A social history of Jewish women in Imperial Germany, this study synthesizes German, women's, and Jewish history. The book explores the private--familial and religious--lives of the German-Jewish bourgeoisie and the public roles of Jewish women in the university, paid employment and social service. It analyzes the changing roles of Jewish women as members of an economically mobile, but socially spurned minority. The author emphasizes the crucial role women played in creating the Jewish middle class, as well as their dual role within the Jewish family and community as powerful agents of class formation and acculturation and determined upholders of tradition.
A social history of Jewish women in Imperial Germany, this study synthesizes German, women's, and Jewish history. The book explores the private--familial and religious--lives of the German-Jewish bourgeoisie and the public roles of Jewish women in the university, paid employment and social service. It analyzes the changing roles of Jewish women as members of an economically mobile, but socially spurned minority. The author emphasizes the crucial role women played in creating the Jewish middle class, as well as their dual role within the Jewish family and community as powerful agents of class formation and acculturation and determined upholders of tradition.
Winner of the 1993 National Jewish Book Award for History
USA
"A fascinating reconceptualization of German-Jewish history which
is both fact-filled and scholarly as well as eminently
readable."--Lilith
"This exciting new social history of Jewish women in Wilhelmine
Germany constitutes a pathbreaking contribution...Kaplan's highly
original study...significantly deepens our understanding of Jewish
history, women's history, and German history...Dramatically
reshapes the way we understand the German-Jewish past."--American
Historical Review
"In her earlier work on German Jewish woman, Marion Kaplan ventured
to attack tricky, emotion-laden subjects without the usual
preconceptions and with impeccable scholarship. Now, in broadening
her canvas, she once again sheds far more light than heat, and her
readers have good reason to be grateful."--Peter Gay, Yale
University
"Exceptional achievement...Careful and imaginative use of
sources...Her extraordinary range of sources includes memoirs,
cookbooks, newspapers, novels, oral interviews, as well as economic
and sociological statistics....Especially impressive is the
author's keen insight into the complex and often contradictory ways
in which class, gender, and ethnicity intersected in the lives of
German-Jewish women."--Report of the Biennial Book Prize
Committee
"Kaplan's richly detailed The Making of the Jewish Middle Class
eloquently explores the multiple and contradictory intersections of
women's, Jewish, and German history in the Inperial era...Marvelous
book."--Journal of Women's History
"In this superb book, Marion Kaplan argues convincingly that the
making of a German Jewish middle class in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century took place at home as much as it did at
work, in private as much as in public; it was the work of women and
men."--German Politics and Society
"Kaplan brings together important material from the fields of
German history, women's history and Jewish history. Using sources
which range from demographic and occupational statistics to
organizational records and newsletters to prescriptive literature
and personal memoirs, Kaplan charts a fascinating process of class
building and identity construction among German Jewish bourgeois
culture."--Labor History
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