Von Berlin nach Berkeley: deutsch-jüdische Identitäten

by Reinhard Bendix

German (translation)Original English

Genres: Biography

491 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Kai Weber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This double-biography, half a father's biography and half a son's autobiography, is asking questions about individualism, being an outsider, and particularly about Jewish assimilation. It's a 20th century story, it's a German story, and so it's a story of Jewish life in a surrounding of persection. But not only...
The author's father, Ludwig Bendix, who was active as a lawyer, judge and law writer in the late German empire and during the Weimar Republic times has renounced Jewish religious life and gives an example of secular assimilation to the German nation. He also fought for the democratic ideals of the Weimar constitution against its opponents. Enter the Nazis. The world knows about their crimes, so the reader knows what has to follow: The non-conformist, left-wing democrat Jew Bendix needs to be broken. Two times he's sent to concentration camps, in 1938 his family can get him not only out of prison, but also out of the country.
When looking at this part of history, at a first glance it is difficult to understand why so many Jews were clinging to Germany after the coming to power of the Nazis. This book just describes one individual case, but it makes the behaviour of assimilated German Jews perfectly understandably, because it shows how deep were their roots, how undeniably German they were and they felt like. Ludwig Bendix did have a notion of belonging to a minority, but it was a definitely a German one. And so he didn't want to leave it all to the Nazis to define what is German.
But as I said, this book is not only about the father, it's about the son, too. About his coming of age, about the influence his father had on him, especially in formative years, and about conflicts that arise in a father-son-relationship in later adult life. The book is decidedly a book about this father-son-relationship, and so the two chapters that describe the general academic career of Reinhard Bendix (a sociology professor at UC Berkeley) are not fitting in very well. But that's the ony drawback of an otherwise highly interesting account of two men's lives and struggles.

[S.B. Barnes]

Read in English.
Abstaining from a rating given that the author was my grandfather.