Jewish intermarriage and conversion in Germany and Austria

Modern Judaism

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 23-61

  Lowenstein, Steven M ^a  

^a American Jewish University   (United States)

Author keywords

Gas chromatography; Illicit drug use; Immunoassay screening; Mass spectrometry; Workplace drug testing

Indexed keywords

EID: 61449320208     PISSN: 02761114     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/mj/kji003     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. Till van Rahden, Juden und Andere Breslauer. Die Beziehungen zwischen Juden, Protestanten und Katholiken in einer deutschen Grossstadt von 1860 bis 1925 (Göttingen, 2000), pp. 141-147
2. Kirsten Meiring, Die Christlich-Jüdische Mis-chehe in Deutschland 1840-1933 (Hamburg, 1998)
3. Marsha Rozenblit, The Jews of Vienna 1867-1914: Assimilation and Identity (Albany, 1984), p. 128
4. Leo Goldhammer, Die Juden Wiens: Eine statistische Studie (Vienna, 1926), pp. 17-18
5. Peter Honigmann, Die, Austritte aus der Jüdischen Gemeinde Berlin 1873-1941. Statistische Auswertung und historische Interpretation (Frankfurt, 1988), pp. 81-82
6. Stefan Behr, Die Bevölkerungsrückgang der deutschen Juden (Frankfurt, 1932), p. 112
7. See also Statistik des deutschen Reichs, Vol. 451, No. 5 (1933 census): Die Glaubensjuden im Deutschen Reich (Berlin, 1936), p. 8
8. The figures for 1926-1930 were calculated by me based on Meiring, Die Christlich-Judische Mischehe in Deutschland 1840-1933, pp. 94-95
9. See, especially, Statistisches jahrbuch für das deutsche Reich (1923), p. 31
10. See, e.g., Meiring, Die Christlich-Jüdische Mischehe in Deutschland 1840-1933, pp. 94-95
11. Trade Maurer, "Partnersuche und Lebensplanung. Heiratsannoncen als Quelle für die Sozial- und Mentalitätsgeschichte der Juden in Deutschland," in Juden in Deutschland. Emanzipation, integration, Verfolgung und Vernichtung. 25 Jahre Institut fur die Geschichte der deutschen Juden Hamburg, ed. Peter Freimark, Alice Jankowski, and Ina S. Lorenz (Hamburg, 1991), pp. 344-374
12. See, for instance, Sylvia Barack Fishman, Jewish and Something Else: A Study of Mixed Married Families (New York, 2001), esp. pp. 7, 31-34, 100
13. Meiring, Die Christlich-Jüdische Mischehe in Deutschland 1840-1933, pp. 104-106
14. ZDSJ, Vol. 5 (1909), p. 157
15. In Silesia there were 324 Jewish in-marriages and thirty-six intermarriages in 1904. Statistics for Breslau for the years 1901-1905 showed an average of 137 Jewish in-marriages annually and an average of eighteen intermarriages. Uriah Zevi Engelman, "Intermarriage among Jews in Germany, USSR and Switzerland," Jewish Social Studies Vol. 2 (1940), pp. 164-165. One caution about the urban and rural statistics should be mentioned. Because of the lack of appropriate facilities in the villages, many rural Jews married in the nearest city. This should not affect the validity of our comparison above, unless intermarrying village couples were more likely to marry in the city than in-marrying ones
16. Behr, Die Bevölkerungsrückgang der deutschen Juden, p. 113; "Eheschlies-sungen im Jahre 1904," pp. 158-159
17. See Steven M. Lowenstein, "Was Urbanization Harmful to Jewish Tradition and Identity in Germany?" Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Vol. 15 (1999), pp. 85, 101. 1 used the 1933 census figures for Jews (by religion) in an attempt to correct for distortions caused by regional differences in emigration rates during the years 1933-1939
18. Magdeburg, a city with few Orthodox Jews, had 330 half Jews compared to 726 Jews (of whom 637 belonged to the Jewish community) in 1939. In the smaller mainly Orthodox community of Halberstadt in the same region, there were only twenty-seven half Jews compared to 245 full-Jews (235 of them members of the community). In Fulda, another small city dominated by Orthodoxy, there were only ten half Jews and four quarter Jews but 415 members of the Jewish community (Lowenstein, "Was Urbanization Harmful to Jewish Tradition and Identity in Germany?" pp. 95, 105)
19. Statistik des deutschen Reichs, Vol. 451, No. 3 (German census 1933), pp. 32-33
20. Lowenstein, "Was Urbanization Harmful to Jewish Tradition and Identity in Germany?" pp. 83, 93, 97, 99
21. Honigmann, Die Austritte aus der jüdischen Gemeinde Berlin 1873-1941, pp. 77-93
22. Van Rahden, Juden und Andere Breslauer, pp. 149-151. In van Rahden's relatively small sample, twelve of the twenty intermarrying Jewish brides, whose fathers' income was known, were in the below 1,100 DM category. By comparison only two of the six intermarrying men whose fathers' income was known, and only ten of seventy-nine Jewish women who married Jewish men, were in this low-income category
23. Bruno Blau, "Die Austritte aus dem Judentum in Berlin wahrend der Jahre 1907 und 1908," ZDSJ, Vol. 5 (1909), pp. 87-91
24. Rozenblit, The Jews of Vienna 1867-1914, pp. 130-131, 136-140
25. J. Thon, "Die Bewegung der jüdischen Bevölkerung in Bayern seit 1876," ZDSJ, Vol. 1 (1905), Heft 8, p. 7. Part, but by no means all, of the explanation for the higher-than-expected number of intermarriages with Protestants is the fact that many Jews lived in sections of Bavaria like Mittelfranken, Oberfranken, and Pfalz, which were predominantly Protestant (Mittelfranken, 68,7 percent; Oberfranken, 59.7 percent; Pfalz, 55.8 percent)
26. "Eheschliessungen im Jahre 1903," ZDSJ, Vol. 1, No. 4 (1905), p. 8
27. "Eheschliessungen im Jahre 1904," ZDSJ, Vol. 2 (1906), pp. 158-159
28. Statistik des deutschen Reichs, Vol. 451, No. 5, p. 8. It is difficult to know whether the slight increase in the years 1931 and 1932 (to 167 a year) represented a trend or not
29. See, for instance, "Austritte aus dem Judentum und Uebertritte zum Judentum im Jahre 1903 in Deutschland," ZDSJ, Vol. 1 (1905), Heft 1, esp. p. 14
30. Honigmann, Die Austritte aus der jüdischen Gemeinde Berlin 1873-1941, pp. 27, 46 (graph), 57 (graph), 78 (graph), 149-150. Honigmann points out a change in the nature of withdrawals "from the Jewish community only" before and after 1918. Until 1918 such withdrawals could be made only on declarations that remaining within the community violated one's conscience. Most of those withdrawing were Orthodox Jews seceding from the Reform-dominated Jewish community. In the Weimar Republic, such a declaration of conscience was no longer needed, and most withdrawals from the community were a sign of lack of interest in communal membership (and taxpaying). The 1920-1923 withdrawals followed a temporary peak of withdrawals in 1919
31. Honigmann, Die Austritte aus der jüdischen Gemeinde Berlin 1873-1941, p. 56, quoting Bruno Blau, "Die Austritte aus dem Judentum in Berlin (1873-1906)," ZDSJ, Vol. 3 (1907), pp. 145-153. These figures are based on the one-third of those withdrawing who declared the religion they were joining. It assumes that the other two-thirds had a similar pattern
32. The ninety-six cases about whom we know for 1903 represent only a small fraction of the 259 Jews who left the Jewish community in that year. Blau, "Die Austritte aus dem Judentum in Berlin wahrend der Jahre 1907 und 1908," pp. 87-90. In the 1907-1908 cases we have information on the religious choices of only 102 of the 335 individuals who left the community
33. ZDSJ, Vol. l (1905)
34. ZDSJ, Vol. 1 (1905), Heft 5, p. 11
35. The fact that intermarried couples had fewer children than either in-married Jews or Christians was mentioned frequently by writers on intermarriage in the first half of the twentieth century. For a good summary, see Meiring, Die Christlich-Jüdische Mischehe in Deutschland 1840-1933, pp. 101-103
36. Arthur Ruppin, Die Juden der Gegenwart, 2nd ed. (Köln, 1911), p. 175, in Aron Tanzer, Die Mischehe in Religion, Geschichte und Statistik (Berlin, 1913), p. 33. A study of the children of intermarried couples in Beslau in 1905 (ZDSJ, Vol. 6 [1910]) showed that the 203 mixed couples in the city had a total of 244 children, only sixty-seven of whom were being raised as Jews. The percentage raised as Jews in this case is 27.5 percent higher than the figure in most other studies
37. Statistisches Jahrbuch für das deutsche Reich, Vol. 59 (Berlin, 1941-1942), p. 27
38. ZDSJ, Vol. 6 (1910), p. 29. At the same time fewer than 4 percent of Saxon Protestant men married out of the faith