Book recommendation: "The Pity of It All" by Amos Elon

[struggle4progress]

The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German Jewish Epoch 1743-1933
Metropolitan (Henry Holt): NY: 2002(?)

Elon attempts to see these two centuries, without being conditioned by the flaming wreckage that followed

His book is largely a collection of anecdotes, often only a sentence or a paragraph long, strung together by generalities, mostly about people successful enough to play a cultural role, and so represents a variety of historical thinking not usually much to my taste: one will not find here many careful and thorough historical portraits, nor much about the lives of ordinary people -- and yet the book overall will leave a certain curious and useful impression of how the world looked to some people over a particular period time

Most of us, for example, will never have heard of David Frielander's 1799 suggestion that synagogues could confederate with Lutheran congregations, provided the divinity of Jesus could be set aside. And most of us will not have known that Theodor Herzl, one of the intellectual fathers of Zionism, nevertheless celebrated Christmas

In the end, of course, none of us can ignore the flaming wreckage. The problem remains: to understand how this German culture, that was in many ways an exemplary treasure, was also capable of such murderous spasms and to understand exactly why so many people were completely unable to see the destructive currents. And on precisely this issue, Elon provides some indicators, almost without comment. One should perhaps try to understand much more about the anti-semitic Hep! Hep! riots of 1819, and one might want to have more understanding of ignored tracts like Berhard Cohn's 1896 "Before the Storm: A Serious Word of Warning to the Jews of Germany." And a reason to try to understand such matters in detail, beyond mere historical curiosity, is the desire not to be taken by surprise here in our own time, after having failed somehow to see or to understand or to combat particular cultural currents

[Jim__]

1. Have you read the book?

Does the book attribute the holocaust and the rise of Hitler to anything that is particular to German culture? I'm not sure that the rise of Hitler had anything especially to do with German culture but rather was tied to the circumstances surrounding Germany's loss of WWI. To me, the causes of the rise of Hitler, and all that is associated with it, seem much more immediate than deep and cultural.

[struggle4progress]

2. I read the book in October. The author does not attempt to discuss the causes of the Holocaust:

he attempts to survey, as I indicated in my short review above, some aspects of German Jewish culture prior to 1933

It is not a complete survey, since he is primarily interested in German Jews who succeeded, which in the early part of his story is a very select group: the Napoleonic conquest enfranchised German Jews, who were then disenfranchised after Napoleon's defeat; the Bismarck unification re-enfranchised them de jure but not de facto; Weimar really enfranchised them

The book does not much cover or analyze German anti-semitic traditions. You will find no discussion of the Wotan societies, for example. Regarding the Hep! Hep! riots, it is noticed that the rioters over a large geographical area shouted Hep! Hep! (an arcane reference to the Roman sack of Jerusalem: Hierosolyma est perdidus); and a contemporary remark is noted, to the effect: "Some educated people are behind this, because most folk would never otherwise have heard the reference." The book does note an oscillation of fashion: at times, it is very fashionable to oppose anti-semitism; at other times, it is fashionable to be anti-semitic; and one even sometimes sees popular intellectuals now in one camp, now in another, according to current fashion

I expect the full political and cultural story of the Shoah is very complicated: it may involve German anti-semitic currents with elaborate roots. You will not find in this book the strange nineteenth century theories that Christianity is not really a Jewish offspring because Jesus was trained in India, for example. You will, however, find some little facts suggesting developments the anti-semites could have exploited among ethnocentrists or xenophobes: nineteenth century synagogue construction and an influx of foreign Jews resulting from the Russian pogroms

[dimbear]

3. A hard look at the sitation in Spain.........

I am not aware of an English translation of this one, but if you can stumble through a little Spanish this is a jawdropper:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33885

It portrays very plainly the tragedy (persecutions of the Jews) enacted over time in Spain which more or less began with the advent of the Catholic monarchs.

Historia de los Judios en Espana, Adolfo de Castro.