East German-Jewish Spaces in Berlin: Jewish Heritage Societies (Heimatvereine) and their diasporic Milieu during the 1920s and 1930s

ABSTRACT Following the First World War and the loss of German territories in Posen, West Prussia and Silesia, many German Jews from those areas left their homes and settled either in Germany or moved to the USA, Latin America or Palestine. Quite a few of them came to Berlin. There and in other German cities as well they founded so called Heimatvereine, Jewish Heritage Societies. This article analyses the spaces those societies created – concrete spaces, in which people met, but also metaphorical spaces, in which a specific East-German-Jewish diasporic milieu was created and maintained that also transcended the borders of the Weimar Republic.


Introduction
When Rabbi Joachim Prinz in 1927 evaluated the role of those Jews, who originated in the former Prussian eastern province of Posen, but lived by then in Berlin and had become members of the Jewish community there, he was convinced they fulfilled a special role within this community, because of their deep rootedness in Jewish tradition, or, as he put it: Poland as refugees from German lands.As such, they had been closely linked to the overall organisation of the Jews of Poland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 8t that time, during the eighteenth century, as many as 80 per cent of all Jews worldwide lived in the Polish territories. 9Those who lived in the Western parts of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth became deeply affected by the partitions of Poland since 1793.Some of the western parts of the former Polish-Lithuanian state from then on belonged to Prussia and formed its Eastern Provinces.
Prussia, at the latest after the conquest of Silesia in the 18 th century and the three partitions of Poland in the period 1772 to 1795, constituted the centre of imperial Germany.From 1871 onwards as the German Empire, it ruled in its Eastern Provinces over many Poles and Jews, nationally yet undefined slavophone population groups and other minorities. 10In the province of Posen for example those groups reached a majority with almost two-thirds constituting Poles and Jews.Overall, the five Prussian Eastern Provinces were home to 23 percent of the Prussian-Jewish population in 1871, whereas the Jews of Posen were in the first rank in numbers among the Prussian provinces' Jewish population, counting 76.800 people in 1849. 11hese regions were borderlands.They were located between Germany-Prussia, the Polish population without a state, and Russia.The idea of the borderland includes not only geography, but also cultural, economic, normative and symbolic phenomena that shape mechanisms of identity-building. 12On the one hand, in borderlands nationalism always plays a meaningful and ideological role, producing national identities and exclusion of an (often imagined) 'Other' to produce social cohesion and unity.No matter how much linguistic, confessional, or ethnic diversity in certain regions existed, neither camp of borderland nationalists saw pluralism as a natural state, but rather as an uneasy part of a struggle for increased homogenisation.In the case of the Prussian provinces, this was certainly the case when we look at German and Polish nationalist forces, each of which tried to convince the borderland population to stand on either side. 13n the other hand, borderlands with their inherited entanglement of various languages, religions and ethnicities developed as translators of the 'other' into the 'self', of the exterior into the interior: The excluded 'outside' always leaves a trace on the 'inside', in other words: The 'other' is inscribed in the own, sometimes to a point where substantial differences disappear and something new or third emerges that might resist demands from the outside.Border spaces are potentially heterotopias, and as such, they can 'disturb and resist the hegemonic visions'. 14Often, in borderlands, there is no clearly definable hegemonic group.Multiple affiliations are the rule rather than the exception.And this certainly holds true for the borderlands of the Prussian East, where Germans, Jews, Poles, Kashubs, Masurians and Lithuanians lived.
The Jews in the Eastern Provinces of Prussia and especially of Posen underwent a profound transformation in the period after the partitions.During a relatively short time, they abandoned their caftans, and began to speak High German instead of Yiddish and to side with German-speaking culture and German nationality. 15While the Polish population in the province sought to escape the pressure of Germanization, the Jews of Posen saw themselves as guarantors and pioneers of German culture and German liberalism, especially after 1848, when social and cultural affinities with Germans and the political loyalism to the Prussian government had encouraged them to commit themselves to the German national movement. 16The East European Jews of Posen of the eighteenth century had become German Jews one hundred years later. 17In this situation, the Jews of Posen 'more than once found themselves between the fronts of what has been labelled as the German-Polish "Volkstumskampf": shunned by the Polish side as pro-German, accepted by the Prussian-German side partly only to a limited extent because of their eastern origins.' 18 But even if they sided rather with German than with Polish nationalism, they nevertheless had an attitude that can be characterised as a Posen-specific 'advocacy of a civic tradition and rejection of nationalist stridence.' 19They participated very actively in the political and economic development of the city: From 1866 to 1918 more than 80 Jews were members of the city council, some of them for more than twenty years.They harmonised well with both non-Jewish Germans and Poles in the council -with the common goal to modernise Posen. 20s well their religious life can be characterised as Posen-specific, as it remained intense throughout the nineteenth century. 21This again is due to the borderland situation, because in the eastern Prussian provinces the influences of traditional Judaism mixed with the interpretation of Jewish tradition by the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement whose emergence is generally associated with Berlin, but was influenced by Polish Jews in the first place. 22Rising nationalism in the borderlands went along with rising antisemitism, conjured up by German and Polish nationalists -one reason for German Jews to leave the region already from 1848 onwards, after the revolution finally permitted it.From then on, Jewish migration out of the province grew steadily.From 1849 to 1871 the numbers of Jews in Posen declined absolutely by 19 percent, in the next two decades it fell by 28 percent. 23Jews emigrated especially to Berlin and the Ruhr area and also non-Jewish Germans were drawn to the world of Berlin already before 1918, although in the course of the aforementioned Germanisation policy considerable allowances poured into the province and a colonial settlement commission tried to attract Germans.In 1910, in the province of Posen Germans made up about 35 percent of the total population, while Poles amounted to 65 percent.In turn, just under 27,000 Jews lived in the entire province at that time -this equalled 1.3 percent of the population. 24Of these 1.3 per cent, 99.75 per cent declared their nationality to be German. 25The Jewish proportion was higher in the city of Posen with about 5,000 to 6,000, which meant about 3.5 per cent of the city population.This constellation and the fact that Posen's Jewry had developed over the centuries as a religious, economic and intellectual centre, partly due to its borderland situation and the connections with Poland and Russia, meant that Jews from Posen had a considerable influence on the Jewish intellectual and religious life in Berlin from the nineteenth century until 1939. 26The well-known rabbis Akiba Eger (1761-1837), Philipp Bloch (1841-1923) and Leo Baeck (1873-1956) came from the province of Posen, as did the influential historians Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891), Adolf Warschauer (1855-1930), Eugen Täubler (1879-1953) and Ernst Kantorowicz (1895-1963).Entrepreneurs, intellectuals or artists such as the painter Lesser Ury (1861-1931) completed this influx. 27The well industrialised Silesia, on the other hand, hardly lost any Jewish residents; on the contrary, it even had an influx across its eastern border and in 1910 still counted 45,000 Jewish residents.In East Prussia, too, the number had remained relatively stable at 13,000 throughout the nineteenth century. 28

Transferring the borderland -the founding of the Heimatvereine
After the First World War and the peace treaties of Versailles, parts of the Prussian Eastern Provinces of Posen, West Prussia and Upper Silesia fell to Poland.Since in German and in German-Jewish circles knowledge of Polish, Yiddish or Russian for the communication with either Non-Jews or Jews who began to settle in the province coming from other parts of Poland, was limited, the German-speaking population suddenly faced a clear disadvantage. 29Nevertheless, leading representatives of the Jewish community in Posen such as Max Kollenscher at first called the Jewish population to remain in Posen. 30In an article published in the Mitteilungsblatt des Jüdischen Volksrats Posen in February 1919 he accentuated his hope, that in the ethnically mixed region a right to selfdetermination, a kind of autonomy in questions of education, social policies, culture and economy could be realised for the Jews of Posen.He postulated: Whether in the German Empire or in the Polish state: in Posen, Germans, Poles and Jews will have to live side by side.The oppressive policy of the old Prussian government has finally been eliminated, [. ..] all nationalities will have to live in respect for each other. 31vertheless, several factors led to more and more Posen Jews leaving the province: anti-German sentiment in the surrounding society, journalistic agitation, a deterioration of the economic situation also due to the new geographical settings and the loss of markets of the former empires, pressure from the administration and increasing immigration from Congress Poland and Galicia contributed to this.Above all, the emigration of neighbours or business partners and customers reduced the desire of Germans and German Jews to remain in the province.Thus, a wave of mass emigration took place in the summer and autumn of 1920.
By 1921, 500,000 to 700,000 Germans had left Poland.While in 1919 Germans in Posen had made up 42 percent of the population, by 1931 it was only two percent.Only few German Jews remained.The traditional borderland with its ethnically mixed population became considerably more homogeneous.In 1921, the first census in the Second Polish Republic still showed about 10,400 Jews in the province of Posen, 58.1 percent of whom declared a German, 27.8 a Polish and 13.6 percent a Jewish nationality. 32rom then on, the Jews of Posen formed a scattered, transnational community that nevertheless tried to stay closely connected.Like many other German Jews from Polandand like many non-Jewish Germans from the same area -they founded Heritage Societies.Those societies constituted the diasporic space mentioned before, in which members were able to negotiate their longing for the old Heimat and the preservation of their memories, a space to meet, to discuss economic hardship and the support of those, who were in need.They created a diasporic community that was strongly constituted by geographic origin and constituted a space of in-betweenness, mentally rooted in the former Heimat, while at the same time living in the new one, a diasporic space of continuity and transformation.This resembled not only in a specific conception of being a Jew from Posen, to which I will return later, but also in material phenomena: Posen's former city councillor Arthur Kronthal used both his old address in Poznań and his new one in Berlin in his letterhead until the late 1920s. 33Kronthal had left Poznań already in 1921, and, to speed this up, had burned all his correspondence and notices. 34During the 1920s Kronthal did not live in Poznań any more -but his prominent address Wilhelmplatz 7 (Plac Wolności) remained as a materialized mental map on his letterhead.
In 1928, there were at least 43 such Jewish heritage societies in the Weimar Republic, most of them in Berlin -the Jüdisches Jahrbuch für Gross-Berlin (Jewish Yearbook for Greater Berlin) lists 43 for Berlin, but mentions other cities as well.As the earliest foundation in this list figures the Hilfsverein für Märkisch-Friedland (Relief organisation, today Mirosławiec) in Pomerania, that was founded as early as 1856.Some others followed during the late nineteenth century, but most of the societies emerged either between 1900 and 1911, or, and this is the largest founding wave, between 1920 and 1925.In 1928 the Berlin societies had been joined by 5300 members. 35The largest amongst the societies were those from Posen and Pomerania, each having 300 to 400 members.In 1925, an Umbrella Association, the Verband Posener Heimatvereine (VPH) (Association of Posen Heritage Societies) was established, which from October 1926 onwards published a monthly newspaper, the Posener Heimatblätter (Posener Heimatnews). 36As a forerunner of this publication, the news bulletin Heimattreu (Loyal to the Homeland) had already appeared since 1920, a small publication edited by former residents of the town of Hohensalza (today Inowrocław). 37he Posener Heimatblätter became a transregional and transnational publication, which was not only read in Berlin, but was sent to Poland, the United States, Brazil, Great Britain, Palestine, New Zealand, Switzerland and other places.The emergence of this publication follows a trend of diasporic groups, who sustain themselves through the press despite of vast distances.This was the space in which they could retell their shared story of the past and their common experience of the present. 38The paper had a circulation of 3,000 and was initially free and sent to subscribers -this changed after 1933.A Posen Jew, the publisher Georg Marcus, initially printed the first volumes of the publication at his own expense, which was not very extensive at 8 to 10 pages on average. 39The first editor-inchief of the Posener Heimatblätter was Hermann Becker, followed by the well-known writer Hermann Kurtzig, who became famous for his anecdotes and books about Jews from the German East.Leo Berlak and Erich Löwenthal were the last two editors.The last issue was published in 1938 and its editor-in-chief, Ernst Löwenthal, was forced to flee to the United Kingdom, where he survived the war. 40hat was the goal of those societies, who could join them, why had they been founded?The precondition to be able to become a member of most of the societies was initially that they should have been born or had lived in the respective region or town or have some kinship in this region.But some of the societies, such as the one for the town Kempen in the Posen province that was founded in 1898, from 1906 onwards loosened the membership preconditions and accepted 'people who have a relationship to Kempen.' 41 By contrast, members did not necessarily have to be Jewish.In the description of the society Verein der Pommern zu Berlin e.V. in the mentioned yearbook it reads: 'It should be noted that the society is not a specific Jewish society, even if the largest part of its members are Jews.' 42 As well other societies were characterised by openness towards non-Jewish members, at least until 1933.In July 1928, a report from the General Assembly of the VPH mentions the following: Sanitätsrat Dr. Rothmann criticised the fact that the news from the Heimat published in the Heimatblätter did not always have a Jewish character.In response, the editor explained that the Heimatblätter were not a distinctly Jewish journal and that he must take the Christian readers into account [. ..]He pointed out that we also have Christian members in the association.
Furthermore, the report emphasized that the members of the societies 'are not only interested in Jewish matters from the homeland, but in everything that awakens their interest in the old homeland, which after all was not Jewish, but German' 43 This concentration on the 'old Heimat' as the main precondition for membership led as well to contacts to non-Jewish German Heritage Societies.In October 1927, the Blätter reported that the Deutscher Ostbund (Federation of the German East) had encouraged the VPH already in 1925 to join the all-German Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Landsmannschaften in Groß-Berlin (Association of German Landsmannschaften in Greater Berlin), in which the Ostbund played a leading role.The revanchist Ostbund constituted one of the first German Associations for Refugees and Expellees from the German East and was founded in 1920. 44Its initial task was mainly an economic one -the Ostbund demanded from the Weimar government extensive compensation for refugees who had lost their possessions in the Eastern territories because of the First World War and frequently lived in misery in the Weimar Republic.The Weimar government, on the other hand, was not very eager to fulfil these demands: They did not want to attract more Germans from the Eastern territories through generous compensation -on the contrary, the government wanted as many Germans as possible to remain in the East to back political claims to incorporate these areas into Germany again.So, the demands of the Ostbund were not fulfilled in the way the association had demanded. 45Later, the Ostbund developed also into a welfare association with different socio-political activities to support the refugees from the Eastern Provinces of Prussia. 46nitially, also Jews from the Eastern Provinces joined that association. 47But, as an article in the Posener Heimatblätter stated, as soon as the Ostbund had approached right-wing political parties in the early 1920s, Jewish members were rather discouraged.Consequently, Jews started their own societies, the Heimatvereine, which accepted non-Jews as well, who did not share the political goals of the Ostbund.In 1927 the Ostbund started another initiative to unite the associations, and negotiations between leading members of both associations took place.For the VPH the lawyer Berthold Haase from Hamburg, formerly head of the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith) in Posen, reported that the Ostbund was mainly interested in financially well-off members, and hoped for a 'favourable influence on the common German cause' in case the Jewish members would engage also on a management level of the Ostbund.Many of the societies that were organised in the VPH then voted in favour of joining the Ostbund, but some scepticism remained: members criticized the rather high membership fees as well as the political orientation of the Ostbund and their leading journal, the paper Ostland (Eastern Land).They observed that as well members of the presidium, some of the regional associations and the paper Ostland had been 'inwardly antisemitic and outwardly strongly chauvinistic.'Additionally, some members of the VPH were upset about the revisionist motto of the paper Ostland: 'What we have lost must not be lost.'Therefore, the VPH decided to demand political neutrality from the Ostbund and its journal as well as the assurance that any kind of antisemitism will be kept away.
On the other hand, the Heimatblätter emphasized that the character of the Ostbund had changed, due to Jews joining the organisation, and it was also acknowledged that the journal Ostland had not published any antisemitic articles in the last two years.And, this article listed in 1927 the advantages of the VPH joining the Ostbund: The common economic and political interests of Jews and non-Jews from the former province of Posen.This should lead to a better understanding on both sides and help to achieve a 'truce leading to lasting peace'. 48nother voice in favour of joining the Ostbund appeared in the following issue of the Heimatblätter: Dr. Rothholz, president of the association of the Posener in Hamburg, stressed that the objections against the Ostbund are 'no longer valid.'He considered it even a necessity that Jewish associations would not isolate themselves and linked this to a successful fight against antisemitism.He believed that education and knowledge would add to this fight and was even convinced, this would be the only way to dissuade antisemites from their principled hatred of Jews.He was convinced: 'We Jews in particular must not suspect something chauvinistic or antisemitic behind every expression.' 49 Later on, in June 1928, the VPH concluded that a union with the Ostbund had been made superfluous by the fact that the Kriegsschädenschlußgesetz (War Damage Compensation Law) had come into force in a completely different form than expected at the time when the question of a union with the Ostbund was raised. 50This justification shows that the VPH probably never considered a political cooperation with the Ostbund, and as soon as economic benefits ceased to apply, a union with the non-Jewish association was no longer considered. 51evertheless, contacts between individual members of both societies continued.The mentioned former city councillor of Posen, Arthur Kronthal, cooperated frequently with the Ostbund and wrote articles for their publications -in 1926 he was asked to publish an article on the zoological gardens in Posen in the Ostdeutscher Heimatkalender (East German Homeland Calendar). 52Other Jewish authors as the historian Adolf Warschauer or the writer Heinrich Kurtzig, one of the editors in chief of the Posener Heimatblätter, contributed as well to those publications. 53And, when in November 1929 a celebration was held in Berlin by the Ostbund in honour of Poseners who had been imprisoned in 1918 and 1919 in a camp of Szczypiorno near the Polish town of Kalisz -a Prisoner of War (POW) camp where during the First World War soldiers of the Polish Legions were held in Berlin, before it was used after the war for the imprisonment of Germans -Jews stood not aside. 54This event began with a religious service, with Catholics celebrating it in St. Hedwig's Cathedral, Protestants in the Berliner Dom and Jews in the Fasanenstraße-Synagogue.The evening before, a social gathering with an address by Ostbund-President Emanuel Ginschel had taken place in the Wilhelmshallen at Berlin Zoo, that was also attended by members of the VPH.In the synagogue, Rabbi Bergmann welcomed the members of the Ostbund who are 'staying in our house of service today.' 55 The fact, that the Jewish associations were not closed off to a non-Jewish audience became also visible in many news from the old Heimat, that included the announcement of anniversaries or other news about prominent non-Jews who either had stayed in the East or had also moved to Berlin.This openness towards non-Jewish Germans from Posen resulted from the fact that many members of the Heimatvereine conceptualised Jewish and non-Jewish relations back in Posen as a relation, in which the Jews of Posen had always remained loyal to Germany during the nationality struggle with the Poles, and they hoped to be rewarded for this loyalty in the future.The idea of the societies did not only function in retrospect, but displayed an orientation towards the future, as author Izaak Herzberg formulated optimistically in March 1929 in an article under the title 'Germanness, Polishness, Jewishness'. 56Contacts to non-Jewish Poles were kept as well: It was again Arthur Kronthal who continued to correspond with new members of the Polish City council in Posen.The director of the city's newly founded Statistical Office, Zygmunt Załęski, contacted Kronthal in 1930 with a request to translate an article by Kronthal on Richard Witting 57 for the Kronika Miasta Poznańia" (Chronicle of the City of Poznań).Witting, a brother of journalist Maximilian Harden, came from a Jewish family, that had left the province of Posen in 1853 to Berlin, where Witting was born.He became an influential legal expert and banker, counsellor to emperor Wilhelm II., director of the German National Bank from 1902 and one of the founding fathers of the Weimar Constitution.But, above all, he had served as mayor of Posen from 1891 to 1902 and had initiated a modernisation process in the city.The new rulers in Poznań acknowledged Wittings achievements but wanted Kronthal to reflect upon his own 'national attitude' that had, in the eyes of Załęski, influenced his writings on Witting.Załęski especially criticized one phrase used by Kronthal: 'The Polish administration, to which at the end of 1918 the flourishing community created under Prussian rule fell into its lap as ripe fruit. ..' Załęski though was convinced that Posen would have been better off had it never became Prussian in the first place. 58But, Kronthal, who in a correspondence with Rabbi Louis Lewin in Breslau characterized the Kronika miasta Poznania as '(euphemistically speaking) not exactly philosemitic' and Zygmunt Załęski as an 'antisemitic Germanophobic editor' (antisemitischer deutschfresserischer Herausgeber), did not change his wording in the Polish translation -it got published as it has been in 1930 and newly issued in 2009. 59So, Kronthal as a representative of the Posen Jewish diaspora in Berlin continued his ties to his former Heimat also to non-Jewish Poles -even under the not very favourable conditions that the new constellation had created for him and his fellow compatriots.The preservation of the memory of the old Heimat was an even more important part of his life than ruling out a cooperation with, in his opinion, an antisemitic environment.Remarkable here is the initiative by the new Polish representatives of Poznań, who -despite the often heated Polish-German atmosphere during the interwar period -acknowledged the merits of the former German-Jewish politicians for the development of the city and the preservation of their memory.
While the first Heimatvereine had emerged mainly with the goal to help those fellow Jews and non-Jews from the East, who had to struggle to earn a living after they moved, 60 the goals of the Heimatvereine widened especially after 1918, when parts of the Prussian Eastern Provinces fell to Poland.At the General Assembly of the VPH in 1928 they were characterized as follows: To cultivate the sense of belonging and loyalty to the Heimat, to pursue welfare activities for needy compatriots, to establish an information centre for legal and economic matters concerning the former province of Posen, to provide the public with a news service, and to create a fund to support the Jewish communities back in the East in the maintenance of places of worship, cemeteries and welfare institutions. 61Initially, the societies concentrated much on the practical advisory function: they informed about legal and economic developments in Poland that could affect the members in terms of questions of compensation, the procurement of family certificates and recognition as refugees.Then they engaged very much in the care of graves in the Posen province, because cemeteries were considered the only place where 'we can find the old Posen.' 62 In addition, they supported people in need in Posen.The societies thereby saw themselves as an integrative link between the Posen refugees themselves, in Germany and all around the globe, but also for their relations with the province.

The milieu of the Posen Jewry
One of the most important goals of the Heimatvereine was the preservation of the milieu of the Posen Jews, that was perceived as a very special one, different from other German Jews and different from those of Polish Jews.In accentuating their special milieu, Jews from Posen differed not much from other Jewish diasporic groups.Jews from Białystok, Vilna or Odessa were as convinced of a certain spirit of their hometowns which they tried to preserve -the abandonment of the old Heimat rather enforced feelings of regional belonging than weakened it, as Rebecca Kobrin points out. 63Berthold Haase recapitulated in his memoir, that the Jews of the province of Posen had a character of their own, which he characterized as a 'mixture of a strongly pronounced Jewish consciousness and an equally strongly pronounced German consciousness.'In his view, the Jews of Posen had preserved 'what is called "Jewishness", i.e., a Jewish manner, Jewish knowledge, Jewish interests and a lively activity in all Jewish matters,' without giving a reason for this development.On the other hand, he emphasized that 'Germanness' was as well more sharply emphasized, because the Jews in the East belonged to the German borderland population, and as living amidst a predominantly Polish population had constantly been compelled to become aware of their Germanness. 64While Haase does not mention that the stronger bond to Jewishness might as well have resulted from the borderlandsituation, namely from the influences of the more traditional oriented Polish Jews, other authors did reflect on this.'Posen Jews in their New Heimat' was the title of an article from March 1927, in which the Rabbi and historian Aron Heppner, who had left the province of Posen in 1920 and in 1924 became an archivist at the Jewish community in Breslau, described the Posen milieu as being full of loyalty to tradition, and the Jews there 'as mediators between the world of living Judaism, as it had been preserved in the Jewish centres of Poland, and the progress of Western European culture, which the Jews of Germany, emancipated for almost half a century, had embraced with frantic speed.' 65 And as indicated, Rabbi Joachim Prinz observed that the Posen Jew had preserved an old Kehilla consciousness that was hardly known among other German Jews.This meant attending more services in Berlin and celebrating the Jewish holidays for a longer period.Hermann Becker confirmed, that the Jews from Posen, jointly with those from Silesia and others from the East, would constitute half or even three thirds of the people who attended one of the synagogues in Berlin on Shabbat. 66rinz saw this consciousness as the main reason for the emergence of the Heritage Societies in Berlin: 'The love of Kehilla life with all the gossip, with all the idylls and all the anecdotes, but also with all the great tasks, is one of the psychological prerequisites for the Posen Jews' share in community life.' 67 He felt this to be in danger though, since the children of the Posen Jews in his eyes had already been absorbed into the mass of Berlins' hundred thousand and more Jews, whose Jewish activities consist of attending the synagogue on the High Holidays and whose Jewish knowledge corresponds to the German education of a fifth-grade gymnasium pupil. 68r Prinz the Jews from Posen were constant re-newers of Jewish consciousness, in a world that they perceived as being threatened by materialism and an exaggerated emancipation process.Consequently, the loss of the province of Posen counted as a grave loss of a reservoir of Jewish thought and strength for the future.This special position of the Jews of Posen, between East and West, between tradition and modernity, was confirmed by many observers -Max Kollenscher identified 'a special intensity of Jewish feeling, thinking and acting', the journalist Arno Herzberg called Posen the home of a 'specific, own Jewishness', and librarian Heinrich Loewe confirmed in a letter from Tel Aviv in 1937 that the Jews of Posen felt strongly connected by birthplace, worldview and thinking -because of this the Posener Heimatblätter would be passed on from one to another in Tel Aviv and were widely distributed. 69his attitude in the associations, which did not reject traditional forms of religiosity as they had prevailed in Poland, because in the 'province of Posen a deep religiosity had been formed', as Leo Schocken summed up from Tel Aviv in 1938, 70 included a description of the Polish or East European Jews that was relatively free from the sometimes compassionate or even patronising tone some German Jews used in their description of Jews from Eastern Europe. 71While it was noted that the 'contrast between Jews from Congress Poland and the long-established German Jews plays a strong role' in the old Heimat, 72 it was recognized without rejection that the Eastern European Jews had now 'moved much closer'. 73Max Kollenscher suggested for the German-orientated Jews of Posen to 'reconnect with the large and strong Polish Jewish community.' 74And while some Jewish Poseners might have not felt comfortable within the Jewish community in Berlin, as having abandoned Jewish religious traditions, the Heimatblätter reported in a neutral tone from a situation in the Pomeranian town of Bromberg (Bydgoszcz), where 18 German Jews had stayed after 1918 while 600 Jewish families arrived from Poland.Those Polish Jews were not satisfied with the German rabbi and the shohet of the previous community, since in their eyes they were not religious enough. 75What becomes clear, is that German and Polish Jews in many ways perceived each other, were entangled, exerted mutual influence and inspiration instead of always being sharply divided groups. 76hen it comes to an interpretation of German rule in Posen before 1918, we also find opinions which emphasize the alleged civilizing mission of German culture in Eastern Europe.An almost paradigmatic assessment is the following passage in a travel report by Arthur Kronthal from 1929, where he mentions Cyryl Ratajski, the Polish mayor of Poznań from 1922 to 1924 and again from 1925 to 1934.Kronthal praised Ratajski's services to the development of the city of Poznań from 1923 to 1929 in the highest terms, and concludes: Of course, one must not overlook the fact that Ratajski -as well as most of his colleagues from the former Prussian part -owes what he was and what he is for the most part to Germans.From the German grammar school to the university in Berlin and the German civil service, he had always remained in close contact with 'German character.' 77is was in line with Kronthal's earlier mentioned interpretation of the modernising role of the German dominated city council in Posen during the 19 th century.In 1930, the medical officer Straßmann added that Polish peasants had felt quite at home as Prussians and had regarded their periods as soldiers with 'grateful appreciation as a period of cultural development.' 78So the Jewish Heimatvereine were not free from a sense of cultural superiority, that conceptualised Poland as a life-long pupil on the road to a civilisation that was marked as coming from the 'West'. 79From time to time members of the Heimatvereine openly accentuated the meaning of the Posen Jews as a 'culture bearer' for Germanness in the East and this way perpetuated the stereotype of a strict West-East cultural divide. 80But while non-Jewish German associations of expellees from the East also demanded the return of the lost territories, the Jewish Heimatvereine -to the best of my knowledge -never made such a claim.
And to be sure, such arguments were neither uniform nor consistent -rather, we find a diversity of attitudes towards Poland, without openly nationalistic anti-Polish tones.This included recognising the contemporary political situation and focusing on an understanding of Poland as well as an idealised picture of the past.Arthur Kronthal therefore called in December 1929 in the same article, in which he accentuated Ratajskis dependence on German culture, for a fundamental change in attitudes in Germany towards Poland, pointing to the city of Poznań, because with the order and cleanliness 'one encounters everywhere in the city itself, it is finally time to stop the derogatory judgement inherent in the old saying about the "Polish economy".' 81This positive reception of Poland was at odds with the anti-Polish, revisionist propaganda of wide circles of the public in the Weimar Republic.It often went back to the experiences of the authors.The coexistence with Poles that many authors recollected from their childhood, appeared frequently as an 'undisturbed living together and getting along of all inhabitants, whether Germans or Poles, Protestants, Catholics or Jews'.As one author remembered, 'and when the Polish boys shouted their "Polska nasza" (Poland belongs to us) -then we replied with the "Wacht am Rhein". 82After a short scuffle, it was all over and comradeship was restored.' 83While this might be a quite idealised view of the past which is in line with narratives of other heritage societies, in which images of small rural towns create an imagination of pre-modern and unadulterated idylls, we find here also a wish to transfer the social space of the borderland region from the past into the contemporary world of Berlin and to the future.To achieve this goal the different associations met on a regular basis to exchange memories, to listen to historical talks, literature, and to look at slide shows from the old Heimat, thereby trying to stay 'politically and religiously completely neutral'. 84

New challenges after 1933
After 1933, as already mentioned, the societies were gradually thrown back on themselves.We find only few reports of any kind of meetings with non-Jews from the former East.And initially one can observe a great insecurity: the meeting of the Jews from Rogasen for example took place in the private apartment of Leo Schocken, and the members of this society agreed not to participate any more in large gatherings, they wanted to continue to offer lectures, but inconspicuously. 85The association of the Hohensalzaer for example called their members to devote themselves from now on more intensively to the life of the association and to strive less for pleasure but more for serious goals. 86From 1934 onwards though the meetings became more sociable again, and the societies' newspaper announced readings, lectures and humoristic evenings again.Following instructions from the Reich Press Chamber, Jewish periodicals from 1933 onwards were allowed only to deal with Jewish topics.Criticism of National Socialism or antisemitism was equally banned as the description of German landscapes or essays about the Jewish contribution to German culture. 87The topics of the meetings changed accordingly: Questions of cultivating tradition and joyful memories took a back seat to those of emigration, the new legal situation of Jews in Germany or Jewish occupational issues of the present, as a talk by Rabbi Joachim Prinz was announced, while Alfred Herrmann from the Reichsbund für jüdische Siedlung (Reichsbund for Jewish Settlement) lectured on 'The Practice of Retraining for Agricultural and Horticultural Professions'. 88In one of the gatherings of the societies, in this case from West Prussia, after the Nuremberg Laws had been announced, the speaker, Magistratsrat R. Gossels, a representative of the Jewish community of Berlin, pointed out that it was the duty of every member to recognise the changed circumstances, both internally and externally, and strictly obey the existing laws.He claimed that socialising, which had been so important for the members of the societies, should now take place at home, and public events and restaurants should be avoided, so he somehow called for a self-isolation and a narrowing of the space the members of the societies were used to.The speaker saw it as the duty of the heritage societies to promote this amongst their members.That the group was not without hope for a better future in Germany, is indicated by the articles' optimistic outlook, that the meeting had also been called with the intention of setting up more West Prussian groups. 89Some of the meetings moved to smaller Jewish places: In 1936 a group met in the Jewish Rowing Club Triton in Berlin-Schöneweide, and the announcement assured: Lowest prices, and secluded, Jewish-run restaurant.Others met in small bakeries or restaurants, such as the restaurant Hugo Kaufmann in the Logenhaus in Berlin-Schöneberg, or in private homes. 90At the same time the societies continued some of their social routine from the pre 1933 time.This meant, for example, organising quite large events: In March 1938 more than 300 people gathered in the Joseph-Lehmann -School of the Reform Community in Berlin to participate in a slide show with pictures from the Eastern Provinces.Social events, such as the so called Gesellschaftsabende (Social evening) continued with hundreds of participants, who danced to the music of the bands Ernst Fabian and Bert Braun and came together with the goal 'to share old memories and forget the everyday worries, and to assure that there is still a Jewish youth that can also be cheerful and happy.' 91 Those social events generally served the exchange of memories, but now they additionally were a space where one could escape the distress of the present world.
Beyond that, the societies were now much more eager to build something like an archive of the East and asked their members to hand in photographs, artefacts, and memoirs from their youth, because, in times of 'increasing dispersal', this, along with genealogical research, was seen as inevitable to preserve the Posen milieu. 92While in the beginning of the Heimatvereine, news about the life of the different societies took up a large part of the Heimatblätter, in the 1930s the newspaper printed more and more historical essays and memoirs in order to serve as an archive for the life of the Jews of Posen -this happened against the background of growing emigration of Jews from Germany and growing dispersal after 1933. 93This dispersal meant a decrease in membership and income for the heritage societies.By 1937, for example, the number of members of the Society of Poseners had dropped by more than half compared to 1927. 94n 1935 the new situation led to a fusion of all heritage societies from Posen, West Prussia and Upper Silesia into one large association, the Verband jüdischer Heimatvereine (Association of Jewish Heritage Societies).The Posener Heimatblätter were now published as an organ of the Verband Jüdischer Heimatvereine. 95The publishing house became a member of the Reichsverband der deutschen Zeitschriften-Verleger.This provided legal security for the association's journal. 96Following the fusion of the societies in 1935, that eliminated the German name Posen from the name of the society, the publication changed its name accordingly into Blätter des Verbandes Jüdischer Heimatvereine.Additionally, since June 1934, the Reich Press Chamber -and this applied to both the German non-Jewish and Jewish press -prohibited the distribution of free newspapers. 97his, of course, affected the Blätter heavily, as they had previously been sent out free of charge, with shipping costs included in the membership fee.
Magnus Davidsohn, senior cantor at the Fasanenstraße Synagogue in Berlin, justified the step of the fusion with the need for Jewish unity 'that must give us support and hold.' 98 The fusion seems to have been an unpopular step because each of the societies had cultivated the memoirs of their own region, of their own imagined space.Davidson, who himself had grown up in Upper Silesia, nevertheless tried to unite the different regions and remind the members of common practices and customs in the East, -and he promised the Jews from Posen, that all the other 'Easterners' would participate in their goals, which were so 'wonderful Jewish'. 99In 1938 a branch office of the greater association was installed in Breslau, that had been the home of many Poseners. 100espite this fusion, that was put forward not least due to financial difficulties, the Society had to dismiss its secretary, the writer Heinrich Kurtzig, and replace him by volunteers in 1937. 101Due to the deteriorating economic situation of many members, the Society reacted by intensified publishing of lists and names of Jewish traders, professionals, shop owners and freelancers which came from the eastern regions.The members were called to make business only with them.A social and economic unity among the compatriots remained the goal of the society.Once more it becomes very clear, that geographic origin had more than a symbolic significance -it tried to bring compatriots together, e.g., also at workplaces, a comparable situation as Daniel Soyer has observed for Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in New York even under much less harsh conditions. 102To strengthen this kind of unity, the society continued to organise group travels into the city of Posen and the provinces.The reports from those trips were continuously characterized by melancholy, gratitude towards those Jews who continued to care for Jewish houses and cemeteries there, a general appreciation of what had been created in Poland and the mentioned lack of anti-Polish attitudes.Those trips also served to reassure an idealized childhood, that was often described as an undisturbed coexistence of Germans, Jews, and Poles -this was never seen as a contrast to the nevertheless unequivocal commitment to Germanness, which at the same time always meant being a Posener.This commitment was held up, despite the fragile mood amongst the Posen Jews in Germany in their precarious situation, facing ever more exclusion and persecution.While this could not be openly addressed in their press, we find an allusion to the old bonds as well as to the sadness of contemporary life in Berlin at the end of 1938 in a letter by Arthur Kronthal, addressed to Rabbi Louis Lewin for his seventeenth birthday.Lewin, who likewise came from the Posen province, where he had worked as a rabbi before he moved to Breslau in 1926, had just arrived in Palestine, having been forced to leave Germany following the pogroms of the 9th of November.Kronthal writes: While, in contrast [here Kronthal refers to Lewin being now in Palestine, while he himself had moved to the Jewish retirement home at Berkaer Strasse in Berlin-Schmargendorf], the days and nights around us are filled and dominated by lamentations and complaints, and while we, deeply depressed by our impoverishment, unemployment, disenfranchisement and proletarianization, mourn our homelessness and defamation, you can at least feel some comfort and a beautiful satisfaction in upright pride about how closely your own name is linked to your old homeland.Not only until your 70th birthday, but far beyond the present dark times of sorrowful events and into the bright hoped-for future.Since we are not in a festive birthday mood today, our wishes must be limited to this statement and its continuation. 103

Conclusion
The heritage societies that were established after 1918 mainly in Berlin and elsewhere, constituted a metaphorical space, a space in which their members could negotiate their position towards the new place of living and the old Heimat.They were situated between arriving in a new homeland, also the perception and acceptance of this arrival by their new environment (which was not always very hospitable, because they were seen as coming from the 'East'), and their longing for the old Heimat.To this Heimat they constantly referred and maintained contact to those, who had either stayed there, had newly arrived or found themselves in new positions created by the Polish nation-state.This was a condition of having arrived, but not fully arrived, a feeling of homelessness and belonging at the same time -a condition that is quite characteristic for diaspora groups.This affirms, that the Jews of Posen in Berlin and their publication, which is both an expression of this group and at the same time was invaluable to construct it, should be defined as a diasporic group, a group in which multiple cultural affiliations were quite common.To their self-identification as Jews and Germans a very important, if not the most important marker was added, namely the regional origin, which defined as much a mental space and a mental condition as it was a geographical space.It was as space coined by a consciousness of a specific Posener mentality.This entailed preserving a religious tradition, a common sentiment of belonging with non-Jewish Germans from the region, as well as a certain openness towards and an acceptance of the new Polish state and the newly arriving Polish Jews in the province of Posen.This openness at the same time was full of ambiguity.The Jewish Poseners after 1918 did not question the imperial space, that the German Empire, following the partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, had created in the Prussian borderland.On the contrary, most of them were convinced that the Prussian state had initiated a glorious modernisation of those lands.This ambiguity should be interpreted as an outcome of living in an ethnically mixed borderland, a borderland that was transferred into a perceived diasporic space, a space constructed by its diasporic subjects.This space was characterised, among other things, by the fact that in the face of a perceived destruction of the culture of a social group, this group holds on to its own values, which got enforced by the dispersal or were constructed only afterwards.At the same time, it is hoped that this would lead to spiritual and social renewal -this again holds true for other diasporic or migrant groups. 104Heimat, in this conception, is first and foremost a social space, or to put it more precisely: the spatial symbolisation of social contexts.The loss of Heimat was the loss of social space, the space of primary socialisation, the space of birth, the loss of familiarity of childhood and youth.This space somehow became homeless in the new environment of Berlin -and the Heimatvereine tried to resist this homelessness and aimed to renew it. 105Preceding the year of 1933, this had not been a closed space -this changed to a significant degree after 1933, enforced upon the group by the disenfranchising politics of the Nazi regime that affected all Jews in Germany.The space was narrowed down, while the principal goal of this imagined space, namely to preserve the specific milieu of the Posen Jews, remained to be the goal of the Jewish Heritage Societies even under the most horrific life conditions.