Between Concealing and Revealing: Covering Jewishness in Weimar Germany

• In Event: Passing and Covering: New Approaches to Assimilation in Jewish Studies

Abstract

This paper examines how the category of covering is relevant for the study of Jewish visibility in Weimar Germany, which builds on my 2017 book, PASSING ILLUSIONS. I challenge the notion that Weimar Jews sought to be only invisible or indistinguishable from other Germans, suggesting that there were occasions when it was beneficial to be openly Jewish. It is productive to locate the conversation about Jewish visibility within a broader context of minority visibility, particularly in applying Kenji Yoshino’s notion of covering. The concept of passing connects the German-Jewish experience to other widely known histories of concealing, including African American racial passing and sexual or queer/LGBT passing. Covering is an appropriate term for the precautionary behaviors of Weimar Jews who sought to tone down their Jewishness, but who at times still wished to remain visible as Jews.

Examples of both passing and covering in Weimar Germany shed light on the differences between the two categories, and on how both functioned with respect to the creation of complex and fluctuating Jewish identities. Jews, like members of other minority groups, were encouraged to blend in through the pursuit of a kind of bourgeois respectability that was synonymous with inconspicuousness. As satirist Kurt Tucholsky joked in 1922: “Besides: a Jew shouldn’t cause such a fuss over himself. That just exacerbates antisemitism.” Historical and cultural sources demonstrate that Jews at times attempted to pass or cover Jewishness through minor modifications to their physical appearance, attire, or accessories. On numerous occasions, Jews instructed each other to cover Jewishness by keeping a low profile while visiting potentially hostile or antisemitic resorts. This paper focuses specifically on when and how covering was used to determine when to conceal or reveal Jewishness.

Author

• Kerry Wallach, Gettysburg College