Emigration from the Weimar Republic (1918-1932)
The German defeat in World War I and the subsequent years of political crisis and economic hardships prompted a considerable emigration from the short-lived German democracy (1918—1932).
This immigration of more than 420,000 Germans to the United States included an estimated number of more than 7,000 Jews (Niederland 1998, 172). Jewish immigrants did not differ in essence from the broader German immigration to the United States in both motivations and figures (increasing steadily before 1924 and decreasing until 1933). Though this immigration included some ideologically driven exiles (e.g., a notable group of left-wing intellectuals disillusioned by the crushed Socialist revolutions in Germany), most left for America out of different motivations. These were, for the most part, young single men of the World War I generation. Most of them were academics, professionals, or merchants, though initially many had to practice manual labor to make ends meet. A German Jewish periodical (Israelitisches Familienblatt 20.4.1932, 2) claimed in those years that German Jewish emigrants formed their own organizations in response to rising antisemitism in the German immigrants’ organizations in the United States and their own alienation toward the Eastern European Jews now dominant in the Jewish American street.Like other potential emigrants to the United States, Central European Jews were influenced by the growing restrictions in American immigration policy prior to the Great Depression. These restrictions were fateful to the history of Central European Jewish emigration: The Immigration Act of 1917 initiated the principle of blocking applications of “persons who were likely to become public charges” (LPC Clause). The 1921 Emergency Immigration Restriction Act (Johnson Act) originated the quota system (i.e., the principle of a fixed yearly quota of immigrants from any given country respectively; 25,000 from Germany, which was still much higher than Eastern European quotas). The Immigration Act of 1924 (National Origins Act) required that emigrants apply for a visa in their native countries, which would then be accepted or rejected according to the abovementioned categories. And finally, during the Great Depression, came a stricter interpretation of the LPC Clause and the Hoover Directive of September 13, 1930, which demanded exacting proofs from applicants on these qualifications, thus drastically limiting the numbers of immigrants even without a cut in the quota itself. This rigorous immigration policy proved tragic for European Jews seeking to flee Nazi persecution.