Das Wahlverhalten der jüdischen Bevölkerung in der Weimarer Republik. Zur politischen Orientierung der Juden in der Weimarer Republik (review)

Book Reviews 133 for enemies of the Jews to pick up from there. They would have done so without a Jewish lead, at any rate. Similarly, Graetz demonstrates how Jews believed in a separate Jewish or Semitic race, one with durable physical and psychological traits, which some of them termed "Semitism." Sephardim, moreover, were inclined to think of the Ashkenazim as made up of inferior racial stock, in a social-darwinistic sense, whereas the Ashkenazim looked upon many Sephardim as apostates, little different from the non-Jews with whom they mixed so freely. Many Jews began to re-examine their beliefs about race or the power of the Rothschilds, as the mischief those beliefs encouraged became clearer by the 1880s and 1890s with the rise of modem political-racial antisemitism . Many non-Jews, most notably Ernst Renan, also moved away from strict racial determinism, because of the unforeseen implications of such notions but also simply because a growing body of evidence put them into question. Graetz's treatment of Renan is revealing in other ways, particularly in his description ofthe warm and lasting friendships Renan retained with Jews in France, in spite of his sometimes aggressively formulated descriptions of the "sterility" of the Semitic race in history. Jewish intellectuals in France retained an admiration for Renan, even when criticizing-or at least striving to qualify-many of his ideas. Again, Graetz's account ofthese relationships is characterized by a subtlety of tone, a sense of ambiguity and paradox, and a reticence to make ofRenan the villain, or antisemite, that is to be found in some accounts. A short review cannot adequately convey a sense of the richness of the many chapters of this volume. It is regrettable that it was not brought up to date and more ambitiously edited, or more carefully written in the first place, but those with the background and patience to deal with its various idiosyncrasies will fmd it rewarding. Albert S. Lindemann University of California Santa Barbara Das Wahlverhalten der jiidischen BevOikerung in der Weimarer Republik. Zur politischen Orientierung der Juden in der Weimarer Republik, by Martin Liepach. Tiibingin: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1996. 330 pp. DM 130. Martin Liepach's book applies the statistical methods ofmodem political science to the study ofthe voting patterns ofJews in Germany during the Weimar Republic. The book is divided into four main sections (not including the short conclusion). A brief discussion of previous literature on the subject and of methods to be used in the volume is followed by a longer historical section describing the position of German Jewry in the 134 SHOFAR Fall 1997 Vol. 16, No.1 Weimar Republic. The historical section includes discussions of antisemitism and internal Jewish ideological divisions. The core of the work is found in sections 3 and 4, which are, respectively, a study ofthe political views ofleading publications read by German Jews and a statistical study of election results of the elections between 1928 and 1932 (with some earlier data). Liepach combines a sophisticated use of multiple regression analysis (which is sometimes hard for the lay person to follow) with a careful look at the ideological background and spectrum of contemporary Jewish political views. Liepach's use of press analysis and his fairly thorough study of the ethos ofGerman Jewry prevent him from slavish reliance on statistical correlations alone, which might have led him to absurd conclusions. (There is a positive statistical correlation between Jewish population and the far right German nationalist party [DNVP], for instance, whose real reason is that districts with many Jews had more wealthy voters than others.) The electoral analysis, which is the most important and innovative part ofthe book, uses two main groups of Jewish voters as the core of its data. The first set of statistics come from election district results in the major centers of Jewish population-Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and Cologne (especially the first two). More unusual is Liepach's analysis on voting patterns among small-town and rural Jews in the southern states of Hesse and Baden. Pathbreaking as are Liepach's me~ods for the study of the Jewish vote in Germany, the results tend to modify and nuance...