Jews in Leipzig - The University of Texas at Austin

notions of pluralism and liberty, not least for Jews. 35 The boundaries between groups of
Jewish Leipzigers—and the freedom to negotiate those boundaries—would collapse in
the Nazi period, because that state was founded on radically different notions of
community and identity.
Jewish Publications
A number of Jewish publications aimed at various audiences were produced in
Leipzig, and a glance through their pages offers clues to the themes that bound together
Jewish Leipzig, just as much as their differences illustrated what divided that community.
The “Zeitschrift des Hilfsvereins israelitischer Gewerbetreibender und für die Interessen
des Judentums” [the Magazine of the Aid Society of Jewish Tradesman and for the
interest of Jewry], which appeared for the first time in 1913, was [as the title indicated] a
journal for craftsmen and a general interest publication, including advertisements for the
Reform and Orthodox synagogues, Carlebach’s Höhere Israelitische Schule, and the
young Zionists’ league. 36
A few years later, the “Mitteilungen des Hilfsvereins russischer Juden” appeared.
This was the organ of a local Jewish group dedicated to aiding refugees from Galicia and
Russia, as the name suggests. The mission statement expresses humanitarian goals:
“above all, we must reach an accord with the government to make it possible to ease the
path for those among the army of unemployed who have relatives in America. Thus, we
35
Article 109 of the Weimar Constitution guaranteed equality of all citizens. Article 135 guaranteed
freedom of religious practice. Both Peter Gay, in Weimar Culture: the Outsider as Insider, New York,
1978, and Donald Niewyk, in The Jews in Weimar Germany, New Brunswick, 2001, make the point that
liberalism was the bond that held German Jews to the new Republic.
36
StAL, PP-P 147: Zeitschrift des Hilfsvereins israelitischer Gewerbetreibender und für die Interessen des
Judentums, for January 9, 1913.
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