History of Judaism in

Germany
German 3650
Google Search: Jews in Germany
1. Time of the first documented Jewish
presence in Germany

2. The place of the biggest Jewish

settlement in Germany

3. The reason of the appearance of Jews in

Germany
 Timeline: Jewish Life in Germany
Antiquity
70 Roman Conquest of Jerusalem
321-331 First documented Jewish presence in Germany, in Cologne

Middle Ages
1096 First Crusade
1347-52 Black Plague
1460-62 Construction of Frankfurt Ghetto

Modern Period
1711 Eisenmenger, Jewry Revealed
1749 Lessing, The Jews
1781 Jewish emancipation
1871 Unification of Germany; German Jews gain complete
political equality
1933 Nazi seizure of power
1945 End of WW II
late 1980s influx of Russian Jews to Germany
Jewish settlement in the ancient world
 70 CE: Destruction of the Temple in
Jerusalem
Romans conquer
Jerusalem in
aftermath of Jewish
revolt
Destroyed Temple,
forbade Jews from
residing in
Jerusalem, sold many
Jews off as slaves
Depiction of the sack of Jerusalem on the Arch of Titus, a
triumphant monument in the Roman Forum.
 Beginning of Jewish settlements in
Germany: The Early Middle Ages
Early settlements in
Cologne, 321/331
Jewish-Christian
relations in late
antiquity and the
early Middle Ages
Jewish population
growth before the
Crusades
 Timeline: Jewish Life in Germany
Antiquity
70 Roman Conquest of Jerusalem
321-331 First documented Jewish presence in Germany, in Cologne

Middle Ages
1096 First Crusade
1347-52 Black Plague
1460-62 Construction of Frankfurt Ghetto

Modern Period
1711 Eisenmenger, Jewry Revealed
1749 Lessing, The Jews
1781 Jewish emancipation
1871 Unification of Germany; German Jews gain complete
political equality
1933 Nazi seizure of power
1945 End of WW II
late 1980s influx of Russian Jews to Germany
German Jewry in the 18th-century
Jews step outside of the Jewish Ghetto
prominent Jewish scholars and
intellectuals: Moses Mendelsohn, Rahel
Varnhagen, Moritz Daniel Oppenheim
Jewish Emancipation, the Haskalah
birth of the Jewish Reform Movement
non-Jewish Germany: debates if
converting to Christianity could be the
cure to antisemitism
 Moses Rahel Varnhagen
Moritz Daniel
Mendelsohn The most
Oppenheim
Leading thinker influencial
First modern German-
of the German salonnire in
Jewish painter
Enlightenment Germany
German Jewry in 1933: A profile
565,000 Jews in
Germany
70% in cities, 1/3 in
Berlin
62% in business and
commerce
Middle class
Typically strongly
identified as both
German and Jewish
European Jewish population circa
1933
 The beginnings of an answer?
[T]he Jewish people, despite all apparent intellectual
qualities, is without any true culture, and especially without
any culture of its own. For what sham culture the Jew today
possesses is the property of other peoples, and for the most
part is ruined in his hands. [Indeed,] there has never been a
Jewish art and accordingly there is none today either; that
above all the two queens of all the arts, architecture and music,
owe nothing original to the Jews. [T]he Jew lacks those
qualities which distinguish the races that are creative and
hence culturally blessed. To what an extent the Jew takes over
foreign culture, imitating or rather ruining it, can be seen from
the fact that he is mostly found in the art which seems to
require least original invention, the art of acting. But even
here, in reality, he is only a juggler, or rather an ape; for even
here he lacks the last touch that is required for real greatness;
even here is not the creative genius but a superficial imitator,
and all the twists and tricks that he uses are powerless to
conceal the inner lifelessness of his creative gift. [cont.]
 Quotation, continued
[The Jew is] always a parasite in the body of other peoples. That
he sometimes left his previous living space results from the fact
that from time to time he was thrown out by the host nations he
had misused. His spreading is a typical phenomenon for all
parasites; he always seeks a new feeding ground for his race.
He is and remains the typical parasite, a sponger who like a
noxious bacillus keeps spreading as soon as a favorable medium
invites him. And the effect of his existence is also like that of
spongers: wherever he appears, the host people dies out His
life within other peoples can only endure for any length of time if
he succeeds in arousing the opinion that he is not a people but a
religious community . And this is the great lie. The Jew has
always been a people with definite racial characteristics and
never a religion. [Indeed,] the Jewish religious doctrine
consists primarily in prescriptions for keeping the blood of Jewry
pure. With satanic job in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth
lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his
blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he
tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out
to subjugate.
Hitlers Mein Kampf (My Struggle)
Written in 1923,
published 1925
Bestseller after Nazi
seizure of power in
1933until Germany
defeated by the Allies in
1945
 Holocaust
Definition:

1. Destruction or slaughter on a mass scale,

especially caused by fire or nuclear war
2. historical: a Jewish sacrificial offering that is
burned completely on an altar
 Shoah
-- Hebrew word meaning "catastrophe," denoting
the catastrophic destruction of European Jewry
during World War II.

-- used in Israel, and the Knesset (the Israeli

Parliament) has designated an official day, called
Yom ha-Shoah, as a day of commemorating the
Shoah or Holocaust; falls in 2018 on April 11-12
 Pogrom
A violent riot aimed at the massacre or
persecution of an ethnic or religious group,
particularly (and traditionally) of Jews
 Final Solution

-- the Nazi policy of exterminating European

Jews. Introduced by Heinrich Himmler and
administered by Adolf Eichmann, the policy
resulted in the murder of 6 million Jews in
concentration camps between 1941 and 1945.
 Antisemitism
Hostility toward or
discrimination
against Jews as a
religious, ethnic, or
racial group
of, relating to, or
constituting a subfamily of
the Afro-Asiatic language
family that includes
Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic,
and Amharic
 Jewish Life Today
Only 15,000 German Jews survived the
Holocaust
Until the end of 1980s: 25,000-30,000 in
West Germany
Only 400 in East Germany
today: some 105,000 registered Jews
Approx. 85% are Soviet Jews