The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women and German-Jewish Identity in Imperial Germany (Studies in Jewish History) - Hardcover

Kaplan, Marion A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195039521 ISBN 13: 9780195039528

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 1991

Synopsis

This comprehensive study of Jewish women in Imperial Germany (1871-1918) addresses the complex interrelationships of ethnicity, sex, and class. It examines the changing lives and roles of women who were part of an urbanizing, economically mobile, but socially spurned minority group, and also looks at their relationship with the rest of society.

The author identifies German-Jewish women's `double burden' as females - discriminated against in both German and Jewish traditions - and as Jews - objects of the increasing anti-Semitism of their era. She also points out the ambiguous, often contradictory role that Jewish women played: they were powerful agents of acculturation, encouraging their families to adapt outwardly to German customs and norms, and also determined upholders of tradition, maintaining family rituals, kin networks, and Jewish communal organizations.

About this title

Review

'Kaplan's book makes an important contribution to the history of German Jews, but it should also encourage historians to investigate women's roles in the formation of Catholic and Protestant middle-class identities.'David F. Crew, University of Texas at Austin, German History, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1993

From the Back Cover

The Making of the Jewish Middle Class eloquently explores the multiple and contradictory intersections of women's Jewish, and German history in the Imperial era.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195039521
• ISBN 13: 9780195039528
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368