Jewish Intermarriage in Germany and Austria

Both conversion and intermarriage involve individual life decisions, which have wider communal and historical significance. Generally scholars studying these two phenomena in the Jewish community have been most interested in their implications for Jewish continuity and survival. The two acts of out-conversion and intermarriage have usually been viewed as nearly identical behavior indicating a personal desire for "radical assimilation." More recent scholarship has begun to distinguish between conversion to Christianity and intermarriage in terms of both motivation and social results and have tended to view intermarriage as far less of a rejection of Jewish identity than conversion.¹ But intermarriage, especially, has many other implications than merely being an indication of the will to assimilate. It can tell us much about gender distinctions and relationships between parents and children, as well as the effect of social class and of working outside the home on marriage choices. Analysis of regional and chronological differences in patterns of intermarriage can give us insights into the effects of urbanization and the implications of political changes and changing economic conditions on private life. A comparison of Germany and Austria, with their contrasting laws on intermarriage, can show the effects of differing legislation on marriage and conversion patterns.

The Nature of the Documentation on Intermarriage and Conversion in Germany and Austria

The German and Austrian data differ greatly from the information available on interreligious patterns in America for several reasons.² In the United States, where the census does not gather information on religious affiliation or behavior, research has relied almost exclusively on surveys of sample populations. In Germany and Austria, on the other hand, local, regional, and national governments collected voluminous information on religion in general and on intermarriage in particular. This information is much more precise than American data can be for another reason—the judgment of who was or was not a Jew was determined by legal enactment. Membership in the Jewish community was not simply a matter of choice in Central Europe. One was required to register with a denomination or to officially declare oneself "without denomination" (konfessionslos). Changing one's religious status required filing official declarations. In the absence of such official papers, everyone born a Jew retained a membership in the Jewish community for life. Because of the existence of these requirements we have information not only on Jews who converted to Christianity but also on those who left the Jewish community and declared themselves without religion. The obsessive nature of the collection of Jewish population data reached its high point under Nazi rule. This material eventually had tragic consequences for the Jews being counted, a fact that we should never forget. But, ironically, it has provided some of the most useful and detailed data on intermarriage available anywhere. (The use of the 1939 Nazi census in this study will be discussed in the appendix.)

Although the official registration of religious denomination was similar in both Germany and Austria, there was one important legal difference. In Germany, the marriage of a Jew and a Christian was legalized in the late nineteenth century. In Austria, on the other hand, such marriages remained technically illegal. If a Jew and a Christian wished to marry, either one would have to convert to the other's religion, or at least one of the spouses would have to declare him- or herself to be without religion.³ These legal differences would cause a difference in patterns of conversion and intermarriage between German and Austrian Jews.

Changes in Intermarriage over Time

Studying intermarriage and conversion chronologically enables us to study the effects of political and economic events on the patterns. Most analyses of these figures have been based on studies of changes in the Jewish intermarriage rate and have presented a picture of a steady increase punctuated by a huge jump during World War I followed by a continued steady increase in the 1920s and early 1930s.⁴ As an example, the...