German Jews

German Jews
Deutsche Juden (German)
יְהוּדִים גֶּרְמָנִים (Hebrew)
דײַטשע ייִדן (Yiddish)
The location of Germany (dark green) in the European Union (light green)
Total population
116,000 to 225,000
Regions with significant populations
Germany
Israel, United States, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and the United Kingdom
Languages
English, German, Russian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and others
Religion
Judaism, agnosticism, atheism, and others
Related ethnic groups
Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, Israelis

German Jews are Jews of German descent, or Jews living in Germany.

Overview

Map of expulsions of Jews from various European regions, ca. 1100–1600 AD.

Jews started living in German land in 321 AD under the Roman Empire. They formed the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews in the Middle Ages, who survived centuries of pogroms and expulsions into the 20th century. Multiple German cities were centers of Jewish cultural life, including Mainz and Speyer, until the Nazi German-led Holocaust happened and wiped out most German Jews, among the 6,000,000+ Jews killed across Europe.

Middle Ages

Massacre of Jews in Metz (Holy Roman Empire) in the First Crusade.
A miniature from the Grandes Chroniques de France depicting the expulsion of Jews from France in 1182. This is a photograph of an exhibit at the Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv.

Under the Germanic Frankish Merovingian dynasty between the 5th and 8th century, Jews were banned from working as public servants. A succession of ecumenical councils also banned Jews from socializing with Christians or observing the shabbat over the unfounded fear that Judaism (the Jewish ethnoreligion) would influence Christians.

11th century

Systematic persecutions of Jews intensified in the 11th century under the Capetian dynasty, when King Robert the Pious tried to kill all Jews who rejected Christian conversion. Jews across the German land were assaulted, tortured or burned at stakes. The persecutions coincided with the destruction of the original Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by the Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah in 1009, which was exploited by Benedictine monk Rodulfus Glaber to spread rumors about Jewish "involvement" in the destruction.

First Crusade

When the First Crusade happened in 1096, Jews were massacred by the crusaders across the German land. The events were seen by some historians as a series of genocidal massacres. The massacres all happened with Roman Catholic Church's tacit approval.

Deportations

Between the 1182 and 1394, at least 13 expulsions of Jews happened, during which dozens of Black Death-associated massacres of Jews happened.

Renaissance

Woodcut from Kupferstichkabinet, Munich, c. 1470, showing a Judensau, a common medieval German antisemitic image depicting Jews (identified by the Judenhut) suckling from a pig and eating its excrement. The banderoles display rhymes mocking the Jews.
Map listing (in German) the presence of Judensau images on churches of central Europe; in red, the ones that were removed.
Burning of Jews. From Hartmann Schedel's Liber Chronicarum (1493).

Martin Luther (1483–1546), a reformer who led the Reformation in the 16th century, was well-known for his antisemitism, despite his historical contributions to Christianity and important role in European history. Luther wrote the 65,000-word thesis On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543, consisting of accusations of "Jewish conspiracy against Christianity" and incitement to extreme violence towards Jews.

Luther's antisemitism is said by historians to have contributed significantly to antisemitism in German society, while the claims in Luther's 16th-century book are still being promoted by some influencers. Johannes Wallman (1930–2021), a professor of church history at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, wrote in 1987:

The assertion that Luther's expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment have been of major and persistent influence in the centuries after the Reformation and that there exists a continuity between Protestant anti-Judaism and modern racially oriented anti-Semitism, is at present wide-spread in the literature; since the Second World War it has understandably become the prevailing opinion.

Richard Steigmann-Gall, a history professor at Kent State University, wrote in his 2003 book The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945:

The leadership of the Protestant League [had] a similar view. Fahrenhorst, who was on the planning committee of the Luthertag, called Luther "the first German spiritual Führer" [. ...] Fahrenhorst invited Hitler to become the official patron of the Luthertag [. ...] Fahrenhorst repeatedly voiced the notion that reverence for Luther could somehow cross confessional boundaries: "Luther is truly not only the founder of a Christian confession [...] his ideas had a [major] impact on all Christianity [sic] in Germany.

Modern period

1819 riots in Würzburg, from a contemporary engraving by Johann Michael Voltz. On the left, two peasant women are assaulting a Jew with pitchfork and broom. On the right, a man wearing tails and a six-button waistcoat, "perhaps a pharmacist or a schoolteacher," holds a Jew by the throat and is about to club him with a truncheon. The houses are being looted.

Between the Middle Ages and the 18th century, Jews in Germany suffered from persecutions punctuated by periods of tolerance. The 19th century saw a series of anti-Jewish pogroms, emancipation of Jews followed in 1848.

20th century

Nazi leaders organized a boycott on businesses owned by Jews in 1933. The boycott was the first nationwide anti-Jewish action in Nazi Germany. The "Jewish boycott" ("Judenboykott") was the first coordinated action undertaken by the Nazi regime against Germany’s Jews. It took place on Saturday, April 1, 1933. That day, Germans were not supposed to shop at stores and businesses that the Nazis identified as Jewish. They were also not supposed to visit the offices of Jewish doctors and lawyers.
Taken in March 1933, immediately after the Nazis seized power, this photo shows Nazi SA militants forcing a Jewish lawyer to walk barefoot through the streets of Munich wearing a sign that says "I will never again complain to the police".
Börnerplatz synagogue in Frankfurt am Main, set on fire by a Nazi mob overnight, still burning the next day. Kristallnacht 1938-11-10.
German citizens look the other way on November 10, 1938, the day after Kristallnacht. What they see or don't want to see are destroyed Jewish shops and houses.

By the early 20th century, German Jews were more integrated than the Jews in other European countries. The situation changed in the 1930s when the Nazis took over and started the Holocaust. At least 170,000 German Jews were killed in the Holocaust, during which Martin Luther (1483–1546) was advertised as a folk hero in Germany, whose teachings were publicly circulated. Luther's statues were also built across Germany, along with celebrations of "German Luther Day", a national holiday made by Hitler in 1933.

A Nazi German postcard of Martin Luther.
German Christians celebrating German Luther Day in Berlin in 1933, speech by Bishop Hossenfelder.
Third Reich Nazi Anti-semitic propaganda poster entitled Das jüdische Komplott ("The Jewish Conspiracy"), issued by the Parole der Woche ("Slogan of the Week" or "Word of the Week"), a wall newspaper (Wandzeitung) published by the National Socialist Party propaganda office (Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP) in Munich, Germany. Antisemitism combined with anti-Americanism, Anglophobia, and the conspiracy theory of Jewish Bolshevism.
Antisemitic illustration in Der Stürmer accusing Polish Jews of being "the scourge of God", introduced as evidence in the Nuremberg trial.
An American soldier stands near a wagon loaded with corpses outside the crematorium of the Buchenwald concentration camp, Germany, following its liberation.

21st century

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin.

Jews exist in Germany at a much smaller number than before. In 2023, it is estimated that 118,000 Jews remained in Germany. Jews in Germany continue to be subject to antisemitic violence.

2010s

A man with Nazi tattoos overshadowed by a Yasser Arafat portrait from behind.

2020s

On October 18, 2023, 11 days following the Hamas-led October 7 massacre which killed over 1,200 in a day, a Berlin synagogue was firebombed with molotov cocktails by two masked men. Official statistics also showed a rapid rise in antisemitic hate crimes in the months following the October 7 massacre.

On February 2, 2024, a pro-Palestinian Berlin undergraduate beat a Jewish classmate to the point of hospitalization following an argument over the Israel–Hamas war. The German police reported that the Jewish student was punched and kicked repeatedly on the floor, suffering facial fractures. The victim is the grandson of Amitzur Shapira, an Israeli athletics coach murdered by the Black September terrorists in the 1972 Munich massacre.

In May 2024, some Jewish parents from suburban Berlin transferred their kids to Jewish schools in Mitte, many of which guarded by police and enclosed walls, due to increasing antisemitic violence in Berlin. In June 2024, a young Israeli couple was assaulted in Berlin's Potsdamer Platz after being heard speaking Hebrew. The suspect shouted abuses, threw a bottle and a chair at them and beat them on the floor.

On September 5, 2024, the 52nd anniversary of the 1972 Munich massacre, a suspected terrorist opened fire at the Israeli consulate and the neighboring Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism before being shot dead by police. On 7 October 2024, 10 Holocaust memorial stones were torn from their spots. The day coincided with the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre.

Responses

In June 2024, the Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) reported that there were 4,782 antisemitic incidents in 2023, an 80% rise as compared to 2022, most of which happened following the October 7 massacre. In October 2024, Felix Klein, the German Commissioner for Jewish Life and the Fight against Antisemitism, asserted that "open and aggressive antisemitism has been stronger than at any time since 1945."

On November 6, 2024, the German lower house of parliament passed a non-binding resolution to pledge the end of funding to groups that "spread antisemitism, question Israel's right to exist, call for a boycott of Israel or actively support the BDS movement." The resolution enjoyed cross-party support, but faced opposition from MPs of left-wing populist parties like the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and Die Linke (Left Party).

Meanwhile, the BDS movement itself was designated as antisemitic by the German government in 2019 and a threat of "suspected extremism" by the German intelligence agency in 2024. On May 20, 2025, the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution called the BDS "hostile to the constitution". In its report, it stated:

[t]he anti-constitutional ideology of the BDS campaign, which denies Israel’s right to exist [...] supporters of BDS in Berlin justified and/or glorified the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7, 2023 [...] signs with stereotypical antisemitic imagery were repeatedly displayed.

Historical population

Year Jewish population in Germany Total German population Jewish % of population
1871 512,158 40,997,000 1.25%
1880 562,612 45,095,000 1.25%
1890 567,884 49,239,000 1.15%
1900 586,833 56,046,000 1.05%
1910 615,021 64,568,000 0.95%
1925 564,379 63,110,000 0.89%
1933 503,000 66,027,000 0.76%
1939 234,000 69,314,000 0.34%
1941 164,000 70,244,000 0.23%
1950 37,000 68,374,000 0.05%
1990 30,000 79,753,227 0.04%
1995 60,000 81,817,499 0.07%
2002 100,000 82,536,680 0.12%
2011 119,000 80,233,100 0.15%

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Hebrew: יהדות אשכנז
  2. ↑ A pogrom is a form of riot that targets an ethnic or a religious group. It is derived from the Russian word погром ("pogrom"); from "громить" IPA: [grʌˈmitʲ] ‒ to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.

References

  1. ↑ DellaPergola, Sergio (2019). "World Jewish Population, 2018" (PDF). American Jewish Year Book 2018. Vol. 118. p. 54. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-03907-3_8. ISBN 978-3-030-03906-6. S2CID 146549764.
  2. ↑ "1700 years of Jewish life in Germany". Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  3. ↑ "German Jewish culture through the ages". amp.dw.com. Retrieved 21 February 2021.
  4. ↑
  5. ↑
  6. ↑
  7. ↑
  8. ↑ Benedictow, Ole Jørgen (2004). The Black Death, 1346–1353: The Complete History. Boydell Press. pp. 392–93. ISBN 1-84383-214-3. Retrieved 1 October 2012.
  9. ↑ "The Magic Land of Magenza: Jewish Life and Times in Medieval and Modern Mainz". Mainz.de. City of Mainz. Archived from the original on 13 November 2013.
  10. 1 2 3
  11. 1 2 3 4
  12. 1 2 3 MacCalloch, Diarmaid (September 2, 2010). A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (1 ed.). Penguin Books. ISBN 9780141021898. Retrieved December 25, 2024.
  13. 1 2 3 Bokenkotter, Thomas (1979). Concise History of the Catholic Church. Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. ISBN 9780385130158. Retrieved December 25, 2024.
  14. 1 2
  15. ↑ Lindemann, Albert S.; Levy, Richard S. (October 28, 2010). Antisemitism: A History. Oxford University Press. p. 75. ISBN 9780199235032. Retrieved December 25, 2024.
  16. ↑ Marshall, John (2006). John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture. The Johns Hopkins University. ISBN 9780521651141. Retrieved December 25, 2024.
  17. 1 2 3 4 5
    • Halpérin, Jean, and Arne Sovik, eds. Luther, Lutheranism and the Jews: A Record of the Second Consultation between Representatives of The International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultation and the Lutheran World Federation Held in Stockholm, Sweden, 11–13 July 1983. Geneva: LWF, 1984.
    • Oberman, Heiko A. The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation. James I. Porter, trans. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984. ISBN 0-8006-0709-0.
    • Tjernagel, Neelak S. Martin Luther and the Jewish People. Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1985. ISBN 0-8100-0213-2.
    • Wallmann, Johannes. "The Reception of Luther's Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th Century." Lutheran Quarterly 1 (Spring 1987) 1:72–97.
    • Wallmann, Johannes (1987). "The Reception of Luther's Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th Century". Lutheran Quarterly (1): 1:72–97. The assertion that Luther's expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment have been of major and persistent influence in the centuries after the Reformation and that there exists a continuity between Protestant anti-Judaism and modern racially oriented anti-Semitism, is at present wide-spread in the literature; since the Second World War it has understandably become the prevailing opinion.
    • Gritsch, Eric W. Martin Luther's Anti-Semitism: Against His Better Judgement. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012. ISBN 978-0-8028-6676-9.
  18. 1 2 3 4 Hillerbrand, Hans J. (2007). "Martin Luther". Encyclopædia Britannica. [H]is strident pronouncements against the Jews, especially toward the end of his life, have raised the question of whether Luther significantly encouraged the development of German antisemitism. Although many scholars have taken this view, this perspective puts far too much emphasis on Luther and not enough on the larger peculiarities of German history.
  19. ↑ The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics (PDF). Anti-Defamation League. 2003. p. 11. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 15, 2014. Retrieved August 15, 2014.
  20. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.138.
  21. ↑ Elon, Amos (2002). The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743-1933. Metropolitan Books. p. 103. ISBN 0-8050-5964-4.
  22. 1 2 3 4 5
  23. ↑ The Jews of Germany: A Historical Portrait - Page 281 by Ruth "Gay
  24. ↑ German Federal Archive, image description via cooperation with Wikimedia Commons.
  25. 1 2 "How many Jews live in Germany? | JPR". Institute for Jewish Policy Research. 15 October 2019. Retrieved March 29, 2025.
  26. ↑
  27. ↑
  28. 1 2 "Jewish university student in Berlin badly beaten by classmate in fight over Hamas war". The Times of Israel. February 4, 2024. Retrieved January 8, 2025.
  29. ↑ "The surprising trend among anxious Jewish parents in Berlin". The Jewish Independent. May 21, 2024. Retrieved January 8, 2025.
  30. ↑ "Israelis attacked in Berlin's Potsdamer Platz after speaking Hebrew". Ynetnews. July 1, 2024. Retrieved January 8, 2025.
  31. ↑
  32. ↑ "Stumbling stones commemorating Holocaust victims uprooted in German city". Ynetnews. October 9, 2024. Retrieved October 10, 2024.
  33. 1 2 3 "Antisemitische Vorfälle in Deutschland 2023" (PDF). Bundesverband der Recherche- und Informationsstellen Antisemitismus (Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism, RIAS). June 25, 2024. Retrieved January 8, 2025.
  34. ↑ "German antisemitism czar says country facing 'tsunami' of Jew hatred since Oct. 7". The Times of Israel. October 4, 2024. Retrieved October 11, 2024.
  35. 1 2 "Germany passes controversial antisemitism resolution". DW News. November 6, 2024. Retrieved January 8, 2025.
  36. ↑ "Germany designates BDS Israel boycott movement as anti-Semitic". Reuters. May 17, 2019. Retrieved January 8, 2025.
  37. ↑ "German Intelligence Agency Classifies BDS Campaign as 'Extremist' Threat". Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). June 24, 2024. Retrieved January 8, 2025.
  38. 1 2 "In first, German intelligence agency labels BDS 'hostile to constitution'". Jewish News Syndicate (JNS). May 21, 2025. Retrieved May 22, 2025.