Debates concerning the Jewish Welfare System in the Era of Civil Equality

Rainer Liedtke

Source Description

This open letter, printed as a brochure, must be seen in conjunction with the recent achievement of civil equality for Jews in Hamburg in 1860. It documents a related problem, namely the question of whether, in spite of Emancipation, a separate Jewish welfare system ought to continue. The authors of this document were all members of the “Committee for the Poor” Armen-Collegium of the German Israelite Congregation. This body supervised communal welfare activities. The letter was addressed to the supervisory committee of the Congregation. The authors positioned themselves in the debate concerning the future of the Congregation vis-à-vis its welfare institutions, now that the constitutional changes of 1860 placed the Jews of Hamburg on an equal footing with non-Jews. Inside the Congregation’s Council, disunity prevailed as to whether the continuation of a separate Jewish welfare system was absolutely necessary, given the elimination of Congregational self-rule. A minority among the superintendents argued that the Jewish needy should, from now on, turn primarily to the public domain. The majority saw things differently, and the open letter reflected its opinion. It spelled out in a particularly emphatic way the paramount importance of Jewish welfare activities for the social cohesion and preservation of identity for the Jews of the Hansa city.
  • Rainer Liedtke

The new Constitution as a turning point


The 1860s was a pe­riod of up­heaval for the Jews of Ham­burg, a sit­u­a­tion that could be traced back to the city-​state’s con­sti­tu­tion of 1860. It gave all in­hab­i­tants, re­gard­less of their re­li­gious af­fil­i­a­tion, com­pletely equal sta­tus be­fore the law. Upon the elim­i­na­tion of all re­main­ing po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic lim­i­ta­tions, Jews were also freed from com­pul­sory mem­ber­ship in a con­gre­ga­tion. For the Jew­ish wel­fare sys­tem, civil equal­ity had a con­se­quence that can scarcely be over­stated: the hereto­fore in­sti­tu­tion­ally sep­a­rated care for the Jew­ish needy was sup­posed to cease, ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ately. From now on, they, like all Ham­burg cit­i­zens, were sup­posed to turn ex­clu­sively to the city’s Gen­eral In­sti­tute for the Poor All­ge­meine Ar­me­nanstalt.

A parallel Jewish welfare system


The new reg­u­la­tion posed a se­ri­ous prob­lem for Ham­burg’s Jews. The ex­ist­ing Is­raelite In­sti­tu­tion for the Poor Is­raelitis­che Ar­me­nanstalt (founded 1818), the cen­tral Jew­ish wel­fare or­ga­ni­za­tion, func­tioned quite well up to this point and was con­sid­ered a suc­cess. In its struc­ture and meth­ods, it was mod­eled on the Gen­eral In­sti­tute for the Poor All­ge­meine Ar­me­nanstalt (founded 1788), but served Jews ex­clu­sively. The Is­raelite In­sti­tute for the Poor Is­raelitis­che Ar­me­nanstalt ac­corded Jews in need reg­u­lar or tem­po­rary fi­nan­cial sup­port, dis­trib­uted bread and soup in sev­eral soup kitchens, or­ga­nized med­ical treat­ment, and took re­spon­si­bil­ity for the board­ing and feed­ing of Jew­ish or­phans and foundlings. Jews with­out means who were sick had their hos­pi­tal bills paid, when ap­pro­pri­ate.

The Jew­ish or­ga­ni­za­tion was a pri­vate as­so­ci­a­tion, the costs of which were pri­mar­ily de­frayed by sub­ven­tions from the Ger­man Is­raelite Con­gre­ga­tion. Un­like the Gen­eral In­sti­tute for the Poor All­ge­meine Ar­me­nanstalt, it was there­fore not fi­nanced by pub­lic means. Along­side this cen­tral in­sti­tu­tion of the Jew­ish wel­fare ac­tiv­ity, there ex­isted in the 1860s sev­eral dozen ad­di­tional as­so­ci­a­tions, foun­da­tions, and fra­ter­ni­ties which Jews or­ga­nized in order to sup­port other Jews in var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions of need. Al­to­gether, this ex­tra­or­di­nar­ily ef­fec­tive Jew­ish wel­fare sys­tem func­tioned well and cov­ered the req­ui­sites for Jews in need in an out­stand­ing way.

Advantages of the “Jewish system”


Ac­cord­ingly, the au­thors rep­re­sent­ing the “ma­jor­ity vote” ar­gued against the abo­li­tion of a sep­a­rate Jew­ish sys­tem of aid. An es­pe­cially im­por­tant part of its line of ar­gu­ment was the state­ment that the Jew­ish in­sti­tu­tions pri­or­i­tized the pre­ven­tion of poverty and cul­ti­vated quite per­sonal re­la­tion­ships with the needy. The city in­sti­tu­tion for the poor only stepped in with help “when those seek­ing aid [were] in the most dire need and their au­ton­omy has al­ready dis­ap­peared,” they rested on de­ter­rence and ne­glected the close con­tact be­tween the guardians of the poor and their wards, which in the Jew­ish sys­tem so suc­cess­fully hin­dered abuses. For these rea­sons, it seemed ap­pro­pri­ate to the au­thors of the sub­mis­sion that the state should meet its oblig­a­tions to care – also for the Jew­ish poor – with sub­ven­tions to the ex­ist­ing Jew­ish in­sti­tu­tions.

Compromise with the Hamburg Senate


After ex­ten­sive ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the gov­ern­ment and su­per­vi­sory board of the Con­gre­ga­tion, an amenda­tory com­pro­mise was ar­rived at a few months later. Every needy cit­i­zen of Ham­burg, no mat­ter what re­li­gion, would have to have ac­cess to the Gen­eral In­sti­tute for the Poor All­ge­meine Ar­me­nanstalt. A sep­a­rate Jew­ish wel­fare sys­tem, to which all Jews were pre­vi­ously com­pelled to apply, was abol­ished. At the same time, how­ever, the Ham­burg Sen­ate de­clared that it would ex­pressly wel­come the con­tin­u­ance of a vol­un­tary Jew­ish sup­port sys­tem. Such a sys­tem, to be sure, could not be sup­ported by pub­lic means. The re­vised statutes of the Ger­man Is­raelite Con­gre­ga­tion of 1867 took this into ac­count, stat­ing that Jew­ish wel­fare work would as­suredly be car­ried on as be­fore; at the same time, how­ever, Ham­burg Jews, like all other cit­i­zens of the city, should prin­ci­pally avail them­selves of the pub­lic sup­port in­sti­tu­tions. Thus, in fact, lit­tle changed.

The basis for a confessional welfare system


Why was such high value placed on the con­tin­u­a­tion of a sep­a­rate, pri­vately or­ga­nized, ex­tra­or­di­nar­ily costly Jew­ish sup­port sys­tem, even after Jew­ish Eman­ci­pa­tion? Con­cern for the need to main­tain Jew­ish di­etary laws or the re­li­gious hol­i­days in fit­ting ways was scarcely rel­e­vant. This played no role in the great ma­jor­ity of the in­sti­tu­tions’ ac­tiv­i­ties in this realm. A look at the Catholics, a sec­ond re­li­gious mi­nor­ity of the Hansa city does not help to an­swer the ques­tion since it shows that wel­fare ac­tiv­ity was not in gen­eral strongly or­ga­nized along con­fes­sional lines. The Ham­burg Catholics, who in the course of the 19th cen­tury sur­passed the num­ber of Jews, dis­posed of only a few, mostly Church wel­fare or­ga­ni­za­tions and, in the mat­ter of care for the poor, were, in stark con­trast to the Jew­ish in­sti­tu­tions, quite over­whelm­ingly de­pen­dent on pub­lic means. In the search for an­swers, it should surely not be for­got­ten that the fi­nan­cially much bet­ter off Jews of Ham­burg, as a mat­ter of tra­di­tional and moral con­sid­er­a­tions, felt ob­lig­ated to see to it that needy co-​religionists be well cared for. The well-​developed Jew­ish wel­fare sys­tem, al­ready in ex­is­tence for many years, seemed the best suited to achieve that end. How­ever, three ad­di­tional, es­sen­tially more im­por­tant, cir­cum­stances also need to be con­sid­ered.

Welfare systems as social frameworks of the bourgeoisie


First, the Is­raelite In­sti­tu­tion for the Poor Is­raelitis­che Ar­me­nanstalt, as well as nu­mer­ous other, smaller Jew­ish wel­fare or­ga­ni­za­tions and the highly dif­fer­en­ti­ated as­so­ci­a­tional net­work, were all im­mensely im­por­tant in­stru­ments for the reg­u­la­tion of so­cial re­la­tion­ships, in­clud­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of sta­tus within the Jew­ish Con­gre­ga­tion. The as­so­ci­a­tional life of the 19th cen­tury was of cen­tral im­por­tance in the for­ma­tion and de­lim­i­ta­tion of the bour­geoisie. It ce­mented class mem­ber­ship, shaped be­hav­ioral norms, and dis­trib­uted power and in­flu­ence. Jews, like non-​Jews, who be­longed to the bour­geoisie used as­so­ci­a­tions and wel­fare or­ga­ni­za­tions to de­fine their so­cial po­si­tion; the Jews of Ham­burg, how­ever, did this quite pre­dom­i­nantly in their own Jew­ish sphere. Had the most im­por­tant el­e­ment of this sphere, the sep­a­rate Jew­ish wel­fare sys­tem, sud­denly van­ished in the 1860s, the struc­ture would have been elim­i­nated within which the hi­er­ar­chies of Ham­burg Jews were de­fined. The ar­gu­ment that Jews in need of help pre­ferred to apply to or­ga­ni­za­tions led “by their own peo­ple” must be un­der­stood in this con­text.

Welfare activity as a strategy for the preservation of identity


Sec­ondly, it should be noted that en­gage­ment in wel­fare ac­tiv­ity was part of the com­mu­nal iden­tity of all mem­bers of the bour­geoisie; more­over, in the Jew­ish sphere it gen­er­ated a Jew­ish com­mu­nal iden­tity. In the post-Eman­ci­pa­tion pe­riod this was sub­sumed under a rad­i­cal re­de­f­i­n­i­tion. Car­ing for needy co-​religionists, to­gether with with other Jews, strength­ened Jew­ish group iden­tity and cre­ated a feel­ing of co­he­sive­ness in a time when even the Jew­ish world was be­com­ing sec­u­lar­ized. Here there re­mained stand­ing a sphere in which one could feel “Jew­ish” in a so­cially highly re­garded way. To this end, Jew­ish eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples were promi­nently listed in the statutes of the sup­port or­ga­ni­za­tions. Thus, it was spelled out that one was act­ing in a tra­di­tional Jew­ish field, when, in fact, pre­dom­i­nantly mod­ern and ef­fi­cient meth­ods for the al­lo­ca­tion of funds were being em­ployed. In this re­spect, or­ga­nized wel­fare must be seen as an im­por­tant al­ter­na­tive strat­egy for the preser­va­tion of iden­tity among those Jews, who were or wanted to be part of the mul­ti­fac­eted Ger­man bour­geoisie. In the Eman­ci­pa­tion and post-Eman­ci­pa­tion era, el­e­ments of co­he­sive­ness and dis­so­lu­tion in­flu­enced the German-​Jewish bour­geoisie. More and more Jews re­garded them­selves as sim­ply mem­bers of a con­fes­sional com­mu­nity, dis­tin­guish­able from non-​Jews only in the mat­ter of re­li­gion. At the same time, in­ter­est in re­li­gious forms of be­hav­ior rapidly re­ceded in the sec­ond half of the 19th cen­tury. In the pub­lic sphere, it was pre­em­i­nently non-​religious as­so­ci­a­tions, most of which pur­sued so­cial aims, in which the Jew­ish­ness of the ma­jor­ity of Jews was de­ter­mined and which fos­tered Jew­ish sol­i­dar­ity. This in­cluded not only those ac­tively en­gaged in wel­fare work, but ex­tended to the con­gre­ga­tion in gen­eral, since the mu­tual give and take among in­di­vid­u­als was bound up in these as­so­ci­a­tions. At the least, the quiet tol­er­a­tion, at most, the open ac­knowl­edge­ment from the non-​Jewish side that the Jew­ish sys­tem for care of the needy func­tioned well strength­ened this sol­i­dar­ity con­sid­er­ably.

The Jewish welfare system as an argument in favor of Emancipation


Thirdly, it must be con­sid­ered, that, in the en­tire process of Eman­ci­pa­tion, the ex­is­tence of a sep­a­rate Jew­ish wel­fare sys­tem was very pos­i­tively re­garded by non-​Jews. What is more, it was a sig­nif­i­cant quid pro quo in the long-​drawn out process of civil equal­ity. To some ex­tent, the Jew­ish wel­fare sys­tem “as a re­turn of ser­vice” for the re­ceipt of equal sta­tus was an in­te­gral com­po­nent of Eman­ci­pa­tion ide­ol­ogy. Be­cause they did not let “their own poor” be­come a bur­den on the pub­lic purse, Jews showed they were wor­thy of Eman­ci­pa­tion. In Ham­burg and other lo­cales, this ex­plains the vol­un­tary con­tin­u­a­tion of the com­pul­sory gov­er­nance that was of­fi­cially abol­ished in 1860. It was clear to the ma­jor­ity of Jews that it was bet­ter not to lay claim to the same priv­i­leges as their non-​Jewish fellow-​citizens, al­though they were now for­mally en­ti­tled to do so. Nev­er­the­less, this should not be seen as sim­ply an ex­pres­sion of Jew­ish anx­i­ety about stir­ring up re­sent­ment.

Continued existence of a Jewish social sphere


The Jews of Ham­burg saw them­selves con­fronted by anti-​Jewish prej­u­dice and hos­til­ity at all lev­els of so­ci­ety. The de­mar­ca­tion of or­ga­nized Jew­ish life was not, how­ever, pri­mar­ily a de­fen­sive re­ac­tion, but rather a pos­i­tive man­i­fes­ta­tion of Jew­ish­ness by the self-​confident Jew­ish bour­geoisie of the city. Wel­fare ac­tiv­ity stood at the cen­ter of Jew­ish self-​preservation, not - at least not pri­mar­ily – de­fined as a self-​defense against at­tacks from out­side. Rather it was an at­tempt to build and main­tain a sec­u­lar Jew­ish iden­tity in the present and for the fu­ture, dur­ing the rapid and all-​embracing trans­for­ma­tion of Jew­ish ex­is­tence in the 19th cen­tury. The ex­tremely suc­cess­ful Jew­ish wel­fare sys­tem con­tributed de­ci­sively to this ef­fort, show­ing that a dis­tinc­tive Jew­ish so­cial sphere could be re­tained even after Eman­ci­pa­tion. This was nec­es­sary in order to coun­ter­bal­ance the frag­ile so­cial equi­lib­rium in­side the Jew­ish com­mu­nity. It oc­curred to only a few Jews or non-​Jews that this might also hin­der the in­te­gra­tion of the mi­nor­ity, be­cause the sup­port of “their own poor” was con­sid­ered ap­pro­pri­ate and de­sir­able for these so­cial groups, who were gen­er­ally per­ceived to be “sep­a­rate.”

Select Bibliography


Christoph Sachße / Florian Tennstedt, Geschichte der Armenfürsorge in Deutschland. Vol. 1: Vom Spätmittelalter bis zum 1. Weltkrieg, Stuttgart et al. 21998.

Selected English Titles


David Blackbourn / Richard Evans (eds.), The German Bourgeoisie. Essays on the Social History of the German Middle Class from the Late 18th to the early 20th Century, London 1991.
Mary Lindemann, Patriots and Paupers. Hamburg, 1712–1830, New York et al. 1990.
Fredrick Marquardt, Pauperismus in Germany during the Vormärz, in: Central European History 2 (1969), pp. 77–88.
Jonathan Sperber, Bürger, Bürgertum, Bürgerlichkeit, bürgerliche Gesellschaft. Studies of the German (Upper) Middle Class and its Sociocultural World, in: Journal of Modern History 69 (1997), pp. 271–297.

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About the Author

Rainer Liedtke (Thematic Focus: Organizations and Institutions), Prof. Dr. phil., is Professor of 19th and 20th Century European History at the University of Regensburg. His research interests centre on comparative European history, urban history, Jewish history, British history and the modern history of Greece.

Recommended Citation and License Statement

Rainer Liedtke, Debates concerning the Jewish Welfare System in the Era of Civil Equality (translated by Richard S. Levy), in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, May 30, 2018. <https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:article-27.en.v1> [January 05, 2025].

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