Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas:  jgo.e-reviews 5 (2015), 1 Rezensionen online / Im Auftrag des Instituts für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien in Regensburg herausgegeben von Martin Schulze Wessel und Dietmar Neutatz

Verfasst von: Mirjam Zadoff

 

Kateřina Čapková: Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia. Transl. by Derek and Tarzia Paton. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012. XVI, 281 S., 20 Abb., 4 Graph., 1 Tab., 1 Kte. ISBN: 978-0-85745-474-4.

What a paradox situation: Until the middle of the 19th century the Prague Jewish community hadat least in numbersbeen one of the most important Jewish settlements throughout Europe. Unlike Vienna or Berlin there had been a continuous Jewish presence in Prague over the centuries, and as part of the community existed a small but influential upper class that was well connected to other urban Jewish communities in Europe. Yet, around 1900 Jewish Prague appears to be rather provincial, and was inhabited by an insignificant population compared to the thriving Jewish centers Berlin, Vienna, Budapest and Warsaw. In the interwar period these metropolises accommodated hundreds of thousands of Jews, whereas the Prague community had no more than 35.000 members, who just like the Jews in Germany or Austria were highly urbanized and secularized. Prague had never become a destination for Jewish refugees and migrants from the east, and the citys Jewish population even declined due to emigration in the 1920ies. Yet, despite the decline in numbers Prague Jewry played a central role in the intellectual and political Jewish worlds of the interwar period.

In the past years a number of new publications enriched our knowledge of Bohemian Jewry in various perspectives: Whereas Dimitry Shumsky presents the intellectual history of Prague Zionism, Martina Niedhammer and Ines Koeltzsch are following the path of spatial studies and come to fascinating results in the field of new cultural history (Ines Koeltzsch: Geteilte Kulturen. Eine Geschichte der tschechisch-jüdisch-deutschen Beziehungen in Prag (1918–1938). München 2012; Martina Niedhammer: Nur eine Geld-Emancipation? Loyalitäten und Lebenswelten des Prager jüdischen Großbürgertums 18001867. Göttingen 2013; Dimitry Shumsky: Zweisprachigkeit und binationale Idee. Der Prager Zionismus 19001930. Göttingen 2013 [hebr. Erstausgabe Jerusalem 2010]). Although Kateřina Čapková takes no such methodological challenge, her study, which originally has been published in Czech (2005), grants us with a detailed and rich picture of various Jewish circles in the Bohemian capital and beyond. The main interest of the Prague based researcher is the complex issue of the national identity of the Jews of Bohemia, which she describes as a fluid and interchangeable sensation which was not merely based on linguistic affiliation. She approaches Bohemian Jewry from three different perspectives and analyzes them as German Jews, Czech affiliated Jews and finally Zionists, members of the Jewish national movement. What makes her research an essential contribution to the history of Bohemian Jewry is her broad knowledge of Czech Jewry on the one hand, and on the other hand her focus on the interwar period, which she contextualizes by repeatedly referring to the fifty years prior to the foundation of the Czechoslovak nation state.

National identity has been a complex issue for the Jews of the newly founded republic: The 1921 and 1930 census defined most minorities according to their everyday language, yet Jews had the exceptional right to declare theirnationality. The author analyzes this recognition of the Jews as a national minority of the First republic as a result of the presidents sympathy to the idea of Jewish nationalism. Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk made Max Brod one of his advisors, who at the time had been a member of the Jewish National Council. Consequently Jews could declare their nationality as Jewish without any need to demonstrate their Jewishness, neither did they have to speak a Jewish language or belong to a Jewish community. As Čapková shows, Jewish nationality was by no means equated to Zionism, but rather referred to ethnic or religious affiliation. Since the issue of nationality was detached from ones language, Jews would declare their language of everyday communication in the census sometimes as Czech, sometimes as German reacting to social pressure, varying within one family or from census to census. In fact, most of the Jews in the First republic were bilingual, Čapková declares.

In order to define the three core groups German Jews, Czech Jews and Zionists, Čapková analyzes them from the prospect of their institutional and organizational affiliation. On the one hand this angle narrows her perspective to the public life of almost exclusively men; it leaves unmentioned these mens personal lives, the experiences of Jewish women (apart from members in womens Zionist organizations) as well as the perspectives of non-organized citizens. On the other hand it enables the author to focus on the analysis of specific Jewish circles that – without doubtinfluenced the Jewish public life of the young state in particular.

As her first core group Čapková analyzes the German Jews of Prague as members of the upper middle class and followers of liberalism, who unlike the Jews of Vienna did not have to repay their social integration with giving up their Jewish identity. Nonetheless they did not establish distinct German-Jewish organizationsa phenomenon, which the author explains with the fact that around 1900 German Jews had formed half of the capitals Germans population. They therefore did not understand themselves as a minority and saw no motivation to have their own periodicals or organizations. Their only social networks were the Order of Bnai Brith, as an important elite association supporting arts, sciences and literature, and the Herderverein, established by young and promising Prague Jews, who were mainly the sons and daughters of the members of Bnai Brith. Both organizations had little interest in national issues, and only in the 1930ies, when the social pressure on German Jews was growing, their co-operation with Prague Zionists increased.

Čapková then turns towards rural and urban Czech-Jewish communities and to the process of Czech-Jewish assimilation. She describes this movement as different from the parallel situation in Germany or Austria, where Jewish assimilation had been limited by antisemitism. Yet, this assumption seems to be misleading, since it ignores the asynchronity of the two processes: The first generation of Czech Jews campaigned for synagogue services in Czech, promoted Czech nationality among Jews and tried to gain the support of Czech politicians for their cause. In this way it resembled the early German-Jewish emancipatory movement that started several decades before. And just like its German counterpart the Czech national movement crumbled under the striking experience of antisemitism in Czech society, and the hopes of Czech Jewscame to naught(p. 105). Throughout the 1930ies the experiences of Czech Jews and German Jews took similar developments, when both groups were drawing nearer to Zionismwith one essential difference: Amongst bilingual Jews the Czech language came to the fore, whereas German gradually proved less relevant.

Summing up the history of Bohemian Jewry, it much resembles the experience of Jews all over Central and Western Europe: with their lovefor their native landandtheir lukewarm attitude to the Jewish religion(p. 253). At the same time the Bohemian situation was unique in many respects, as Kateřina Čapková demonstrates in her studyunique in their strategies of social and political interaction with both, the Czech majority and the German minority. In this respect Čapková manages skillfully to place Bohemian Jews not in-between Czechs and Germans, but defines them as active members of a society, which they shaped and influenced in many ways.

Mirjam Zadoff, Bloomington, IN

Zitierweise: Mirjam Zadoff über: Kateřina Čapková: Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia. Transl. by Derek and Tarzia Paton. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012. XVI, 281 S., 20 Abb., 4 Graph., 1 Tab., 1 Kte. ISBN: 978-0-85745-474-4, http://www.dokumente.ios-regensburg.de/JGO/erev/Zadoff_Capkova_Czechs_Germans_Jews.html (Datum des Seitenbesuchs)

© 2015 by Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropastudien in Regensburg and Mirjam Zadoff. All rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact jahrbuecher@ios-regensburg.de

Die digitalen Rezensionen von „Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. jgo.e-reviews“ werden nach den gleichen strengen Regeln begutachtet und redigiert wie die Rezensionen, die in den Heften abgedruckt werden.

Digital book reviews published in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas. jgo.e-reviews are submitted to the same quality control and copy-editing procedure as the reviews published in print.