Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

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DavidFrankenberg
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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#16

Post by DavidFrankenberg » 13 Nov 2017, 01:40

Here http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ger ... story-tour it is said :
The anti-Semitism became more pronounced in the aftermath of World War I in Weimar Germany. For the most part, however, the prosperity and legal equality of the Jews continued unabated until Hitler’s rise to power in 1933
Once again, it seems that the Jews while benefiting equality were getting richer and richer until... 1933. The question is how was it possible if they were discriminated and what was the amount of their wealth when Hitler came to power ?

It is surprising that nearly 100 years later we have no figure about that wealth. Everybody knows about the aryanization of jewish goods. Germans should have kept the records in the archives, isnt it ?

Here http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Micro ... mc_id=wiki The International School for Holocaust Studies writes
Before the Nazis rose to power in January 1933, Jews owned 100,000 businesses in Germany, including stores, factories, publishing houses, newspapers, and private professional practices. (...) Of the 50,000 Jewish-owned stores that existed in 1933, only 9,000 remained in 1938 (...) After the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, the Nazis legalized forced Aryanization—allowing the forcible confiscation of Jewish property. The German Jewish community had to pay a fine of one billion reichsmarks for the damage inflicted upon them during the pogrom. Jewish businesses not yet sold were put under government trusteeship, and Jews were forced to register all their property with the Nazis. Their money was put into blocked accounts from which they could only draw small amounts each month. Jews who emigrated had to leave most of their valuables behind. Those Jews deported
to Theresienstadt had to sign away their property. Eventually, all Jewish money and property was confiscated by the Nazis and used to finance the
deportation of the Jews.
In the german state's archives, there must be traces till today, isnt it ? It should be easy to demythify this theme of the nazi propaganda.

Here viewtopic.php?f=55&t=168991&p=1719237, BDV says
am not aware of a systematic study of the economic effects, but we can start with the size of the Kristallnacht fine (1 billion RM, 10% of jewsh wealth)
, so german jewish wealth was 10 billions of RM in 1938. How accurate is this ?

Here again http://alphahistory.com/holocaust/jewis ... -seizures/ we find this :
In 1938 the Nazi government moved to hasten and complete the ‘Aryanisation of Jewish property’. In April a decree issued by Nazi leader Hermann Goering ordered Jews to compile and submit details of all private property valued at in excess of 5,000 Reichsmarks. Across Germany, Jews were required to fill out a comprehensive inventory and lodge it with the government before the end of June. Some did so with indifference – like the conductor Victor Klemperer, who said that “We have become so used to living in this condition of lost rights… that it hardly disturbs us any more”. These inventories would be used to compile a ‘register of Jewish wealth’. Similar requirements were enacted in Nazified Austria and, later, in occupied Europe.
So, what gives this "register of jewish wealth" ?
Further amendments in 1938 required emigrating Jews to leave most of their cash in a Gestapo-controlled bank. The Reichsfluchtsteuer generated enormous amounts for the Nazi regime. In its first year of operation (1932) it had raised less than one million Reichsmarks of government revenue – but by 1938 this amount had skyrocketed to more than 342 million Reichsmarks.
The most significant pre-war confiscation of Jewish property followed the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938. The government held Jews responsible for this violence and ‘fined’ the Jewish population a total of one billion Reichsmarks. This amount was to be paid with cash or through the requisitioning of other portable wealth, such as gold, gemstones and jewellery. On November 12th, Hermann Goering passed the Decree Excluding Jews from German Economic Life, which effectively banned Jews from conducting any form of retail business. Thousands of Jewish shops and stores, which had held out against earlier pressures, were now obliged to close.
So by the end of 1938, the whole jewish wealth was taken by the german gvt. How much was it ?

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Gorque
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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#17

Post by Gorque » 13 Nov 2017, 02:26

DavidFrankenberg wrote:Here https://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/artic ... d=10007689 it is said :
Jews were only later emancipated in Greece (1830), Great Britain (1858), Italy (1870), Germany (1871), and Norway (1891). Although civil equality for Jews was thus guaranteed by law, European Jewry remained beset by antisemitism and social discrimination.
If they are right, how could they be so rich while being discriminated ?
They keep on writing :
Walter Rathenau, one of the most prominent Jewish political figures of the Weimar Republic, is assassinated by right-wing radicals. Rathenau, the president of the General Electric Corporation of Germany (AEG) since 1915, became foreign minister of the Weimar Republic in 1922. As a Jew, he was hated by right-wing groups particularly for his policy of fulfilling the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and his normalization of relations with the Soviet Union. His murder is indicative of the right-wing antisemitic campaign blaming Jews for Germany's defeat in World War I.
If Germany was so antisemitic, how the president of AEG (one of the biggest industrial group) and foreign minister of the republic could have been jewish ?
IMHO, You are using an overly broad paint brush in attributing the characteristics of a minority as being representative of all. For me, the jury is still out as to what you are angling for.


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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#18

Post by GregSingh » 13 Nov 2017, 03:44

We don't need to invent a wheel here. Several publications already have some answers.
Here is a start:
Sidney Zabludoff, “And It All But Disappeared: The Nazi Seizure of Jewish Assets,” World Jewish Congress Policy Forum, No. 13, 1998
Helen Junz, “Report on the Pre-War Position of the Jewish Population in Nazi Occupied Countries, Germany and Austria,” Volcker Report, Appendix S, December 1999.

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wm
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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#19

Post by wm » 13 Nov 2017, 04:52

DavidFrankenberg wrote:So by the end of 1938, the whole jewish wealth was taken by the german gvt. How much was it ?
According to an estimation made by the Reichsbank in 1938 the entire stock of Jewish wealth invested in Germany was between 2.2 and 5.15 billion Reichsmarks. According to the Finance Ministry 7.1 billion.
I suppose it's up to 50 billion dollars in today's money.

DavidFrankenberg
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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#20

Post by DavidFrankenberg » 13 Nov 2017, 12:42

GregSingh wrote:We don't need to invent a wheel here. Several publications already have some answers.
Here is a start:
Sidney Zabludoff, “And It All But Disappeared: The Nazi Seizure of Jewish Assets,” World Jewish Congress Policy Forum, No. 13, 1998
Helen Junz, “Report on the Pre-War Position of the Jewish Population in Nazi Occupied Countries, Germany and Austria,” Volcker Report, Appendix S, December 1999.
I wd be happy to know the figures given by these studies.
wm wrote:
DavidFrankenberg wrote:So by the end of 1938, the whole jewish wealth was taken by the german gvt. How much was it ?
According to an estimation made by the Reichsbank in 1938 the entire stock of Jewish wealth invested in Germany was between 2.2 and 5.15 billion Reichsmarks. According to the Finance Ministry 7.1 billion.
I suppose it's up to 50 billion dollars in today's money.
I found that data today : 12 billions of RM (=120 billions today) "Conservatively, their money financed at least 30 per cent of the German war effort". http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ffort.html

But i dont know if this study is considering the whole european jewish wealth or only the german... it seems it deals with european jewish wealth :
The report also details the ransacking of 72,000 apartments in the eastern territories – Poland and the Baltic states –
What was the part of the german jews in those 12 billions ?

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wm
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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#21

Post by wm » 13 Nov 2017, 13:28

Consider this:
A Jewish factory producing tanks, and a Jewish factory producing toilet paper.
The Nazis confiscate both. New owners produce tanks and toilet paper as earlier. Pay taxes and wages.
And now tell me, what has Germany gained thanks to the confiscation?
Nothing.
Both factories were a part of the German economy earlier, and they are part of the German economy now. Nothing has changed.

The new German owners are rich now, the old Jewish owners are poor. Germany is as was before.

Even more, the Jewish owner of the tank factory knew lots about making tanks, the German owner knows much less. So the factory produces less and worse tanks now.
The Jewish toilet paper was exported across Europe thanks to personal contacts of the Jewish owner earning much needed foreign currencies for Germany.
The German owner exports nothing - the old wholesale clients don't buy from robbers.

So actually the confiscation resulted in a net loss for Germany.
By the end of the year, with regulations concerning the sale of real estate firmly in place, virtually all Jewish wealth remaining within the Reich was accounted for and the Reich's exchequer was several billion Reichsmarks to the good. To avoid confusion, it is worth stressing that this was a purely financial transfer.
These acts of persecution in no way improved the overall position of the German economy.
Of course, some gains in efficiency were to be expected from closing down the many small and inefficient craft businesses belonging to Jews. But too much should not be made of this rationalization effect. Given the small scale of such businesses, the amount of labour and other resources released by these means cannot have been more than trivial.
Nor should we exaggerate the fiscal benefits reaped by the Reich. According to the records of the Finance Ministry, revenue from the two main taxes levied on the Jews, the wealth tax and the flight tax, in the 1938-9 fiscal year came to 498.5 million and 342.6 million Reichsmarks respectively.
This was just 5 per cent of total Reich revenue from taxes and customs. In 1939 the percentage was less.

The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze
So Germany got about 840 million Reichsmarks, in the grand scheme of things, a trivial amount, basically nothing.

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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#22

Post by Br. James » 13 Nov 2017, 18:55

I think it is a mistake to look for 'reasonable' answers when considering anti-Semitism and it's effects. Whether or not the German government and it's economy benefited much, little or not at all as a result of the disenfranchisement and eventual murder of Jews during the Third Reich era completely misses the point, just as much as Hitler's identification of a supposed 'link' between Jews as a social group and Communism was nothing more than a focused effort to channel historic yet unjustified antagonism against members of a religious group as a means of justification after the fact. The one major area of political position unique to the NSDAP as analysed against all of the numerous right-wing parties active during the years of the Weimar Republic was it's virulent focus upon specifically blaming the Jews for all the ills of post-WWI Germany, as it played upon emotional, racist and xenophobic traditions long familiar to the German and Austrian public.

Br. James

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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#23

Post by wm » 14 Nov 2017, 23:12

To be correct Hitler linked the Jews not only with communists but with socialists, liberals, and all the non-right-wing press. And the link was real. Today the American Jews overwhelmingly support the Democrats, and they were doing that in Germany too.
He wasn't especially afraid of communists, and the Nazis and the German communists cooperated sometimes, especially during strikes.

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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#24

Post by Gorque » 15 Nov 2017, 04:24

Hi wm:

I agree with your statement of cooperation between the NSDAP and the KDP as they cooperated in bringing about the elections of November '32 by causing massive disorder in the Reichstag after the July '32 elections. If one is looking to the past for a portent to the future, a word to the wise, best to consider the chances of other possibilities as a result of chaos fomented.

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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#25

Post by Futurist » 15 Nov 2017, 07:07

Knouterer wrote:
DavidFrankenberg wrote:Hi,

nazis pretended that the Jews were parasites sucking the wealth of the German people. That's why they wanted to get them out of the country and to keep their wealth within the country.

But how accurate was the assertion that assumes the Jews stole the germans' money ?
How rich were the german jews in 1933 ?
That question has a clear and very unpleasant antisemitic undertone. If in fact Jews were on average wealthier than other Germans, in spite of the discrimination they had suffered under for centuries - higher taxation, universities and many professions/trades closed to them, etc. etc. - it must have been because they were smarter and thriftier and worked harder.

The suggestion that German Jews were richer - which remains to be proven, there were many poor Jews - because they "stole" other people's money is both ridiculous and offensive.
Completely agreed with this. As you said, the very likely explanation for Jewish disproportionate success relative to their numbers is their higher average IQs (in comparison to Gentiles).

Indeed, anti-Semites appear to have assumed that Jews and Gentiles had equal cognitive abilities on average whereas the reality might have very well been quite different.

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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#26

Post by Futurist » 15 Nov 2017, 07:12

DavidFrankenberg wrote:Hi,

nazis pretended that the Jews were parasites sucking the wealth of the German people. That's why they wanted to get them out of the country and to keep their wealth within the country.

But how accurate was the assertion that assumes the Jews stole the germans' money ?
How rich were the german jews in 1933 ?
This article might be of some interest to you:

https://www.uni-trier.de/fileadmin/fb4/ ... June10.pdf

"In the early twentieth century, a dense corporate network was created among the
large German corporations ("Germany Inc."). About 16% of the members of this
corporate network were of Jewish background. At the center of the network (big
linkers) about 25% were Jewish. The percentage of Jews in the general population
was less than 1% in 1914."

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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#27

Post by Knouterer » 15 Nov 2017, 09:51

Futurist wrote:
Knouterer wrote:
DavidFrankenberg wrote:Hi,

nazis pretended that the Jews were parasites sucking the wealth of the German people. That's why they wanted to get them out of the country and to keep their wealth within the country.

But how accurate was the assertion that assumes the Jews stole the germans' money ?
How rich were the german jews in 1933 ?
That question has a clear and very unpleasant antisemitic undertone. If in fact Jews were on average wealthier than other Germans, in spite of the discrimination they had suffered under for centuries - higher taxation, universities and many professions/trades closed to them, etc. etc. - it must have been because they were smarter and thriftier and worked harder.

The suggestion that German Jews were richer - which remains to be proven, there were many poor Jews - because they "stole" other people's money is both ridiculous and offensive.
Completely agreed with this. As you said, the very likely explanation for Jewish disproportionate success relative to their numbers is their higher average IQs (in comparison to Gentiles).

Indeed, anti-Semites appear to have assumed that Jews and Gentiles had equal cognitive abilities on average whereas the reality might have very well been quite different.
I don't know if Jews had or have higher IQs, I have no reason to think so. In any case, a higher IQ is not at all a guarantee of success in business.

My point is rather that with the cards heavily stacked against them, Jews in past centuries had to work harder and be more careful than Gentiles just to survive.

I you have to pay taxes that are twice or three times as high as those of your Gentile competitors, who also exclude you from their guilds, fraternities, clubs and other networks, you just can't afford to be lazy or make mistakes in business.
Last edited by Knouterer on 15 Nov 2017, 09:53, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#28

Post by wm » 15 Nov 2017, 11:10

The average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is 107 to 115, well above the human average of 100. They exhibit a distinctive genetic signature. Additionally the rate of Jewish "outbreeding" - procreating with non-Jews - is only half a percent - the lowest rate of any population in the world today.

Windolf in his "The German-Jewish Economic Elite" advanced three hypotheses for its existence, all untestable for lack of data:
- higher educational culture of Jewish families,
- extensive family relations of Jews,
- desire to achieve economic success at any price motivated by regarding economic success as a sign of being chosen.

It's not IQ because it was shown IQ and success are poorly correlated. But both IQ and success depend on good family environment and its wealth.

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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#29

Post by shamirnewell » 15 Nov 2017, 14:43

wm wrote:The average IQ of Ashkenazi Jews is 107 to 115, well above the human average of 100. They exhibit a distinctive genetic signature. Additionally the rate of Jewish "outbreeding" - procreating with non-Jews - is only half a percent - the lowest rate of any population in the world today.

Windolf in his "The German-Jewish Economic Elite" advanced three hypotheses for its existence, all untestable for lack of data:
- higher educational culture of Jewish families,
- extensive family relations of Jews,
- desire to achieve economic success at any price motivated by regarding economic success as a sign of being chosen.

It's not IQ because it was shown IQ and success are poorly correlated. But both IQ and success depend on good family environment and its wealth.
As a Jew I would share something I noticed growing up. My home had an extensive library. Reference books on language and usage, commercial law,agriculture, building trades. Books on history, philosophy, religion. Mine was a typical Jewish house even if my father worked as a farmer and commercial builder. We had several sets of encyclopedias. German, yiddish, Hebrew English Spanish language books. We also got several professional farming and building publications a month. Then several world news magazines and finance magazines. Then general interest National Geographic southern living and home building journals.

When I visited other Jewish homes they also had a library of books. Usually centered around the family occupation.
When I visited the many more numerous Gentile homes. Books were quite limited. Usually the Bible, the telephone book, maybe a English dictionary, rarely a thesaurus, and even rarer encyclopedias. Books learning and hard work were the rule and guide by which I grew up. I think for my few Jewish friends it was the same. My gentile friends spent more time watching tv.

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Re: Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

#30

Post by Annelie » 15 Nov 2017, 14:52

[--) post removed.
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