Goldstein, Moritz

(1880-1977)

   writer and Zionist; advanced the ar-gument that Germany s Jews* had no home in Europe. After studying German language and literature during 1900-1906, he became editor of the Goldene Klassiker-Bibliothek (Library of golden classics). In 1912 he published an article entitled "Deutsch-Judischer Parnass" ("German-Jewish Parnassus"); the piece caused a minor furor. He argued that the Jews were directing German culture, yet had neither the capacity nor the right to do so. He noted that Berlin s* newspapers* were a Jewish monopoly, that its theater* world was directed by Jews, that Germany s musical life was unthinkable without Jews, and that the study of German literature was in Jewish hands. Despite their intellectual and emotional efforts, Germany s Jews, he insisted, remained a rootless people.

   Goldstein served on the Western Front during 1915-1918. When the Republic encouraged even fuller involvement by Jews in German society, he chose not to emigrate to Palestine. In 1919 he became literary editor of Vossische Zeitung and then joined Inquit in 1928 as court reporter. Dismissed in 1933 from Vos-sische Zeitung, he emigrated to Italy. Until 1936 he directed Florence's Land-schulheim for German students and thereafter ran a boarding school with his wife in Viargio. He was briefly imprisoned by Mussolini in 1938, and the Ital-ians expelled him in 1939. He passed through France to England and finally emigrated to the United States in 1947.

   Goldstein s thesis was, of course, exaggerated. But he was not the only Jew who believed that the Jewish people had acquired too much influence in Ger-many. For example, Franz Kafka claimed that it was impossible to write in German since use of the language was the "overt or covert... usurpation of an alien property.

   REFERENCES:Goldstein, "German Jewry's Dilemma"; Laqueur, Weimar; Strauss and Röder, Biographisches Handbuch.