Oberlaender,
F.A. (1997): "My God, They Just Have Other Interests", in:
Oral History Review, 24, 1: 23-53

Abstract

The article deals with the coping patterns developed by Catholics of Jewish origin who were adults in 1933, after being exposed to discrimination through the so-called "Nuremberg Laws." The main focus of the study is the question of how these people viewed their own religion, Judaism or their German nationality, and how these views might have been changed as a result of these experiences.

The article is based on narrative interviews conducted with "non-Aryan" Catholics of Jewish origin, and is centered specifically around the analysis of a biographical interview which was conducted with a Catholic priest who belongs to this group. The recounting of his life-story is supplemented by secondary sources which illuminate his social environment. The article concludes with the development of a structural hypothesis on the distinctions between patterns specific to the case of Father Fuchs and those which are characteristic of the group.

1. Historical Introduction and Theoretical Approach

The "Nuremberg Laws" and the ideas which they embodied transformed the structure of Jewish identity from a religious or ethno-religious group into a race. This racial conceptualization of Jewish identity meant that the targets of discrimination against Jewish people would include individuals who had, up to this point in time, neither maintained nor felt any cultural, religious, ethnic or historical bond to the Jewish community. This included people who had been raised in the spirit of Protestantism, Catholicism, atheism or agnosticism.6 They came from all socio-economic classes -- above all from the middle-class -- and they came from families that were centrist, national-liberal, German-nationalist or liberal, as well as social democratic, Communist and völkisch7, although the latter were proportionately few, compared with the general population. Through the racial re-definition of the term "Jew," these people suddenly found themselves a part of a stigmatized group. Even having had one Jewish grandmother, who had perhaps died decades before, herself having converted to Christianity early in her youth, and whom the given individual had possibly never even met, was sufficient grounds for inclusion into this newly re-defined category. Approximately 350,000 people living within the territory of Germany of 1933 who did not consider themselves Jewish religiously were thus stigmatized and persecuted, next to the approximately 500,000 people who belonged to Jewish congregations (Oberlaender, 1985). The majority of the non-Jewish people of "non-Aryan" descent were so-called "first degree Mischlinge" (literally, "mixed breed"). This was the name given to people who had two Jewish grandparents, if they themselves had never been members of a Jewish congregation and were not married to a Jewish person.

This essay seeks to explore how experiences of stigmatisation and persecution altered the relationships of Catholic Germans of Jewish ancestry to identity-generating groups such as Catholics, Germans and Jews. How did they experience and cope with these situations? How did they react to being classified as Jews at a time when such an association could mean only marginalization, persecution and even death? How did they experience such situations, given that they had no concrete positive cultural or religious ties to the group? How did they respond to the Jewish institutions which were forced by the state to take on responsibility for "racial Jews," when the institutions themselves did not consider those people to be Jewish? How did Catholic "non-Aryans" respond to the reactions of their own Church to the National Socialist state, and how did they respond to the statements and actions regarding fascism, race politics and war made by Catholic individuals? How did they experience the impact of contemporary Catholic politics on themselves, and how did this in turn change their relationship to their faith and to the Church as an institution? (Oberlaender, 1992a, 1992b)

2. The Obtainment and Evaluation of Empirical Data

The case of Father Fuchs is an example which allows a closer examination of the coping mechanisms and structures of response to oppression developed by a "non-Aryan" with a previously valid "social identity" (Goffman, 1968), the legitimacy of which is first called into question by society when the individual is already an adult. The individual case is systematically reconstructed and additional cases are referred to when further information is deemed necessary or helpful. The primary source of information is biographical interviews (Hildenbrand, 1991) while other biographical primary sources (such as letters, personal documents, etc) have been collected as well. The evaluation is conducted on the basis of "qualitative analysis" (Strauss, 1987) in the tradition of "symbolic interactionism" (Mead, 1972). The sequential-analytical method of ordering the topics to be evaluated, according to a series of main subjects, was conducted on the basis of the "structural hermeneutics" of Ulrich Oevermann (Oevermann, 1988) and was expanded based on Frake's conceptual "component analysis" (Frake, 1980). The goal of the sequential interpretation is to differentiate and recognize the dialectic between what is general and what is particular in the individual case structure (Oevermann, 1988).

2.1 Difficulties in Collecting Data

It is enormously difficult to make contact with Catholic "non-Aryans." They have no official gatherings, they are not registered in either Catholic or Jewish congregation files as "non-Aryans," they generally avoid the media and they are also quite old.

I used the following methods to locate and contact people in this group:

a) informal contact through the Jewish community: it is feasible to gather information and establish possible contacts by asking Jewish people whether they have family members who are married to non-Jews or who have converted to Christianity. Yet here one encounters certain problems: for one, few of the Jewish people affiliated with Jewish congregations in Germany today are descendents of the pre-War members of those congregations (Arnsberg, 1983). Thus contact with those individuals does not lead to contact with "German Jews" who left the Jewish faith before 1933. Furthermore, the exchange of information concerning phenomena such as intermarriages and religious conversions proves to be extremely difficult in spite of the fact, or, in some cases, precisely because, the researcher is himself Jewish. Nevertheless I did succeed in establishing a number of contacts through Jewish circles, especially through marginal Jewish groups, such as groups of Jewish intellectuals who meet regularly.

b) Contact through Catholic institutions: using old church documents I attempted to find out the names of chaplains from the years 1933-36 and to learn of their present whereabouts. Most of them are still alive, presently retired, and approximately half of them still live within their former parishes. I wrote to these people and asked them if they could remember any members of their congregations from that time who were of Jewish ancestry. About half of them answered; two did remember such people, only one could recall names. Using the phone book and the Einwohnermeldeamt8 I was able to find out their current addresses. Through these means I was able to locate one person of "non-Aryan" descent, who was however unwilling to discuss anything with me. Through a high Church official I was brought into contact with one individual who was willing to be interviewed.

c) Through the telephone book: I searched through the local phone book for people with common Jewish last names (Lewy, Cohen, Shapiro, etc) and with common Catholic (Christian) first names (Christoph, Karl Maria, etc). In these cases one can be quite sure that the individual is a Christian but of Jewish descent.

d) Through the radio: I was able to do two radio programs on this subject. After they were aired a number of such people who had themselves experienced persecution contacted the radio stations and this led to the establishment of contact with further interview partners.

In total I was able to gather information on 29 people; of those, 19 were personally affected and 10 were the children of such people.

>> Übersicht