Comrades, German-Jewish hiking association
Die Kameraden, the German-Jewish Wanderbund were a youth association within the Jewish youth movement in Germany . The youth union founded in 1916 split into three successor organizations in 1932; at that time it had about 1,600 members.
history
The first German-Jewish hiking club called “Comrades” was founded in 1916 in Breslau ; it was followed by other local associations, which merged in 1919 to form a Reich Association. Unlike the Blau-Weiß, Bund für Jewish Jugendwandern in Deutschland , which was also founded in Breslau in 1907 , the comrades were not nationally Jewish or Zionist , they were oriented towards the assimilated Jewish bourgeoisie . The federal goal was "to educate a mentally and physically healthy youth who consciously feel themselves to be a member of the German national community and the Jewish religious community." Religiously, the federal government took a neutral position on the different currents within Judaism.
Various political and regional currents developed within the federal government, the most prominent among them was the Black Heap around Hans Litten and Max Fürst , which developed from the northeast Prussian region of the Comrades around the mid-1920s and took its name from Florian Geyer's Odenwälder Bauernheer Black Pile had borrowed. The black heap was anti-authoritarian and advocated the social revolution , its 150 members provoked with a libertarian lifestyle. Parts of the Black Heap lived together in mixed-sex shared apartments that were vegetarian and abstained from alcohol and nicotine. At Pentecost 1927, the Black Heap was excluded from the union, and it continued to exist independently for another year. Many of its members then joined socialist and communist organizations and were active in the resistance against National Socialism . The opposite pole to the Black Heap was the “Ring” with its focus on West Germany, which was patriotic-German-oriented and denied any social effectiveness of the youth union.
With the exclusion of the Black Heap , the conflicts of direction within the comrades were not resolved; a socialist and a patriotic German wing continued to exist. In addition, starting in 1928 with the "circle" around Hermann Gerson, a moderate socialist, religious movement emerged within the federal government, which was based on Martin Buber , but at the same time was strongly influenced by Stefan George , like many other groups of the Bundestag youth . The tension between these groups led to the breakup of the covenant in 1932:
- The socialist wing formed the Free German-Jewish Youth with 100 to 200 members .
- The approximately 400 members of the patriotic German wing united in the men's alliance Black Fähnlein .
- From this, in turn, the Blaue Schar group split off in 1934 under the leadership of Paul Yogi Mayer .
- The remaining approximately 1000 members formed the new Bund Werkeople (Bund Jewish Youth) around Gerson.
Known members
- Rudi Arndt ( Black Pile )
- Peter Blachstein (The Circle; Workers )
- Friedrich W. Buri
- Max Fürst ( Black Pile )
- Erich Gans ( Black Pile )
- Hermann Gerson (The Circle; Workers )
- Kurt Goldstein
- Robert Jungk
- Lotte Kaliski
- Fritz Lamm
- Hans Litten ( Black Pile )
- Heinz Putzrath
- Heinz Rosen ( Black Pile )
- Ilse Seglow ( Black Pile )
- Leni Yahil ( workmen )
- Ernest M. Wolf
literature
- Knut Bergbauer and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum : "We are young, the world is open". A Jewish youth group in the 20th century. House of the Wannsee Conference, Berlin 2002. ISBN 3-9808517-2-9 . [to the black pile]
- Antje Dertinger : white seagull, yellow star. The short life of Helga Beyer. Dietz, Berlin and Bonn 1987. ISBN 3-8012-3020-1 . [to the Free German-Jewish Youth]
- Irmgard Klönne : German, Jewish, Bündisch. Memory of the Jewish youth movement expelled from Germany. Puls 21. Verlag der Jugendbewegung, Witzenhausen 1993. ISSN 0342-3328 .
- Bernhard Trefz: Youth Movement and Jews in Germany. A historical investigation with special consideration of the German-Jewish Wanderbund Kameraden. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1999. ISBN 978-3-631-33900-8 .
- Paul Mendes-Flohr : Rosenzweig and the comrades. A Non-Zionist Alliance . In: Journal of Contemporary History , Vol. 26 (1991), Issue 3/4 (= Jehuda Reinharz (Hg.): The Impact of Western Nationalisms. Essays Dedicated to Walter Z. Laqueur on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday . Sage Publications , London 1991), pp. 385-402.
Web links
- House of the Wannsee Conference: The Black Pile ( Memento from May 3, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
- Youth in Germany 1918 to 1945: Jewish Youth (NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne)
- Jungvolk: Journal of the "Comrades", German-Jewish Wanderbund, B881 Digitized Library Periodicals at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York