Walther Rathenau
Weimar's Fallen Statesman
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
This deeply informed biography of Walther Rathenau (1867–1922) tells of a man who—both thoroughly German and unabashedly Jewish—rose to leadership in the German War-Ministry Department during the First World War, and later to the exalted position of foreign minister in the early days of the Weimar Republic. His achievement was unprecedented—no Jew in Germany had ever attained such high political rank. But Rathenau’s success was marked by tragedy: within months he was assassinated by right-wing extremists seeking to destroy the newly formed Republic.
Drawing on Rathenau’s papers and on a depth of knowledge of both modern German and German-Jewish history, Shulamit Volkov creates a finely drawn portrait of this complex man who struggled with his Jewish identityyet treasured his ̶otherness.” Volkov also places Rathenau in the dual context of Imperial and Weimar Germany and of Berlin’s financial and intellectual elite. Above all, she illuminates the complex social and psychological milieu of German Jewry in the period before Hitler’s rise to power.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Imagine that Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, were also an influential public philosopher who published numerous books on society and political affairs and you will begin to get a sense of Walther Rathenau (1867 1922). The longtime head of AEG, the German counterpart to GE, he was briefly Germany's foreign minister before being murdered by fascist anti-Semites. In this entry in Yale's Jewish Lives series, historian Volkov, professor emerita at Tel Aviv University, is, appropriately, particularly interesting on Rathenau's Jewishness. He declared his identity outright in Germany's increasingly hostile atmosphere and, unlike many ambitious German Jews, refused to convert. Yet he internalized some of the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes, writing of the "medieval qualities" of the Jewish proletariat. Volkov also examines the nuances and contradictions of Rathenau's writings. Here was one of Germany's leading industrialists yet he wrote critically of the "mechanization" of modern life. Volkov captures especially well the socially awkward and often lonely man who never married and may have been gay (an issue she judiciously never resolves). Volkov's well-researched and written book has a few of the gaps and flaws of a short biography, but it has far more strengths as a fascinating introduction to an important, multifaceted early 20th-century figure.
