Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 “We Are All Germans; Why Then Ask for Religion?”: Cultural Identity, Language, and Weimar Pluralism, 1928–1932
- 2 “Racial and Social Boundaries between Germans and Jews Are to Be Strictly Drawn”: Dictatorship Building and the Process of Nazifying Language, 1933
- 3 Toward the Eradication of the “Impossible, Untenable Category of ‘German Jews’”: Enforcing and Contesting Racial Difference, 1935–1938
- 4 “The Jewess” Attempted to “Stage a Case on Her Descent”: Linguistic Violence as Part of Genocide, 1941–1945
- 5 “We Are Not Bad Jews, Because We Believe We Are Good and True Germans”: Another Beginning and Persisting Difference, 1945–1948
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Frequency of Key Categories of Germanness and Jewishness
- Bibliography
- Bibliographical Essay
- Index
- References
1 - “We Are All Germans; Why Then Ask for Religion?”: Cultural Identity, Language, and Weimar Pluralism, 1928–1932
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 “We Are All Germans; Why Then Ask for Religion?”: Cultural Identity, Language, and Weimar Pluralism, 1928–1932
- 2 “Racial and Social Boundaries between Germans and Jews Are to Be Strictly Drawn”: Dictatorship Building and the Process of Nazifying Language, 1933
- 3 Toward the Eradication of the “Impossible, Untenable Category of ‘German Jews’”: Enforcing and Contesting Racial Difference, 1935–1938
- 4 “The Jewess” Attempted to “Stage a Case on Her Descent”: Linguistic Violence as Part of Genocide, 1941–1945
- 5 “We Are Not Bad Jews, Because We Believe We Are Good and True Germans”: Another Beginning and Persisting Difference, 1945–1948
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Frequency of Key Categories of Germanness and Jewishness
- Bibliography
- Bibliographical Essay
- Index
- References
Summary
When Germany's newspapers reached newsstands on April 1, 1928, the country's political parties were intensifying their campaigns for the approaching Reichstag election of May 20. By that time, the German people under the Weimar Republic had experienced more than four years of relative political and socioeconomic stability, based in part on the receipt of short-term American loans. But there had been limits to that stability. In mid-February, the twelve-month-old center-right coalition under Chancellor Wilhelm Marx of the Catholic Center Party, the Republic's fifteenth cabinet since 1919, collapsed. The final straw was the disagreement over the role of the Christian churches in public education. But the main coalition partners, especially the right-liberal German People's Party (Deutsche Volkspartei, DVP) under long-serving Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, had been seeking political realignments to implement their competing policies for months. The inclusion of the German National People's Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP) in the Marx cabinet reflected the ongoing shift of the Republic's political culture and language to the right. As the strongest right-wing force in the country, the DNVP had only moderated its antirepublican stance in 1925, and much of the membership's rhetoric still remained rooted in völkisch thought.
The opposition parties were also jockeying for power. The Social Democrats were eager to return to the government. They had been the strongest force in the Weimar coalition of 1919, which laid the foundations for Germany's first democracy, and they continued to be the largest parliamentary party in the Reichstag.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Language of Nazi GenocideLinguistic Violence and the Struggle of Germans of Jewish Ancestry, pp. 15 - 57Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009