Summary
The wartime committee, chaired by Franz Oppenheimer, through which first-generation German Zionists and liberal Jewish establishment leaders pursued a German-backed Jewish autonomy in Poland and linked Jewish national interests to German imperial interests (Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, PDF p.271-272).
Details
- It was founded on August 17, 1914 as the Deutsches Komitee zur Befreiung der Russische Juden by first-generation Zionists including Max Bodenheimer, Oppenheimer, Klee, Friedemann and Struck, to the dismay of the Inner Actions Committee, which pursued neutrality; with Oppenheimer’s election as chairman its pro-German stance was established, and in November 1914 it was renamed Komitee für den Osten and opened to non-Zionist members including Eugen Fuchs of the Centralverein, Maximilian Horwitz, Berthold Timendorfer and Moritz Sobernheim (PDF p.270-271).
- Oppenheimer’s distinction between an ancestry-based ethnic identity in the West and a national one in the East became the committee’s guiding principle (PDF p.271).
- It published the biweekly Neue Jüdische Monatshefte between the fall of 1916 and the spring of 1920 (PDF p.271).
- It considered Jewish national interests congruent to German imperial interests, portrayed Eastern European Jews as pioneers of German culture and commerce in the East, and believed establishing a Jewish autonomy was “the best way to Germanize the East”, facilitating German imperial expansion and educating the Ostjuden with Prussian virtues and discipline (PDF p.272).
- Its efforts resulted in Ober Ost creating two positions for experts in Jewish affairs, one occupied by Hermann Struck from 1917; its suggested appointments included Ludwig Haas as head of the Jewish Department in the German civil administration of Poland and, outliving the war, Sobernheim to the Auswärtiges Amt’s Referat für jüdische Angelegenheiten, described by Nicosia as more or less an official German government version of the committee (PDF p.274-276).
- Its small successes exacted a high price from Polish Jewry: Russian authorities used suspected collaboration as a pretext for mass deportations, and Polish national circles associated Jews with German imperial interests (PDF p.276).
- Oppenheimer, Friedemann and Sobernheim represented it at the Auswärtiges Amt on January 5, 1918 to receive the German declaration supporting Jews’ civic and cultural aspirations as a minority in Eastern Europe (PDF p.280).
Related pages
Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, Franz Oppenheimer, Max Bodenheimer, Moritz Sobernheim, Neue Jüdische Monatshefte