The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743-1933 [Hardcover]

Amos Elon (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0805059644 | ISBN-13: 978-0805059649 | Publication Date: November 1, 2002 | Edition: 1st

From an acclaimed historian and social critic, a passionate and poignant history of German Jews from the mid-eighteenth century to the eve of the Third Reich

As it's usually told, the story of the German Jews starts at the end, with their tragic demise in Hitler's Third Reich. Now, in this important work of historical restoration, Amos Elon takes us back to the beginning, chronicling a period of achievement and integration that at its peak produced a golden age second only to the Renaissance.

Writing with a novelist's eye, Elon shows how a persecuted clan of cattle dealers and wandering peddlers was transformed into a stunningly successful community of writers, philosophers, scientists, tycoons, and activists. He peoples his account with dramatic figures: Moses Mendelssohn, who entered Berlin in 1743 through the gate reserved for Jews and cattle, and went on to become "the German Socrates"; Heinrich Heine, beloved lyric poet who famously referred to baptism as the admission ticket to European culture; Hannah Arendt, whose flight from Berlin signaled the end of the German-Jewish idyll. Elon traces how this minority-never more than one percent of the population-came to be perceived as a deadly threat to national integrity, and he movingly demonstrates that this devastating outcome was uncertain almost until the end.

A collective biography, full of depth and compassion, The Pity of It All summons up a splendid world and a dream of integration and tolerance that, despite all, remains the essential ennobling project of modernity.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In his excellent overview, veteran Israeli journalist and historian Elon (a biographer of Herzl and others) writes in a fluid and appealing style, with a talent for capturing the right anecdote or quote. He focuses on individual figures, both well-known ones such as Heine, Marx (both of whom converted to Protestantism) and Herzl, and lesser-knowns such as Ludwig Sonnemann (a newspaper editor who excoriated Bismarck's 1871 annexation of Alsace and Lorraine), Kurt Eisner (head of a short-lived socialist republic in Bavaria in 1919) and Walter Rathenau (the assimilated foreign minister who was assassinated in 1922). Like other historians of German Jewry, Elon points to the leadership of Jews in bringing the Enlightenment to Germany and to their high rate of assimilation and intermarriage (by the 1920s, the intermarriage rate of German Jewry rivaled that of America today). Fortunately, Elon avoids the trap of seeing all of pre-Nazi German-Jewish history as a prelude to the Holocaust or of viewing the "Final Solution" as inevitable. At the end of the 19th century, he argues effectively, "In most other European countries, prejudice and discrimination seemed equally or more prevalent" than in Germany. Elon's book is not without its shortcomings, such as focusing too much on Berlin and neglecting Jews in other cities, as well as rural and poor Jews, eastern European immigrants and women. But given these failings, this study will prove enlightening and enjoyable to those interested in both modern Jewish and modern German history. 47 b&w illus.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

German Jews were among the first in the modern era to attempt to be both Jewish and national simultaneously. Elon author of over half a dozen books on Jewish history argues that this fusion often caused dissonance, which manifested itself in a number of intellectual movements, from radical assimilation to Zionism. Elon re-creates the German Jewish intellectual world through collective biography, whereby individuals are chosen as archetypes to understand the challenges and accomplishments of the entire German Jewish community. Such an approach can be dangerous, relying as it does on those who have left some sort of literary or political remnant. Elon, however, usually avoids this trap by focusing on the public side of German-Jewish life. Indeed, Elon's study charts a similar intellectual pattern to Ritchie Robertson's (The Jewish Question in German Literature, 1749-1939: Emancipation and Its Discontents). Unlike Robertson, who concentrated on its literary and philosophical manifestations, Elon examines a wider spectrum, including political and economic thought. Perhaps the most interesting chapter is "War Fever," which brings into stark contrast the responses of these various intellectual movements to total war in 1914. This work provides fascinating insight into the Jewish dilemma of coping with modernity. Recommended for most libraries. Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books; 1st edition (November 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805059644
• ISBN-13: 978-0805059649
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #338,202 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, Compelling History of Jews in Germany, April 7, 2005

By 

Beth Fox "Beth A. Fox" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743-1933 (Hardcover)

Too often the history of Jews in Germany is portrayed as beginning with the Weimar Republic and ending with the Holocaust. This German-Jewish history begins much earlier, in 1743, and ends before the Third Reich has obliterated the German Jewish community. It is a sobering tale.

The story of Jews in Germany is essentially one of a long unrequited love affair. From decade to decade, and century to century, the Jews featured in this book wanted nothing more than to be Germans. They did everything in their power to demonstrate their "Germanness," from eagerly volunteering to fight for Germany in the Franco-Prussian and First World Wars, to making important scientific discoveries (10 German Jews won Nobel prizes in science), to financing various principalities, to writing great German poetry. A good many Jews were even willing to convert to Christianity in order to blend in, or to be able to practice their professions. The rulers of various German states (there was no united "Germany" until 1871) cynically used Jews as a source of funds, allowed them minimal rights, and expelled or denied them advancement at whim.

Still, the people who refused to call themselves "German Jews" ("We are German citizens of the Jewish faith!") kept abasing themselves to join this society. One wonders why. One reason is that Germany did have a lot to offer -- it was a leader in philosophy, science, music and art. A historian visiting Berlin in the 1970s said that the 20th Century could have been the German century. Another reason is that as bad as Germany was, it treated its Jews better than many other places in Europe, particularly Russia. And in the Weimar Era, German Jews were represented at all levels of government: the Foreign Minister was a Jew, as was the head of a short-lived socialist government in Bavaria. Jews were leaders in science, architecture, music and theatre. German Jews even believed that they were better off than their co-religionists in the United States,where Jews were excluded from many neighborhoods and jobs, and Ivy League schools had quotas. (Of course, there is nothing in American Jewish history remotely similar to the German religious exclusions, or, worse still, "Hep, Hep!" riots.)

The major flaw in this book is that while it discusses the impact of German Jews on Germany, it gives short shrift to the impact of German Jews on Jewish life, and neglects the more religious Jews altogether. The omission of Samson Raphael Hirsch, one of the greatest Orthodox leaders of all time, is inexplicable. The philosophy of "Torah im Derech Eretz," i.e., that Jews should simultaneously study Torah and be conversant with modern culture and thought, is the foundation of the Modern Orthodox movement -- and it started in Germany.

It is sometimes difficult to wade through long non-fiction books, especially history, but not this one. The book grabs you in the beginning and never lags. (Not only is Elon a great writer, but he has made the not-inconsiderable effort to translate German poetry into rhymed English!) The story is painful, and often heartbreaking, but well worth the effort.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful story, September 19, 2003

By 

I. Tysoe "Inna Tysoe" (Earth) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743-1933 (Hardcover)

This is a heartbreaking story about a people who tried to shake their pariah status and, although sometimes things got better sometimes worse, ultimately they failed and failed horribly. Told in a series of sketches against the backdrop of European and German histories, this book combines the best of fiction and non-fiction in a seamless and utterly readable whole.

It is refreshing too that there are neither demons nor saints in these pages. The Jews portrayed here (from Mendelsohn to Arendt) are simply people who try to convince themselves that they too can be German. And for a while they succeeded not in becoming German (for the Germans never regarded them as anything but pariahs) but in convincing themselves that they had achieved that much-coveted status.

And when they had convinced themselves they forgot that "the step-child must always be on his best behavior," forgot even that they were step-children; so heady was the illusory promise of Emancipation, so wondrous was Kaiser's pledge that "he no longer knows any parties, [he knows] only Germans" that the Jews allowed themselves to be deceived. During WWI, they were "as conformist" as all others, forgetting that in war hatred abounds and that the fastest way to get hold of an ideology is to declare that they hate someone. And that the easiest group to hate is a minority that had always been persecuted.

The reminder (a Jew census to determine how many Jews served on the front lines) was a shock but it was not a big enough shock to make the Jews flee Germany. A place where they had lived for thousands of years; where they had lived before the Germans arrived. For, as Amos Elon makes clear, there was noting inevitable about the Holocaust. Even at the very end of the Weimar Republic, there was a paradox of surging Nazism and increasing assimilation, of growing anti-Semitism and growing Jewish prominence for Jews in every field in Weimar culture." For the Jews this meant that they could cling to the belief that they could yet become German; for the Nazis this meant that the Jews were increasingly prominent and therefore so much easier to hate.

The end we know.

But there was so much more to the German Jewry than their horrible and tragic end. This is their story, beautifully told. I highly recommend it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars one of the most poignant and informative books I have ever read, July 25, 2006

By 

lector avidus (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743-1933 (Hardcover)

Amos Elon opens this book describing Moses Mendelsohn, a German philosopher's entry as an impoverished and uneducated teen into Berlin through a gate reserved for "swine, oxen, and Jews," and ends it with a famous Jewish writer's fleeing Berlin by train just hours ahead of the Gestapo.

Between these bookends you'll find the history of the German Enlightenment, the general acceptance and tolerance that Jews came to enjoy in Germany, of the significant role that Jews played in Germany's cultural, scientific, political and business worlds, and of the assimilation process that led to the specific identity of being a German Jew, and of most tragic suffering. What a pity!

It is the privilige of the victor to write history; most English-language histories of Germany's Jews to a greater or lesser degree approach their story through the prism of Anglo-American history, and adopt some of the prejudices and justifications of Anglo-American historians sometimes becoming but recitations of trusims. Not so this book, which is far more sophisticated. Without excusing that which ought never have happened, Elon clearly symapathisizes with the German people, and does not, for example, only describe the depths of the racial hatred to which they sunk, but also describes how barely 30 years before, they were far and away the most tolerant and least racist nation in history. Would that this were better known.

Not only is it a (brief) history of German Jewry, but also a brief history of German culture, politics and science. Elon believes that the Social-Democrats were far too weak, disorganized, and confused to have been able to maintain law and order during the Weimar Republic, and that the more conservative parties, which largely were extensions of churches, were too tied down by their religious affiliations to have been able to provide effective government. This, he believes, meant that the only form of government that could have saved Germany from the horrors that came to be would have been a military dictatorship. Expecting the Germans to smoothly transition from centuries of monarchic rule to a democracy during the depths of the Great Depression was not realistic. Democracies cannot exist without citizens who think for themselves, monarchies often raise people to follow orders without question. This is an interesting idea, and not what one hears from the sort of historians who write that the horrors arose because people weren't nice enough.

This is a hugely informative and highly moving book that is history sine ira et studio, history at its very best. I heartily recommend this book.