Negotiating Presences: Palestine and the Weimar German Gaze

The new Jewish presence in Palestine brought about by Zionism and consolidated politically by the Balfour Declaration reintroduced into the German and German Jewish consciousness the idea of the proximity of Jews to the Orient while challenging their image as "orientals." It was photography that showed such new Jewish appearances especially palpably and that confronted viewers with a changing Holy Land. This article discusses three photo books on Palestine published in 1925, using them as markers for the contested presences and absences of Jews and Judaism in Germany. The books discuss the status of Palestine and the role of Jews as its new, old colonizers, allowing for a plethora of opinions on the political meaning of Zionism, many of which would be attacked soon thereafter.