JS 490R-000: Sen Seminar In Jewish Studies: German-Jewish Emigration (Fall 2010)

From the onset of German-Jewish transatlantic emigration in the early 19^th century this people movement shaped a continuing relationship among German and American Jewries and became an integral element of German-American, American Jewish and German Jewish life.  A closer look at German-Jewish migration shows that although this migration had an obvious  East -West direction, it was the base for a trans-national cultural community deeply committed to "German-Jewish modernity" and thus created a legacy far beyond the Jewish communities in both German as well as American societies.

Starting with a short introduction to "German Jewry" and the identity it developed as a result of Haskalah at the end of the 19^th century, the course will explain what triggered different waves of German Jewish mass emigration to the United States from 1820 to 1950. The course will discuss how this group became a central element in the emerging American Jewish community at mid-19^th century and how and why German-Jews have so quickly made it into a bourgeois middle class in 19^th century America. We will also examine intellectual exchanges, Jewish entrepreneurship, religious and political identities which developed as part of this migration and will ask about the effect this relationship had had on German Jews in Germany as a highly modern, mobile and trans-national community.

The course will also focus on  the emigration of German-Jewish refugees from Nazism after 1933, explore the stages of exclusion in Germany, and explain, why the United States were the most popular destination for them. We will look into their legacy and relationship with America as well as with non-Jewish German refugees, study individual communities of the period and will conclude with aspects of memory and re-migration in the trans-atlantic context.