How Jews Became Germans by Deborah Hertz

How Jews Became Germans by Deborah Hertz

When the Nazis came to power and created a racial state in the 1930s, an urgent priority was to identify Jews who had converted to Christianity over the preceding centuries. With the help of church officials, a vast system of conversion and intermarriage records was created in Berlin, the country's premier Jewish city. Deborah Hertz's discovery of these records, the Judenkartei, was the first step on a long research journey that has led to this compelling book. Hertz begins the book in 1645, when the records begin, and traces generations of German Jewish families for the next two centuries. The book analyzes the statistics and explores letters, diaries, and other materials to understand in a far more nuanced way than ever before why Jews did or did not convert to Protestantism. Focusing on the stories of individual Jews in Berlin, particularly the charismatic salon woman Rahel Levin Varnhagen and her husband Karl, a writer and diplomat, Hertz humanizes the stories, sets them in the context of Berlin's evolving society, and connects them to the broad sweep of European history.

Deborah Hertz is Herman Wouk Chair in Modern Jewish Studies, University of California at San Diego, and the author of Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9780300110944
ISBN 10	0300110944
Titel	How Jews Became Germans
Autor	Deborah Hertz
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Verlag	Yale University Press
Erscheinungsjahr	2007-11-27
Seitenanzahl	288
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.