Jewish intellectuals in Weimar Germany

The Weimar Republic (1918-1933) was the scene of an unprecedented Jewish intellectual and artistic flowering in Germany, commensurate with the emancipation and integration achieved over the long nineteenth century. In philosophy and criticism, figures such as Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, and Franz Rosenzweig profoundly renewed thought; in the arts and letters, Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg, Alfred Döblin, and the publishers and journalists of the major Berlin press played a leading role. Sigmund Freud, in Vienna, and Albert Einstein, in Berlin, embodied the radiance of science. This ferment unfolded, however, against a backdrop of persistent and growing antisemitism, which made Jews the scapegoats of crisis and of hated modernity. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 abruptly shattered this "renaissance": excluded, persecuted, and then threatened with death, most of these intellectuals took the path of exile, transplanting elsewhere a part of German culture.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan
• Jewish Virtual Library ↗