The German Question, Part Sixty-Two

"Bismarck" Part Five/G "Bismarck as Chancellor & A Treaty With 'Contentious Relatives' ""Ethnic Minorities in Bismarckian Germany/German Jews"

For those who have been following this series, remember, until the founding of the actual (Second) German Empire in 1871, the individual German states each had their own laws governing such things as "citizenship." In the German state of Prussia, religious tolerance became something of a tradition going back to Friedrich Wilhelm, the great grandfather of  Frederick the Great, in the 1600s. On the other hand, certain German states, like Austria, were not as tolerant, even though the German emperor was almost always from Austria, and those emperors were at times, but certainly not always, inclined to religious tolerance. The emperors could not force other German leaders to grant religious tolerance, and even in their own Habsburg lands the local leaders, steeped in staunch Catholicism, were not always prone to follow the emperor's lead, although he was also the head of the Habsburg family. Laws and tolerance varied in the many German states over the centuries, but by the mid 1800s, more and more of the states made attempts to grant equality to all of their citizens, regardless of religious belief. Of course, "granting equality" is different from having everyone in the general population "accept" people of differing religions, but ever so gradually, German Jews became much more integrated into German society, with most eventually seeing themselves as "German," and indeed, they were German citizens. One must also consider that, just as in other religious groups, German Jews practiced their faith to varying degrees, with some not adhering to any particular religious beliefs. Then too, Jews and Germans "intermingled," just as "Germans" had intermingled with other "groups" of people, as I have shown in this series of articles, throughout their history. The later Nazi nonsense about "purity," was just that, NONSENSE, period (make that "exclamation point")!*

Over the centuries Jews came to Germany for many reasons, including wars, persecution or out-and-out terror in other lands, often coming from Poland or Russia. Orthodox Jews, by their very beliefs, did not integrate into German society as well, even with the existing German Jews who were often far more secular. These Orthodox Jews experienced far more persecution in every day life, but this was certainly not exclusive to Germany, but elsewhere, too, not that this makes it better. When the North German Confederation was established by Bismarck, religious tolerance and equality (in theory) became law.** When the Confederation became the German Empire in 1871, the same law remained in effect.*** During Bismarck's time, the Jewish population was somewhere between 500,000 and about 575,000, depending upon the year.

This doesn't mean that all Germans took tolerant positions toward Jews during Bismarck's time, as there were extremist nationalist groups that viewed Jews as "foreign." These groups eventually tried to make major inroads into the political system and establish a presence in the Reichstag (the German Parliament). They desired to enact laws repealing equality and religious tolerance. In that general era, these groups ebbed and flowed, but they never made major gains in those times. They certainly were forerunners of what was to come later. (A Word History is below the notes)

* For an interesting take on "intermingling," see my article "Hitler The Jew?": http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2010/10/hitler-jew.html

** Official government positions remained difficult for Jews to attain, and some "converted" to Christianity in order to advance (or at least that was the "take" on such conversions). Remember, Catholics had similar difficulties, and they were Christians! (Prussia, the dominant German state after 1866, was heavily Protestant.)

*** Bismarck and many Prussian officials were not as tolerant of German Catholics.

WORD HISTORY:
Tannen(baum)/Tan-This word, probably known to most of you from the Christmas song, "O Tannenbaum," technically does not mean "Christmas tree," although through repeated usage in that context, it certainly has taken on that meaning. It means "fir tree," in German, and the first part of the word is closely related to English "tan," which is what I will cover here in this Word History. I will cover "Baum," in the next part of this series on the Germans. So again you get two words "Tanne(n)" and "tan." After lots of searching around, I came up with an Indo European root for this word, "dhonu/dhanu," which certainly had to do with "trees," and "perhaps" specifically "oak trees." Several sources expressed the belief that some Germanic dialects (and perhaps Latin, too) acquired the word from Celtic,^ but that is not certain, although some old Celtic dialects had similar words with a connection to "oak" trees. Whatever the case, Old High German had "tanna," which meant "fir" (tree), and seemingly also possibly "oak" (tree) in some old dialects. Perhaps the acorns and pine cones made people use the same word, at least at times, but both German and English also have related specific words for "oak" (in German it is "Eiche," pronounced similarly to "Ike-eh"). The Old High German word then produced modern German "Tann," meaning "pine forest," and it is "der Tann," indicating that grammatically the noun is masculine, and the term is often more poetic in usage rather than as an everyday word. The same Old High German "tanna," also gave modern German "Tanne," which means "fir tree," and it is "die (pronounced like "dee") Tanne," indicating that it is grammatically feminine. Exactly when the word came into English is difficult to say, but the popular song was written in the 1820s in Leipzig, Germany, and while the word "may" have been present prior to that time with some American English speakers because of German immigrants, the song undoubtedly popularized the word, especially around Christmas. When I was a kid, the song was even taught in both English and German in my elementary and junior high school.

Latin had "tannum" (which meant "oak bark," from the same Indo European source above) and the later derived verb form "tannare," which meant "to use tree bark to dye animal skins;" thus, "tan hides." This then gave Old English "tannian" (perhaps between 900 and 1000 A.D.), meaning "to tan hides," which later became "tannen" in the Middle English period, before the modern shortened version "tan," used as both a verb and a noun. The the first quarter of the 1500s brought the usage "to get browned by the sun" (the noun "tan" for the result of being browned by the sun seems to have developed from the verb in the 1700s ... mid?), and the mid 1600s brought the English expression "tan someone's hide" (that is, "beat or spank someone's backside").

^ Celtic is a branch of the Indo European family of languages, and as such, it is related to English, but further down the family tree. Celtic dialects once blanketed large parts of Europe, but in more modern times, its limited number of representatives still in existence, which include Welsh, Irish Gaelic, Scots (Scottish) Gaelic and Breton (spoken in the Brittany region of France), are fighting for survival.