Jewish marginality produced a radical critique of society paralleling working-class alienation

Evidence

And yet, for all their claims to total assimilation and assertions about the lack of discrimination in Weimar, one cannot avoid a sense of their protesting too much. If in fact Weimar was an environment in which anti-Semitism was on the wane, which itself seems questionable, it must be remembered that the Institut’s members all grew up before the First World War in a very different Germany. Even the most assimilated Jews in Wilhelmian Germany must have felt somewhat apart from their gentile counterparts, and coming to maturity in this atmosphere must surely have left its mark. The sense of role-playing that the Jew eager to forget his origins must have experienced could only have left a residue of bitterness, which might easily feed a radical critique of the society as a whole. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 166 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Assimilated Jews’ role-playing bitterness fed radical critique despite claimed non-discrimination — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 166

Broader Connections

• Assimilated Jews’ role-playing bitterness fed radical critique despite claimed non-discrimination #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 166