Elias on Anti-Semitism: Zionism or Sociology

Abstract

This paper proposes to revisit the intellectual trajectory of Norbert Elias on the basis of an article published by the sociologist in a local Jewish newspaper in 1929 and entitled “On the Sociology of German Anti-Semitism.” It argues that in this seemingly circumstantial text, Elias asserts his decision to favor sociology, which had come to replace and envelop his engagement in the Zionist youth movement Blau-Weiss. This is evident in the article's somewhat ambiguous final sentence, where Elias presents German Jews with an alternative: collective emigration to Palestine or a lucid vision drawn from a sociological diagnosis of the situation. The paper begins by situating Elias's text within the range of analyses of anti-Semitism in 1920s Germany, comparing its approach to Zionism with that of Franz Oppenheimer. It then contextualizes its relationship to the sociology of Karl Mannheim: Elias was Mannheim's assistant in Frankfurt and his approach contrasted with the perspective developed in the same time and place by the Frankfurt school. Finally, the paper shows that Elias's sociological distantiation would imperceptibly take the place of the political distantiation that had centered on Zionism—a scientific movement that implied erasing from his memory the political Zionism he had long supported. A new French translation of Elias's 1929 text, also by Danny Trom, is included as an appendix.