Max Lazar

My dissertation, tentatively entitled "Jerusalem on the Main," is a local study of Jewish integration in Frankfurt am Main between 1914 and 1938. Until now, there has been a historical consensus that the First World War marked a negative turning point of what, until then, had been an upward arc of Jewish integration in Germany that had begun in the late eighteenth century. I challenge this master narrative of German-Jewish history by arguing that the Jews of Frankfurt continued to enjoy a high level of integration into the political, educational, cultural, and social life of their surrounding society until the Nazi Party's seizure of power in 1933. Furthermore, I use examinations of local literature, popular culture, and the history of Jewish integration in Germany during the years preceding the Holocaust.