City walk Scheunenviertel (Berlin)

In Auguststraße 17 was the Arbeiterfürsorgeamt der Jüdischen Organisationen Deutschlands (Workers' Welfare Office of the Jewish Organizations of Germany). It had been founded in 1918 as an aid organization for Jewish workers*, the majority of whom had come to Germany from Eastern Europe in the course of the First World War. Many of them had settled in the Scheunenviertel, but were threatened with expulsion after the end of the war. A decree issued by the Prussian Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Heine, on November 1, 1919, stipulated that "Ostjüdinnen*Ostjuden" were only to be tolerated if they had not committed any criminal offenses and had work and housing. For their placement, however, was not to be a state institution in Berlin, but the Arbeiterfürsorgeamt responsible.

Financially, the Arbeiterfürsorgeamt was supported by various Jewish organizations. The "East Jewish" workers*innenschaft was thereby by the Allgemeinen Jüdischen Arbeiterbund (also called Bund), the socialist-Zionist workers*innen organization Poale Zion and the Verband der Ostjuden represented. According to Salomon Adler-Rudel, who became executive director in 1919 and was a member of Poale Zion, the Workers' Welfare Office often took over negotiations with state authorities; especially when it came to arrests or threatened expulsions. Often, passport matters had to be clarified and, for example, papers of the numerous stateless persons had to be applied for at consulates. The threat of deportation in the absence of housing was met by the creation of a refugee home at Wiesenstraße 55, in Berlin-Gesundbrunnen, which could accommodate one thousand people. Following the demand "Melocho welo Zedokoh" ("work and not alms") of the proletarian Eastern Jews, the organization also worked to find jobs, as Ludger Heid notes. To this end, about twenty field offices were opened throughout Germany. After a merger with the Central Welfare Office of German Jews, the Auguststrasse was abandoned in 1930, according to Adler-Rudel.

The German representation of the socialist-Zionist workers' organization Poale Zion was located at Auguststraße 17. As Momme Schwarz shows, the first groups of the organization had emerged in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. With its Zionist orientation, the Poale Zion separated itself from other socialist organizations such as the Allgemeinen Jüdischen Arbeitererbund (also Bund named) . With the immigration of Jewish workers*innen from Eastern Europe to Germany, both organizations also established themselves in Berlin. Finally, the Poale Zion was founded in Germany on November 12, 1918, and its members were encouraged to join German socialist parties as well, in the spirit of class struggle. On the other hand, they did not want to cooperate with the bourgeois Zionists, as Anne-Christin Saß makes clear. The supporters of the Poale Zion were therefore mainly recruited from the "East Jewish" proletariat, as Ludger Heid notes. These Jews*Jews, often already socialized in the workers* movement in Eastern Europe, created places of cultural expression in the Scheunenviertel, ranging from amateur theater to educational and political discussion evenings. The Poale Zion also published a German-language and a Yiddish newspaper: the Jüdische Arbeiterstimme and Unzer Bavegung, as Gerben Zaagsma points out. Saß refers to the Farlag Poalei Tsion affiliated Jüdische Arbeiterbuchhandlung at Artilleriestraße 8 (now Tucholskystraße). In addition to socialist literature and party writings, children's books and Yiddish, Hebrew, German and Eastern European books were sold there. A separate workers* home called Ber Borochow at Linienstrasse 159 was maintained as a meeting place. Anne-Christin Saß notes that the Poale Zion lost many members in the course of the emigration of Jewish workers*innen to the West. Thus, the newspaper Unzer Bavegung had to be discontinued in 1924 due to the lack of Yiddish-speaking readers.

From 1919, the Workers' Home Ber Borochow was located at Linienstrasse 159. It belonged to the socialist-Zionist workers' organization Poale Zion, which had its headquarters at Auguststrasse 17. The cultural meeting place of the "East Jewish" workers' movement was described in August 1919 by Salomon Adler-Rudel, who himself was a member of the Poale Zion, as follows:

"One climbs four flights of stairs and after a few minutes forgets that one is in the middle of Berlin, memories of home revive. Familiar faces, friends you saw years ago in Krakow, Warsaw or Vienna, make the memory even stronger, Jewish workers, from the various cities of the East have come together here and created their own home. [...] As soon as one enters, one is in the midst of them, taking part in the discussions they are having, hot, passionate as everywhere: dictatorship or democracy, independent or majority. With strong inner pathos, each one defends his point of view. Outside the room, they take an active part in the socialist movement, each according to his own point of view. Here, the common goal, the independent Jewish workers' movement, brings them together. All directions of the proletarian movement in Germany are fought for here. [...] The official part of the discussion is over. The opponents from earlier are together in confidence. Involuntarily and impulsively they begin to sing. The songs of hardship, struggle and freedom, blown here from the East, like the singers, have retained their old strength and again unite the quarreling brothers." (Adler-Rudel, 1919: 2).

Ludger Heid uses event listings from the Jüdische Arbeiterstimme, the newspaper of Poale Zion, to show how diverse the offerings of the workers' home described by Adler-Rudel were. So there exist in April 1921 a tea hall and a reading room there were offered evening lectures on the theory of relativity, but also on the political situation in Germany or job creation.

In the Empire, foreigners were forbidden to join political associations. Nevertheless, there were informal political associations, such as a group of the Allgemeinen Jüdischen Arbeiterbund (Bund), which met in 1898, among other places, in the Russian Reading Hall on Linienstrasse. Unfortunately, we do not know an exact address. Later and until the beginnings of the Weimar Republic, however, it was common for Jewish workers* to meet in non-partisan associations dedicated to the dissemination of socialist Jewish writings as well as the organization of workers* in the free trade unions. The majority of the organized workers* had come as contract workers from Russia, the founding place and stronghold of the Bund. According to Anne-Christin Saß, this led to the Jewish workers* associations being dominated by supporters of the Bund. Like Poale Zion, Russian and Galician Social Democrats/Bundists* founded an official Bund branch in Berlin in June 1919. The plan, according to Saß, was to organize papers on general and Jewish issues, to form courses (Yiddish, German, arithmetic, political economy) and a library. Anne-Christin Saß states that the Central Committee of the Bund decided not to be part of the reconstruction of the Second International. Instead, it planned-as did Poale Zion-to join the newly formed Communist International, but this did not happen. Beginning in December 1919, left-wing members of the Bund published the Yiddish-language journal Der Morgnshtern, Zeitschrift für Politik und soziale Fragen. In addition to working for the Bund, several supporters also became members of USPD and SPD, and the Bund used SPD premises and printing press, for example in the Vorwärts-Haus on Lindenstraße. The membership of the Bund declined due to the emigration of Jewish workers*, so that they ceased their work in 1923/1924. Nevertheless, Jakob Stürmann writes, well-known Bundist*innen continued to live in political exile in Berlin, and the city also gained great importance for the Arbeiterbund through the transfer of the Bund's foreign archive in 1925. Saß describes how the active members of the Bund changed from workers* to leading party members, who came together in the Berlin Committee of the Bund.

Mischket Liebermann was born on November 18, 1905, in Tyczyn, a Galician village, the fifth of eight children of Rabbi Pinchus Elieeser. In 1914, the family fled to Berlin and moved to Grenadierstraße. Mishket's father established a synagogue there and, as an Orthodox rabbi, was a dedicated member of what Mishket called the "voluntary ghetto." The assimilation of his children was the rabbi's greatest concern: he forbade the speaking of the German language and demanded the practice of the Jewish faith instead. Mischket was considered a non-conformist and freedom-seeking girl. At sixteen, she ran away from home when a forced marriage was in prospect. She kept her head above water by doing simple wage work in a cigarette factory and an office, and experienced the daily struggle as a worker during the inflation. She became close to the workers' movement and the passionate devotion of the communists who fought for the interests of ordinary people. In her autobiography, she describes the assassination of Luxemburg and Liebknecht as an incisive experience. Equally formative for her was her encounter with the actor Alexander Granach, who moved in the circle of communist intellectuals, and whose first meeting in front of the Volksbühne was Mischket's ticket into the world of theater. She followed her newfound passion as a theater actress, although for her family this was tantamount to prostitution. She became acquainted with the communists of the Scheunenviertel, who adhered to a revolution like that of the Spartakusbund. After Mischket noticed the high percentage of militant women at the anti-war demonstration at the Lustgarten, and helped distribute leaflets in front of the Wertheim department store on Rosenthaler Strasse, she joined the Communist Party of Germany in 1925: "Oh yes, I was "famous" in the ghetto: Communist. Actress." (Liebermann 1977: p. 70)

The Jüdisches Volksheim opened its doors at Dragonerstraße 22 (today Max-Beer-Straße 5) on May 18, 1916. In the debate about the relationship between German and Eastern European Jews in Berlin, the pedagogue Siegfried Lehmann argued that they could learn from each other in places like the Volksheim. Eastern European Jews, who were widely considered to have a higher level of religious knowledge, could be integrated into German society. In this way, German Jews would learn "remnants of religious inwardness and the values developed in the Jewish past," Lehmann said. The Volksheim was intended not only to be charitable in the poverty of the Scheunenviertel, but to address a Jewish sense of community across lines of origin and class. In addition to open events and classes, the Volksheim also housed young people who lived with the staff*. This approach was also viewed critically. The religious philosopher Gershom Scholem, for example, attested that the activists of the Volksheim had an "embryonic knowledge" of Judaism and recommended that they study the sources of Judaism themselves instead of uncritically cultivating the supposedly Jewish values of the "Eastern Jews. Even though the use of the building was primarily for charitable purposes, it also provided spaces for workers' self-organizations to meet. Anne-Christin Saß reports that on November 9, 1918, the Perez Association hung a Bundist flag from its meeting room in revolutionary solidarity with the non-Jewish workers.

At Kleine Alexanderstraße 9/11, there were premises of the Jewish Workers-Emigrants Committee from about 1920 to 1922. Founded by former Jewish contract workers from Eastern Europe, the committee was a self-help organization of all workers' welfare organizations for Jewish workers who had fled to Germany, as Trude Maurer writes. This presumably refers primarily to the Bund, Poale Zion and the Zionist-socialist Hapoel Hazair. Unfortunately, we do not know the exact date of its founding or any details about its members. The Jüdische Rundschau published an announcement of a "Jewish music evening" on September 28, 1921, in the Blüthnersaal in Berlin-Tiergarten, at which the mixed choir of the Jüdischer Arbeiter-Klub was to give its very first performance. The proceeds of the event were earmarked for the reading room and tea and workers' kitchens, which were otherwise financed by the workers*.

Workers' cultural associations served as centers of education and sociability as well as places of political discussion even before the Weimar Republic. Named after the Eastern Jewish poet Jizchak Lejb Perez, the Arbeiterkulturverein Perez existed in several German cities. This was dedicated to the education of workers rather than to the formation of political opinion, and was intended to bring together adherents of different tendencies. Anne-Christin Saß has compiled that for the years 1917/1918 in Berlin between 700 and 1800 members are assumed, one of the meeting places was in the Dragonerstr. 22 (see station 6, Jüdisches Volksheim). However, the political fronts were so hardened that Perez members of the Bund or of Poale Zion often held separate events. However, in view of events such as "The National Demands of Jewish Parties in Russia" with Poale Zion supporter Salman Rubashov (later Salman Shazar), who grew up in Russia, it can be assumed that political debates did take place. Perez had a clubhouse that provided meeting facilities as well as a library of revolutionary and Yiddish-language books and periodicals. With the founding of separate Poale Zion and Bund groups around 1919, Perez lost its following and importance. In mid-1920, the Berlin Perez association was dissolved, partly because of the assumed USPD membership of a board member and because the police eyed the meetings of foreign workers* suspiciously, as Trude Maurer reports. The onward and return migration of Eastern European workers weakened the party-like organizations from 1923/1924 onward. Thus - depending on the information - in 1924 or 1925 a non-partisan Perez association was formed again, at the beginning, however, mainly occupied with money acquisition. In September 1927, the association opened its own clubhouse at Große Präsidentenstraße 2. In order to counteract a, according to Saß, "supposed 'danger of assimilation'", the socialist Jewish workers* were to remain connected to Jewish or Yiddish culture through lecture offers and a library with Yiddish and Russian language daily newspapers.