Announcement Establishing the Zentralverein Organization

We received the following appeal addressed to the German citizens of Jewish faith with the request to publish it:

For the past two decades, a movement has disquieted our fatherland whose ultimate goal is our social ostracism and the curtailment of our constitutional rights. We had hoped that the sense of justice cultivated by the majority of our fellow citizens and our shared cultural work would serve as a strong enough bulwark against the machinations of a minority who are laying the blame for every evil of our times squarely on their Jewish fellow citizens and who want to degrade them to knaves without a fatherland. The character of a nation is based on a shared mode of thinking and feeling; its external sign is a common mother tongue. People of different origins and different religious faiths are fused into a unified nation through shared history. The unity of the German people was also built upon a variety of origins and faiths. From the moment that we were allowed to participate fully in the life of the German people, we Jews devoted all of our energy to our fatherland, with enthusiasm and heartfelt joy. We took part in all military actions and in all intellectual battles that unified the splintered empire, making it shine anew under the sovereign leadership of the emperor. The civil liberation of the Jews has always gone hand in hand with significant advancements of our fatherland. Just as during Prussia’s recovery from its deepest humiliation, when the foundation was laid in the legislation of Stein and Hardenberg for the emancipation of the Jews,¹ so too did the founders of the German Reich, at the moment when the spirit of the German people soared highest, crown the work of our liberation by abolishing the last vestiges of religious inequality before the law. What had separated us until then from the entire community had been cleared away. The suffering of the past was forgotten; in our hearts lived only the joy that comes alive when the right of participation is granted. And now a movement is arising that wants to destroy the concord that was just created, a movement that with the help of shrewd organization and ruthless agitation carries its falsehoods into an ever-broadening circle and no longer shies away from attacking our constitutional rights. If in light of this development we feel the necessity of creating a unified organization, nothing is further from our minds than the spirit of separation. We are only following our duty to preserve, under our own steam, our position in our fatherland and we are convinced that our fellow citizens will respect this attitude. Our relationship to our fatherland is not different from that of the Protestants or Catholics. All communities of faith contain in themselves a wide variety of religious movements and people of diverse political convictions. But all are unified in their national thinking and come together as one where the welfare of the empire [Reich] is concerned. We do not want to sweep the mistakes of individuals under the rug out of an erroneous feeling of solidarity; but we also do not want to tolerate that the mistakes of individuals are blamed on the entire Jewish community. In order to articulate this attitude loudly and powerfully we united to form the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith. The Association wants to call up all forces to undertake self-defense, strengthen in individuals the awareness of our unconditional equality, and to prevent that the feeling of our belonging to the German people might wither under the impact of our opponents’ hostilities. With the help of the written and the spoken word, and with the aid of assemblies and lectures, the Association wants to arm individuals with weapons that will enable them to fight in the spirit of truth the battle that is forced upon them today, so that everyone, who has understood that the distressing situation we are facing in our time is calling for self-defense, has a chance to participate in internal and external improvement. We are not setting ourselves up in opposition to existing organizations that have similar goals; we want to work alongside and with them—on the road to self-help and in full public view. Thus everyone has the opportunity, and hence, also the duty, to contribute to the great work of self-defense. Fellow-citizens and Members of Our Faith! We urge you to join the Association. Do not hesitate to come!

The Board of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith.

The appeal is signed by many prominent members of the community. We find, among others, the following names: Factory owner Dr. I[sidor] Ginsberg, Attorney Dr. [Richard] Grelling, Geheimer Sanitätsrath Dr. S[amuel] Kristeller,² Prof. Dr. Mendel, Dr. Heinr[ich] Meyer-Cohn, Adjunct Professor Dr. H[ugo] Preuß, Geh[eimer] Medizinalrath,³ Prof. Dr. Senator, Attorney Dr. Herm[ann] Stern, Professor Dr. Julius Wolff, Geh[eimer] Sanitätsrath Dr. Abraham [Adolf] Baer, Professor Dr. Adolf Baginsky, Sanitätsrath Dr. I. Blumenthal, Sanitätsrath Dr. Edel, Factory-owner W. Hagelberg, Gymnasium-Professor Dr. Daniel Jacoby, M. Jastrowitz M.D., J. E. Isaac; Dr. James Israel, Chief of Medicine at the Jewish community hospital; Dr. J. Kastan, physician and writer; Geheimer Sanitätsrath Dr. Kirstein, Attorney Dr. Felix Landau, Dr. M. Levin, Dr. phil. Felix Liebermann, Dr. Siegmund Maybaum, rabbi of the Jewish Community, retired Sanitätsrath und Stabsarzt Dr. Oscar Rothmann,⁴ Leonhard Sachs; Royal medical councilor, Dr. W. Sander, Director of the Berlin Psychiatric Clinic; Kommerzienrath S. Weigert,⁵ Sanitätsrath Dr. Wiesenthal.