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Konzepte des nationaljüdischen Körpers in der frühen Weimarer Republik

Weimar Germany’s ‘National-Jewish’ intellectuals, journalists and physicians advocated a more positive attitude to the ‘Jewish body’ than did anti-semites. Sharing propositions of ‘race hygiene’, they regarded the ‘Jewish body’ as a tool for forming a new Jewish self-consciousness within German society as well as individual self-perfection. Like other contemporary trends – sport frenzy and the ‘cult of youth’ – this was not only a Zionist project, but also a programme many ‘national German Jews’ could subscribe to. However, the latter differentiated between the male and the female body, echoing traditional beliefs in a male public and a female private sphere.