World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [105]
First, the Jews in Weimar Germany were not an economically dominant minority in the sense that, say, the Chinese are economically dominant in most Southeast Asian countries. Claims that “Jews ran the German economy” were patently false. Second, I am distinctly not suggesting that the roots of anti-Semitism in Weimar Germany, or anywhere else for that matter, were economic in nature. Anti-Semitism in Germany, as elsewhere in the world, existed long before Jews were particularly successful economically. (Economic grievances certainly had nothing to do with the numerous pogroms directed at poor shtetls in Russia and Eastern Europe.) Third, Weimar Germany obviously differed in profound respects from most of today’s developing countries. For example, Germany was a former imperial power, with colonies and protectorates all over Africa and a formidable naval fleet and army. Weimar Germans, including women, were far more educated than the average inhabitant of the developing world today. Commentators have described Weimar Germany as “a cradle of modernity.” Moreover, Weimar Germany had a powerful industrial base, an impressive network of railways and infrastructure, and a highly sophisticated banking system.
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Nevertheless, conditions in post–World War I Germany were more analogous to those in the developing world today than one might think. Most crucially, Weimar Germany was characterized by widespread economic deprivation and suffering, in large part because of inflation that reached catastrophic proportions in 1923. (By most accounts the principal cause of the inflation was not reparations to the Allies, but rather the excessive national debt that Imperial Germany had incurred in financing the war.) With the plunging mark, writes historian Gordon Craig, “the simplest of objects were . . . invested with monstrous value—the humble kohlrabi shamefacedly wearing a price-tag of 50 millions, the penny postage stamp costing as much as a Dahlem villa in 1890. . . .” While a few—principally industrialists and speculators—profited from the inflation, millions of working and middle-class Germans were left suddenly impoverished. Those on fixed incomes or pensions were hit hardest. At one point, in late 1923, only 29 percent of the total German labor force was fully employed. Contributing to the mass frustration was a chronic national housing shortage, estimated at 1.5 million dwellings in 1919–20. As in the developing world, malnutrition and disease in the Weimar Republic were pervasive, particularly among children and the old. Deaths from hunger were common.
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Against this background, Jews in the Weimar Republic were widely perceived as an “outsider” ethnic minority wielding outrageously disproportionate economic power vis-à-vis the “indigenous” majority. The reality of the Jews’ economic situation in the Weimar Republic was as follows. Relative to their tiny numbers—Jews formed just under 1 percent of the total population of Germany—they were disproportionately represented in certain professions and occupations. Between 1918 and 1933, nearly three-quarters of German Jews earned their livelihood from trade, commerce, banking, and the professions, particularly law and medicine. By contrast, only about one-quarter of the non-Jewish population of Germany was similarly employed.
Thus in 1933, Jews made up around 10 percent of Germany’s doctors and more than 16 percent of its lawyers and notaries public. Commerce and finance, however, were the major pursuits of most German Jews. In 1930, Jews owned 40 percent of Germany’s wholesale textile firms and nearly 60 percent of the country’s wholesale and retail clothing businesses. In 1932, Jews owned roughly 80 percent of all department store business. Weimar Jews were also prominent in banking. Nearly half of the country’s private banks were owned by