Early Zionism and the German Language

Questions pertaining to the multilingual predicament of diaspora Jewry were central to Zionism, the movement advocating the establishment of Jewish self-government in Palestine. Since the emergence of Zionist groups in the 1870s and 1880s, their members constantly grappled with practical and ideological questions regarding the use of language. Zionists revered Hebrew as the historic language of the Jews, yet in the late nineteenth century Hebrew was hardly used as a vernacular and was inaccessible to most Western European Jews. Yiddish was spoken by the vast majority of Jews in the Russian Empire, but was foreign to most Western Jews, and had a low symbolic status among Jewish reformers, intellectuals, and nationalists. Early Zionists therefore used different languages in different regions and political contexts. German was one of these languages, yet its role in early Zionism exceeded the merely functional and the German language had become by the turn of the twentieth century an intrinsic component of Zionist politics. This linguistic state of affairs was, however, entangled in broader historical and political sensitivities.

First, German held a contentious status in Eastern European Jewish societies. It was associated with Enlightenment ideas, western-leaning worldviews, secularization, religious reform, and assimilation. Its use as a literary and intellectual language was thus entwined with transformative currents in the history of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. Second, beginning in the 1890s, German Zionists obtained leading positions in the movement, consolidating German as its chief language. For some Eastern European Zionists this linguistic order jeopardized the efforts to advance Hebrew culture and undermined the grassroots character of Eastern European Zionist activity. Lastly, the main ideological texts of Zionism between the 1880s and the First World War were written in German and engaged with key German political ideas prevalent at the time.^[1] This affected the reception of Zionist thought in different Jewish communities. German was thus at once a uniting and a dividing language in Zionist politics. It facilitated communication between different factions of diaspora Jewry and it enabled effective communication in a highly esteemed global language. At the same time, it brought to the surface key divisions within Jewish communities and within the Zionist movement itself.

The Jewish Enlightenment and the usability of German

Illustration 1: Die Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1822, by Leopold Zunz | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Since the late eighteenth century, German had enjoyed an important yet controversial image among Eastern European Jews, who followed with fascination, admiration, or dismay the processes of legal emancipation and cultural integration taking place in German-speaking lands. Key ideologues of the German Jewish Enlightenment, as well as German statesmen and thinkers grappling with the status of Jews, posited that abandoning Yiddish and adopting the German language was a necessary step on the path to civic equality and cultural progress. In the first decades of the nineteenth century the acquisition of German served as a catalyst of Jews’ entry into non-Jewish educational institutions and professional venues. Moreover, Jewish religious reformers in Germany and Austria introduced German as a language of sermon and prayer, and a circle of Jewish scholars in Germany—the Wissenschaft des Judentums [Illustration 1]—pursued historical and philological research of Jewish culture and religion in the German language. Witnessing these developments, and in the context of German’s broader status as a highly valued language of science and culture, young Jews in Eastern Europe seeking to obtain political and scientific knowledge from Europe learned German, which was relatively accessible owing to its proximity to Yiddish.

Illustration 2: Peretz Smolenskin, 1842–1885 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Illustration 3: Moses Mendelssohn, 1729–1786, based on an oil portrait (1771) by Anton Graff in the collection of the University of Leipzig | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

In contrast, orthodox Jews in Eastern Europe often argued against learning German, deeming it a sign of departure from Jewish religious tradition. Both proponents and opponents of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah) perceived German as a language that could transform the lives of Jewish individuals and challenge the cohesion of Jewish communities.

Jewish nationalist circles in Eastern Europe—emerging mostly out of the Haskalah—were preoccupied with processes of linguistic assimilation and their implications for Jewish nationhood. In his writings from the 1870s, Perets Smolenskin (1842-1885) [Illustration 2], a Russian-born, Vienna-based Hebrew writer and early Jewish nationalist, criticized assimilatory currents among German Jews. He singled out Moses Mendelssohn’s 1783 [Illustration 3] translation of the Pentateuch into German and argued that its chief purpose was to introduce Jews to the German language, thus advancing their departure from Hebrew. Mendelssohn, according to Smolenskin, had made the Holy Scriptures, “the object of spiritual rejoicing for the House of Israel, the treasure of its faith,” into “a servant for the German language!”^[2] After European Jews had gradually withdrawn from Judaism—as Smolenskin perceived it—a Jewish national revival would require a reaffirmation of the spiritual bond between Jews and the Hebrew language. Nonetheless, he acknowledged the benefit of works written in defense of Judaism in the German language, insofar as they confront and counter anti-Jewish agitators in their own tongue, and thus “erase the disgrace from Israel and raise its dignity.” Smolenskin attacked the linguistic choices of German Jewish scholars who clung to German, but acknowledged the political potentialities embedded in such choices. This ambivalent attitude toward German’s necessary yet troubling presence in modern Jewish life would continue to inform Jewish nationalism in Eastern Europe.

Illustration 4: Moses Hess, 1812–1876, by Gustav A. Köttgen about 1846 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Illustration 5: „Autoemancipation!“: Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen von einem russischen Juden, von Lev Pinsker, 1882 — Illustration 5: „Autoemancipation!“: Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen von einem russischen Juden, by Lev Pinsker, 1882 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Illustration 6: Lev Pinsker, 1821–1891 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

From emancipation to ‘Autoemancipation!’

It was one thing for Eastern European Jews to comment on the benefits of writing in German for political purposes, but it was another thing to utilize German themselves. To be sure, German Jews had previously published texts affirming Jewish nationality. Moses Hess’s [Illustration 4] Rome and Jerusalem: The Last National Question (1862) was but the most notable example.^[3] This book would attract notice in the late 1890s but was largely ignored upon publication. The first text written in German by an Eastern European Jewish nationalist was the anonymous pamphlet Autoemancipation! An Appeal to his People by a Russian Jew (1882)^[4] [Illustration 5]. The trigger for this publication was the wave of anti-Jewish pogroms taking place in southwestern Russia. Its author was Leon Pinsker (1821-1891) [Illustration 6], a physicist from Odessa who had not hitherto published a political text in German. He had studied at a Russian university and acquired additional medical training in Germany in 1848-49. In the 1860s he advocated the integration of Russian Jews into Russian society as a national and ethnic group. In the wake of the 1881-2 pogroms Pinsker travelled between several cities in Western Europe, meeting various Jewish political and intellectual figures. During his stay in Berlin he decided to write and publish a pamphlet in the German language.

Illustration 7: Ludwig Philippson, 1811–1889 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Illustration 8: Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, 1844 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

For Pinsker, the crisis of Russian Jewry could not be solved without coordinated political action across borders. His language choice and direct address to German-speaking Jews reflected this conviction. ^[5] His pamphlet’s reception was likewise informed by its language. Ludwig Philippsohn (1811-1899) [Illustration 7], a German rabbi and the editor of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums [Illustration 8], described Pinsker’s ideas as wrapped in “eloquent yet mostly hollow phrases.” More substantially, Philippsohn argued that the pamphlet conveyed a Russian understanding of Jewish history, one which sees only violence and oppression and overlooks achievements and progress in the condition of Jews. “There is no reason why we should russify our worldview,” he told his German readers. Philippsohn also found a perilous element in Pinsker’s German publication, namely in how it allegedly echoed the accusations raised by antisemites in the German public and political spheres during these years. Philippsohn was particularly critical of Pinsker’s nationalist worldview and his perception of Jews as permanently foreign, bound to be mistrusted and resented. Philippsohn asserted that “some of the author’s statements have appeared thus far only in texts written by antisemites.”^[6] A similar concern was raised by Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider, who wrote that the agitation of Pinsker and of Jewish proponents of immigration to Palestine “is more dangerous than antisemitism.”^[7

Illustration 9: Nathan Birnbaum, 1864–1937 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Illustration 10: Shmaryahu Levin, 1867–1935, by M. M. Boiovič | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

By contrast, Russian Jewish nationalists praised Pinsker’s use of “a tongue for teaching” and his “noble words” as primary virtues of his pamphlet.^[8] In the United States, Emma Lazarus wrote of “a very remarkable pamphlet just printed in Germany, written by a Russian Jew.” She praised the anonymous writer’s “fiery eloquence and his depth and fervor of conviction,” and deemed that his “appeal for nationality is a pregnant indication of the spirit of the times.”^[9] In his Hebrew-language review, Smolenskin maintained that there was nothing original about Pinsker’s pamphlet: “no great news has been revealed to us here, not for anyone who knows Hebrew and knows what has been written in it in the last years, nor for anyone who knows the spirit of the majority of Jews in Russia, whose voice is echoed in it too.”^[10] However, Smolenskin conceded that Autoemancipation! was a milestone in one specific respect: “such words had not been heard in German ever since Jews started speaking and writing, since the rise of their spirit until our days.” German, Smolenskin continued, “was the holy of holies for the fathers of the Haskalah, and their history is that of the attempt to silence Israel among the gentiles, to have its memories sunk in oblivion, its temples of glory destroyed.” For Smolenskin, the originality of Pinsker’s text lay in the fact that it went against the assimilatory function German had played in previous decades. Autoemancipation! was thus “a powerful key to open sealed gates.” In Smolenskin’s view, Pinsker had “proclaimed in the German language the idea that we are a people and that we must pay heed to our existence by guaranteeing ourselves an asylum. And for this we praise the writer and express our gratitude.”

Pinsker’s readers thus paid heed to Pinsker’s choice of language, observing that he asserted nationalist currents prevalent among Russian Jews while conveying them in the idiom of contemporary European nationalism and addressing himself to German Jews. Pinsker’s linguistic choice was driven by pragmatic considerations, but it had an important ideological significance, as it enabled him to polemicize more effectively against liberal tendencies, to challenge the premises of Jewish emancipation in German-speaking lands, and to advocate for coordinated Jewish political action between east and west.

From Autoemancipation to Selbst-Emancipation

Shortly after its publication, Autoemancipation! was translated into Russian, Hebrew, and Yiddish, acquiring a canonical status among Jewish nationalists in Eastern Europe. Hoveve Zion, an umbrella organization for the various groups of activists propagating immigration to Palestine, appointed Pinsker as the movement’s president, and in 1884 convened its first international conference in Kattowitz, Germany. The conference was held mostly in German, and its protocols were published in Hebrew and German.^[11] One year later, the Jewish nationalist magazine Selbst-Emancipation was established in Vienna by members of the Jewish student organization “Kadimah.” This organization was comprised of Eastern European Jewish students based in Vienna, alongside the Austrian-born Nathan Birnbaum (1864-1937) [Illustration 9], who was Selbst-Emancipation’s editor and chief writer. The title was a direct tribute to Pinsker’s pamphlet, albeit replacing the Greco-Latin ‘auto’ with the Germanic ‘Selbst.’ The journal was dedicated to combating antisemitism and assimilation, and raising Jewish national consciousness among Western Jews.^[12] It was in Selbst-Emancipation that Nathan Birnbaum in 1890 coined the term “Zionism,” which indicated Birnbaum’s effort to give Palestine-centered Jewish nationalism the air of a coherent worldview around which Eastern and Western European Jewries ought to unite.

One of the pressing issues which Selbst-Emancipation and other Jewish periodicals addressed during the early 1890s was the immigration of Eastern European Jews to Western countries, propelled by the expulsion of Moscow Jewry in 1891 and the worsening conditions of Jews in Russia’s Pale of Settlement. Now, however, a series of texts written by Jewish activists was published in German. For example, in 1891 a Russian Jew anonymously published a German-language pamphlet that called on European Jews to help the fleeing masses.^[13] Particularly important in advancing Jewish nationalist agitation in these years were Jews of Eastern European descent, mostly students, who were residing in Berlin. Figures such as Shmaryahu Levin [Illustrations 10], Leo Motzkin, and Nachman Syrkin played leading roles as mediators between Jewish political circles in Russian and German-speaking lands, reporting in the German press and in political meetings on the economic and political hardships faced by Eastern European Jews.^[14] In February 1892, in a bilingual appeal published by the editors of Selbst-Emancipation urging Zionists to support the journal, the authors stressed that it was fighting assimilation by using the German language, “which is currently at the forefront with regard to our brethren in Europe.”^[15] In the mid-1890s Zionists were only a small ideological group within European Jewry, in particular in Western countries. However, they forged and developed channels of communication and political cooperation between different groups of activists in Eastern and Western Europe. Owing to its place in European politics and in Eastern European Jewish societies, German served as a main carrier of the Jewish national message.

Illustration 11: Theodor Herzl, 1860–1904 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Illustration 12: Der Judenstaat, by Theodor Herzl, 1896 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Zionism as a German-speaking movement

The function of German in the Zionism of the 1880s and 1890s was institutionalized with the establishment of the Zionist Organization in 1897 [Illustration 13]. Based in Vienna, it was led by German speakers and its language of communication was German. Its founder and main ideologue was Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) [Illustration 11], who, together with Max Nordau (1849-1923), geared Zionist politics away from local efforts to organize the immigration of Jews to Palestine and advanced instead an ambitious approach centered on interaction with the higher echelons of diplomacy in Europe and beyond, and with the Jewish economic elites in western countries. The goal was to obtain a charter from the Ottoman Empire and other governments that would recognize Jews’ right to self-government in Palestine. Both Herzl and Nordau were born in Pest (today Budapest), Austro-Hungary, to families rooted in German culture. Herzl was a journalist and playwright, whose interest in Jewish political affairs grew gradually from the early 1890s. In 1895 he ventured into Jewish politics, chiefly in response to soaring antisemitic agitation in Austro-Hungary, Germany, and other European states. In 1896 Herzl published a programmatic booklet, Der Judenstaat,^[16] [Illustration 12] which was swiftly translated into numerous languages and shook the Jewish political sphere, particularly in Eastern European states. The pamphlet presented antisemitism as a problem that could not be solved in the present, and called on Jews to establish their own state. Herzl took concrete steps to advance that goal, creating contacts with Jewish political and economic elites and European statesmen.

The Zionist Congress, convened by Herzl in Basel in 1897, was the venue that signified more than any other the international character of the Zionist movement, with 200 delegates hailing from across the Jewish diaspora, but mostly from Eastern Europe. The Congress also mirrored the dominance of the German language in Zionist politics. The participants were free to use any language they chose, with other delegates serving as simultaneous interpreters. However, a significant majority of the speeches were given in German, which was also the language of the Congress’ published protocols until 1939. The ensuing discussions were held in multiple languages, leading to what commentators described as a “babel-like” setting. In the following congresses, a pragmatic language, Kongressdeutsch, began to be used. This was a fusion of German and Yiddish, free from stylistic embellishments and complex grammatical forms, thus enabling a degree of practical communication between German and Yiddish speakers.

The communication difficulties in the Zionist Congress were entwined with ideological divisions. Herzl and Nordau saw the future of Zionism as dependent on successful diplomatic and philanthropic efforts and gave only passing attention to cultural or religious questions. In order to be deemed a serious actor in European politics, the Zionist movement under Herzl made significant efforts to adopt diplomatic mores and to convey an air of respectability. That Zionism was communicated chiefly in German fitted well with Herzl’s pursuit of cooperation with diplomats and governments in Central Europe. Herzl’s diplomatic and Germanophone orientation, however, was often seen by Eastern European Zionists as an alarming attempt to shape Jewish politics along Germanophile, bourgeois, and elitist lines, without heed to the cultural proclivities of the Jewish masses in Eastern Europe. The term Kongresszionismus was often used to pejoratively denote Herzl and his allies’ political approach.^[17] In contrast, Eastern European Zionists propagated grassroots agitation and mobilization of the Jewish masses for immigration to Palestine. At the Congress of 1899, Russian Zionist Menahem Ussishkin declined Herzl’s request to speak in German, replying: “I speak mainly to those who understand me and who wish to understand me. […] I want to speak only in a manner which will allow my position to be properly understood, and this I can achieve only in Russian.”^[18] In 1903, right-wing Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky gave a lengthy speech in “highly eloquent Russian,” as he called it in his memoir, indicating his wish to disrupt the Germanophone atmosphere of the congress.^[19] Both from right and from left, the language question and the hegemony of German in the Congress allowed Zionists to channel their ideological dispositions and criticize the leadership of the movement.

Illustration 13: Die Welt, 1903 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

The Germanophone character of early Zionism extended beyond the corridors of the ongress. In 1897 Herzl established the Zionist periodical Die Welt [Illustration 13]—using his own financial means for that purpose—, which would serve as the main platform of the movement’s ideological debates and a central medium of news from around the Jewish diaspora. Zionist activists from Eastern Europe seeking to address the movement’s leadership often now resorted to publishing in German. In 1898, when Russian Zionist Nachman Syrkin sought to advance a socialist agenda for the Zionist movement, he published a programmatic essay “that was written in German and was addressed to the Zionst audience of the time,”^[20] as he later recalled. While Zionist agitation was carried out in various languages, German remained its central vehicle of communication up until the First World War. Its practical benefits overrode other ideological considerations or other linguistic alternatives.

Illustration 14: Altneuland, by Theodor Herzl, 1902 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Illustration 15: Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, 1858–1952 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

German and Hebrew

Herzl did not see the Jewish multilingual predicament as a serious obstacle to realizing Zionist goals. In Der Judenstaat, he envisioned the future land of the Jews as a multilingual federation, comparable to the Swiss model. In 1895, he predicted in his diary that German would serve as an official language in Palestine.^[21] Hebrew, at any rate, was not in a position to serve any practical function: “Who among us knows enough Hebrew to buy a train ticket?”, he wrote in Der Judenstaat.^[22] His remark was a truism for most Western European Jews, but it suggested Herzl was oblivious of the steady efforts of early Jewish nationalists to reinvigorate the Hebrew literary and intellectual spheres, and indeed to turn it into a modern vernacular. More crucially, Herzl did not recognize the vital ideological importance of Hebrew in Eastern European Jewish nationalism. Upon encountering backlash on his indifference to Hebrew, Herzl adjusted his position and endorsed Hebrew as the language of the future state of the Jews. This concession, however, had little impact on the actual conduct of Zionist politics in Herzl’s lifetime.

The dominance of German in Zionism often permeated debates on the purpose and meaning of Zionism. “Cultural Zionism,” the Zionist faction associated with Asher Zvi Ginsberg and Ahad Ha-Am (1856-1927), often characterized Herzl’s approach as essentially detached from Hebrew language and culture and, as such, from the historical roots of Judaism. For Ahad Ha-Am, Herzl’s approach was a mere emulation of European nationalism, hopelessly fixated on diplomacy and territoriality. Ahad Ha-Am, in contrast, believed that a Jewish cultural and spiritual revival was a vital prerequisite for a genuine realization of Jewish national aspirations. In 1902, when Herzl published the novel Altneuland [Illustration 14], depicting Jewish life in their own sovereign land, Ahad Ha-Am deemed the novel’s oversights indicative of Herzl’s fundamental flaws. His review—published in Hebrew and German—pointed out Herzl’s lack of engagement with the language question and his failure to address the fate of the Hebrew language. Ahad Ha-Am asserted that in various passages of the novel it appeared that the educated speak German whereas “the peasants, of course, speak Jargon [Yiddish].”^[23] This, for Ahad Ha-Am, was but one example of Herzl’s narrow Zionist approach and disregard for Hebrew.

Efforts to enhance the place of Hebrew in Zionism increased in the following years. One factor contributing to this development was the rise of Jewish nationalist and socialist movements in Eastern Europe and in the United States, which endorsed Yiddish as a Jewish national language. In 1908, a conference advancing the cause of Yiddish language and culture took place in Czernowitz, an event that Zionists perceived to be a direct threat to the status of Hebrew as the language of Jewish nationhood. Against this background, Eastern European Jewish nationalists who settled in Palestine took an active part in efforts to enhance the status of Hebrew among Palestine’s Jewish community (also known as the ‘Yishuv’). Young, politically-engaged men and women dedicated considerable intellectual and material efforts to establishing Hebrew educational institutions and periodicals, often with the financial support of Western Jewish organizations. Activist and linguist Eliezer Ben Yehuda [Illustration 15] edited a Hebrew periodical in Palestine and wrote a pioneering Hebrew dictionary aimed at offering a comprehensive, modern vocabulary for the use of the land’s inhabitants.

These developments propelled proponents of Hebrew-centered Zionism to enhance their efforts to confirm the status of Hebrew in Zionist ideology and politics. While Hebrew continued to play a fairly marginal role in the Zionist Congress, a group of Zionists lobbied for allocating more resources to advancing Hebrew language and culture, and actively challenged the status of German as a Zionist lingua franca. In 1909—a few days before the Zionist Congress—they convened in Berlin a conference aimed at advancing the Hebraist agenda. Not all speakers were able to communicate in Hebrew, a problem that in the political atmosphere of these years could not be downplayed. German Jewish thinker Martin Buber delivered his speech in German, admitting that he had hesitated whether to appear on the stage: “I must speak about the Hebrew language in a foreign tongue, because I have not been accustomed to think my thoughts in Hebrew, and my heart would not let me translate my thoughts—which I think in a foreign tongue—into my national language, which I command less well.” He called this predicament, with which many Jews had to cope, “a tragedy.”^[24] In the Zionist Congress of 1911 a motion was proposed to guarantee that Hebrew would be the language in which the opening speech would be delivered. The motion did not pass, but the Congress did formally acknowledge Hebrew as an official language. This decision marked a shift: German could no longer be deemed a self-evident vehicle of Zionist politics.

The Hebraist efforts within the Zionist movement reached a peak in 1913. The German Jewish philanthropic organization Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden funded the establishment of a technical university in Haifa, Palestine. The university’s Board of Trustees determined that German would serve as a language of instruction of the natural sciences. According to the stated decision, German would “connect the students to the scientific development of the modern period through one of the greatest cultural languages.”^[25] Zionist leaders in the Yishuv held that this argument camouflaged Germany’s imperial and cultural interests at the expense of Zionism and the Hebrew language.^[26] An immediate upheaval erupted in the Yishuv. Petitions, demonstrations, and strikes directly targeted the Hilfsverein’s institutions—which, at the time, comprised 45 percent of the schools in the Yishuv. Zionist organizations in Palestine and in other countries—including Germany—protested the Hilfsverein’s decision, framing it as a struggle for the independence of Palestine’s Jewish community. While German was but one among various languages used in Palestine at the time, the struggle against it proved to have remarkable mobilizing power. The Board changed its decision in early 1914 and agreed to set Hebrew as the language of instruction. “The war of languages,” as it was dubbed by contemporaries, drew on the notion that German’s presence in Jewish society was a barrier to Zionist aspirations. The political pressure stirred by Yiddishism and other Jewish and non-Jewish languages in the Yishuv, alongside the continuous internal tensions within Zionism, boosted the Hebraists’ cause. German’s symbolic and practical significance turned it into an increasingly contested marker in key political battles in the early history of the Zionist movement.

Zionism de-Germanized

When Herzl entered Zionist politics the German Empire became a chief—though not exclusive—target of the movement’s diplomatic efforts. The hope was that German support of Zionism would pave the way to obtaining recognition of Jewish self-government in Palestine from Germany’s imperial ally, the Ottoman Empire. In a lexicon produced by the Zionist Federation of Germany in 1908, the authors of the entry ‘Zionism and German Politics’ noted that the Zionist appeal to the German Empire had a special significance considering “the historical tie that links Judaism with German culture,” embodied in the fact that millions speak a “German-Jewish dialect” (namely Yiddish), and that German was the official language of communication in the Zionist movement.^[27] This line of argumentation acquired additional significance during the First World War. Throughout the war, the Zionist Organization maintained complete neutrality. However, when German and Austrian armies invaded Russia in 1915, some German Zionists hoped this would eventually bring about the liberation of Russian Jewry living under oppression, and that the Central Powers would deem Eastern European Jews potential allies. Notwithstanding considerable criticism from within the Zionist movement, a group called “Committee for the East” (Komitee für den Osten), comprised of several Jewish activists, mostly German Zionists, advanced cooperation with the Central Powers in the East. Different publications produced by the Komitee or affiliated writers brought forth the argument that the linguistic proximity between Yiddish and German reflected a deeper affinity between Eastern European Jews and Germany, thus holding out a prospect for cooperation between Jews and the German regime. In a 1916 booklet, for instance, Nahum Goldmann described Eastern European Jews as “mediators of world culture” through Yiddish, their “German-Jewish language.”^[28] However, the efforts of the Komitee did not yield any results and were received with indifference or hostility by both the German government and East European Jewish populations. In the last two years of the war the Komitee no longer invoked the argument for linguistic and cultural affinity.^[29]

Illustration 16: Balfour-Declaration, 1917 | via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

In November 1917, upon Britain’s entrance into Palestine, the British foreign ministry issued the Balfour Declaration [Illustration 16], stating that the British government “view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The collapse of the Habsburg, German, and Ottoman empires sealed a geopolitical reorientation of Zionist diplomacy. With Palestine under British rule and with an official statement of support for Zionist aspirations, London became the center of gravity of Zionist politics, housing from 1921 the Zionist Organization’s headquarters. Zionists from Eastern Europe, the United States and Palestine obtained key roles in the movement, marking a further departure from the early orientation of Zionism toward German language and culture. Until the rise of the Third Reich, German continued to serve as one of the languages in which Zionists pursued their activity. However, German ceased to embody the promise of a Jewish national emancipation and became rather a relic of the inherent tensions within early Zionism, reflecting the rootedness of Zionism in the European political landscape as much as it reflected its wish to transcend it.

Endnotes

^[1] Doron, Joachim, Social Concepts Prevalent in German Zionism: 1883–1914, in: Studies in Zionism 3/1, 1982, pp. 1–31.

^[2] Smolenskin, Perets, Ma’amarim, Jerusalem: Keren Smolenskin 1925, Vol. 2, p. 72.

^[3] Hess, Moses, Rom und Jerusalem: Die letzte Nationalitätsfrage, Leipzig 1862.

^[4] Pinsker, Leon, Autoemancipation! Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen von einem russischen Juden, Berlin 1882.

^[5] Volovici, Marc, Leon Pinsker’s Autoemancipation! and the Emergence of German as a Language of Jewish Nationalism, in: Central European History 50/1, 2017, pp. 34-58.

^[6] Philippson, Ludwig, Eine alte Frage: Ein Nachtrag, in: Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 46. Jahrgang, No. 42 (17. Oktober 1882), p. 681.

^[7] Steinschneider, Moritz , Judaica, in: Hebräische Bibliographie. Blätter für neuere und ältere Literatur des Judenthums nebst einer literarischen Beilage, Vol. 21, 1881/1882, p. 123.

^[8] [Gordon, Jehuda Leib], Bina ba-sfarim, in: Ha-Melits 9 (1882); Zitron, Shmuel Leib (Ed.), Im ein Ani Li, Mi li?, Vilna: Romm 1884, p. 35.

^[9] Lazarus, Emma, An Epistle to the Hebrews, in: The American Hebrew (8. Dezember 1882), p. 34

^[10] [Peretz Smolenskin], Yedi’at sfarim, in: Ha-Shahar, Bd. 3, 1883, pp. 185-186.

^[11] Schoeps, Julius H., Palästinaliebe: Leon Pinsker, der Antisemitismus und die Anfänge der nationaljüdischen Bewegung in Deutschland, Berlin 2005.

^[12] Olson, Jess, Nathan Birnbaum and Jewish Modernity: Architect of Zionism, Yiddishism, and Orthodoxy, Stanford 2013, pp. 43-48.

^[13] Was soll aus den russischen Juden werden?, Berlin: Cossirer & Danziger 1891, pp. 102-108; Klausner, Israel, mi-katovits ad bazel [From Kattowitz to Basel], Jerusalem 1964, pp. 102-108.

^[14] Schäfer, Barbara; Krampe, Saskia, Berliner Zionistenkreise: Eine vereinsgeschichtliche Studie, Berlin 2003.

^[15] National Library of Israel, Archives, Ahad Ha-Am Collection, ARC. 4° 791 7 (1887). See also: Brainin, Ruben, An die Zionisten in Rußland, in: Selbst-Emancipation. Zeitschrift für die nationalen, socialen und politischen Interessen des jüdischen Stammes - Organ der Zionisten, 4. Edition, Issue 22 (16. November 1891), pp. 3-4; 4. Edition, Issue 23 (1. December 1891), pp. 2-3; 5. Edition, Issue 1 (5. January 1892), pp. 6-7; 5. Edition, Issue 4 (23. February 1892), pp. 41-42.

^[16] Herzl, Theodor, Der Judenstaat: Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage, M. Breitenstein, Leipzig; Vienna 1896.

^[17] Berkowitz, Michael, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War, New York 1993, pp. 8-39.

^[18] Stenographisches Protokoll der Verhandlungen des V. Zionisten-Congresses in Basel, 26., 27., 28., 29. und 30. December 1901, Vienna: Publisher of the association Erez Israel 1901, pp. 354-355. [http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/cm/periodical/titleinfo/3476264]

^[19] Jabotinsky, Vladimir, Story of My Life, edited by Brian Horowitz & Leonid Katsis, Detroit: Wayne State University Press 2016, p. 69.

^[20] Syrkin, Nachman, Letoldot hatsiyonut hasotsyalistit, in: Kitve nachman syrkin, Tel Aviv: Davar 1938, p. 291.

^[21] Herzl, Theodor, Zionistisches Tagebuch 1895–1899, edited by Johannes Wachten & Ch. Harel, Berlin: Ullstein 1983, Vol. 2, p. 90.

^[22] Herzl, Der Judenstaat, p. 75.

^[23] Haam, Achad, Altneuland, in: Ost und West 4 (1903), pp. 227-244.

^[24] Buber, Martin, Die hebräische Sprache und der Kongress für hebräische Kultur, in: Barbara Schäfer (Ed.), Martin Bubers Werkausgabe: frühe jüdische Schriften 1900–1922, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2007, p. 211.

^[25] Nathan, Paul, Palästina und palästinensischer Zionismus, Berlin: H. S. Hermann 1914, p. 4.

^[26] Friedman, Isaiah, The Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, the German Foreign Ministry and the Controversy with the Zionists, 1901–1918, in: Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 24 (1979), pp. 291-319, here p. 304.

^[27] Zionismus und deutsche Politik, in: Zionistisches A-B-C Buch, Berlin-Charlottenburg 1908, pp. 274-281, here: p. 276.

^[28] Goldmann, Nahum, Von der weltkulturellen Bedeutung und Aufgabe des Judentums, München: F. Bruckmann 1916, p. 23.

^[29] Grill, Tobias, „Pioneers of Germanness in the East“? Jewish-German, German, and Slavic Perceptions of East European Jewry during the First World War, in: Tobias Grill (Ed.), Jews and Germans in Eastern Europe: Shared and Comparative Histories, Oldenbourg 2018, pp. 125-159; Stefan Vogt, Subalterne Positionierungen: Der deutsche Zionismus im Feld des Nationalismus in Deutschland 1890–1933, Göttingen 2016, pp. 197-251.

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