No degree of conformity made Jews’ social membership secure in Weimar Germany
Evidence
Walter Benjamin was just being discovered and he was becoming the key figure in a materialist theory of the arts and the media. … Their basic common experience was that no degree of conformism was enough to make one’s position as a member of society secure. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 14
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader Critical Theory framework: outsider status as analytic standpoint, echoes of standpoint theory. — connects to: Weimar Jewish leftists radicalized because careers did not solve the Jewish problem — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 165; German society defined Jewishness as a bodily essence no assimilation could erase; Jewish social position derived from state relationship rather than class, leaving them socially void. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 92 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Jewish social position derived from state relationship rather than class, leaving them socially void.
#expands(0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 92 - Jews were socially suspended in a void defined by the state
#expands(0.85) - Weimar Jewish leftists radicalized because careers did not solve the Jewish problem
#corroborates(0.82) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 165 - German society defined Jewishness as a bodily essence no assimilation could erase
#expands(0.78) - Jews existed between social classes rather than within any one of them.
#expands(0.75) - Society preferred unfamiliar Jews over assimilated ones as exotic objects
#qualifies(0.74) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 263 - Notables governed Jewish communities while belonging to neither Jewish nor Gentile society
#exemplifies(0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 211 - Jewish social acceptance depended on being perceived as a race of traitors.
#qualifies(0.72) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 270