The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743-1933/Amos Elon (New York: Picador, 2002)

 Studio portrait of a family of German Jews of Polish origin, who were forced to return to Poland in 1938. The family lived for a time in Zabno with the Goldman family. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ann Shore (Hania Goldman))

The Pity of It All as much an exploration of European culture as it is a history of Jewish contributions to modern life. Indeed the two are inextricable. In what we now see to have been a unique cultural flourishing, Germans of Jewish background helped create a cultural milieu during the rise of the modern German state that was a world wonder. The evanescence can be compared to renaissance Florence, Tang China, or classical Alexandria. And like these epochs the moment disappeared, wrung out by quotidian social tensions and political swings and unexpected events. Such periods of flourishing are fragile. If this book does anything it should remind us to treasure them.

In the German example Jews from eastern Europe were able to thrive in a quickly modernizing German culture that was at times welcoming, at others antagonistic. Jewish peoples at the time took two approaches, either seeking to remain culturally separate or to assimilate. The assimilationists were constantly disappointed, until the German State from 1933 finally clarified the issue. But the dream persisted, after 1945 transported to new locales like the United States and Canada. The anti-assimilationists of course succeeded in establishing Israel as a political entity. Both worldviews thrive today.

There is no need to list all the outstanding individuals who contributed to the Jewish renaissance, from Felix Mendelssohn to Einstein to Franz Kafka.  These are individuals whose  thinking continues to impact our lives today, in many fields. Elon uses their lives to unveil the various periods in the grand narrative of Jewish-German life. He begins with the greatest philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, who arrived in Berlin in 1743. Elon structures most of the chapters by following two or more outstanding individuals whose lives exemplify the period. Throughout the primary focus is on Berlin, while paying due respect to such other centers as Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Vienna. The intellectual ferment was everywhere, but in Berlin it burned brightest.

Assimilation proceeded along several lines. Jews were slowly accepted into most realms of civic life—with the military it would be the Weimar Republic before full acceptance would be attained. Along the way Jews were established in trading, industry, finance, journalism, academia, and the arts, making immense contributions. Jews were involved in the grand failures as well, for instance in jingoist promotion of WWI and its disastrous results. Jewish intellectuals, businesspeople and artists clearly achieved a high degree of assimilation, even though it was not complete, and serious prejudice remained. This was reflected in the number of converts to Christianity, including the great poet of the German language, Heinrich Heine.

Along the way there were constant reminders that absolute assimilation, possible for many, was never going to be complete. The Hep! Hep! Riots of 1819 were a stark reminder of the overt hatred experienced throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. These riots led to the creation of one of many Jewish organizations, The Society for the Culture and Science of the Jews (Wissenbchaft). While ultimately unsuccessful, the Society bore the banner of an effort to reform Judaism and eliminate aspects of Judaism that did not “fit” the modern world. 

How to we explain the assumption that Jews would be fully assimilated into European culture, and especially the German? Part of it is surely due to the progression of modernity, the ongoing unfolding of an enlightenment project based on the rights of individuals and a new compact between state and individual. New rights spreading through Europe, especially during the  revolutionary changes of the Napoleonic wars, the revolutions of 1848, and the nationalist movements within the Hapsburg empires, the Italian states, and the disunited German states, led most Jewish publications to hope out-loud that the new states would treat them with equality. Their hopes were inevitably dashed. As in 1819, the revolutions of 1848 were followed by anti-Jewish riots (p. 158). 

Throughout these modernizing events the Jewish religion itself was also changing. In mid-19th century half of the Jewish population practiced traditional rituals and stayed aloof from civic life. The other half saw themselves as politically liberal and willing to engage in politics (160). Jewish rabbis generally favored political change. 1848, “the year of folly,” led to a uniting of liberals of all backgrounds, including Jews (179). The novelist Berthold Auerbach felt that both his German-ness and his Jewishness were strengthened by the revolution of (167), 

Things appeared to improve steadily with the era of Bismarck, who served as Prussian prime minister from 1862 to 1890. Ludwig Bamberger and Gerson Bleichröder were Bismarck’s primary bankers, Walter Rathenau his primary industrialist. The emancipation law of 1871 seemed to cement the new status Jews felt as full-fledged German citizens. But the stock market crash of 1873 would lead to more anti-Semitic trouble. It would never die out completely, no matter how fervently German Jews assimilated to German values and converted to Christianity. 

Germany’s rising prosperity at the turn of the 20th century produced even more talented German Jews, from scientists Paul Ehrlich and Fritz Haber to the theologian Martin Buber. There was, as Elon notes, “a flood of talent” (275). All of the confidence and optimism that came along with these achievements would come to a screeching halt with World War I, however. Many prominent Jews, including the Zionist leader Max Bodenheimer and the writer Stefan Zweig, supported the war (319). In the wake of Germany’s defeat and the onerous settlement at Versailles, the Weimar Republic was formed in 1919.

Elon’s final chapter, titled simply “The End,” takes the reader as far as Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. The story from that point, one familiar to the general reader, becomes something different—no longer about a German-Jewish culture, it becomes that tale of a minority carved out from their home culture and singled out for exclusion and extinction. The impact of this move on German culture as it stands today is a fascinating question, one not discussed by Elon. German culture went its way, and Jewish religion and peoples continued in a different direction. What we are left with is an allusion to a unique possibility: If German culture had continued with its Jewish side intact, in an imperfect yet viable symbiosis, if not for Hitler, if not for the first World War, if not…Germany could have become the dominant nation in the world. But what we are left with, and which Elon describes in detail, is an incredible effulgence of human creativity and industry, an epoch whose contributions live on in our modern world.