Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion - Jewish Experiences of the First World War in Central Europe

During the First World War, the Jewish population of Central Europe was politically, socially, and experientially diverse, to an extent that resists containment within a simple historical narrative. While antisemitism and Jewish disillusionment have dominated many previous studies of the topic, this collection aims to recapture the multifariousness of Central European Jewish life in the experiences of soldiers and civilians alike during the First World War. Here, scholars from multiple disciplines explore rare sources and employ innovative methods to illuminate four interconnected themes: minorities and the meaning of military service, Jewish-Gentile relations, cultural legacies of the war, and memory politics.

List of contents

List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Jason Crouthamel, Michael Geheran, Tim Grady, and Julia Barbara Köhne

PART I: AT THE MARGINS: MINORITIES AND THE MILITARY

Chapter 1. Hopes and Disappointments: German and French Jews during the Wars of 1870/71 and 1914–1918

Christine G. Krüger

Chapter 2. Habsburg Jews and the Imperial Army before and during the First World War

Tamara Scheer

Chapter 3. The ‘Stepchildren’ of the Kaiserreich: Alsatians in the German Army during the First World War

Devlin M. Scofield

PART II: RELATIONS: CONTESTED IDENTITIES DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Chapter 4. Rethinking Jewish Front Experiences

Michael Geheran

Chapter 5. "Being German" and "Being Jewish" during the First World War: An Ambivalent Transnational Relationship?

Sarah Panter

Chapter 6. In the Shadow of Antisemitism: Jewish Women and the German Home Front during the First World War

Andrea A. Sinn

Chapter 7. The Social Engagement of Jewish Women in Berlin during the First World War

Sabine Hank

Chapter 8. “My Comrades Are for the Most Part On My Side”: Comradeship Between Non-Jewish and German Jewish Front Soldiers in the First World War

Jason Crouthamel

PART III: REPRESENTATION: THE CULTURE OF WAR

Chapter 9. Blind Spots and Jewish Heroines: Refashioning the Galician War Experience in 1920s Hollywood and Berlin

Philipp Stiasny

Chapter 10. Agnon on the Home Front in In Mr Lublin’s Store: Hebrew Fiction of the First World War

Glenda Abramson

PART IV: CONTESTED MEMORIES: WORKING THROUGH THE LEGACIES OF WAR

Chapter 11. Paper Psyches: On the Psychography of the Front Soldier According to Paul Plaut

Julia Barbara Köhne

Chapter 12. Narrative Negotiations: Interpreting the Cultural Position of Jews in National(social)ist War Narratives from 1914 to 1945

Florian Brückner

Afterword: German Jewry and the First World War: Beyond Polemic and Apologetic

Derek Jonathan Penslar

Index

About the author

Jason Crouthamel is an Associate Professor of History at Grand Valley State University. His publications include An Intimate History of the Front: Masculinity, Sexuality and German Soldiers in the First World War (2014), The Great War and German Memory: Society, Politics and Psychological Trauma (2009) and two collections coedited with Peter Leese: Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War and Traumatic Memories of the Second World War and After (both 2016).

Michael Geheran is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the United States Military Academy. He is a graduate of Norwich University, Harvard University, and Clark University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2016. He is currently working on a book based on his doctoral research, which examines the experiences of German-Jewish World War I veterans during the Holocaust.

Tim Grady is a Reader in Modern History at the University of Chester. He is also the author of The German-Jewish Soldiers of the First World War in History and Memory (2011), A Deadly Legacy: German Jews and the Great War (2017), and co-editor, with Hannah Ewence, of Minorities and the First World War: From War to Peace (2017).

Julia Barbara Köhne is a Visiting Assistant Professor of the History of Culture at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin.  She is the author of Geniekult in Geisteswissenschaften und Literaturen um 1900 und seine filmischen Adaptionen (2014), Kriegshysteriker. Strategische Bilder und mediale Techniken militärpsychiatrischen Wissens, 1914–1920 (2009), and co-editor, with Ulrike Heikaus, of Krieg! Juden zwischen den Fronten 1914–1918 (2014).

Summary

This collection explores rare sources and employs novel interdisciplinary methods to illuminate four interconnected themes: minorities and the meaning of military service, Jewish-Gentile relations, the cultural legacy of the war, and memory politics.

Additional text

“All in all, the collection succeeds in its primary aim, to present fresh and innovative perspectives on (mainly) German Jewish wartime experiences and introduce newly discovered sources and analytical tools that highlight their diversity, in the editors’ words, ‘along gender, political, geographic, social, and subjective lines’. Perhaps even more importantly, as Derek Penslar puts it in his thoughtful afterword, it represents an important contribution towards a ‘unified field of modern German and Jewish history’.” • Journal of Austrian Studies

“By exploring diverse narratives in various forms, including literature and film, these twelve excellent essays add nuance and complexity to the mainstream narrative of the Jewish Great War experience. The primary goal of this collection is to go beyond the Judenzählung of 1916, the ‘Jewish count’ of war contribution, and to challenge the belief that anti-Semitism was the main ordeal dealt with among central European Jews.” • First World War Studies

“The editors are to be commended for going beyond traditional historical concerns to include literature, film and even psychology…[This volume]is an important collection of essays which mostly deal with German Jews in the First World War. It … does a masterful job at reminding us that German Jews were indeed part of the German nation, however defined, before the Nazis.” • Social History

“This interdisciplinary collection of essays is a penetrating and deeply researched analysis of how the horrors of World War I shaped, in contradictory and surprising ways, Jewish life. It is an impressive achievement that will stand alongside some of the best scholarship in the field.” • Eugene M. Avrutin, University of Illinois

“Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion is truly at the forefront of research in the field. It approaches its subject in an original, sophisticated and intellectually riveting manner. Coherent and convincing throughout, the book manages to surprise and engage, all the while expanding our understanding of what it meant to be a Jew during World War I.” • Ilse Josepha Lazaroms, Central European University

“This extraordinary volume advances the historiography of German-speaking Jews in World War I to a higher level, pushing past the now dated debates about Jewish war service and assimilation that dominated the field for decades. A rich compilation of cutting-edge research, Beyond Inclusion and Exclusion demonstrates the diversity and heterogeneity of Jewish war experiences and postwar memories. Its authors interrogate Jewish difference through a range of compelling, interdisciplinary approaches and comparative frameworks, unearthing new material and reexamining familiar sources from fresh perspectives. An indispensable collection for readers interested in trauma and its linkages with war, gender, Jewishness, and media and for scholars of Jewish history, German studies, and war and society in the twentieth century.” • Paul Lerner, University of Southern California

Product details

• Authors: Jason Geheran Crouthamel
• Assisted by: Jason Crouthamel (Editor), Crouthamel Jason (Editor), Michael Geheran (Editor), Dr. Tim Grady (Editor), Tim Grady (Editor), Julia Barbara Koehne (Editor), Julia B. Kohne (Editor), Julia Barbara Köhne (Editor)
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.11.2018
• EAN: 9781789200188
• ISBN: 978-1-78920-018-8
• No. of pages: 418
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; First World War, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / Jewish, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Jewish Studies, Jewish Studies, c 1910 to c 1919, c 1914 to c 1918 (including WW1), Relating to Jewish people and groups, Social groups: religious groups and communities, HISTORY / Wars & Conflicts / World War I