The Jews and Germans of Hamburg; The Destruction of a Civilization, 1790-194 by J.A.S. Grenville; Routledge, London and New York, 2012, 330 pp.
By Dorothea Shefer Vanson
MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — This thorough study of the history of the city-state of Hamburg, a thriving Hanseatic port in north Germany, describes in almost unbearable detail the sequence of events that led to the annihilation of what was once a prosperous Jewish community, the second largest in Germany, before the Second World War and Hitler’s Final Solution.
Using a vast array of contemporary and historical sources, the city’s archives, personal documents, diaries and memoranda, Professor Grenville, who was Professor of Modern History at the University of Birmingham and is himself originally from Hamburg, has put together a blow-by-blow account, as it were, of the events leading to Hitler’s accession to power in Germany in 1933, and the series of laws and restrictions affecting Jews that followed. He is at pains to point out that there was no difference in adherence to the official Nazi line between Hamburg and any other town or city in Germany, even if there may have been one or two individuals who were prepared to bend the rules a little, at least for a while.
Professor Grenville describes and analyses the series of events that caused Hitler and the Nazi party to gain popularity in Germany, focusing on individual stories and recollections as well as on the cold, bureaucratic processes that were subsequently set in motion. The reader is introduced to individuals who recorded their emotions, and their reactions to developments as they unfolded. These personal accounts were written by Jews and Gentiles alike, and tend to reveal the agony on one side and the indifference on the other.
The Jewish community of Hamburg, together with those of its neighbouring towns, Altona and Wandsbeck, was first established by Spanish and Portuguese Jews expelled from the Spanish peninsula in the fifteenth century. They were gradually joined by co-religionists from other parts of Europe, and Jews were officially granted permission to become citizens of Hamburg in 1848, the year of revolution throughout Europe.
Initially, most of the Jews who settled in Hamburg were street traders or small shopkeepers who, as they prospered, established Jewish schools and provided their children with education, the key to social and economic advancement. Eventually Jews were permitted to enter the professions. Hamburg was a major international trading hub, and many Jews made a living from the import and export of goods. Their ties with other Jews elsewhere in the world naturally helped them to further their business interests.
Among the most prominent Jewish families of Hamburg were the Warburgs, whose bank served to finance many public and private undertakings. Solomon Heine, the wealthy uncle of Heinrich Heine, the poet, donated the funds for the Jewish Hospital in 1842, when his banking house helped to rebuild Hamburg after a great fire destroyed large parts of the city. Another prominent Hamburg Jew was Albert Ballin, head of the Hamburg-America shipping line, and a friend of the Kaiser in the pre-First World War era. In the nineteenth century the Jewish community provided accommodation for both Jews and non-Jews, and set up a wide-ranging network of schools as well as religious, cultural and welfare institutions.
Starting in 1933 the Nazis imposed ever-increasing restrictions on Jews, preventing them from engaging freely in commerce, depriving them of freedom of movement, stripping them of their possessions, and confining them to crowded conditions in designated ‘Jew-houses.’
The once prosperous Jewish community of Hamburg exists no more. Its synagogues were burned during the pogrom of 9th and 10th November 1938, an event which served to trigger the emigration of those Jews, mainly young people, who could gain entry to another country. Those who were left, mainly the elderly, the infirm, and young families, knew that their fate was sealed. The remaining number, almost 8,000 Jews, were deported to concentration camps in 1942. Several hundred Stolpersteine mark their last place of abode.
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Shefer-Vanson is a freelance writer, author of The Balancing Game, and translator based in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion, Israel. She may be contacted at dorothea.shefer@sdjewishworld.com