Jewish wealth in 1933's Germany

[DavidFrankenberg]

Thank you for your answer wm. Did he have any explanation concerning the big gap between these estimates ? 2.2-7.1 billions ?

[wm]

Different methodologies were used, and they were created for different reasons (wealth invested, not the total), but it doesn't matter because several pages earlier he writes:

if prosperous Jewish families had emigrated en masse from Germany in 1933 and 1934, the effects on the Reichsbank's foreign currency reserves would have been disastrous. At a conservative estimate German Jewish wealth in 1933 came to at least 8 billion Reichsmarks.

According to this it was 12 percent of Germany's gross domestic product.

[DavidFrankenberg]

Wow... Jews were a bit less than 1% of the population... and detained at least 8 billions of RM ? This is huge. The nazi cliché seems to be confirmed indeed. How could such a tiny group raise such huge amount of money in a country where they were discriminated ? Something should be wrong.

[wm]

Well, I'm not that well versed in German history. Generally if you were a non-Catholic/non-Protestant in a Catholic/Protestant country you were a second class citizen. If you were a peasant, you didn't care because you were a third class citizen anyway. But if you were a middle-class person it was a problem. You couldn't become a professor, a bureaucrat, or an officer in the army.

Wikipedia in its History of the Jews in Germany shows some isolated (by hundreds of years) events during periods "of heightened political and social tensions" and nothing more.
It says for example that during the Hep-Hep riots "many Jews were killed" and it was "shortly following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the great famine of 1816-17". But it should be mentioned during that famine up to 200,000 people died, so the "social tensions" weren't a joke.

I suppose the Jews were always "businessmen". Hundreds years ago "businessman" was almost a dirty word, in the nineteenth century it suddenly ceased to be. So they were, one might say, lucky. The others - the nobles, the princes actually didn't.
Lots of nobles didn't make it through the nineteenth century because of their total economic ignorance.

[Knouterer]

Wow... Jews were a bit less than 1% of the population... and detained at least 8 billions of RM ? This is huge. The nazi cliché seems to be confirmed indeed. How could such a tiny group raised such huge amount of money in a country where they were discriminated ? Something should be wrong.

They did not "raise" it. They earned it. Against the odds. To repeat myself: The suggestion that German Jews were richer because they "stole" other people's money is both ridiculous and offensive.

[wm]

At that time (and even today) lots of people thought that "raising" equals stealing. The communists, socialists, syndicalists even many nationalists. The fascists and the national-socialists were actually more tolerant in this regard.
Lots of people held a grudge against the wealthy and better-off, but against the Jews I'm not so sure it was lots of people, or even lots of Germans.

[ColinWright]

... 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.....

! This is at odds with what I know to be true of Jews in the US.

Not 'less than half a percent', but fully fifty percent of all Jewish men in America marry gentiles.

Since US Jews represent about a third of the world's total Jewish population, obviously either my figure is wrong or yours is wrong. Even if we assumed that no non-US Jews married gentiles, and that no US Jewish women married gentiles, we'd still have an 'outbreeding' rate of 16%.

I'll also mention that the rate of marriage with gentiles among German Jews in the twenties was very high -- about 32% if I recall correctly. I may be wrong about that specific figure, but it was a substantial number.

Finally, what I recall of the various genetic studies that have been done on Jews shows that while Jews from -- say -- Poland are indeed related to Jews from Italy, in both cases they are still more closely related to their gentile neighbors. That hardly suggests interbreeding was vigorously avoided.

I'm afraid I can't accept your claim that the overall outbreeding rate is only half of one percent. Everything I know contradicts that.

[ColinWright]

Wow... Jews were a bit less than 1% of the population... and detained at least 8 billions of RM ? This is huge. The nazi cliché seems to be confirmed indeed. How could such a tiny group raised such huge amount of money in a country where they were discriminated ? Something should be wrong.

They did not "raise" it. They earned it. Against the odds. To repeat myself: The suggestion that German Jews were richer because they "stole" other people's money is both ridiculous and offensive.

I'm afraid I got bored and skipped from page one to page four. Did anyone ever actually answer the original question?

As a group,were German Jews especially wealthy? If so, how wealthy? It's a good question. I'd be curious to know the answer.

[wm]

! This is at odds with what I know to be true of Jews in the US.

It's from the beginning of time, not today. This man said it - he doesn't look like a kook, but who knows, somewhat dark in there.

Not 'less than half a percent', but fully fifty percent of all Jewish men in America marry gentiles.

Then they are basically Americans not Jews already, they have chosen themselves to be Americans by emigrating there.

Finally, what I recall of the various genetic studies that have been done on Jews shows that while Jews from -- say -- Poland are indeed related to Jews from Italy, in both cases they are still more closely related to their gentile neighbors. That hardly suggests interbreeding was vigorously avoided.

It think it should be mentioned again, the "genetical evidence" to the contrary didn't survive. People who didn't interbreed, and weren't related to their gentile neighbors didn't make it. And most of them didn't relate and didn't survive.
The first rule of survival was to have a very good gentile friend, and there were no more rules.

[DavidFrankenberg]

Wow... Jews were a bit less than 1% of the population... and detained at least 8 billions of RM ? This is huge. The nazi cliché seems to be confirmed indeed. How could such a tiny group raised such huge amount of money in a country where they were discriminated ? Something should be wrong.

They did not "raise" it. They earned it. Against the odds. To repeat myself: The suggestion that German Jews were richer because they "stole" other people's money is both ridiculous and offensive.

I'm afraid I got bored and skipped from page one to page four. Did anyone ever actually answer the original question?

As a group,were German Jews especially wealthy? If so, how wealthy? It's a good question. I'd be curious to know the answer.

I agree that the final answer is not given yet.

But, so far, according to wm citing Adam Tooze, it is said that the jewish wealth in Germany was at least 8 billions of Reichsmark.
It is a low estimate. I wd be happy to find the high estimate and the medium. I wd be happy to know how these estimates have been established too.
I guess i wd have to read Adam Tooze The wages of destruction.

At a conservative estimate German Jewish wealth in 1933 came to at least 8 billion Reichsmarks. (...) According to a detailed account compiled by the Reichsbank, the hard currency losses due to emigration between January 1933 and June 1935 came to a total of 132 million Reichsmarks, of which Jewish emigrants accounted for 124.8 million Reichsmarks. Transfers had peaked in October 1933 at over 11 million Reichsmarks, but throughout the first half of 1934 they ran at around 6 million Reichsmarks per month.

Tooze writes that the loss of money implied by the jewish emigration was so heavy that it led the nazi gvt to slow down drastically this jewish emigration. This is how Hitler, who wanted Jews to leave the country, didnt want it anymore. They were so rich, that Hitler could not afford to let them go with their wealth.

But, what i find very strange is that the answer of the original question is so hard to find. If 8 billions is a low estimate, what is the high estimate ? 16 billions ? This is so huge.

[wm]

Please, if 505,000 Jewish Germans owned 8 billion ℛℳ, and 65.5 million German Germans owned the rest (53 billion ℛℳ) it follows the statistical Jewish German was worth 15,800, and the statistical German German was worth 815 - almost 20 times less.

And it's not a low or a high estimate, it's the only existing.

[DavidFrankenberg]

Please, if 505,000 Jewish Germans owned 8 billion ℛℳ, and 65.5 million German Germans owned the rest (53 billion ℛℳ) it follows the statistical Jewish German was worth 15,800, and the statistical German German was worth 815 - almost 20 times less.

So, the Jews were at least more than 20 times richer than Germans in 1933. Interesting.

And it's not a low or a high estimate, it's the only existing.

Tooze talks about a "conservative estimate".

[wm]

And he gives no source for it. It probably means that some guy with a pen and paper, maybe even he himself, did a rough estimation.
The estimate is most likely an aggregate of guesses how much major Jewish enterprises were worth, plus a guess how much the small stuff was worth. It's all educated guesses.
I'm sure that the German IRS (and anybody else) didn't collect such data so it doesn't exist.
This is why the German Jews had to declare their assets (but not their value as far as I know) themselves five years later.
And this is probably why Tooze merely writes the declared assets were worth several billion RM. It's all guesses.

[DavidFrankenberg]

Yes, he doesnt give a source for this claim...
His book is known to be very good, but in this particular matter it's not.

But, we should be able to estimate this with the records of aryanization and the flow of money abroad.
Maybe the german state doesnt want to make public the amount of RMs "stolen" during these years 1933- 1939 ? By feart of having to restitute it to the today's Jews ?
Maybe the Jews doesnt want to make public the amount of RMs they had "stolen" to the Germans prior 1933 ? By fear of feeding antisemitism ?
Maybe because the 2 actors of this tragedy agree tacitly not to publish anything about it ?

So bad for history !

[ColinWright]

Please, if 505,000 Jewish Germans owned 8 billion ℛℳ, and 65.5 million German Germans owned the rest (53 billion ℛℳ) it follows the statistical Jewish German was worth 15,800, and the statistical German German was worth 815 - almost 20 times less.

And it's not a low or a high estimate, it's the only existing.

This is a remarkable enough figure that one would want some verification.

Without wishing to go off onto tangents, assertions are often made that on examination turn out to be indefensible or spurious. There's the notion that the Belgians killed ten million Africans in the Congo propagated in King Leopold's Ghost, the infamous 'battle' of Prokhochovka or whatever it was, and claims that members of some tribe of Mexican Indians can run one hundred and fifty miles in a day.

So the average German Jew was twenty times as rich as the average German gentile? My -- but I'm not taking that one on faith.