Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany by Kerry Wallach (review)

The German Constitution of 1919 granted, for the first time in German history, full civic rights to people of Jewish descent. All the same, as Kerry Wallach notes in the introduction to her thought-provoking book, in the Weimar Republic Jews remained "a population under scrutiny" (2), subject to various forms of anti-Semitic discrimination, marginalization, and harassment, as well as, on occasion, even physical attacks. Such conditions triggered a concern over when and how it was appropriate or advisable to either disclose or conceal one's Jewish identity in public. Wallach draws on the American concept of "passing," developed primarily in connection with the African American and the LGBT experience, to analyze a wide variety of responses by Jews living in Weimar Germany to "the conflicting messages conveyed by the tenuousness of their social positions" (160). In the Weimar Republic, Wallach argues, passing as not Jewish potentially "provided professional or personal upward mobility or political sanctuary" (159).

In four main chapters, framed by an introduction and a conclusion, Wallach shows how "[p]arallel to the pressure to evade anti-Semitism by being inconspicuous was the desire to overcome such pressures by displaying Jewishness, a right that many Weimar Jews proudly exercised" (4). Faced with often conflicting demands, depending on whether the main focus was on how to relate to fellow Jews or to the non-Jewish population at large, Jews in the Weimar Republic developed a wide range of strategies for navigating a potentially tricky terrain:

For Weimar Jews, passing figured as a means toward achieving a type of dual legibility, of appearing simultaneously non-Jewish and Jewish, depending on the viewer. Yet passing and recognizability were not always intentional or able to be controlled, and they sometimes resulted in confusion or mistaken identifications.

(21)

Wallach strips the concept of passing of binary moral connotations (it is commonly regarded as either objectionable, because deceitful and dishonest, or justifiable, because necessary for self-preservation or survival), salvages moments of potential agency for Jews living in the Weimar Republic, highlights the tremendous diversity of Jewish positions, and pays sustained attention to issues of gender.

Chapter 1, "Methods of Projecting and Detecting Jewishness," shows various examples of what Wallach calls "dual coding," by way of which Jews took advantage of the illegibility of supposed racial or ethnic markers (such as physiognomy, facial features, complexion, or hair colour and texture) or of the inability of non-Jewish observers to read such markers, while at the same time providing subtle clues that were legible to the initiated, that is, to fellow Jews. This endeavour was complicated for German Jews by efforts to differentiate themselves from Ostjuden, Jews pouring into the country after the First World War who were trying to escape violent pogroms in eastern Europe. In the second chapter, "Coming Out as Jewish: Print, Stage, and Screen Displays," the main focus is on advertisements that appealed to Jewish consumers, with markers largely illegible to non-Jewish audiences, and on the pronounced interest on the part of Jewish moviegoers to identify "positive depictions of Jewishness" onscreen that, as Wallach notes, "often were so inconspicuous that they were nearly invisible" (78). Chapter 3, "Hostile Outings: When Being Seen Was Undesirable," deals with efforts at "self-policing" on the part of the Jewish community (97). Repeated attacks on people presumed to be Jewish (for instance, in 1923, 1927, and 1931) triggered an extensive debate on how to avoid, for example, conspicuous displays of consumption (such as fashionable clothes or jewellery) that might provoke anti-Semitic prejudice. Participants in this debate included the liberal Jewish press, women's organizations, conservative rabbis, and the Jewish war veterans' organization, Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten. The fourth chapter, "Mistaken Identifications and Nonrecognitions," acknowledges the slipperiness of identity ascriptions based on visual clues or other markers such as names, and discusses the often tragic results of efforts to conceal one's Jewish identity from others, including family members...