Title: Unwelcome strangers :
Authors: Wertheimer, Jack.
Date: 1987
Publisher: Oxford University Press,
Physical description: ix, 275 pages ; 24 cm.
Language: English
LC classification: D
Abstract: When East European Jews migrated westward in ever larger numbers between 1870 and 1914, both German government officials and the leaders of German Jewry were confronted by a series of new challenges. What policies did government leaders devise to cope with the seemingly unending tide of Jews flooding across Germany's borders? What was the actual, as opposed to the perceived, character of these Jewish migrants? How did native Jews respond to the arrival of coreligionists from the East? Drawing on archival research conducted in East and West Germany, Israel, and the United States, Unwelcome Strangers probes into these questions, touching on some of the most troubling issues in modern German and Jewish history--the behavior of Germans toward strangers in their midst, the status and self-perception of emancipated Jews in pre-Nazi Germany, and the responses of "privileged" Jews to needy, but alien, coreligionists.
Contents: The German state. The challenge of Jewish mass migration ; Public debates over Eastern Jews ; Administrative solutions -- The East European Jews. Demographic characteristics ; Economic pursuits ; Organizational activities -- The Jewish community. In the maelstrom of communal politics ; Social and cultural tensions ; The posture of organized German Jewry -- Conclusion: a comparative perspective -- Abbreviations -- Appendix: statistical tables.
Notes: Includes index.
Subject headings (LCSH): Germany--Ethnic relations.; Jews, East European--Germany--History.; Jews--Germany--History--1800-1933.; Jews--Germany--Politics and government.