Hear, O Israel!

Born in Berlin to the prominent industrialist Emil Rathenau, Walter Rathenau was brought up in Prussian high society. He studied physical sciences and philosophy, receiving his doctorate in 1889. In 1897, he contributed his now famous and infamous “Höre Israel!” (Hear O Israel!) article to the journal Die Zukunft calling for greater assimilation of Jews into German society and identifying ethics held in common by German Jews and Protestants. By the beginning of World War I, Rathenau had inherited control of the Allgemeine-Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft, an electrical engineering company, from his father. During the war, he became an economic policy leader within the imperial government, helping to guide the empire’s war economy. He became foreign minister for the German Republic following the war, orchestrating the payment of reparations arranged in the Treaty of Versailles. After signing the Treaty of Rapallo, which settled territorial and financial claims resulting from the war between the German Republic and the Russian Soviet government, Rathenau was assassinated by members of the nationalist Organization Consul. In spite of Rathenau’s assimilationist character, the overtly antisemitic assassination lent a quality of political martyrdom to Rathenau. Thus, the writer Joseph Roth would hold him up as an ideal moral paragon for Jews.