StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

German Civilization: Jewish Assimilation in Germany - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
Instructor Date Jewish assimilation in German Heinrich Heine was born of Jewish parents in the 19th century in German. He was a student of law in a German university who strongly identified himself with the Jews. Because he wanted to advance in his career, he converted to Christianity by accepting baptism but latter realized that conversion never solved any of his problems…
Download full paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER91.3% of users find it useful
German Civilization: Jewish Assimilation in Germany
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "German Civilization: Jewish Assimilation in Germany"

Jewish assimilation in German Heinrich Heine was born of Jewish parents in the 19th century in German. He was a of law in a German university who strongly identified himself with the Jews. Because he wanted to advance in his career, he converted to Christianity by accepting baptism but latter realized that conversion never solved any of his problems. Christians shunned him for his Jewish background and for accepting to be converted. Heine’s work showed that he devoted to Jewish culture. For instance, Jewish allusions and characters characterized his poetry.

Heine published his Hebrew melodies and many poems on Jewish themes. It is believed he described himself when he stated in his poem that, "take a secret and malicious pleasure in remodeling in whatever ways they see fit what the people's memory has preserved." Jews were treated as second-class people after the Germans. There are a lot of privileges that the Germans enjoyed unlike the Jews; they were also hated by the Germans. For instance, his friend Borne experienced a lot of hatred from his enemies because of his origin as a Jew, and strong believe and connection with Judaism.

Heinrich secretly accepted baptism a month before his final examination of his degree in law. Publicly, Heine rebuked his actions by accepting baptism arguing that he had just bought for himself a direct ticket to European culture. He described his actions as a direct transformation from a religious act and culture into a secular European culture. Heine had a strong positive attitude towards the Jewish culture, even after converting, he still identified himself as a Jew, and on the other hand, he despised Christianity as purely European secularism.

Six months after his baptism, he wrote a letter to his friend Mosses Mosser claiming that due to his conversion, the Jews and Christians now hated him. Due to this, he regretted being baptized. Heine’s attitude towards baptism shows that he was not satisfied by the choices he made and the results that he received after conversion. He claimed that since his conversion, he has experienced misfortunes. Heine was annoyed with his friend Eduard Gans who converted several months after he converted.

He responded to this news with a violent poem titled “to an apostle” this poem showed how he was emotional to this act. Ordinary families who converted to Christianity were able to marry, get children, lived in communities though they never engaged in public debates. The ordinary people never talked in public but they only whispered their grievances among themselves. It took the protest by journalists and the poets who made public what other people were experiencing in private. Moreover, His choices were typical of a Jew in German during that time because the Jewish mothers knew that their children would grow up and convert into Christianity.

Bismarck had insisted that Germany was a Christian nation; this forced the Jews to convert to Christianity. The mass conversion of the Jews into Christianity was not what they wanted just like Heine’s conversion. However, theologians were distrustful with the mass conversion and regarded it as inherent evil of Jewish character. He then proposed a six-year probation period for applicants. Unlike Heine who found neither relief nor honor in conversion, some converts turned against their fellow Jews.

They allied with others and sowed seeds of discord that contributed to Jewish suffering. Fredrich Julius was one of the Jews who are not celebrated by the Jewish people; he will be remembered for betrayal. Fredrich converted to Lutheranism in 1819; he embraced Christianity but also allied with the mythical entity, German folk and denounced the Jewish culture. He even went a head to claim that the Jews were morally inferior to Germans. He was able to succeed Gans as professor of law in 1840 in the University of Gans.

In 1847, Fredrich expounded his ideas in a book, which strongly argued against the possibility of emancipation of the Jews in a Christian State. In spite of this, he never advocated for physical violence. His comments against the Jews alleviated his position in the university. Consequently, the Jewish conversion was slowed down by the growing secularization that affected all religious boundaries and the growing concern by theologians like Friedrich Schleiermacher about the mass conversion, which led to “judaization” of the church.

Finally, in his poem “the loreley” reflected his hope for a new national identity in German that would include the integration of traditional German and Jewish culture. He encouraged the Jews to stick with their own Jewish culture and take pride in it. Work Cited Gay, Peter. My German Question: Growing up in Nazi Berlin. Yale: Yale University Press, 1999. Print.

Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“German Civilization: Jewish Assimilation in Germany Essay”, n.d.)
German Civilization: Jewish Assimilation in Germany Essay. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/history/1463459-german-civilization-jewish-assimilation-in-germany
(German Civilization: Jewish Assimilation in Germany Essay)
German Civilization: Jewish Assimilation in Germany Essay. https://studentshare.org/history/1463459-german-civilization-jewish-assimilation-in-germany.
“German Civilization: Jewish Assimilation in Germany Essay”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/history/1463459-german-civilization-jewish-assimilation-in-germany.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF German Civilization: Jewish Assimilation in Germany

HISTORY Book Report/Review

During Hitler's reign, his main objective was to identify and destroy germany's 600,000 Jewish population.... It was alleged in this book that there was more than 2000 machines of this kind dispatched around germany and in some other parts of Europe.... Jews were not limited to those who practice Judaism, but those of Jewish blood regardless of their assimilation, intermarriage, religious activity, or conversion to Christianity....
4 Pages (1000 words) Book Report/Review

How Can Societal or Regime Security Explain Intra-State Conflict

The Third Reich represents one of the darkest moments in germany history.... An authoritarian political movement which evolved during the early half of the twentieth century, fascism was the dominant political ideology in germany for more than a dozen years.... What lead to the development of fascism in germany?... Established during the height of the fascist frenzy which propelled the National Socialist party to power in post-War germany, the Third Reich and Nazi germany are terms which are often used synonymously to describe this particularly ominous period....
10 Pages (2500 words) Essay

The Holocaust: Remembering and Becoming Human

The essay "The Holocaust: Remembering and Becoming Human" focuses on the stories of the Holocaust are human stories that intersect issues of survival, apathy, escape resistance, rescue, and the search for meaning.... Several scholars have exposed the apathy of other nations to the plight of the Jews....
17 Pages (4250 words) Essay

History Acceptance of Muslims in the World

In so doing, European nations have had to face the fact that immigration programs, which allowed large numbers of Muslims to immigrate from the Middle East to European countries post World War II, were poorly planned, implemented and lacked review and oversight to determine whether or not those people being received from the Middle East under the programs had achieved successful assimilation into the European societies into which they had immigrated....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

The Impact of Armenian Genocide on Further Development of Armenian Nation

The study “The Impact of Armenian Genocide on Further Development of Armenian Nation” refers to a mass of documents confirming the authenticity of the Turkish campaign for the mass extermination of Armenian preachers, teachers, clergymen and so on in 1915-1916 and its historical consequences....
19 Pages (4750 words) Research Paper

The Main Subjects of Anthropology

This study presents Anthropology which involves the task of unraveling the complexities of the biological and cultural aspects of life among various world populations.... It is a study of humans as complex social entities in relation to their language, culture, and thought.... nbsp;… According to the paper, physically, human beings share similar traits, but the environment in which they grow moulds them into what they are and they in turn impact upon their surroundings....
15 Pages (3750 words) Research Paper

Jewish History in Europe

The paper "jewish History in Europe" discusses that the emancipation of the Jews in Western Europe began with the French Revolution.... hellip; It is necessary to mention that jewish history in Europe was marked by numerous losses of the people of their nation.... However, the strength and ability to survive even in the most difficult conditions manifest the power of the national spirit, which made the European countries look differently at the jewish nation....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

Genocide as Action Plan for National Groups's Destruction

enocide, though wrong from a humanistic view, is an indirect result of human civilization where different groups of people are forced to live together without giving due credence to their inherent differences and their subsequent inability to cohabit peacefully without warring (Alvarez, 2001, p16).... Common sense and learned opinion seek to paint genocide as an anti-thesis of modern civilization.... This is because of the basic reasoning that the “advancement of civilization” should represent the advancement of human values, tolerance, common decency and racial/ethnical integration (Rummel, 2002, p....
12 Pages (3000 words) Essay
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us