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Racializing Jewishness: Zionist Reponses to National Indifference in Interwar Czechoslovakia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2012

Tatjana Lichtenstein
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In anticipation of Czechoslovakia's 1930 population census, one observer, writing in the Zionist Jüdische Volksstimme, assessed the importance of this statistical event for the Jewish nationalist movement:

To us the upcoming census is more than merely a way to obtain reliable data about changes and demographic developments among the Jewish people. We are anticipating an increase in the number of Jews choosing “Jewish nationality,” and thus for us the census, much more so than for other peoples in this state, is an event of national importance […] once the Jewish public becomes aware of the significance of the census, it will be pointless for the other nationalities to attempt to restore their own ranks by decimating the Jewish nation in Czechoslovakia.

Type
Sites of Indifference to Nationhood
Information
Austrian History Yearbook , Volume 43 , April 2012 , pp. 75 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © Center for Austrian Studies, University of Minnesota 2012

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References

1 “Volkszählung 1930,” Jüdische Volksstimme, 23 January 1930.

2 In this article, I use the terms “Zionist” and “Jewish nationalist” interchangeably, as did many contemporary observers. In interwar Czechoslovakia, Jewish nationalists consciously and consistently employed a political-legal terminology derived from the country's minority protection laws. Terms like “Židovská národní rada (Jewish National Council),” “Židovská národnost (Jewish nationality),” and “národnostní menšina (national minority),” cast Jews as one of the country's national minorities with legitimate collective rights. In the Czechoslovak political context, Jewish nationalists made references to Zionism when it empowered or added prestige to the Jewish nationalist cause. In a lecture to a Czechoslovak student society, one Jewish expert noted that although all Zionists were Jewish nationalists, not all Jewish nationalists were Zionists. See Friedmann, František, Strana Židovská [The Jewish Party] (Prague, 1931), 9Google Scholar. In the Bohemian Lands, there was a considerable overlap between Jewish nationalist and Zionist activists, a fact which underlines the rhetorical importance of the use of the “local” terminology.

3 In the essay “Census, Map, Museum,” Benedict Anderson explored the census's role in constructing racial collectives and subsequent ethnic nationalisms. See Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York, 1991, revised edition), 163–70Google Scholar.

4 On the uses of statistics to map territories and populations, see Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT, 1998), 9–84Google Scholar.

5 Urla, Jacqueline, “Cultural Politics in an Age of Statistics: Numbers, Nations, and the Making of Basque Identity,” American Ethnologist 20, no. 4 (1993): 818–43, at 818CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Efron, John M., Defenders of the Race: Jewish Doctors and Race Science in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (New Haven, CT, 1994)Google Scholar; Hart, Mitchell B., Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity (Stanford, 2000)Google Scholar; Penslar, Derek J., Shylock's Children: Economic and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (Berkeley, 2001)Google Scholar; Soffer, Oren, “Antisemitism, Statistics, and the Scientization of Hebrew Political Discourse: The Case Study of Ha-tsefirah,” Jewish Social Studies 10, no. 2 (2004): 55–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Avrutin, Eugene M., Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, 2010)Google Scholar. In employing the term “Jewish statistics” or “Jewish social science,” I am referring to the body of research on Jews as a social collective undertaken by Jewish experts from a broad range of disciplines beginning, as Mitchell Hart notes, in the 1880s. As Hart points out, the term “Jewish statistics” served as a shorthand for a wide range of research categories relying methodologically on descriptive statistics, history, and ethnography. From 1902 to 1925, Berlin was the institutional focal point for Jewish social science. The organizing body, Verein für jüdische Statistik, set up its main office there, and it was where its journal, Zeitschrift für Demographie und Statistik der Juden, was published. Furthermore, it was an institution closely connected to the Zionist project. Nevertheless, as Hart notes, scholars from a wide variety of places and with very different interests and agendas used the methods and concepts of Jewish statistics; see Hart, Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity, 3–4.

7 Ibid., 30.

8 See, for example, Mendelssohn, Ezra, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (Bloomington, IN, 1983), 145–46Google Scholar; and Čapková, Kateřina, “Uznání židovské národnosti v Československu 1918–1938 [The Recognition of Jewish Nationality in Czechoslovakia, 1918–1938],” Český časopis historický [The Czech Historical Journal] 102, no. 1 (2004): 77–103, at 91, 101Google Scholar.

9 87 percent of the region's Jews were registered as being of Jewish nationality. For the Jewish Conservative Party and the first census, see letter d. 29 September 1927 from Koloman Weisz to Ministry of Interior, Národní Archív-Ministerstvo školství a národní osvěty [Mš] inv.č. 2086 sign. 47/VIII karton 3924.

10 For examples of complaints about census commissioners, see Bubeník, Jaroslav and Křesťan, Jiří, “Zjištování národnosti jako problém statistický a politický: zkušenosti ze sčítání lidu za první republiky, [Determining Nationality as a Statistical and Political Problem: Lessons Learned from the Population Censuses in the First Czechoslovak Republic],” Paginae Historiae 3 (1995): 119–39Google Scholar.

11 Rádl, Emanuel, Národnost jako vědecký problém [Nationality as a Scientific Problem] (Prague, 1929), 48Google Scholar. Rádl insisted on citizens' right to choose nationality rather than be ascribed national belonging according to mother tongue or other so-called objective markers. Although he touched on the subject in his 1928 book-length analysis of Czech-German relations, Válka Čechů s Němci [The Czechs' War against the Germans] (Prague, 1928), which was highly critical of Czech policies toward the country's German minority, his polemic with Czech statisticians, the prominent demographer Antonín Boháč in particular, regarding the validity of nationality statistics was published in Národnost jako vědecký problém.

12 As Rebekah Klein-Pejšová observes, the process to divest nationality from language began in Slovakia in preparation for the August 1919 census. For an analysis of the debate preceding the event, see Rebekah Klein-Pejšová, “Among the Nationalities: Jewish Refugees, Jewish Nationality, and Czechoslovak Statebuilding” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2005), 128–54.

13 The constitutional articles supplementing the Constitution's §128 regarding the protection of minorities stated “that Jews could not be forced to declare other ethnic national belonging than Jewish during censuses, elections, and other public events,” regardless of their language of use, see Ústavní listina, Národní shromáždění československé 1918–1920 [The Czechoslovak Constitution, The Czechoslovak National Assembly, 1918–1920], tisk 2421 část č. 3, available electronically at www.psp.cz

14 In 1921, Jews (as defined by religion) in Czechoslovakia numbered 354,342 (2.6 percent of the country's population). Sčítání lidu v republice Československé 1921 [The 1921 Population Census in Czechoslovakia] (Czechoslovakia, 1924).

15 The Jewish nationalist parties received about 79,714 votes. On the importance of the census in light of recent elections, see “Sčítání lidu, [The Population Census],” Židovské zprávy, 21 January 1921.

16 For a discussion of the effects on Austrian census practices for the national competition in the Bohemian Lands, see Zeman, Z. A. B., “The Four Austrian Censuses and Their Political Consequences,” in The Last Years of Austria-Hungary: Essays in Political and Military History, 1908–1918, ed. Cornwall, Mark, 31–39 (Exeter, 1990), at 37Google Scholar.

17 Cornwall, Mark, “The Struggle on the Czech-German Language Border, 1880–1940,” The English Historical Review 109, no. 433 (1994): 914–51, at 919CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Everyday language was dismissed by these experts as a flexible and adopted tool of communication, not as an expression of national belonging; Boháč, Antonín, “Národnost či jazyk? [Nationality or Language?]” Československý statistický věstník [The Czechoslovak Statistical Bulletin] II (1921): 40–58, at 52Google Scholar. However, the Czechoslovak census makers' search for objective ethnic markers was not as much a departure from Austrian practices as perhaps imagined. Historians argue that by the turn of the century, Austrian legal practice increasingly understood national belonging in ethnic terms and believed it to be verifiable through objective markers such as language, social and professional affiliations, and origin. See Stourzh, Gerald, “Ethnic Attribution in Late Imperial Austria: Good Intentions, Evil Consequences,” in The Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective, ed. Robertson, Ritchie and Timms, Edward, 67–83 (Edinburgh, 1994)Google Scholar; Kelly, T. Mills, “Last Best Chance or Last Gasp? The Compromise of 1905 and Czech Politics in Moravia,” Austrian History Yearbook 34 (2003): 279–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Boháč, Antonín, “První všeobecné sčítání lidu v Československé republice [The First General Population Census in Czechoslovakia],” Československý statistický věstník II (1921): 104–20, at 116Google Scholar.

20 Antonín Boháč, “První všeobecné sčítání lidu v Československé republice,” 104. As Jeremy King notes, the creation of the category “Czechoslovak,” which merged claims of Czech or Slovak nationality, “helped to paper over the inconvenient fact that ethnic Germans in the Slavic state numbered too many: only about 50 percent less than ethnic Czechs, and about 50 percent more than ethnic Slovaks,” King, Jeremy, Budweisers into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848–1948 (Princeton, 2002), 165Google Scholar.

21 As some experts noted, there was considerable discussion in the scientific community about whether Jews were a nation or not, precisely because of their lack of language. The census makers attempted to accommodate both views by allowing Jews to choose Jewish nationality or any other nationality according to their mother tongue. For disagreement about Jews' status, see Antonín Boháč, “Národnost či jazyk?” 42. For the position that nationality should be a subjective choice, see Krejčí, Dobroslav, “Má se při našem příštím sčítání lidu zjištovati národnost nebo řeč mateřská? [Should the Next Population Census Determine Nationality or Mother Tongue?]” Československý statistický věstník I (1920): 275–85, at 285Google Scholar; for the position that objective verifiable markers were necessary, see Boháč, Antonín, “Příští sčítání lidu, [The Next Population Census],” Československý statistický věstník I (1920): 268–75, at 272–74Google Scholar. Both authors, however, agreed that Jews constituted a distinct ethnic group.

22 For a detailed discussion, see Klein-Pejšová, “Among the Nationalities,” 153.

23 For regulations regarding the census's question of nationality, see Antonín Boháč, “První všeobecné sčítání lidu v Československé republice,” 116; for the perception of the sociological importance of religion in preserving Jewish distinctiveness, thereby legitimizing it as an objective marker, see Antonín Boháč, “Národnost či jazyk?” 54.

24 For an analysis of earlier attempts to have Jews recognized as a national group, see Stourzh, Gerald, “Galten die Juden als Nationalität Altösterreichs: Ein Betrag zur Geschichte des cisleithanischen Nationalitätenrechts,” in Prag—Czernowitz—Jerusalem: Der österreichische Staat und die Juden vom Zeitalter des Absolutismus bis zum Ende der Monarchie, ed. Drabek, Anna M., Eliav, Mordechai, and Stourzh, Gerald, 73–117 (Eisenstadt, 1984)Google Scholar.

25 “Memorandum Národní rady židovské Prezidiu ministerské rady ČSR o zjištování národnosti při prvním sčítání lidu v Československu 24. řijna 1920 [The Jewish National Council's Memorandum to the Ministerial Council of Czechoslovakia regarding the Determination of Nationality during the First Population Census d. 24 October, 1920]” [Memorandum 24 October 1920], reprinted (29–31) in Bubeník, Jaroslav and Křest′an, Jiří, “Zjištování národnosti a židovská otázka, [The Determination of Nationality and the Jewish Question]” in Postavení a osudy židovského obyvatelstva v Čechách a na Moravě v letech 1939–1945 Sborník studií [The Status and Fate of the Jewish Population in Bohemia and Moravia in the years 1939–1945: An Anthology of Papers], ed. Krejčová, Helena and Svobodová, Jana, 11–39 (Prague, 1998), at 29Google Scholar.

26 Memorandum, 24 October 1920, 29.

27 Memorandum, 24 October 1920, 30.

28 Memorandum, 24 October 1920, 29.

29 The Jewish National Council did not consider religion as the only marker of Jewish descent and asked specifically for individuals with another or no religion to be allowed to claim Jewish nationality. In practice, however, this seems to be the only way in which Jewish descent could be determined aside from an individual's own statement or the census commissioners' observation of other “ethnic Jewish markers.” See Memorandum, 24 October 1920, 30.

30 Memorandum, 24 October 1920, 29.

31 Kieval, Hillel J., Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley, 2000), 212Google Scholar; Čapková, Kateřina, “Uznání židovské národnosti v Československu 1918–1938,” Český časopis historický 102, no. 1 (2004): 77–103, at 91, 101Google Scholar; Zahra, Tara, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca, 2008), 119–20Google Scholar; Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars, 146; Beneš, Václav L., “Czechoslovak democracy and its problems, 1918–1920,” in A History of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918–1948, ed. Mamatey, Victor S. and Luža, Radomír, 39–98 (Princeton, 1973), at 41Google Scholar.

32 This view was presented in an article in the Zionist Židovské zprávy denouncing Heinrich Rauchberg, a prominent German statistician and member of the Statistical Council, for calling on Jews “not to endanger their own rights and those of their German fellow citizens” by opting for Jewish nationality in the upcoming census, a warning echoed by the German press; see “Židé a sčítání lidu [Jews and the Population Census],” Židovské zprávy, 3 February 1921. Jewish nationalists were particularly incensed by Rauchberg's “Jewish origin” and to them he served as an example of the chauvinistic character of assimilating Jews eager to prove their ‘German-ness.’ “K sčítání lidu (Návrh, který musí padnouti) [Regarding the Population Census: a Proposition that Must be Defeated],” Židovské zprávy, 14 February 1930.

33 Although the Židovské zprávy generally cited Czech support for the Jewish nationalist cause, the Brno-based Zionist weekly Jüdische Volksstimme reported that both Czech and German nationalists were competing for Jewish “numbers”; see “Volkszählung,” Jüdische Volksstimme, 10 February 1921.

34 Rauchberg wrote about his experience of the Council's decision-making process in an article published in mid-January 1921 in Znaimer Tagblatt, as quoted by Emanuel Rádl in Národnost jako vědecký problém, 43–44.

35 Although Yiddish was used extensively among Jews in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, Jews in Slovakia and the Bohemian Lands used primarily Czech, German, Hungarian, and Slovak. Hebrew was promoted as Jews' national language by the Zionists working to secure state funding for public Hebrew-language minority schools. If nationality was to be recorded according to language, then Zionists rightly feared that the existence of a Jewish national minority, especially in the Bohemian Lands and Slovakia, would be erased as Jews were absorbed statistically into other national communities.

36 This letter is quoted in Kateřina Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé: Národní identita Židů v Čechách, 1918–1938 [Czechs, Germans, Jews: Jews' National Identity in Bohemia, 1918–1938] (Prague, 2005), 43–44, letter d. 15.2.1930 from the President's Office to Ludvík Singer (Singer's letter to the President's Office was dated 10.2.1930). Archiv Kancelář prezidenta republiky D 1274/30.

37 For the debate that preceded the 1930 census, see Bubeník & Křèstan, “Zjištování národnosti a židovská otázka,” 24–25; Jaroslav Bubeník and Jiří Křesťan, “Zjištování národnosti jako problém statistický a politický: zkušenosti ze sčítání lidu za první republiky,” Kučera, Jaroslav, “Politický či přirozený národ? K pojetí národa v Československém právním řádu meziválečného období [A Political or Ethnic Nation? The Concept of Nationhood in Czechoslovak Law between the World Wars],” Český časopis historický 99, no. 3 (2001): 548–68Google Scholar; for an opponent of the Statistical Council's insistence on objective markers of nationality, see Emanuel Rádl's Národnost jako vědecký problém.

38 Ludvík Singer, who was a member of the National Assembly for the Jewish Party (Židovská strana) from 1929–1931, noted publicly the “political” benefits of retaining the 1921 definition of Jewish nationality, i.e., fewer Germans and Hungarians, in his parliamentary speech on 22 February 1930. See Národní shromáždění československé 22.2.1930 [NS] RČS 1929–1935 [The Czechoslovak National Assembly], PS, 22. schůze. See also his address to the Assembly on Czech fears of “defeat” in mixed urban areas if the definition of “Jewish nationality” changed as proposed by the Statistical Council earlier that year, 26.11.1930 NS RČS 1929–1935, PS, 86. schůze. www.psp.cz

39 In the interwar years, some Czech nationalist circles continued to see themselves as on the defensive against the Germans in the Bohemian Lands and against Hungarians in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia. See comment made in Národní politika as quoted in “Nationalität und Sprache,” Prager Tagblatt, 11 February 1930. See also Mark Cornwall, “Struggle on the Language Border,” 939; Zahra, Tara, “Reclaiming Children for the Nation: Germanization, National Ascription, and Democracy in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1945,” Central European History 37, no. 4 (2004): 501–43, at 516CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Čapková argues that both right-wing German and Czech nationalist parties supported the continued exemption for Jews, see Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé?, 44–45.

40 “Sčítání lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 21 January 1921.

41 “Židé a sčítání lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 3 February 1921.

42 “Židé a sčítání lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 3 February 1921; for similar sentiments in Moravia, see “Jüdisches Volk!” Jüdische Volksstimme, 10 February 1921; “Volkszählung,” Jüdische Volksstimme, 10 February 1921.

43 Klein-Pejšová, “Among the Nationalities,” 151.

44 “Jüdische Wähler und Wählerinnen!” Jüdische Volksstimme, 24 October 1929; “Volkszählung 1930,” Jüdische Volksstimme, 23 January 1930.

45 See, for example, “Jüdische Wähler und Wählerinnen!” Jüdische Volksstimme, 24 October 1929.

46 “Sčítání lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 21 January 1921. In Czechoslovakia, the Jewish national minority was among the country's smallest groups. In 1921, 65.5 percent of the population were recorded as Czechoslovak, 23.4 percent as German, 5.6 percent as Hungarian, 3.5 percent as Ruthenian, 0.6 percent as Polish, and 1.4 percent as Jewish (Zionists, however, pointed to the larger Jewish ethnic community, which made up 2.6 percent).

47 See the sources on the debates preceding both the 1921 and the 1930 census.

48 Otto Bondy, “Antisemitský úspěch, [An Anti-Semitic Success]” Rozvoj, 25 February 1921. The Czech-Jewish movement is often described as “assimilationist.” It was, however, a movement with a variety of factions, many of which were committed to Jewish continuity but rejected the belief that Jews constituted a nation. For the Czech-Jewish movement in the interwar years, see Kateřina Čapková, Češi, Němci, Židé?, 93–174.

49 The demand for statistical representation was included in the first memorandum that the Jewish National Council delivered to the Czech government in October 1928, reprinted in English translation as “Memorandum from the Jewish National Council in Prague to the Government of the Czechoslovak State, October 28, 1918,” in Rabinowicz, Aharon M., “The Jewish Minority,” in The Jews of Czechoslovakia, vol. 1 (Philadelphia, 1968), 218–21Google Scholar; “Sčítání lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 21 January 1921.

50 For the use of Stamm as race, see Hart, Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity, 253; see also the discussion of the use of the term Stamm in the German-Jewish context in van Rahden, Till, “Germans of the Jewish Stamm: Visions of Community between Nationalism and Particularism, 1850 to 1933,” in German History from the Margins, ed. Gregor, Neil, Roemer, Niels, and Roseman, Mark, 27–48 (Bloomington, IN, 2006)Google Scholar.

51 Gustav Fleischmann's series appeared over the course of several months in 1922: “Výsledky sčítání lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 5 May 1922; “Výsledky sčítání lidu II,” Židovské zprávy, 22 May 1922; “Výsledky sčítání lidu III,” Židovské zprávy, 30 June 1922; “Výsledky sčítání lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 25 August 1922; “Výsledky sčítání lidu V,” Židovské zprávy, 6 October 1922.

52 “Výsledky sčítání lidu II,” Židovské zprávy, 22 May 1922; see also “Výsledky sčítání lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 2 March 1921.

53 “Výsledky sčítání lidu II,” Židovské zprávy, 22 May 1922.

54 “Jüdisches Volk!” Jüdische Volkstimme, 10 February 1921; “Die Volkszählung,” Jüdische Volkstimme, 10 February 1921; for a later (1927) but potent example of this notion, see Friedmann's, FrantišekMravnost či Oportunita? Několik poznámek k anketě akad. Spolku Kapper v Brně [Morality or Opportunism? Some Remarks on the Survey Conducted by the Academic Association Kapper] (Prague, 1927), 54–55Google Scholar.

55 For this use of the term, see Zahra, “Reclaiming Children for the Nation,” 521.

56 See Ludvík Singer's speech in the National Assembly on 22 February 1930, Národní shromáždění československé 22.2.1930 RČS 1929–1935, PS, 22. schůze.

57 Ibid.; for Jewish nationalist MPs constituency as all Jews, see also “Was antwortet die Regierung,” Jüdische Volksstimme, 13 February 1930.

58 Emil Margulies' lecture in the Society for the Study of Minority Questions (Gesellschaft zum Studium der Minderheitenfragen), 21 March 1933, “Stenografisches Protokoll des Vortrages Dr. Emil Margulies ‘Über die gegenwärtigen politischen Strömungen und Programme unserer Mitbürger jüdischer Nationalität,’” 4. Central Zionist Archives A299/9.

59 “Die čechoslovakische Sprachenfrage und die Juden,” Jüdische Volkstimme, 11 July 1929; “K sčítáni lidu (Návrh, který musí padnouti),” Židovské zprávy, 14 February 1930.

60 In anticipation of both censuses, Jewish nationalists stressed the importance of the census results for Jews' political and legal position; see “Sčítání lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 21 January 1921; “Židé a sčítáni lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 3 February 1921; “Volkszählung 1930,” Jüdische Volkstimme, 23 January 1930.

61 For critical voices within the Polish community, see Paul, Ellen L., “Czech Teschen Silesia and the Controversial Czechoslovak Census of 1921,” The Polish Review 43, no. 2 (1998): 161–71, at 162–63, 165–67Google Scholar.

62 “Výsledky sčítání lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 2 March 1921.

63 For the notion of backward- or forward-looking categories, one defining “original,” the other “adopted” identities, see Ketzer, David I. and Arel, Dominique, “Censuses, Identity Formation, and the Struggle for Political Power,” in Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses, ed. Kertzer, David I. and Arel, Dominique, 1–42 (Cambridge, 2002), at 25–27Google Scholar.

64 It is important to remember that German and Czech nationalists were essentially competing over the same population. As historians show, nationalists' construction of “Germans” and “Czechs” was an attempt to order and co-opt a social reality where a multiplicity of languages and identifications were the rule rather than the exception. Jeremy King argues that Jews constituted perhaps the only identifiable ethnic group in the Bohemian Lands in the late nineteenth century, a claim supported by Marsha Rozenblit's research on Jewish identities in late Austria. It is still in question, however, to what extent Jewish ethnic identity was a local one; see King, Jeremy, “The Nationalization of East Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnicity, and Beyond,” in Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present, ed. Bucur, Maria and Wingfield, Nancy M., 112–52 (West Lafayette, IN, 2001), at 127Google Scholar; and Rozenblit, Marsha, Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (New York, 2001)Google Scholar.

65 “Die Volkszählung,” Jüdische Volksstimme, 10 February 1921.

66 See the Czech version of the Jewish National Council's address published as “Sčítání lidu,” Židovské zprávy, 21 January 1921; and the German version, “Volkszählung,” Jüdische Volksstimme, 27 January 1921; for a similar sentiment in 1930, see “Volkszählung 1930,” Jüdische Volkstimme, 13 February 1930.

67 Jewish nationalists did not succeed in transforming their Hebrew-language schools in Subcarpathian Ruthenia into a publicly funded minority system. The Ministry of Education repeatedly denied the request for public funds, arguing that the state did not fund religious minority schools, only linguistic minority ones (in Slovakia alone, legislation carried over from the Kingdom of Hungary ensured public funds for Jewish religious schools). Because Jews had “lost their national language,” the Hebrew-language schools were, according to these bureaucrats, religious institutions. My own work on Zionists' efforts to establish a public Jewish school system shows that the state authorities only supported Jewish nationalism when it furthered the hegemony of the Czechoslovakness in the state, particularly the use of and familiarity with the Czech language. Thus, if Jewish schools were perceived by politicians and bureaucrats alike as threatening to withdraw Jewish students from the recently established Czech-language schools in Subcarpathian Ruthenia, the state authorities were not forthcoming with support. In contrast, when Jewish nationalist goals were considered to be decreasing the numbers and influence of the Hungarian- or German-speaking minorities, they were more accommodating toward Zionist requests. Jewish nationalists perceived the denial of public funds for Jewish schools as a breach of Jews' minority rights, particularly in the Eastern provinces, and did not let up in their efforts to secure public funding for the Jewish schools throughout the interwar years. For an analysis of the question of Jewish national schools in interwar Czechoslovakia, see Tatjana Lichtenstein, “Making Jews at Home: Jewish Nationalism in the Bohemian Lands, 1918–1938” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2009), 186–234, esp. 227.

68 As a Jewish nationalist, Friedmann used “trilingual” pennames. He wrote in German as Franz Friedmann, in Czech as František Friedmann, and in both Czech and German as Ish shalom (Hebrew “Man of Peace,” a play on his surname).

69 Friedmann became a member of Prague's City Council in 1931. He was the chair of Hagibor from 1933 to 1939, and he became the last chair of the Czechoslovak Makabi in 1938. For a short biography, see “Skvělý úspěch židovské kandidátky v pražských volbách [Jewish Candidates' Great Success in the Prague Election],” Židovské zprávy, 2 October 1931; for involvement in Jewish sport, see Archív hlavního města Prahy [AHMP] XIV 0367 Židovský sportovní klub Hagibor; AHMP XIV 0685 Svaz Makabi v ČSR.

70 For an example of his command of local statistical data, as well as Jewish statistics, see Friedmann, František, “Pražští Židé [Prague Jews],” Židovský kalendář [The Jewish Almanac] 1929/1930: 148–207Google Scholar, and his essay on Bohemian Jewish statistics, Friedmann, František, “Židé v Čechách [The Jews of Bohemia],” in Židé a židovské obce v Čechách v minulosti a v přítomnosti [Jews and Jewish Communities in Bohemia and Moravia, Past and Present], vol. I, ed. Gold, Hugo, 729–35 (Brno-Prague, 1934)Google Scholar.

71 This is especially true for his attacks on Czech-Jews, as well as articles such as the ones challenging the efforts to institute a numerus clausus in universities in Czechoslovakia, as well as his articles on Jewish children and schools. For Czech-Jews, see Friedmann, František, Mravnost či Oportunita? Několik poznámek k anketě akad. Spolku Kapper v Brně (Prague, 1927)Google Scholar; for numerus clausus and schools, see, for example, “Jak to ve skutečnosti vyhlíží s cizinci na vysokých školách českých [The Truth about Foreigners at Czech Universities],” Židovské zprávy, 6 December 1929; “Vysoké školy české ve světle čislic [Czech Universities in Light of the Numbers],” Židovské zprávy, 13 December 1929; “Židovské děti na národních školách [Jewish Children in Elementary Schools],” Židovské zprávy, 20 April 1932. For Friedmann's defense against what he perceived as an anti-Semitic attack by the Czech social democrat Josef Hudec, see Friedmann, František, Na obranu židovství, Kritické poznámky k brožuře poslance Josefa Hudce [In Defense of Judaism: Some Critical Remarks on MP Josef Hudec's Pamphlet] (Prague, 1920)Google Scholar; for a lecture on the Jewish Party held as part of a lecture series on the ideology of political parties in Czechoslovakia organized by the Union of Czechoslovak student societies, see Friedmann, František, Strana Židovská (Prague, 1931)Google Scholar; for more scholarly endeavors, see the summary of his lecture held in November 1933 in the Society for the Study of the Minority Question, “Asimilace a sionismus u Židů v ČSR (Z přednášky dra F. Friedmanna dne 10. XI. 1933) [Assimilation and Zionism among Jews in Czechoslovakia (A Lecture by Dr. F. Friedmann, 10 November 1933)] Národnostní Obzor [Nationality Horizons] 4, no. 2 (1934): 159–60Google Scholar; for his two-part article published in the Society's journal, see Friedmann, František, “Židovská národní menšina na Podkarpatské Rusi I [The Jewish National Minority in Subcarpathian Ruthenia],” Národnostní Obzor 4, no. 3 (1934): 185–92Google Scholar, and “Židovská národní menšina na Podkarpatské Rusi II,” Národnostní Obzor 4, no. 4 (1934): 269–77Google Scholar.

72 Friedmann continued his scholarly pursuits, as well as producing material, for the Jewish community leadership. Franz Friedmann, “Rechtsstellung der Juden im Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren,” stand am 31,73,1942, für interne n Gebrauch der Jüdische Kultusgemeinde Prag. n.d.

73 Rothkirchen, Livia, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust (Lincoln, NE, 2005), 134Google Scholar.

74 For Friedmann's personal data, see the Prague residency cards held at Národní archiv in Prague.

75 Friedmann, Mravnost, 45.

76 Friedmann, Mravnost, 24, 29, 46.

77 These distinctions accompanied almost all of Friedmann's longer studies of Czechoslovak Jewry; see, for example, Friedmann, Mravnost, 45–46; Einige Zahlen, 9.

78 Friedmann believed that the actual number of Jewish nationals in Bohemia was much higher than the census suggested, as more Jews voted for Jewish parties here than opted for Jewish nationality; see Friedmann, Mravnost, 29; Einige Zahlen, 24.

79 Friedmann, Tschechoslowakei, 1.

80 Friedmann, Mravnost, 40.

81 Friedmann, “Židovská národní menšina I,” 188–92. This two-part article, which was published in Národnostní obzor in 1934, was the only study devoted to the Jewish minority which appeared in the journal's ten years' existence. In Subcarpathian Ruthenia, the other Jewish language in Eastern Europe, Yiddish, was an everyday language for large parts of the Jewish populations. Yiddish, a Germanic language infused with Hebrew and Slavic words, had historically been counted as German in Austria-Hungary. The language's image as a form of German was unhelpful to Zionists. Alongside their Zionists colleagues who revered Hebrew as an ancient and authentic Palestinian tongue, they rejected Yiddish as a jargon, mishmash, and impure.

82 Friedmann, Mravnost, 46–50.

83 Gustav Fleischmann also documented this trend in his study of the 1921 census results for the Bohemian Lands; see, for example, Fleischmann, “Výsledky sčítáni lidu [The Results of the Population Census],” Židovské zprávy, 5 May 1922; “Výsledky sčítáni lidu III [The Results of the Population Census],” Židovské zprávy, 30 June 1922; for non-Jewish experts' observations of this trend, see Boháč, Antonín, “Hlavní město Praha: Studie statistická I. cast [The City of Prague: Statistical Studies, Part One],” Československý statistický věstník 3 (1922): 353–480, at 415Google Scholar; Friedmann drew explicitly on Boháč's study in his own work; see Mravnost, 50–51.

84 Friedmann, “Jak se změnilo rozsídlení Židů v Čechách za posledních 50 let [How the Settlement of Jews in Bohemia Has Changed in the Past Fifty Years],” Židovské zprávy, 2 December 1927.

85 For an article making a similar argument for all of Czechoslovak Jewry, see Friedmann, Einige Zahlen, 6–7.

86 “Asimilace a sionismus u Židů v ČSR (Z přednášky dra F. Friedmanna dne 10. XI. 1933),” Národnostní Obzor 4, no. 2 (1934): 159–60, at 159Google Scholar.

87 Friedmann, Na obranu židovství, 49; Strana Židovská, 8–9.

88 Friedmann, Mravnost, 43.

89 “Asimilace a sionismus u Židů v ČSR (Z přednášky dra F. Friedmanna dne 10. XI. 1933),” 159–60.

90 Friedmann, “Židovská národní menšina II,” 271–72.

91 According to John Efron, the emphasis on historical experience over biology in shaping Jews' character was typical for Jewish race scientists in the early 1900s; see Efron, Defenders of the Race, 174.

92 For an example of the marginalization of other forms of identification, see Jeremy King's Budweisers into Czechs and Germans.

93 An important example of this is the way in which the demand for one mother tongue erased the multilingualism of individuals and communities; see “Instrukce pro sčítacího komisaře a revisora [Instructions for Census Commissioners and Auditors],” Československý statistický věstník 2 (1921): 143–48, at 145Google Scholar. Statisticians at the forefront of the debate rejected national identities defined by space, citing examples such as Carpathian-Rus, Moravian, South Slav, or some other spatial rather than ethnic nationality. See Krejčí, Dobroslav, “Má se při našem příštím sčítání lidu zjištovati národnost nebo řeč mateřská?” Československý statistický věstník 1 (1920): 275–85, at 279–80Google Scholar.

94 Friedmann, “Židé v Čechách,” 729.

95 Friedmann, “Židovská národní menšina I,” 190; this point was also made by Moravian Jewry's statistician Theodor Haas, “Die Juden im Mähren nach den Ergebnissen der letzten Volkszählung,” Jüdische Volksstimme, 1 November 1921.

96 For the political uses of the notion that Germans gradually Germanized the Slav heartland, see Andrea Orzoff's exploration of myth and political culture in Czechoslovakia, Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914–1948 (New York, 2009)Google Scholar.

97 As described by the British, pro-Hungarian writer Harold Harmsworth in an article in the Daily Mail, 30 August 1927, quoted in Orzoff, Battle for the Castle, 155.

98 Bakke, Elisabeth, “The Making of Czechoslovakism in the First Czechoslovak Republic,” in Loyalitäten in der Tschechoslowakischen Republik, 1918–1938: Politische, nationale, und kulturelle Zugehörigkeiten, ed. Wessel, Martin Schulze, 23–44 (Munich, 2004), at 32Google Scholar.

99 Ibid., 28.

100 Similarly, the Jewish National Council had called on Jews to choose Jewish national identity and vote for Jewish parties by employing the Czechoslovakist trope “strength through numbers”; see “Sčítání lidu [The Population Census],” Židovské zprávy, 21 January 1921.

101 Gold, Hugo, ed., Die Juden und Judengemeinden Mährens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Brünn, 1929)Google Scholar; Gold, Hugo, ed., Die Juden und die Judengemeinde Bratislava in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart (Brünn, 1932)Google Scholar; Gold, Hugo, ed., Židé a židovské obce v Čechách v minulosti a v přítomnosti, vol. I (Brno-Prague, 1934)Google Scholar. Hugo Gold saw this work as a step toward establishing a Jewish museum in Brünn, encompassing both collections of artifacts and an archive, a process that needed to come under way “before it is too late.” See Gold, Juden Mährens, 3. Although the Moravian volume was in German, the Bohemian one was in both Czech and German.

102 Efron, Defenders of the Race, 127.

103 Both Efron and Hart locate this impetus in Max Nordau's (1901) speech calling for the collection, production, and publication of knowledge about Jews; Efron, Defenders of the Race, 68–169; Hart, Social Science and the Politics of Modern Jewish Identity, 29–31.

104 See, for example, Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars, 149.