NSDAP campaign poster for the election
to the Reich Presidency, 1932 Permanent exhibit - Room 3, part 2
3.4
Crisis of the Republic
During the crisis of the parliamentary Republic the NSDAP became a mass movement. The impact of the world economic crisis resulted in the party attracting a lot of votes in 1930. Antisemitism served as the common link for the heterogeneous membership of the party. However, the campaign against the Treaty of Versailles and Bolshevism were the main focus of the election propaganda. At the same time, the NSDAP promised to overcome internal divisions and to establish the Volksgemeinschaft.
NSDAP campaign poster for the election
to the Reich Presidency, 1932
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Gregor Strasser and Joseph Goebbels during an SA (Stormtroopers) march past Adolf Hitler in Braunschweig, 18 October 1931
Gregor Strasser headed the social revolution wing of the NSDAP. Following the re-establishment of the party in February 1925, Strasser and his brother Otto organised the extension of the party into North and West Germany. Strasser became increasingly opposed to Hitler’s political direction. In December 1932 he resigned from all of his posts. Gregor Strasser was murdered during the “Röhm Putsch” in Berlin on 30 June 1934. |
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Adolf Hitler speaking at the Düsseldorf Industry Club, 26 January 1932
Its electoral successes meant that the NSDAP was seen as a political alternative by industrial circles. On 26 January 1932 the major industrialist Fritz Thyssen arranged for Adolf Hitler to give a speech in front of 650 members of the Düsseldorf Industry Club. Hitler used the occasion to enlist political and financial support for the NSDAP. |
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Shattered shop windows of the Wertheim department store in Berlin, 1930
From the end of the 1920s, grassroots NSDAP members organised an increasing number of anti-Jewish attacks and boycotts. These met with little response outside the National Socialist movement. |
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Results of the Reichstag elections in the Weimar Republic from 1928 to 1932
- Document as *pdf-file (131 KB): click here
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Integration
Around 450,000 Germans of Jewish faith lived in the Weimar Republic. They had legal equality and were integrated into many areas of society. The majority of the Jewish population belonged to the middle and lower-middle classes and tended to be self-employed. Around two thirds of working Jews owned small and middle-sized businesses. As education is highly regarded in Jewish cultural tradition, many German Jews took advantage of the opportunities to study made available to them in the late 19th century. As academics they tended to join “free professions”, for example as lawyers or doctors, especially as informal obstacles largely prevented them from entering the civil service. Jewish artists, writers and academics made a substantial contribution to cultural life. Members of the small, extremely wealthy Jewish upper classes acted as patrons of culture, academia and social institutions.
From the end of the 19th century, an increasing number of East European Jews migrated to Germany. They mainly belonged to the lower social classes. Many of them observed traditional religious customs and dressed like Jews in the stetl. Consequently, a manifestation of Jewish life that had disappeared with emancipation became visible once more. On the whole, the assimilated German Jews regarded the approximately 100,000 migrants as foreigners.
3.5
Professional and Social Structure
There was an above average presence of Jews in economic sectors such as commerce, transport, industry and trade. They were mainly proprietors of medium-sized businesses or self-employed tradesmen. Those who pursued an academic education often worked as self-employed doctors or lawyers. Contrary to antisemitic prejudices, only a minority of the Jewish population worked as big bankers, publishers or major industrialists.
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Draper’s shop belonging to the Chotzen family in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, around 1920
The trader Josef Chotzen and his wife Elsa owned a small draper’s shop in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. Elsa was from a Protestant family and converted to Judaism in 1914. The family celebrated the main festivals of both religions at home. |
3.6
Jewish Life in Town and Country
During the Weimar Republic, two thirds of German Jews lived in towns of over 100,000 residents. In addition to these urban Jews, who had their own social institutions, there were a small number of Jews living in the countryside. The country communities were mainly concentrated in Hessen, Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg. Country Jews traded livestock or agricultural products or were ironmongers, butchers and bakers, sometimes also farmers.
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Breslau
In 1925 the Silesian town of Breslau, now Wroclaw in Poland, was the third largest Jewish community in the Weimar Republic. There were 23,200 Jews in a population of 573,660. Community life was characterised by a large number of religious, social and cultural facilities. The main economic activity of Jews was in the textiles and corn trade. Other Jews were private financiers, lawyers and doctors.
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Windecken
In 1925 the small town of Windecken in Hessen had 1,800 residents, 47 of whom were Jews. As councillors and members of the sporting association, Patriotic Women’s Association, choir and fire service they were part of the town´s social life. Most of the Jews in Windecken ran businesses and thus held an important position in the economic life of the town. In addition to business relationships, Jewish and Christian families in the town also established personal friendships.
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3.7
Political and Ideological Orientation
Most German Jews supported the bourgeois parties of the Republic. There were numerous organisations and associations within the Jewish communities. The majority were liberal in terms of religion. Only a minority followed traditional religious customs. As the largest Jewish organisation, the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith (C. V.) represented the liberal middle classes. The Reich Association of Jewish Frontline Soldiers countered criticism that German Jews had not fulfilled their military duties in the First World War. The Zionist Organisation regarded the Jews as an independent nation. It called for a “Jewish home” in Palestine. Despite all their differences, the organisations stood together against antisemitic hate campaigns.
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“To German mothers!”, flyer from the Reich Association of Jewish Frontline Soldiers, 1920
This flyer remembered the Jewish soldiers who had fallen in the war: “12,000 Jewish soldiers fell for the Fatherland on the field of honour. (…) German women, do not allow Jewish mothers to be derided in their pain.” |
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“To Moses Mendelssohn on the 6 Sept. 1929.
To the first German Jew, the spiritual father of equal rights for us Jews, the tremendous supporter of German spiritual life, on the 200th anniversary of his birth.”, C. V. Zeitung, 30 August 1929 |
3.8
Jewish Immigrants from Eastern Europe
East European Jews had been living in the German Reich since the end of the 19th century. They had fled to the Reich following pogroms or they had been recruited as workers in the war economy during the First World War. By the beginning of the 1920s the number of East European Jews in the German Reich had risen to 100,000. These migrants were often referred to using the discriminatory term Ostjuden (“Eastern Jews”). Their customs, clothing and language differed from the assimilated German Jews. In the early years of the Weimar Republic, the Ostjuden were the preferred targets of antisemitic propaganda. They were constantly in danger of being expelled or subject to police raids. There were frequent violent attacks, for example in the Berlin Scheunenviertel district in 1923.
Outside a Jewish lending library,
1928
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Raid on the Berlin “Scheunenviertel”, 1920
In early 1920, Reichswehr soldiers arrested Jewish women during a raid on the Berlin street Schendelgasse. These women allegedly did not have residence permits. From March 1920, Ostjuden were put into detention camps for being “black marketeers”, “Bolshevists” or simply “burdensome foreigners”. |
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The “Kaftan” cabaret, 1930-33
In 1930, the actor Ruth Klinger founded the Jewish cabaret “Kaftan” with her partner Maxim Sakaschansky. It was the only Yiddish cabaret in Germany and was closed after the National Socialists came to power. The audience were above all Zionists and Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. In April 1933 Klinger and Sakaschansky emigrated to Palestine, where they tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the cabaret going. |
Text: Dr. Thomas Rink
