Weimar antisemitism drove assimilated German Jews back to Jewish tradition in diverse forms

Evidence

Its first director was Franz Rosenzweig, one of a marginal group of assimilated Jews from which many supporters of a return to Jewish tradition emerged. This return to tradition took place in response to the fact that before the November Revolution in Germany the great majority of the Jewish community had experienced only nominal equality at best, and even after the November Revolution the social situation of Jewish intellectuals was made extremely precarious by the growth of anti-Semitism. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 207 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In his recent study of the predominantly Jewish left-wing literati who wrote for the Berlin journal Die Weltbuhne, Istvan Deak has had to ask similar questions to those that arise in a study of the Frankfurt School. He has correctly noted that the high percentage of Jews on Weimar’s left - the Weltbuhne circle was much larger than the Institut’s, but the same correlation still held - was no mere coincidence. It was due, he wrote, “to a specific development: their recognition of the fact that business, artistic, or scientific careers do not help solve the Jewish problem, and that Weimar Germany had to undergo dire transformation if German anti-Semitism was to end.” 98 However, the members of the Frankfurt School deny ever having had such a recognition. “All of us,” Pollock has written, “up to the last years before Hitler, had no feeling of insecurity originating from our ethnic descent. Unless we were ready to undergo baptism, certain positions in public service and business were closed to us, but that never bothered us. And under the Weimar republic many of these barriers had been moved away.” — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 165 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Assimilated German Jews returned to tradition in response to nominal equality and rising anti-Semitism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 207; Weimar Jewish leftists radicalized because careers did not solve the Jewish problem — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 165; Assimilated German Jews located authentic Judaism in its most alien, orientalized forms

Broader Connections

• Assimilated German Jews returned to tradition in response to nominal equality and rising anti-Semitism #corroborates (0.96) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 207
• Assimilated German Jews located authentic Judaism in its most alien, orientalized forms #exemplifies (0.78)
• Weimar Jewish leftists radicalized because careers did not solve the Jewish problem #expands (0.74) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 165