Verband Der Deutschen Juden
VERBAND DER DEUTSCHEN JUDEN
VERBAND DER DEUTSCHEN JUDEN (Ger. "Alliance of German Jews"), organization of representatives of the major communities and organizations. It was formally founded on April 24, 1904, as an attempt to constitute the sole and recognized representation of German Jewry and all its factions, particularly the *Central-Verein (cv) and the Zionists. The Verband was established, after almost a decade of hesitation and planning by Jewish leaders such as Bernhard Breslauer (1851–1928) and Eugen Fuchs (1856–1923), owing to the threat of increasing antisemitism and the growing disenchantment with the progressive parties, in spite of opposition by many Jewish leaders to a separate organization. Its first chairman was Martin *Philippson. The Verband's main goal was the defense of equality and an attack on official discrimination in Germany. Brochures on discrimination in the universities and in the legal and military professions were compiled and publicized for this purpose. The Verband also published works explaining the principles of Judaism to gentiles. It was a roof organization that did not interfere with the work of other organizations. The Verband did not succeed in winning the support of the Orthodox separatists, the younger and more radical generation of Zionists, and the Eastern European Jews. After World War i, it lost much of its influence, owing partly to the fact that the Weimar Republic had largely stopped the official discrimination against the Jews and that the Verband's tactics were not fit for the fight against the new and much more radical antisemitism, and partly to the increasing significance of sectors within German Jewry that did not support it; it ceased to exist around 1922.
bibliography:
W. Breslauer, in: blbi, 7 (1964), 345–79; idem, in: ylbi, 14 (1969), 259–65; Y. Toury, Die politischen Orientierungen der Juden in Deutschland (1966); idem, in: ylbi, 13 (1968), 57–90; idem, in: Ha-Ẓiyyonut, 1 (1970), 9–56; M. Lamberti, Central European History, 3 (1970), 73–93. add. bibliography: P. Pulzer, Jews and the German State (1992), 280–82.
[Jacob Borut (2nd ed.)]