title: Demographics and Social Structure
Creators: name: Rürup, Miriam
Publisher: name: Institute for the History of the German Jews
Year: 2016
Subjects: subject: Demographics and Social Structure

description: SUMMARY The modern history of Germany’s Jewish minority was characterized by several peculiarities in its social structure, which, generalizing somewhat, could be summarized thus: only in some places, including Hamburg for a time, was the share of German Jews in the overall population ever larger than one percent. From the early modern period until the National Socialist takeover, Jews mainly lived in the Southwest and East of the German territories and, at least since the late 19th century, also in some urban centers such as Berlin or Hamburg. They stood out from the general population as particularly urbanized and also by their remarkable upward social mobility, often the result of a higher level of education. At the same time they displayed specific occupational patterns and a trend towards an ageing population due to a noticeable decline in births. There were considerable regional differences due to varying legal conditions for settlement, starting a family, the inheritance of rights, etc. As early as the 17th and 18th century, Hamburg and Altona became centers of settlement for the Jewish minority. Hamburg’s Ashkenazi Jewish community developed from its beginnings in Altona in 1650 following several failed attempts. At the beginning of the 19th century there was a noticeable population growth in the German-speaking territories when the Jewish population within three decades increased from 260,000 people around 1815 to about 400,000 by the time of the 1848 revolution. This development unfolded in parallel to a growth in the general population — where the increase took a much less pronounced course than among the Jewish minority, however. Since the founding of the Kaiserreich, a fundamental demographic and a resultant economic change was occurring. Around 1870, German Jews lived in about 2,000 small and mid-sized communities and four major communities counting more than 2,000 members (Greater Berlin, Wrocław, Frankfurt am Main, and Hamburg). Compared to the overall population, they were more mobile and therefore clustered in some regional centers. Half of all German Jews lived in Prussia, and after its territory was expanded in 1866 their share rose to 62 percent. A fifth of German Jews lived in Bavaria. Beginning in the 19th century there was a noticeable trend towards urbanization (by 1910 a quarter of all Jews lived in major cities). Of course this trend did not only occur among the Jewish population since it was a result of the new economic perspectives cities offered for both Christians and Jews due to industrialization. Hamburg was home to the largest Jewish community in northern Germany. For a time it had an unusually high share in the overall population at 5 percent around 1800, and it was characterized by a mixed population of both Ashkenazi (6,299 individuals) and Sephardic (130 individuals) Jews. The number of Hamburg’s Jews rose to its highest level in 1925, when there were 19,904 Jewish individuals, which was about 1.7 percent of the overall population. During the years of National Socialist persecution which began in 1933, around 10,000-12,000 Jews emigrated from Hamburg while some remained in the city and survived in so-called “mixed marriages.” A few months after the end of the Second World War a new Jewish congregation counting about 80 members was founded. Today Hamburg’s Orthodox Jewish congregation has more than 2,000 members while the Liberal congregation founded in 2004 has roughly 500 members.