{"id":3116,"date":"2020-02-14T17:45:54","date_gmt":"2020-02-14T17:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/?p=3116"},"modified":"2024-06-04T18:23:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T18:23:05","slug":"german-jewish-americans-at-home-the-turn-of-the-last-century-a-late-19th-century-photo-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2020\/02\/14\/german-jewish-americans-at-home-the-turn-of-the-last-century-a-late-19th-century-photo-album\/","title":{"rendered":"German-Jewish Americans at Home at the Turn of the Last Century: A Late 19th-Century Photo Album"},"content":{"rendered":"
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German-Jewish Americans at Home at the Turn of the Last Century: A Late 19th-Century Photo Album<\/h2>\n

\u201c.<\/strong> . . the [Jewish) religion which was to be prized and saved is fast becoming a watery Unitarianism, and its adherents are allowing themselves, where permitted, to become completely assimilated. Reform Judaism which began as a compromise is ending as surrender.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Marvin Lowenthal, \u201cZionism: A Menorah Prize Essay [part 1],\u201d Menorah Journal<\/em> vol. 1:2 (1915): 118-19<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Marvin Marx Lowenthal (1890-1969), a leading Jewish writer and lecturer of the early 20th<\/sup> century, wrote his first significant publication on the merits of Zionism. In it, he rejects Reform Judaism as Zionism\u2019s opposite. What is more, he describes the Reform Movement as undermining Judaism itself! And yet, his impressive photo album, generously donated to the American Jewish Historical Society by Sid Lapidus, Board Member of the American Jewish Historical Society and of the Center for Jewish History, illustrates the depth of his German Jewish family\u2019s commitment to the Reform Movement. The album\u2019s recent conservation in the Werner J. and Gisella Levi Cahnman Preservation Laboratory by Book Conservator Lyudmyla Bua has provided us with an opportunity to revisit the question of how this important early Zionist came to terms with his German Reform Movement roots.<\/p>\n

The purple velvet-covered album tells a great deal.<\/p>\n

Manufactured and dated 1881, the album was designed for inserting photographs into openings cut out of doubled album leaves. Marvin\u2019s mother, Pauline Marx Lowenthal (ca. 1857-1931), received the album as a gift and filled it to capacity, labeling each photo for Marvin\u2019s benefit. Thirty-seven cabinet cards \u2013 the latest type of studio photo \u2013 are at the front; the back pages, with smaller openings, are filled with a similar number of old-style cartes de visite<\/em> and a few tin types. Dating from the early 1870s to the early 1900s, these images were produced up to the moment when the easy accessibility of the Kodak Box Brownie Camera transformed the public\u2019s relationship to photography.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Moritz Marx (aka Morris; Marks), b. ca. 1820, Germany; d. after 1890, Syracuse, NY. From the American Jewish Historical Society.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The photos depict family members whose services to the Reform Movement are well-documented. These include a number of first-generation German immigrants, such as a paternal great uncle, Isaac Lowenthal, who served as president of the Temple of Concord, Syracuse, NY, following the presidency of his brother (Marvin\u2019s paternal grandfather Simon, not depicted).[1]<\/a> Somewhat later, the presidency of his maternal great uncle, Moritz Marx \u2013 who had taken in Marvin\u2019s mother when she was orphaned \u2013 would extend twenty years, to 1890.[2]<\/a> Back in Bradford, PA, Marvin\u2019s birthplace, David C. Greenwald, his cousin and close family friend, served as president during construction of a new congregational home; he was still secretary of Temple Beth Zion when Marvin\u2019s \u201cZionism\u201d essay appeared.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Beyond deep roots in the Reform movement, Marvin\u2019s photo album documents close-knit relations among several families, in particular the Marxes on Marvin\u2019s mother\u2019s side and the Lowenthals on his father\u2019s. By extension, it provides glimpses not only into the still well-established Jewish community of Syracuse, NY, but also into small-town life in Bradford, PA, an oil boomtown, at a moment when its Jewish community was growing.[4]<\/a> Marvin was related by marriage to Joseph Greenewald, an oil producer who also served as mayor.[5]<\/a> Marvin\u2019s working life began at the age of 15 in the Bradford silk plant of Henry Leon, a member of Bradford\u2019s Reform community who was active in Pennsylvania\u2019s likewise fast-growing silk industry.[6]<\/a> The intimacy of relations between Marvin, his extended family, and their social worlds in Bradford and Syracuse is well-documented in the papers of Marvin Lowenthal, also held by the American Jewish Historical Society (archival collection P-140).<\/p>\n

In 1912, at 22, Marvin left Bradford for the University of Wisconsin \u2013 a university with a growing Jewish student population. Under the auspices of philosophy professor Horace Kallen (1882-1974), the university had just formed a \u201cMenorah Society\u201d on the Harvard model (which Kallen had helped create), to foster a specifically Jewish scholarly community.[7]<\/a> It was Kallen \u2013 who rejected his family\u2019s Orthodoxy just as Marvin rejected his family\u2019s Reform Judaism \u2013 who led Marvin towards Zionism as a new Jewish organizing principle. What is more, he led Marvin to the Menorah Journal<\/em> \u2013 the first forum for open intellectual discussion of Judaism \u2013 where Marvin was soon serving as both editor and regular contributor.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Lowenthal's<\/p>\n

Throughout his life, Marvin Lowenthal would remain true to the Zionism of his early essay. In extensive European travels during the inter-war years, he nevertheless revised his appreciation of the German-Jewish inheritance represented in his album. Building on his travels, in 1936 he published perhaps his most popular work, The Jews of Germany: A Story of Sixteen Centuries<\/em>. Although he concluded that the time for defining Judaism in terms of its various religious movements had passed, he describes \u201cReform Judaism [as having] rendered valiant service to German Jewry in its day. . .\u00a0 The controversies it set on foot resulted in a clearer formulation of what all Jews\u2014traditionalists, moderates, radicals, and even non-believers\u2014stood for.\u201d[9]<\/a> \u00a0His identification card for research at the Biblioth\u00e8que National\u2014dated 1930-31 and inserted loosely into the photo album his mother had filled \u2013 attests to his ongoing engagement with the album as he rethought his earlier views of his German-Jewish inheritance.<\/p>\n

In addition to the Marvin Lowenthal papers, the album complements other holdings available at the Center for Jewish History, including:<\/p>\n