The Baron: Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish Nineteenth Century 9781503632288

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THE BA RON

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STANFORD STUDIES IN JEWISH HISTORY AND CULTURE Edited by David Biale and Sarah Abrevaya Stein

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TH E BA RON MAURICE DE HIRSCH AND THE JEWISH NINETEENTH CENTURY

Matthias B. Lehmann

STANFORD UNIVERSIT Y PRESS Stanford, California

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Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2022 by Matthias B. Lehmann. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-­free, archival-­quality paper Names: Lehmann, Matthias B., 1970- author. Title: The Baron : Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish nineteenth century / Matthias B. Lehmann. Other titles: Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2022] | Series: Stanford studies in Jewish history and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022004026 (print) | LCCN 2022004027 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503630307 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503632288 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Hirsch, Maurice de, baron, 1831-1896. | Jewish Colonization Association— Biography. | Jewish capitalists and financiers—Biography. | Jewish philanthropists—Biography. | Jews—Germany—Biography. Classification: LCC DS134.42.H57 L45 2022 (print) | LCC DS134.42.H57 (ebook) | DDC 943/.0049240092 [B]—dc23/eng/20220429 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022004026 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022004027 Typeset by Elliott Beard in 11/15 Adobe Garamond Pro Cover photo: Baron Moritz Hirsch, between 1890 and 1896, Library of Congress. Cover design: Rob Ehle

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TO MIRIAM

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CONTENTS

A Note on Currencies and Place-­Names  ix Map of Europe in 1878  xi Map of Argentina in 1914  xii Introduction 1 PA RT I A EUROPEA N FA MILY 1  From Munich to Brussels  19 2  The New Aristocracy  37 3  A Jewish Family  61 PA RT 2 OTTOM A N R A ILWAYS 4  “A Pharaonic Plan”  89 5  Building the Ottoman Railroad  111 6  Imperialism, Railroads, Antisemitism  133 PA RT 3 THE POLITICS OF PHIL A NTHROPY 7  Philanthropy in the Ottoman Empire  151 8  Civilizing Missions in Eastern Europe  173 9  The Russian Exodus  195

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Contents

PA RT 4 A RGENTINA 10  The Discovery of Argentina  223 11  The Year of Albert Goldsmid  247 12  Seeing like a Philanthropist  263 Conclusion 283 Acknowledgments 293 Notes 295 Index 363

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A NOTE ON CURRENCIES AND PLACE-­N AMES

Throughout the book, I cite monetary amounts in the currency in which they appear in the sources. The most widely used currency across Europe in the nineteenth century was the French franc, and most amounts here will be given in francs. In 1880, the equivalent value of 1,000 francs in other major currencies was as follows: Pound sterling: 40 Ottoman lira: 43 Austrian gulden (florins): 4671 It is notoriously difficult to translate these numbers into today’s currency. The relative price of goods, services, and labor was different from what it is now. Adjusted for inflation, 100 pounds sterling in 1875 would be about 12,109 pounds today, and the sum with which Baron Hirsch endowed the Jewish Colonization Association in the early 1890s (2 million pounds, subsequently topped off by another 7.2 million pounds), would be something like 1.19 billion pounds today.2

ix

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A Note on Currencies and Place-­N ames

PL ACE- ­N AMES

For the sake of consistency, I usually cite place-­names in the form that they appeared in European-­language sources at the time—­for example, Constantinople rather than Istanbul in modern Turkish, and Philippopolis rather than Plovdiv in Bulgarian. Common place-­names in the book and their modern equivalent include the following: Adrianople Edirne Bottuschan Botoșani Brünn Brno Constantinople Istanbul Czernowitz Chernivtsi Dedeagatch Alexandroupoli Galatz Galați Lemberg Lviv, Lwów Philippopolis Plovdiv Rustchuk Ruse Salonika Thessaloniki Smyrna Izmir Uskub Skopje All translations, unless otherwise noted, are mine.

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Munich

Rome

St. Johann

Ad ri at ic Se a

BosniaHerzegovina

tern Eas elia Rum

Rustchuk

K. OF GREECE

O T T O M A N

Constantinople

BL ACK SE A

Smyrna

100 mi 100 km

E I R E M P

Varna

Adrianople Dedeagatch

Philippopolis

0

0

R U S S I A N E M P I R E

P. O F ROMANIA

Bulgaria

Salonika

Uskub MONTENEGRO

Mitrovica

P. O F SERBIA

Y

Bukovina

Czernowitz

Lemberg

Galicia

Brody

R G A N H U

Budapest

Cracow

Banjaluka

A T R I A U S

Vienna

Eichhorn

MAP 0.1. Borders in Europe after the Treaty of Berlin in 1878.

SE A

Sardinia

Berlin

F

Corsica

SWITZ.

LUX.

GERMAN EMPIRE

.O LY

MEDITERRAN E AN

REPUBLIC OF FRANCE

Paris

K. OF BELGIUM

Brussels

K. OF THE NETHERLANDS

K A IT

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BOLIVIA

h a c o

O CE AN

BRAZIL

R

A G

C

PA

r

a

n

AY

PACIFIC

U

G

EL CHACO

SANTIAGO Dora

S A N TA FE

CORRIENTES

Montefiore

Córdoba

Moisés Ville

CÓRDOBA S. LUIS

Rosario

BRAZIL

Clara ENTRE RÍOS

Lucienville

URUGUAY Buenos Aires

MENDOZA

Montevideo

Mauricio Barón Hirsch

BUENOS AIRES

N

PA M PA

A

CHI

LE

A R G E N T I N A

Narcisse Leven

Major city JCA colonies before 1896 JCA colonies before 1914

LA AT

N

T

IC

O 0 0

C

E

100 mi 100 km

MAP 0.2. Jewish Colonization Association colonies in Argentina according to Altas des colonies et domaines de la Jewish Colonization Association en République Argentine et au Brésil (Paris: Jewish Colonization Association, 1914).

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INTRODUCTION

In 1891, two years after publishing Andrew Carnegie’s famous essay on the “gospel of wealth”—­a seminal text in the history of American philanthropy—­the North American Review asked the Jewish banker and railroad entrepreneur Baron Maurice de Hirsch (1831–­1896) for his view on the social obligations that came with great riches.1 Hirsch—­a native of Munich, resident of Paris, citizen of Austria, and the owner of one of the largest fortunes in Europe—­agreed with Carnegie that “surplus wealth should be considered as a sacred trust,”2 to be employed for the benefit of society, and he shared Carnegie’s disdain for traditional, “indiscriminate” charity. It was not a coincidence that the Review turned to Baron Hirsch, who had just announced the creation of what was, at the time, the largest charitable organization in the world, the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA).3 Unlike Carnegie, who spoke of the creation of parks, free libraries, and public collections of art, Hirsch considered it a luxury to see “the purposes of philanthropy . . . fulfilled in supplying the necessity of aesthetic pleasures.”4 What was at stake, in Hirsch’s view, was nothing less than the future, perhaps the very survival, of the Jews. That is not to say that Carnegie’s approach to philanthropy was apolitical: his 1889 essay on wealth made it clear that he saw philanthropy as an answer to the “social question,” 1

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­ arding off the threat of anarchism and socialism.5 Baron Hirsch, in turn, w saw philanthropy as an answer to the “Jewish question,” warding off the threat of antisemitism, the “socialism of fools,”6 as it was called by some.

Sitting down at the studio of Abdullah Frères in Constantinople in 1888, Baron Maurice de Hirsch had his photograph taken for a carte de visite, an albumen print photograph mounted on cardboard backing and a popular memento and collectible in the late nineteenth century.7 In the photograph, Hirsch appears with his signature mustache, dressed in ostensibly Ottoman garbs, wearing a white turban, a flowing caftan, and baggy sirwal (şalvar) pants.8 He lounges on a divan, one leg folded underneath him, holding the end of a hookah, and a small dog lies at his feet. The Orientalist tableau is completed by the conventional props: a cup of coffee set before him on an octagonal, mother-­of-­pearl and ebony-­inlaid table; a richly patterned rug; and a prayer niche in the background. “Türkenhirsch,” the “Turkish Hirsch,” was how contemporaries referred to the baron, a businessman who built the railroad linking the Ottoman cities of Constantinople and Salonika to the European railway network.9 By the time Hirsch had his photo taken, the first direct trains were traveling the route between Constantinople and Paris, via Vienna. From Paris, one could continue on to Calais and London, as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot would do years later, sporting a mustache not unlike that of Baron Hirsch’s. Abdullah Frères, with locations in Constantinople and Cairo, was among the leading photographic studios in the Ottoman Empire. Run by an Armenian family, it fell in and out of favor with the sultan, serving a high-­powered clientele of Ottoman elites as well as foreign tourists passing through town. Abdullah Frères contributed most of the over eighteen hundred photographs commissioned by Abdülhamid II and included in the fifty-­one large albums that the sultan dispatched to the World Colombian Fair in Chicago in 1893, showcasing the empire’s modernization. The photographs display schools, harbors, railway stations, hospitals, government buildings, and many an Ottoman official sporting European-­style uniforms and the typical headgear of the period, the fez. High school students from around the empire appear in pairs, always in their modern uniforms and fezzes, representing the imperial ideology of Osmanlılık (Ottomanism), of modernity and national unity.10

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FIGURE 0.1. Baron Hirsch in 1888. Abdullah Frères, Constantinople, albumen print. Archives Générales du Royaume, Brussels, Séquestre Balser 304.

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The Orientalist style of Abdullah Frères’ carte de visite of Baron Hirsch thus seems oddly anachronistic, and even more incongruous when contrasted with the photographs taken by the same studio of other foreign visitors like Mark Twain or “Bertie,” Prince of Wales, who appear in their portraits in Western clothes and no “exotic” accoutrements.11 But as a memento of Hirsch’s final visit to Constantinople before selling his railroad company to a consortium led by Deutsche Bank the following year, the photograph is an apt symbol of the fact that, to his contemporaries, Baron Hirsch would forever remain the “Türkenhirsch,” his name associated with the Ottoman railroads. The portrait’s blatant Orientalism also points to the broader political context of Hirsch’s business career. He was a railroad entrepreneur in the age of imperialism, when Austrian politicians and publicists fantasized about how the railway would open up the Ottoman Balkans as a semicolonized market for central European industry and trade, creating a new link—­through the port of Salonika and the newly opened Suez Canal to India—­that would turn Franz Joseph’s empire into a major player in an increasingly globalized world. Yet as the railroad got entangled in great-­power rivalries and was hobbled by successive crises, from the Vienna stock market crash in 1873 to the bankruptcy of the Ottoman government in 1875 and the disastrous Russo-­Ottoman War in 1877–­1878, Austrian and German imperialists quickly turned Baron Hirsch into a lightning rod for their frustrated ambitions. For the antisemitic press, Hirsch’s railroad business had been “unique even in these times of large-­scale capitalist exploitation and daylight robbery,” and Austria’s reputation among the Balkan nations had been irreparably damaged, as one Viennese newspaper claimed, by corrupt officials intervening on behalf of the “ ‘great power’ that is [Baron] Hirsch.”12

A different portrait of Maurice de Hirsch, evoking different associations, adorned the childhood home of Chaim Weizmann, who would later become the head of the Zionist movement and the first president of the State of Israel, in Pinsk (in what is today Belarus).13 For Jews around the world, the name of Baron Hirsch recalled, not his exploits as a railroad magnate, but his legacy as a celebrated philanthropist. Hirsch spent unparalleled sums on everything from supporting wartime refugees and modern Jewish educa-

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tion in the Ottoman Balkans, to a network of schools for Jews living in the impoverished Habsburg province of Galicia, to aiding Jewish immigrants in places like New York City and Montréal. The culmination of his efforts was the JCA, established in 1891. The association’s goal was to organize the mass removal of Jews from Russia and their resettlement in agricultural colonies in Argentina, in Hirsch’s view, “the true country of the future,”14 whose 1853 constitution included a mandate to “foment European immigration.” By dealing with the predicament of the Russian Jews through colonization in Argentina, Hirsch believed that he could, once and for all, settle the “Jewish question” and defeat antisemitism. In the Weizmann home in Pinsk, Baron Hirsch’s portrait hung next to pictures of the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides and the Russian writer Anton Chekhov. This juxtaposition, arbitrary as it might seem, expressed the conflicting sentiments of many European Jews at the time. On the one hand, there was their identity as members of an ethno-­religious minority, with its distinct historical memory. On the other hand, many shared the desire to break from the confines of tradition and social marginalization, to fully participate in the wider society, and to make its culture their own. Baron Hirsch himself had long been advocating, sometimes in provocative language, for the assimilation—­he called it “amalgamation”—­of the Jews into their respective European homelands. Yet, by 1890, he admitted to a reporter of the London Times that the situation of the Jews in the Russian Empire—­home to the largest Jewish community in the world—­no longer held hope for improvement and was quickly deteriorating. The czar’s government, he argued, was “persuaded that Jews ought not to be tolerated within the limits of the Empire,” a conviction “not merely arising from antipathies due to race, but based, at the same time, on a religious belief.” The time had come for Jewish philanthropists to assist in the evacuation of Jews from Russia, for “without such help it would be impossible for the Government to get rid of five millions of Jews except by slaughtering them in a mass.” “The Jewish nation,” Hirsch mused, “has often been compelled to emigrate; let those of the children of Israel who dwell in Russia bow to the same destiny, but let us be allowed time to look about to seek new homes for them in other regions.” Organizing the mass removal of millions of Russian Jews and their settlement in the Argentine pampas, Hirsch believed, would be completed in some twenty-­odd years.15

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FIGURE 0.2. Portrait of Baron Hirsch on display in Biblioteca Popular Barón Hirsch, Moisés Ville, Argentina. A similar picture may have hung on the walls of the Weizmann home in Pinsk. Photo: Matthias Lehmann.

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There was something grandiose, even utopian, about Hirsch’s removal and colonization scheme, though the baron considered that his project was ultimately nothing but “a business like that of constructing and operating a railroad line.”16 While nineteenth-­century philanthropy was built, like its premodern precursors, on highly personalized relations of patronage, it was also predicated on a distinctly modern, technocratic, hegemonic planning mentality that assumed that social challenges—­even on a scale as vast as the mass migration of millions of Russian Jews, their resettlement overseas, and their transformation into farmers—­could be managed by centralized, top-­ down action. In the absence of their own state, Jews would have to rely on nongovernmental philanthropic organizations, like the JCA, to do the job. Baron Hirsch’s colonization project was certainly the high watermark of Jewish philanthropy in the nineteenth century, but it also illustrated its limitations. As the settlement enterprise in Argentina stumbled from crisis to crisis, only some twenty-­five thousand Russian Jewish immigrants, according to one estimate, would make one of the JCA’s colonies their home in the years before the First World War.17 Thus, when Theodor Herzl tried to win Hirsch over for his own, no less fantastical plan, of creating a “Jewish state” in 1895, he dismissed the baron’s project as a “petty solution.”18 And yet, the following year, publicizing his ideas in an article in the London-­based Jewish Chronicle, Herzl was still wondering: “Shall we choose Argentine or Palestine?”19 In fact, Argentina emerged as the second-­most-­important overseas destination for Jewish migrants from the Russian Pale of Settlement and Poland in the early twentieth century, behind the United States but well ahead of Palestine, and there was little indication before World War I that Herzlian Zionism was any more plausible, and any more likely to succeed, than Baron Hirsch’s philanthropic colonization scheme in South America.

This biography of Baron Maurice de Hirsch, one of the most important yet understudied figures of modern Jewish history, opens a window onto the larger world of the Jewish nineteenth century.20 It presents a trans-­national, pan-­European story, not that of a “German Jew,” a “French” philanthropist, or an “Austrian” railroad entrepreneur. The Hirschs—­Maurice, his wife Clara (née Bischoffsheim), and their son Lucien—­lived in an era in which

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railroad links were more important than borders—­as the novelist Stefan Zweig would put it years later in his memoir, “it always gives pleasure to astonish the young by telling them that before 1914 I traveled from Europe to India and to America without passport and without ever having seen one.”21 Thanks to the Orient Express, one could travel all the way from London to Constantinople “without any change of carriages and without passport,” as a poster advertising the 1888–­1889 winter schedule proclaimed.22 That was, of course, only a partial picture: in the Russian Empire, the law still considered most emigration illegal, and official travel papers were difficult to come by. Nonetheless, railroads carried an ever-­increasing number of, especially Jewish, migrants across the empire’s western border in a relentless wave of migration that in the decades before the First World War would lead well over two million eastern European Jews to western Europe and across the Atlantic. Indeed, the story of Baron Hirsch, of the Ottoman railroads, and of the philanthropic work of the JCA unfolds, not primarily within the confines of individual nation-­states, but on a transnational, pan-­European, and indeed transatlantic stage, in an age of imperialism, global capital and labor markets, and mass migration on an extraordinary scale. The nineteenth century was a period of rapid and unprecedented transformation in the Jewish world. Baron Hirsch’s life, exceptional as it is, offers a unique window onto this period. This biography therefore is also a book about nineteenth-­century Jewish history, and it is, more broadly, a book on how Jews navigated the limits of what it meant to be “European” in the age of empire. The story plays out on the margins of Europe: among Jews, who eagerly remade themselves as “Europeans” yet met with the persistent reality of antisemitism; on the European frontier that was the Ottoman Balkans, in the days of “high imperialism”; and, finally, in the South American pampas, where the Argentine state sought to establish its neo-­Europe with the help of European immigrants. The nineteenth century had begun with the promise of Jewish emancipation in the wake of the French Revolution. It ended with political antisemitism on the rise in western and central Europe, and a massive exodus of Jews from eastern Europe underway. Perhaps the most dramatic change that the nineteenth century wrought, in terms of Jewish history, affected the relation between the state and the Jews. Emancipation—­which, by the end of the century, had been achieved across much of Europe, but not in Russia—­meant that Jews for the first time

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were considered citizens with equal rights, no longer aliens to be tolerated at best. Jewish emancipation was, of course, a by-­product of the reinvention of citizenship as European countries transformed themselves into nation-­ states, and it was understood as a contract: in exchange for equality, Jews would integrate, assimilate, and embrace the culture, language, and ethos of the nation-­state in which they happened to live. “Judaism” would become a religion, like Protestantism or Catholicism, and Jews would be turned into Germans, Frenchmen, or Italians “of the Mosaic persuasion.” Even in the multinational Habsburg Empire, Jews could not escape the pressures of the competing nationalisms pulling them in this direction or that, claiming or excluding them as “Germans,” “Hungarians,” or “Czechs.”23 Emancipation was only part of the story, however. The rise of modern capitalism and the Jewish embrace of bourgeois values arguably played just as crucial a role in transforming Jewish society, creating new economic opportunities, eroding traditional patterns of religious observance, and remaking gender roles. Thus, even in the Russian Empire, where emancipation remained a distant dream, Jewish society in the nineteenth century underwent a transformation no less profound than that elsewhere on the continent. By the end of the century, the Enlightenment and secularism were challenging traditional religious certainties and hierarchies in Russia as well, and Russian Jews—­in the absence of state-­sponsored emancipation—­embarked on various roads towards self-­emancipation, whether in the guise of socialism, Jewish nationalism, or emigration to the West. The writing of Jewish history in the modern period is often compartmentalized into nation-­states and empires, and there is no shortage of books that tell the story of the Jews of France, England, Germany, or Russia. The attention to the diversity of Jewish experiences in different countries is certainly an improvement over the older Whiggish perspective of Zionist historians who, somewhat anachronistically, saw the Jews as a nation apart, with a unified history, destined to create a nation-­state (Israel) of their own. But the compartmentalization of modern Jewish history, and the emphasis on nationalism and emancipation, means that historians have paid less attention to a central feature of the Jewish nineteenth century: rather than simply remaining patriotic citizens of one country or another, Jews were seeking to become “civilized,” to become Europeans. Jews across Europe began to see themselves as Europeans, or aspired to become so, and imagined turning other Jews—­for instance, in

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the Ottoman Empire or in colonial North Africa—­into proper Europeans as well. The poet Heinrich Heine—­born in Germany in 1797, living in Paris since 1831—­expressed this feeling when he famously noted that his baptism had been “his entry ticket into European culture.”24 In the eighteenth century, writers like Voltaire still referred to Jews as “Orientals” or “Asiatics.” It was in the nineteenth century that Jews living in Europe began to think of themselves as being of Europe as well. This may have been an intellectual exercise for some, but it was a lived reality for many. Members of the Jewish upper classes, like the Hirsch family, crisscrossed the continent, a habit facilitated by the rapid advance in the construction of railroads in the nineteenth century. At the opposite end of the social spectrum, tens of thousands of East European Jews boarded the railroads and moved to the West, some to study at university to circumvent the anti-­Jewish quotas in Russian higher education, others swelling the numbers of Jewish peddlers and trying their luck in Vienna’s Leopoldstadt or London’s East End. Thus, “Europe” became not only the reference point for an elite of intellectuals or a style of life for the Jewish aristocracy but the lived experience for an ever-­ increasing number of Jews from all walks of life. For antisemites, of course, Jews remained an alien—­a non-­European—­ nation. Tellingly, in the anti-­immigrant backlash against Jewish immigration from the East in the 1880s, Heinrich von Treitschke in Germany still referred to Jews derisively as “German-­speaking Orientals,” and Wilhelm Marr, who first popularized the term “anti-­Semitism,” denounced “the special nature of the Oriental aliens.”25 Yet, remarkably, at the turn of the century, even Theodor Herzl, who had given up hope on Jews ever truly belonging in Europe in the face of persistent antisemitism, still imagined the Jewish state, if it were to be created in Palestine, as “form[ing] a portion of the rampart of Europe against Asia, an outpost of civilization as opposed to barbarism.”26 The transformation of Jews into Europeans had never been more complete than at the moment when Jews were increasingly looking to build a future beyond the shores of the “old continent.” Jews followed myriad different paths on the road into European culture. The very idea of “Jewishness”—­an ethno-­religious identity that had hardly been questioned until the nineteenth century27—­was now undergoing profound changes, from the rise of Reform Judaism to the emergence of secular

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Zionism. It also very much continued to be in flux. In his response to Andrew Carnegie, Baron Hirsch professed that nothing was more natural for him than a commitment to the welfare of those who belong “to my own faith,” yet he also spoke of his confidence that “the Jewish race” was no less apt to embrace agriculture and establish an existence rooted in manual labor and tied to the soil than its Christian neighbors.28 The frequent slippage in contemporary writings about the future of the Jews between “faith” and “race” betrayed a deep uncertainty—­perhaps anxiety—­about just how the Jews fit into modern society and complicates the often-­held assumption that Jews in modern western Europe, unlike those of the East, considered themselves exclusively as members of a religious, and no longer of an ethnic, community.29 Baron Hirsch’s own views reflected these contradictions. Ruminating on the future of the Jews in an interview with the New York Herald in 1889, he declared that “the Jewish question can only be solved by the disappearance of the Jewish race, which will inevitably be accomplished by the amalgamation of Christians and Jews.”30 Yet Hirsch never saw his preference for assimilation or “amalgamation” as contradicting his deep-­seated commitment to Jewish solidarity. Jewish survival, not the survival of Judaism, was the credo of Hirsch’s philanthropy. The gilded age of Jewish philanthropy was dominated by international organizations like the Paris-­based Alliance Israélite Universelle, the Anglo-­ Jewish Association, and the Viennese Israelitische Allianz, and individual philanthropists like Maurice de Hirsch. Hirsch’s philanthropy was unique in its scope and scale, but it was also representative of the larger role that philanthropy played in the political economy of the Jews in nineteenth-­ century Europe. Only a few philanthropists had Hirsch’s international renown; Moses Montefiore, the indefatigable champion of Jewish civic rights from Romania to Morocco, was the most obvious parallel a generation earlier.31 Many other Jewish philanthropists of the period hewed closer to Carnegie’s priorities: German-­Jewish donors, for instance, supported the Kaiser-­Wilhelm research institutes (today’s Max Planck Institutes) and universities in Germany, laying the foundation for Germany’s scientific prowess in the early twentieth century, while others funded many of the country’s museums and collections of art and antiquities. James Simon helped create the German Orient Society and was instrumental in bringing the famous

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Nefertiti bust and the ancient Babylonian Ishtar Gate to Berlin, two of the signature exhibits on Berlin’s Museum Island today. The German-­born industrialist Ludwig Mond, for his part, left forty-­two Renaissance masterpieces to the National Gallery in London, not to mention the fact that about 250 of France’s regional museums received donations of some two thousand works from Alphonse Rothschild in the years before 1914.32 Welfare, poor relief, and education, meanwhile, remained a centerpiece of Jewish philanthropy, from autonomous Jewish welfare systems in cities like Hamburg, Manchester, or Smyrna to the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia (OPE), organized by Russian-­Jewish oligarchs in St. Petersburg and Odessa, which established schools, supported teacher training, and created libraries in the Pale of Settlement.33 A central claim of this book is that philanthropy did not operate outside or beyond the realm of politics: it was the principal form of Jewish political action at the time. The book argues against the notion that Jews, in the absence of their own state, had no political history of their own; in fact, in the second half of the nineteenth century, philanthropy was the main vehicle of Jewish political action. Historians have long been fascinated by the intellectuals, the religious thinkers, and the writers who shaped Jewish responses to the promise and peril of emancipation in the modern period. This book, in contrast, focuses on the highly significant role that private philanthropy played, not unlike in our own age,34 and the ideas and ethos that guided it. Philanthropy, properly understood, was ultimately an expression of Jewish self-­emancipation, no less so than Jewish nationalism, the emergence of which is usually associated with Leon Pinsker’s eponymous Auto-­ Emanzipation (published in 1882), and of course Theodor Herzl. The telos of Zionist historiography has created a binary between emancipation from above (granted by European nations in the course of the nineteenth century), and self-­emancipation in the guise of Jewish nationalism from below. In this narrative, Jews lack collective political agency until the rise of mass politics at the turn of the twentieth century. But throughout the nineteenth century, philanthropy was the main expression of Jewish politics.35 It was never just a form of welfare and charitable poor relief. Its emphasis on bringing modern education to the Jewish “Orient,” from the Ottoman Empire to Habsburg Galicia, was no less a political project than the schooling networks created by national governments. And Hirsch’s colonization scheme in Argentina

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was no less political than Herzl’s Zionism: it was Jewish self-­emancipation without Jewish nationalism.

Like his famous contemporary, Nathaniel Rothschild, Maurice de Hirsch instructed the executor of his will, in this case the London-­based banker Ernest Cassel, to destroy his personal papers.36 This biography, therefore, relies heavily on the baron’s business correspondence, both regarding the Ottoman railroad enterprise and his numerous philanthropic projects. An important resource is of course the papers of the JCA, today housed in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, as well as the archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris. Equally important are the numerous documents assembled by Max Kohler (1871–­ 1934), a lawyer; board member of numerous Jewish organizations including the Baron de Hirsch Fund in New York City; and amateur historian who planned but never completed a biography of Maurice de Hirsch. The papers are held today at the American Jewish Historical Society in New York. In addition, I consulted material available at the YIVO and Leo-­Baeck-­Institute Archives in New York. About Baron Hirsch’s railroad business, we learn a great deal from correspondence and documents in the archives of the Ottoman Imperial Bank, now in the Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail in Roubaix, France; diplomatic and other sources in the Austrian State Archives in Vienna; and the Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi in Istanbul. In Argentina, I primarily consulted material in the Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno and in the Centro Mark Turkow at the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), both in Buenos Aires. The nature of these sources, in addition to printed material such as the published memoirs of former JCA colonists, and newspapers published in French, German, English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, and Spanish, means that we have a very good sense of Baron Hirsch’s public persona, even as there is still much that we don’t know about him as a private individual. There are, however, some family papers from the estate of the Hirschs’ granddaughter, Lucienne, that were sequestered by the Belgian government following World War I (Lucienne was married to a German banker, and thus considered an enemy alien); they are today in the Archives Générales du Royaume in Brussels. We also have the private correspondence between Maurice and Clara’s son Lucien and the British aris-

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tocrat Lady Jessica Sykes, with whom Lucien maintained a relationship in the mid-­1880s. This correspondence is held in the East Riding of Yorkshire Archives, in England.

The following chapters are organized in only loosely chronological order and are primarily thematic. Part 1 leads from the origins of the Hirsch family in Bavaria to the early years of the baron’s career in Brussels—­where he entered into an unlikely partnership with André Langrand-­Dumonceau, promoter of an international Catholic banking empire—­and on to Paris, where the Hirschs were prominent members of Parisian aristocratic society, the “Tout-­Paris.” This first part also explores the story of Maurice and Clara’s son Lucien, his university years, and his relationship with Jessica Sykes, and ends with the fight between Maurice and Clara, on the one hand, and their relatives in Brussels, on the other, over the upbringing of Lucien’s daughter, Lucienne, born out of wedlock. The underlying question, ultimately, is, What was “Jewish” about the story of this European family? Any biographer has to grapple with how to balance the idiosyncrasies of individuals, their particular outlook, the choices that they make, and the broader, structural conditions that shape their lives.37 Part 2 locates the history of Baron Hirsch’s Ottoman railroads in the broader political, economic, and cultural context of European imperialism. No less important, however, is the recognition that Hirsch’s contemporaries themselves—­from Ottoman government officials to European diplomats and journalists to antisemitic publicists and politicians in Austria, Germany, and France—­created highly personalized narratives, with Baron Hirsch at center stage, as they tried to make sense of the broader structural and market forces that stood behind the vicissitudes of the Ottoman railroad project. In these narratives, everything from great power rivalries to the ups and downs of capital markets inevitably was presented as the result of the machinations of Baron Hirsch. In the eyes of antisemites, he was the personification of their own conspiracy fantasies. The Ottoman Empire was not only the site of Baron Hirsch’s most important and long-­lasting business venture, the Oriental railroads, but also an early focus of the Hirschs’ philanthropy. Following their sojourn in Constantinople in the early 1870s, Maurice and Clara de Hirsch began to support the Parisian Alliance Israélite Universelle, the most important Jewish philan-

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thropic organization of the modern period. They continued to be its single largest benefactors until the end of their lives. Later in the decade, during the Russo-­Ottoman War, Baron Hirsch was the most visible representative of Jewish and, indeed, European humanitarian assistance to the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish refugees in the Balkans. Part 3 explores the main philanthropic projects pursued by Hirsch: beyond the Ottoman Empire, those included a major educational foundation in the Habsburg province of Galicia, where Baron Hirsch and his new schools met with skepticism on the part of the government in Vienna, divided responses among Polish nationalists, and fierce opposition from Orthodox Jews. Part 3 concludes with Hirsch’s attempts to deal with the predicament of the Russian Jews. After he failed to duplicate his Ottoman and Galician schooling projects in the empire of the czars, the baron turned his attention to managing Russian Jewish out-­ migration. He created the Baron Hirsch Fund, in New York, and endowed the Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society, in Montréal, to assist Jewish immigrants in North America, and above all, in 1891, he established the JCA, his most ambitious project, to promote Jewish colonization in South America. Part 4, finally, focuses on the colonization project in Argentina, tying the story of the JCA’s first colonies into their Argentinian context, and the broader context of a global labor market and network of migration that linked the villages and towns of the Russian Pale of Settlement to the republics of South America. The four parts of the book are closely interlinked, of course, but they can also be read separately. Thus, a reader interested in the story of the Oriental railroads—­until now a lacuna in the historical scholarship—­can turn to part 2, whereas a reader who is most eager to learn of Baron Hirsch’s Argentine adventure will find that story unfold in the last three chapters of the book.

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PA RT ONE

A EUROPEAN FAMILY

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1

FROM MUNICH TO BRUSSELS

At seven o’clock one summer morning in August 1885, Maurice de Hirsch, accompanied by his twenty-­nine-­year-­old son Lucien, set out from Boitsfort, on the outskirts of Brussels, to catch the express train to the Belgian seaside resort of Ostend.1 The reason for that morning’s journey was a summons by King Leopold II, who was eager to convince the prominent Jewish banker and businessman to invest in the construction of a new railroad in the Belgian Congo.2 While Hirsch met with the king, ultimately rejecting Leopold’s appeals, Lucien had plans of his own for the day: he would enjoy spending a few hours of leisure and taking his breakfast at the Hôtel de la Plage. As he strolled down the seaside promenade, he ran into two distant uncles, and “about all the Jews from [Vienna].” To his chagrin, though, barely settled into his seat to order a setting of prawns and fresh fish, he was interrupted by King Leopold’s aide-­de-­camp. After learning that Lucien was accompanying his father, the king insisted that he join them for lunch. Trying to escape from this “burden, no doubt an honor but also little relaxing,” Lucien pointed to his informal attire, but the acquaintance with whom he had hoped to take his breakfast offered to lend him a frockcoat and proper hat, and thus he was spirited off—­slightly uncomfortable in the coat with its too-­long sleeves—­to meet the monarch. At lunch, while ­Maurice de 19

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Hirsch was busy talking coaches and horses with the queen, Lucien’s eyes explored the surroundings of the royal pavilion. It was, as he observed, decorated with an “excessive simplicity,” and “that with the bad taste worthy of the residence of a crowned head.” Here we have, then, the stage on which the extraordinary story of the Hirschs unfolded: this was, first of all, a European stage, where railroads crisscrossed the continent and allowed the Viennese bourgeoisie to spend its summer holiday at places like Ostend, on the Belgian North Sea coast. The scion of a Bavarian family of ancien régime court bankers, Baron Hirsch was, by the 1880s, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the railway business, identified more than any other sector with the promises of technological progress, modernity, and global capitalism. The 1880s were a period in which the emerging capitalist bourgeoisie continued to rely on their connections with the old aristocratic elites, embracing their habitus and lifestyle but also challenging their inherited positions of power. It was, finally, a time when Jewish families like the Hirschs continued to socialize with other Jews—­it was not a coincidence that Lucien ran into “all the Jews from [Vienna]” on his short stroll in Ostend—­but when Jewishness was no longer expressed through the symbols of traditional religious observance (prawns, after all, are not kosher). Lingering anti-­Jewish prejudice notwithstanding, cultural and even social assimilation was becoming a plausible prospect, and it would be precisely against the backdrop of the gains of emancipation and integration that the situation of Jews in the eastern part of the continent, in places like the Russian Empire or Romania, appeared all the more dire to Jews in the West. Subsequent chapters will explore what Baron Hirsch would become most famous for, his railroad operations in the Ottoman Empire and the vast philanthropic empire that he built in the 1880s and 1890s to assist the Jews of “the East.” But before we get there, let us begin with the origins of the Hirsch family, who they were, and how the transition from one generation to the next, and on to another, reflected some of the larger changes that were so thoroughly transforming European Jewish society in the course of the nineteenth century.

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There is a story about Moritz (Maurice) von Hirsch’s grandfather, Jacob Hirsch (1764–­1840), in which the king of Bavaria expresses his astonishment that his Jewish court banker could have risen from being a mere cattle merchant to the world of high finance. “Easy enough,” he is said to have replied, to the king’s delight. “I dealt in cattle, but with cattle.” In the anecdote, Jacob appears as witty and sly—­and also a bit daring, as the king himself, of course, was one of his customers—­highlighting his dramatic rise from humble origins. By contrast, an anecdote, told about Jacob’s son (and Moritz’s father), Joseph von Hirsch (1805–­1885), paints a different picture: in contrast to Jacob, Joseph appears not to have been much of a businessman himself and was wont to make risky investments, exercising poor judgment. Thus, Jacob von Hirsch, the patriarch of the family, allegedly called on the stockbrokers of Munich and instructed them that, whenever his son gave an order to buy or sell a certain stock, they should do just the opposite and thus save him from ruin.3 Both incidents are likely apocryphal, but they illustrate how the ancien régime’s so-­called court Jews understood themselves: their outsider status; their rise from humble origins, due to their business acumen and the ties that they forged with the myriad territorial rulers, especially in the German-­ speaking lands of central Europe; but also their anxiety about preserving their hard-­won status, and their families’ fortunes, from one generation to the next.4 The case of the Hirschs of Bavaria, though, is not a story of the rise and decline of a family of court Jews, but rather an example of how a pre-­emancipation, preindustrial Jewish elite associated with the old regime managed to survive into a different age, marked by the rise of nationalism, global industrial capitalism, and mass society. In August 1818, Maximilian Joseph, king of Bavaria, granted the status of nobility to Jacob Hirsch, “merchant and court banker in Würzburg.” Henceforth called “von Hirsch auf Gereuth,” after the Franconian estate he had purchased three years earlier, Jacob thus earned recognition for his “merits not only for the higher branches of agriculture but also his efforts for the expansion of industry in the fatherland and the increase of national prosperity through the establishment of sheep farms, establishment of wool spinning factories, and cultivation of waste land.”5 In his petition to be admitted to noble status, Jacob Hirsch had argued that neither his main business, as merchant and banker, nor his Jewishness should disqualify him from

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e­ nnoblement.6 The Bavarian chief minister, Count Rechberg, endorsed Hirsch’s request and apparently considered the possibility of a Jew’s acquiring noble status to be so obvious as to not merit any discussion.7 His elevation to noble status notwithstanding, Jacob von Hirsch’s relocation to Munich in 1821 provoked opposition from the municipal authorities who raised difficulties when Jacob set out to purchase a property, arguing that Jews were prohibited from owning real estate within the confines of the walled city. The king intervened on Hirsch’s behalf, though only to the extent that he declared “his nobility exempts him from the administrative restrictions of the Jewish edict of 1813,” but without making him a full equal of his Christian counterparts.8 Thus the odd situation arose that Jacob von Hirsch and his descendants were members of the noble class, with its privileges and rights, but, as Jews, simultaneously subject to many, though not all, of the restrictive rules imposed by the Bavarian Jewry law of the restoration years following the defeat of Napoléon. In fact, Bavaria had become a kingdom and nearly doubled its size under the protection of Napoléon in 1806: whereas it had previously by and large excluded Jews from residence, its territorial expansion into Franconia and Swabia substantially added to the Jewish population living under Bavarian rule (some thirty thousand people). The edict of 1813, then, responded to this new situation, opening most occupations to Jews and granting them freedom of worship, but also imposing numerous restrictions, most notoriously those that were designed to control and limit the overall number of Jews tolerated within the kingdom. Jewish immigration was banned, and the so-­called Judenmatrikel established quotas for the permissible size of each Jewish community, limiting permission to marry and designed to keep the number of Jews static or reduce it.9 For the Hirsch family, these rules were applied selectively and at times arbitrarily. As late as 1832, the Ministry of Interior instructed Jacob’s son Joseph (Moritz’s father) to have himself inscribed in the Judenmatrikel for the city of Munich—­and to retroactively inscribe Jacob’s name as well. After an appeal to the king, the requirement was waived.10 In 1824, Jacob Hirsch acquired the Planegg estate, some 7.5 miles west of Munich. This also implied the Jewish owner’s jurisdiction over the Christian residents of the villages and farms on his property and led to a prolonged legal battle. Inscribing the purchase in the local property registry was delayed until 1827, and two years later, the regional government informed Hirsch

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that he had to sell the estate. It was only in 1843—­three years after Jacob von Hirsch had passed away—­that a court in Munich finally dismissed the case against the Jewish owner of Planegg.11 In the meantime, Hirsch had also been fighting for the right to establish a brewery, having purchased a beer-­ brewing license for the lower Lake Starnberg region. The brewers of nearby Munich lost no time in protesting against the “intrusion of wealthy gentlemen farmers and bankers” in their business, adding that the edict of 1813 forbade Jews to operate breweries. Fear of competition combined with religious prejudice and resentment against noble landowners. Thus, the brewers argued that Hirsch, “showered with worldly goods and owning millions, will not hesitate to completely destroy the bourgeois [bürgerlich] brew houses.”12 The Munich city council got involved, too, warning the government that its commitment to contribute to the building of the neo-­Romanesque Ludwigskirche cathedral (which was completed in 1844) was contingent on income from the malt tax, and competition for the Munich breweries from Hirsch in Planegg was liable to cause serious financial injury.13 In a deposition from 1837, the city council maintained that “it has forever been a characteristic of the Jews to engage in speculation with harmful or prohibited goods. They were the ones who pursued the old slave trade the longest, and they were the first to engage in usury and in the trade of state bonds, through which they have appropriated a large portion of state income and turned the Christian nations into their financial subjects.”14 In the end, Jacob Hirsch was vindicated, and his concession was upheld. Long after Moritz and Clara settled in Paris, in the 1870s, they still had beer delivered from Planegg15 (the business was eventually sold to the Munich-­based Pschorr in 1928).16 But the legal battle over the brewery highlights three themes that would remain relevant in subsequent decades: the disruptive impact of capitalism on established, traditional industries (such as the old beer-­brewing monopolies in Bavaria); the desire of Jewish elites for noble titles and the accoutrements of an aristocratic lifestyle, including landed estates, precisely at a time when the old feudal regime was giving way to modern capitalist enterprise and social mobility; and the role of religious prejudice—­morphing, as the century went on, into political antisemitism—­as a tool to denounce the disruption and displacement resulting from modern economic change. After Jacob von Hirsch relocated to Munich, his elder son, Joel Jacob (1789–­1876), continued the Würzburg line of the family and inherited

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­ ereuth castle (which the family sold in 1859), whereas his younger sibling, G Joseph, rose to the position of court banker in Munich and took up residence at the Planegg estate. Joel Jacob, unlike his brother, continued to be religiously observant. In Würzburg, he maintained the regular private prayer quorum that his father had established decades earlier, and on one occasion, when King Ludwig I summoned Joel Jacob to dine with him at Aschaffenburg, he reportedly had kosher food delivered for his Jewish guest and for himself.17 As a businessman, Joel Jacob was prolific, pursuing enterprises from reorganizing the Franconian lumber trade (which before had been dominated by a Dutch monopoly), to participating as a banker in the foundation of the Bavarian Hypo-­und Wechselbank in 1834, to, above all, promoting agriculture. He was credited with pioneering modern techniques for producing agricultural goods, importing machinery from England and introducing sugar beets and the manufacture of beet syrup to Bavaria. Wines from his Franconian estates were sold to the dukes of Tuscany and Modena and to the king of Naples. And, at a time when the Bavarian government was still skeptical about railroads, Joel Jacob was one of the first to join consortia for the building of railways, always, it appears, seeking to be on the forefront of technological and industrial innovation.18 It may be true that Joseph von Hirsch, Moritz’s father, was less astute a businessman than his brother Joel Jacob, as suggested by the anecdote about his ill-­judged investments. But his presence in Munich, the royal residence, meant that he was able to maintain the close relationship that his father Jacob had established with the Bavarian court. Joseph certainly played his cards right when, for instance, he set up a field hospital near Planegg during the Prussian-­Austrian War of 1866 (during which Bavaria fought on the side of Austria). Three years later, in recognition of his considerable wealth but also his general contribution to the welfare of the Bavarian state, Joseph was awarded the hereditary title of baron, claiming a place for himself and his descendants as members of the European aristocracy. The ascent of this Jewish banker, son of a cattle merchant, was certainly remarkable: it was also a sign of changing times. In the words of the Bavarian minister, Count Hohenlohe, in the old days it would have certainly been “inadmissible to elevate an Israelite into noble status, but in modern times, when the aristocracy has lost practically all of its political prerogatives and has declined to being nothing

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but a title with a certain significance in society,” many countries—­including England, Austria, and France—­had made their lower-­level noble titles available to Jews.19 There was, thus, a bit of a paradox as Jewish elites, including families of so-­called court Jews, leveraged their role in the capitalist transformation of the economy—­be it through the building of railroads, the creation of new financial institutions, or the modernization of agriculture—­to obtain social recognition precisely through one of the vestiges of the ancien régime, an aristocratic title. And just as they reached the height of recognition, their Christian contemporaries could dismiss their rise into the ranks of nobility as signaling the decline of the aristocracy itself. In other words, as the Jewish elite sought to win recognition and respectability by virtue of obtaining noble titles, many of their Christian counterparts saw them as attention-­seeking parvenus who did not quite belong. This was a trope that would recur throughout the public life of Baron Moritz von Hirsch—­or, Maurice de Hirsch, as he soon came to be known.20

This, then, was the family into which Moritz/Maurice was born in 1831, in Munich, as one of nine siblings (seven of whom survived to adulthood).21 His mother was Caroline Wertheimer, herself the daughter of a Jewish banker in Frankfurt and descendant of the famous Wertheimer family of Vienna (her father was the great-­grandson of Samson Wertheimer, banker for Emperor Charles VI). Indeed, kinship ties linked Hirsch to some of the most prominent Jewish families in central Europe, and he himself would marry into an equally distinguished and well-­connected family when he wed Clara Bischoffsheim (1833–­1899), daughter of the Brussels-­based banker and long-­serving liberal member of the Belgian Senate Jonathan Raphael Bischoffsheim (1808–­1883). Maurice first met Clara after his parents moved him to attend school in Brussels, at the age of thirteen, where he was sent, according to Clara’s reminiscences, because he was “a very self-­willed unruly boy.”22 One can also assume that the Hirsch family was deliberately planting the seeds for Maurice’s future abroad, in light of the persistent restrictions on Jewish life in Bavaria where the Judenmatrikel was not abolished until 1861, full emancipation only came with German unification in 1871, and special Jewish taxes were abrogated only ten years later.23 Belgium, on the other

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hand, independent since 1830, granted equality to its Jews and attracted a number of powerful private bankers, most prominent among whom several German-­Jewish families including the Bischoffsheims of Frankfurt.24 Maurice and Clara were married in Brussels in 1855, where Lucien was born a year later, on July 11, 1856. As Clara would later tell the former American ambassador to Constantinople, Oscar Straus, and his wife, Sarah, longtime friends of the Hirschs, her father had at first not been entirely convinced by her choice of Maurice as future husband. According to Clara, Hirsch once came for a visit when Jonathan Bischoffsheim was discussing a delicate business matter with his partner, Salomon Goldschmidt. Overhearing the conversation when passing under the Bischoffsheims’ porte-­cochere, Maurice ventured to offer an opinion on the matter. His future father-­in-­law, the story goes, was so impressed with him that he readily consented to the match.25 In a subsequent conversation with Straus, Clara offered another anecdote, this time about her first encounter with Maurice’s father, Joseph. As she recalled it, one could see his disappointment when he was introduced to Clara—­his son’s bride—­and her sister, “who was a most beautiful girl much taller than she.” Clara, too, managed to win her father-­in-­law over: when a package was delivered to the house, she carefully unknotted the binding cord, folded up the wrapping paper, and rolled up the cord for future use. “This incident entirely satisfied him in the choice his son had made,” Clara told Straus. “My daughters,” Joseph observed, “would have cut the cord and thrown it away.”26 Whether these incidents really happened the way that Clara remembered them or not, they certainly did convey something about the shared values that she saw reflected in the Hirsch and the Bischoffsheim families: shrewdness and creative thinking about matters of business, but also, despite wealth and comfort, a sense of frugality. The aristocratic lifestyle that Maurice and Clara would carefully stage a few years later, after they had moved to Paris, seems to belie this idea of parsimony. But it always remained as a measuring yard when they would evaluate the ever-­increasing demands for charity and philanthropy in subsequent years, and they always insisted that the beneficiaries of their donations exhibit a sense of economy and frugality. Clara herself may never have completely made peace with the lavish life that they would come to lead. In her early years, she spent weeks sewing cloths and linens for her newborn child, Lucien, all by herself. Later, she appar-

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ently found it difficult, in the words of her former secretary, Paul Barrelet, to manage an army of staff serving in the various Hirsch properties, “constantly confounding the functions of the secretaries with those of the housekeeper.” On one occasion, vacationing at Cap-­Martin on the French Riviera not far from Monte Carlo, when Maurice hired a horse-­drawn coach in the morning and had it wait in front of the hotel as he expected to go out again in the evening, Clara chastised him: “How could you be so wasteful, Moritz?”27

Following their marriage, Maurice and Clara de Hirsch at first returned to Munich, where Hirsch speculated with and lost a part of Clara’s large dowry—­which, some sources claimed, amounted to the enormous sum of 20 million francs.28 Soon, however, the couple returned to Brussels, where Maurice became a junior partner in the Bischoffsheim & Goldschmidt banking house,29 at the time one of the most prominent banking houses in Europe (it would merge, in 1863, with the Banque de Crédit et de Dépôt des

FIGURE 1.1. Portrait of Maurice and Clara de Hirsch. Monographie du Palais des feu le Baron & la Baronne de Hirsch: Décorations intérieures & extérieures (Paris, [1906]).

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Pays-­Bas, also founded by Bischoffsheim, and subsequently form, together with the Banque de Paris, what is today Paribas). A few years later, Hirsch set up a new firm, Bischoffsheim & Hirsch, partnering with his brother-­in-­ law Ferdinand—­who was, in the words of one historian, “more gifted as a bon viveur than a banker, [and] faded gracefully from the picture, leaving just his valuable name as a comfort to creditors.”30 For the first fifteen or twenty years, meanwhile, Clara was her husband’s chief secretary, in charge of maintaining the voluminous business correspondence.31 It was a task she had been well prepared for, having served her father, Senator Bischoffsheim, in a similar capacity before her marriage.32 When young Maurice had been sent off to school in Brussels, Belgium had just opened its first international railway line, linking Antwerp to Cologne. Thus, in 1843, Belgium was crossed north to south, and west to east, by railway lines, connecting it across the borders to its neighbors. Railroads became a symbol of modernity, of technological progress, drawing the countryside closer to cities, and cities across regions and beyond national borders closer to one another.33 The railroad became a central feature of Maurice and Clara de Hirsch’s life as well: without it, they could not so easily have maintained their cosmopolitan lifestyle, which allowed them, and their peers, to constantly crisscross Europe, from city homes to country estates, and from one country to another. Railroads also became the cornerstone of Hirsch’s business empire, earning him a fortune, as we will see, when he won the concession to build a network of railroads in the Ottoman Empire. But railroads also made travel more accessible, more feasible for masses of regular people, not just members of the “upper ten” like the Hirschs, and they played a crucial role in the massive migration of eastern European Jews to the West, a development that would spark Maurice and Clara’s unparalleled philanthropic endeavors in the closing decade of the century. One of the earliest railroad enterprises in which Hirsch became involved was the railway in the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. Railroads required enormous capital investments and thus represented risky bets on future revenue. When the Luxemburg line got into financial trouble, a possible solution that emerged depended on a contract with the French Eastern Railroad. In the context of growing Prussian-­French rivalry, Baron Hirsch set out for Berlin where he met with Otto von Bismarck and convinced him of the potential

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strategic and military advantages of the Luxemburg line for Prussia. Armed with the credible threat of a Prussian engagement in the railway, Hirsch then went to Paris to warn the French government about the prospect of just such a scenario and suggested, as an alternative, that the Eastern Railroad guarantee a minimum revenue for the Luxemburg line, backed by the French state, and thus ensure that the strategically important railway remain within France’s sphere of influence. The liberal German-­Jewish politician Ludwig Bamberger, who tells this story in his memoirs, describes Hirsch’s actions as those of a “financial genius who is successful more because of his diplomatic than his mercantile perspicacity.” Under different circumstances, Bamberger was convinced, Baron Hirsch would have made a shrewd statesman—­ not unlike, perhaps, the ruthless Bismarck who never forgave Hirsch his maneuver.34 One of Hirsch’s business partners during his Brussels years was André Langrand-­Dumonceau, whose financial collapse would eventually open up the opportunity for the baron to snatch up the concession to build the Ottoman railroads. Langrand-­Dumonceau was a colorful personality: one can easily imagine that he served as the inspiration for Aristide Saccard, the protagonist in Émile Zola’s 1891 novel L’argent who, like Langrand-­Dumonceau in real life, sought to build a banking powerhouse to defy an imagined cabal of Jewish high finance.35 Langrand-­Dumonceau started out as a street trader, served in the French Foreign Legion, and built, in the 1850s and 1860s, a tangled web of insurance companies, mortgage banks, and railroad concessions.36 His partnership with Hirsch was an odd match considering that he was advocating for the creation of a Catholic counterpart to what he denounced as the banking monopoly controlled by Jews and Protestants—­“a monopoly that puts into their hands all the vital forces, all the material resources, all the means of political and social action.” The “financial power of the Jews,” Langrand-­Dumonceau was convinced, “will crest inevitably and, at some point, become the master over the fate of Europe.”37 And yet, as Langrand-­Dumonceau’s longtime mentor and associate the former Belgian minister of finance Edouard Mercier pointed out to his protégé in 1858, “we could do good business with M. the Baron de Hirsch: it is always good to have a Croesus backing one up.”38 The ensuing, if troubled, partnership between Langrand-­Dumonceau and Hirsch proved beneficial for both,

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at least for a time. It illustrates how economic decisions are always made within a web of often contradictory forces, some purely profit-­oriented and “rational” choices, others determined by cultural, ideological, or political considerations.39 For Langrand-­Dumonceau, building an international Catholic financial empire to compete with what he saw as Jewish-­(and Protestant-­) dominated high finance did not prevent him from collaborating with Hirsch, even if he never abandoned his reactionary and antisemitic views. In fact, Langrand-­Dumonceau resented being forced precisely into this kind of partnership with, in Mercier’s words, “a man whom you do not value and who is already strongly compromised by other business, which has given him the character of an intrigant.”40 Hirsch and Langrand-­Dumonceau never built a relationship of mutual trust, and their collaboration appears to have been purely transactional, each pursuing his own agenda. Langrand-­Dumonceau, to establish himself as a major player in international finance, needed the backing of Hirsch’s bank and other Jewish-­owned private banks, the very institutions that he hoped to replace by creating a new Catholic financial powerhouse. Hirsch, on the other hand, saw his engagement in several of Langrand-­Dumonceau’s business schemes as short-­term investments, and he never hesitated to play off his own interests against those of his partner. In 1859, Langrand-­Dumonceau and Hirsch together created the Association Générale d’Assurances, a holding company with a capital of 20 million francs and administered jointly by Langrand-­Dumonceau and Hirsch.41 Under the umbrella of the Association Générale, the two unlikely partners founded a mortgage insurance company called Vindabona, in Vienna, the following year. By the time it was formally established in April 1860, the Hirsch, Langrand-­ Dumonceau, and Mercier—­ had principal investors—­ each already netted a profit of some 100,000 francs by selling shares in the new enterprise.42 But problems soon arose as Langrand-­Dumonceau sought to milk the company before it ever generated a profit, insisting on a dividend between 30 to 50 percent. Hirsch complained that announcing generous dividends in the press before Vindabona had realized any profits was liable to undermine confidence in the company. He also worried about Langrand-­ Dumonceau’s insistence on sprinkling reports placed in Vienna’s newspapers with the names of Vindabona’s most important shareholders, ostensibly

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to shore up confidence in the company’s financial health. Because most of them were Belgian, including only very few Austrians, Hirsch feared this would damage how the public viewed the company in its principal market.43 When Vindabona failed to meet Langrand-­Dumonceau’s rosy predictions, which had justified high dividends and driven up share prices, Hirsch recommended merging the struggling concern with a life insurance company that Langrand-­Dumonceau had set up in Vienna in 1858, Der Anker, which was more successful (and still exists today, now as part of the Swiss Helvetia insurance company), thus saving Vindabona at the expense of Anker. Mercier was incensed that Hirsch, “to protect his interests, is ready to sacrifice a society with which he has nothing to do.”44 Instead, Mercier recommended rescuing the ailing Vindabona by infusing it with capital raised by a new mortgage and investment bank to be created in Belgium. Thus, in 1863, the Association Générale of Hirsch and Langrand-­Dumonceau was dissolved, and Langrand-­Dumonceau—­this time without Hirsch’s involvement—­ founded the Banque de Crédit Foncier et Industriel, with a nominal capital of 50 million francs, and became its sole director.45 This was the end of Hirsch’s joint venture with Langrand-­Dumonceau, though in the future their paths would cross again. For example, Hirsch sat on the board of the Société Générale de Commerce et d’Industrie, an industrial investment bank in Amsterdam established in 1863 by Langrand-­ Dumonceau, and they partnered in a Belgian railroad company (the Chemin de Fer Liègeois-­Limburgois), where Hirsch served as chair of the board.46 The baron had done nicely out of his brief involvement with the pioneer of a Catholic financial empire as the shares of the Association Générale, which had cost 600 francs, were sold at 800 upon their absorption into Langrand-­Dumonceau’s new bank.47 Langrand-­Dumonceau, meanwhile, saving Vindabona by feeding it with capital raised for a new enterprise, was laying the foundation for what turned out to be an unsustainable pyramid scheme that would eventually come crashing down. The système Langrand consisted in creating an interdependent web of companies where one firm would cover the losses of another, and a failing concern would be rescued by yet another new creation. But as speculative and precarious as Langrand-­ Dumonceau’s operations were, he did pursue a broader agenda, trying to mobilize capital in western European markets in order to buy up land in

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central Europe—­especially in the Habsburg Empire—­and foster the rise of a class of independent farmers.48 His apparent success as a banker who seemed to be set to compete with the likes of Hirsch, the Bischoffsheims, or even the Rothschilds earned Langrand-­Dumonceau many supporters among the European aristocracy, the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph, and France’s Napoléon III, and close connections in the Catholic Church. In 1864, the Pope recruited Langrand-­Dumonceau to organize a loan for the Vatican, though the 20 million francs that he was able to secure fell far short of the initial target of 50 million.49 The beginning of the end for Langrand-­ Dumonceau came when he tried to capitalize on the sale of Church property expropriated by the new Italian nation-­state, which would be converted into marketable securities, one-­third of which to benefit the Italian treasury and two-­thirds going to the Church. Langrand-­Dumonceau estimated that he would be able to generate 60 million francs in commissions as a profit, but when the deal between the Italian government and the Vatican fell apart, he ended up instead with a large loss.50 By early 1868, Langrand-­Dumonceau’s empire was unraveling. In late January, the Viennese Fremden-­Blatt reported on the “ever closer catastrophe of the Langrand stock companies,” adding: “This is quite unheard of: yesterday his stocks were being offered for free at the exchange, even with a premium or, rather, a compensation for damages [Schmerzensgeld], and still found no takers. . . . Hundreds of families are in despair.”51 One of Langrand-­ Dumonceau’s largest investors, the princely Thurn & Taxis, decided to withdraw, forcing the Belgian banker to seek new loans to keep his business afloat. In his despair, Langrand-­Dumonceau once again turned to Hirsch, who responded with a cordial letter. “My dear Langrand,” Hirsch assured his former partner and competitor, “if I intervene in your business it is only as a friend and thus, I cannot accept the commission of 15 francs per share that you are suggesting.” “If you allow [your associate] Mr. Lejeune to explain to me confidentially all your business,” Hirsch offered, “I am convinced it would be for the best.” Hirsch was not so much looking for a way to salvage Langrand-­Dumonceau, though, as he was trying to obtain information on his erstwhile partner.52 In the quest to establish a Catholic alternative to Jewish or Protestant banking houses, Langrand-­Dumonceau had also joined the race for railroad

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concessions, securing the right to build the Kaschau-­Oderberg Railroad in Hungary, which would connect the Prussian industrial region of Silesia with the eastern part of the Habsburg monarchy.53 The enterprise was already in trouble—­the previous concessionary had failed to make any progress since obtaining the contract in 1865—­and barely four miles of the forty-­eight-­ mile line had been built. But Langrand-­Dumonceau struggled to raise the required capital and, in a maneuver that was typical for him, he tried to avoid the inevitable when, in April 1868, his Banque de Crédit Foncier et Industriel sold the concession to the Société de Crédit Foncier International.54 “Alas,” Vienna’s Neue Freie Presse commented, “the International is, lamentably, also one of the banks of Mr. Langrand-­Dumonceau, whose stock no person wants to buy and which is . . . on the verge of liquidation.”55 In the end, Langrand-­Dumonceau—­who had hoped this railroad concession would help him revive his failing business empire—­was forced to cede the contract to a consortium led by the Anglo-­Austrian Bank in Vienna, which completed the line in 1872.56 A far larger, more ambitious, and more complex proposition was the project to build a railroad connecting Constantinople and the Ottoman Balkans to the Habsburg railways. In the spring of 1868, the Sublime Porte (as the Ottoman government was known) had awarded the concession for the Ottoman railroads to the Brussels-­based Van der Elst & Cie. which, in October 1868, had transferred its rights to Langrand-­Dumonceau. It is unclear whether Elst & Cie. did so after it failed to raise the necessary capital or whether the company had acted as a strawman for Langrand-­Dumonceau all along, but the Ottoman government insisted that it had never authorized this transfer of the railway concession to begin with.57 As his Kaschau-­ Oderberg venture was collapsing, by October 1868, prosecutors in Belgium began to investigate Langrand-­Dumonceau for fraud and extortion: in 1870, the courts declared the failure of his business and, in 1872, sentenced Langrand-­Dumonceau, who had since fled to Paris, then Rome, and eventually the United States, to ten years in prison.58 In the fallout from Langrand-­Dumonceau’s spectacular failure, the government in Constantinople dispatched its minister of public works, the Armenian Davud Pasha, to Vienna. Unable to find any takers in Vienna, Davud Pasha moved on to Paris, where he met another Brussels-­based

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banker with great ambition: Baron Maurice de Hirsch. Just five days after voiding the Van der Elst / Langrand-­Dumonceau concession, the Ottoman minister and Hirsch signed a preliminary agreement on April 17, 1869.59 It would be this deal—­initially for some two thousand kilometers of railroad lines that would link the Ottoman ports of Constantinople and Salonika with the central European railways—­that became the defining moment in Hirsch’s life as a businessman, and which was the main source of one of the largest fortunes in Europe of the late nineteenth century.60 With the Ottoman railroad concession in hand, Hirsch joined the first ranks of Europe’s private banking houses, and their parental hometowns, Munich and Brussels, quickly became too small a stage for Maurice and Clara. Thus, after a temporary relocation to Constantinople to oversee the launching of the Ottoman railroad business, in late 1871 or early 1872, the Hirschs took up residence in Paris, “the capital of the nineteenth century.”61

The trajectory of Maurice de Hirsch, grandson of that Franconian cattle merchant turned courtier for the Bavarian king, illustrates a broader shift in the political history of the Jews in the nineteenth century: what the “court Jews” of central Europe had been in the era of absolutism and mercantilism, the banker cum railroad magnates of the nineteenth century would become in the era of industrial capitalism, nationalism, and imperialism.62 As one historian has noted, what was characteristic of the court Jews was their “close association with a [Jewish] community whose interests [they] championed,”63 and as such, they emerged as the main locus of political power within the Jewish world of early modern Europe. Court Jews have also long been described as harbingers of Jewish modernity, as “a first expression of the modern interweaving of Jews in the life of Europe” and “a prelude to the age of Emancipation.”64 In fact, the rise of the new Jewish elite of bankers and railroad entrepreneurs, including Hirsch, represented some continuities: like the court Jews of the eighteenth century, the “new aristocracy” of Jewish bankers and financiers was closely interlinked, by marriage and family ties, and formed a pan-­European class within Jewish society. Like their predecessors, they embraced an aristocratic habitus and participated in European elite culture, and like them, they marshaled their connections and financial resources in the service of the state.

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But continuities and similarities notwithstanding, Baron Hirsch and his peers lived in a different time and represented a different type of leadership than the court Jews of the past. In the highly differentiated and complex capitalist economies of the late nineteenth century, they offered specialized services, not to individual potentates, but to the governments of nation-­states and empires. Whereas a Jewish agent in the service of a Baroque ruler might single-­handedly be in charge of supplying luxury goods to the court, overseeing the monarch’s finances and providing credit, managing monopolies on tobacco, modernizing agriculture, and provisioning the army, nineteenth-­ century Jewish bankers like Hirsch marketed government-­backed bonds and financed railroads. And while Hirsch might have been on friendly terms with the king of the Belgians, no longer was there anything like the court Jew’s personal dependency—­literally, a matter of life and death—­on the ruler he was serving.65 The relationship between the nineteenth-­century Jewish elite and the larger Jewish community, finally, and the nature of its power, was very different from that of the court Jews in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, who, by virtue of their relationship to the ruler, served as intermediaries between the monarch and his (or her) Jewish subjects. In the wake of emancipation, in contrast, the influence of Europe’s Jewish elites on Jewish society would come to rest primarily on the “soft power” of philanthropy.

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For the celebrationof the Jewish New Year, the Parisian newspaper Le Gaulois reported in September 1879, all four synagogues in the French capital were expected to be filled to the brim, with the best seats reserved, at significant cost, by the members of the city’s Jewish elite.1 Le Gaulois used the occasion of the Jewish holiday to offer its readers an exposé on the place of Jews in Parisian high society, the Tout-­Paris, as it was known. The newspaper began with a lengthy list of the philanthropies sustained by the most prominent members of the Jewish community, from the Bischoffsheim school providing free education to fifty young Jewish girls to various mutual aid organizations, and from a foundation set up by the Fould banking family, offering stipends to young painters and sculptors, all the way to the Alliance Israélite Universelle, an international organization based in Paris that operated a large network of schools throughout the Middle East and North Africa. “It is this spirit of solidarity,” Le Gaulois explained, “which constitutes the power of Judaism [israélisme] and which has earned it, despite the small number of its adherents, such a prominent place in today’s society.”2 Indeed, Jewish elites were prominent, even leading members of the Tout-­Paris.3 Nowhere could one participate in hunting parties as exciting as those hosted by 37

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Baron Rothschild at Ferrières, or by Baron Hirsch at Beauregard, the castle that the Prussians had turned into their headquarters during the war with France in 1870 and that Hirsch had been able to purchase at auction, after the war, for 800,000 francs (it was worth, according to one newspaper report, some 5 million).4 And nowhere could one expect to dine as exquisitely as at the Camondos, the Constantinople banking family that had relocated to Paris, at their mansion on Rue de Monceau, or at the Heines, another major Jewish banking family. Yet, while they were very much a part of high-­flying, aristocratic Tout-­Paris, these prominent Jewish families retained a distinct sense of their Jewishness. That, at any rate, was the sense of the writer in Le Gaulois who reported how, at one grand dinner hosted by the Russian-­Jewish Gunzburgs, the baroness had served a cake baked by herself, made “according to the Israelite fashion,” and how Clara de Hirsch had been observed talking to her son Lucien in Hebrew on the sidelines of a festive reception.5 The latter, to be sure, was fanciful: the family’s language was German and continued to be so even decades after they had spent a great part of their lives in France, and neither Lucien nor Clara would have been able to converse in Hebrew. When the journalist imagined Lucien and Clara doing so, therefore, he reinforced the persistent notion of Jews as “Oriental” others. The report in Le Gaulois captures well the contours of the Hirsch family’s life as part of Parisian society, their position resting on a carefully calibrated combination of economic capital, aristocratic sociability, and philanthropic action.6 The Jewish elites’ infatuation with the nobility and noble titles appears counterintuitive when we think of the nineteenth century as a period that saw the emergence of liberalism and modern capitalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie. But in reality, vestiges of the political, social, and economic old regime remained important until the eve of the First World War. As the historian C. A. Bayly has pointed out, throughout the nineteenth century, “the men of capital,” like Hirsch and his peers, “could still only acquire status and respectability by sharing influence with kings, aristocrats, landowners, and bureaucrats who staffed the offices of the new, hard-­edged nation states.” 7 Political power may have been shifting away from the old elites—­but old hierarchies were perpetuated, and the rise of the capitalist bourgeoisie, of which the Hirschs were a prime example despite their Bavarian noble title, was far from complete, and certainly not uncontested.8 At the same time, the

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proliferation of Jewish philanthropy demonstrated that aristocratic sociability, though it pulled families like the Hirschs into the orbit of gentile elite society, did not necessarily imply an undoing of collective Jewish sensibility, or a sense of solidarity. While Maurice and Clara were not known to bother with attending synagogue, even on the Jewish High Holidays, they would dedicate much of their lives, and fortune, to Jewish philanthropic causes. What they embodied, then, was the new nucleus of political power within the Jewish world of the nineteenth century, which rested not only on the unprecedented wealth of the railroad age but on the systematic accumulation of social capital through participation in aristocratic society, and the deployment of economic and social capital to reshape Jewish society, at home and abroad, through philanthropy.

The Paris that Maurice, Clara, and Lucien de Hirsch made their home in the early 1870s was still recovering from the ravages of the Franco-­Prussian War, when the Prussians had surrounded Paris in a siege that had lasted over four months, and from the turmoil of the Paris Commune, the short-­lived revolutionary government, when for a brief time—­from mid-­March to late May 1871—­the red flag, rather than the republican tricolor, had been fluttering high above the Hôtel de Ville. The Second Empire of Napoléon III had collapsed under the Prussian onslaught, and the Third Republic had been declared the previous September. After the new president, Adolphe Thiers, signed a humiliating armistice at Versailles, the leaders of the Paris Commune formed the first government dominated by members of the First International, founded by Karl Marx, until the regular French army brutally ended this “one revolutionary episode in an otherwise distinctly unrevolutionary period,”9 during the “bloody week” of May 21–­28, 1871. Despite the political turmoil, to many contemporaries, Paris was the epitome of modernity.10 Paris may not have been a major entrepôt of international trade like London, or a center of modern industry like Berlin or New York, but it did function as an important hub of finance and home to many of the continent’s leading private banks—­including that of Baron Hirsch. The city was also a center of consumption, with its famous arcades—­iron and glass passages connecting from one street to another, not unlike latter-­

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day shopping malls—­and, by the second half of the century, had witnessed the opening of the first modern department stores. Thus, if the myth of Paris was, in the minds of many, that of the capital of revolution, in the nineteenth century it also was very much a capital of modern capitalism. Under Napoléon III, in the 1850s and 1860s, Georges Haussmann—­prefect of the Seine region—­had completely transformed the city. Calling himself a “demolition artist,” Haussmann built two hundred kilometers of new streets, creating the grand boulevards that cut through the city, lined by thirty-­four thousand new buildings of uniform height, faced in cream-­colored stone, which define Paris’s distinctive urban topography even today. With the advent of railroads, new train stations went up, emphatically modern with their soaring iron structures; wrought iron was used for the Eiffel Tower that was erected for the 1889 World’s Fair, an entirely purposeless edifice at the time but soon to become the very symbol not only of Paris but of modernity writ large. France was, of course, the first European country to emancipate its Jews following the revolution of 1789, though that had by no means been a foregone conclusion—­emancipation was not granted until two years later, in 1791—­and the civic status of Jews emerged as a test case for the republican idea of universal citizenship.11 French Jewish leaders fully embraced their “double act as Israelites and Frenchmen,” as one contemporary rabbi put it,12 proclaiming that their French patriotism and the ideas of 1789 could exist in perfect harmony with Jewish values. A state-­sponsored network of communal institutions, the consistoires, promoted both Jewish solidarity and acculturation, and whereas very few French Jews at the time intermarried or went as far as converting to Christianity, assimilation into French society and culture transformed the life and lifestyle of all classes of Jews. That was particularly true for those who made their home in Paris, which, when Hirsch moved there in the 1870s, counted some thirty-­five thousand Jews.13 “[F]or us transplanted Alsatian Jews,” remembered one of the many who left behind their villages in northeastern France for opportunities in the capital city, “the customs of our ancestors, alas, are too quickly reduced to memories.”14 Before the twentieth century, however, France attracted few Jewish immigrants from abroad—­the 44,000 who found their way there from eastern Europe between 1881 and 1914 (and of those, many only after 1905) pale

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next to the two million eastern European Jews who migrated during the same period to the United States and the 120,000 who settled in England.15 And yet, French Jewry exerted an outsize influence over Jewish communities elsewhere, especially with the creation of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1860. While we often think of Jewish emancipation in the context of modern nationalism and the need for Jews, as an ethnic and religious minority, to integrate into the emerging nation-­states of Europe, nineteenth-­century France was of course an imperial nation-­state.16 Thus the occupation of Algeria in 1830 also brought some thirty-­five thousand Algerian Jews into the orbit of the French “civilizing mission,” and France’s Jewish leadership embraced the cause of reshaping Algerian Jewry in its own image and making them “modern.”17 (Most of Algeria’s Jews were granted French citizenship in 1870 as a result of the Crémieux decree, named after then minister of justice Adolphe Crémieux, who also served as the president of the Alliance.) Other international events contributed to the rise of a pan-­Jewish sense of solidarity among French Jewish intellectuals and community leaders, such as the Damascus blood libel in 1840: shockingly, the French consul in Damascus and many conservative and Catholic-­leaning newspapers in France had given credence to the ritual murder accusation against the Jews of that Syrian city. The Damascus Affair quickly became an international cause célèbre as newly founded Jewish newspapers spread news about the latest developments throughout Europe, and prompted Western Jewish leaders, including Crémieux and the British philanthropist Moses Montefiore, to set out for Cairo (which then controlled Syria) and Constantinople to intervene on behalf of the besieged Damascene Jews.18 In 1858, another affair drew international attention when a seven-­year-­old Jewish child in Bologna, Edgardo Mortara, who had been secretly baptized by a Christian servant of the family, was taken into custody by the Church to be brought up as a Catholic, against the will of his family.19 This was the context for the creation of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1860, designed to advocate for Jewish civic rights everywhere, to combat anti-­Jewish prejudice, and to encourage modern Jewish education, on the French model, in “the Orient.” Addressing Jews in France and around the world, the founders of the Alliance issued the following appeal:

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If, dispersed to all the corners of the globe and mixed with the nations, you remain attached with your heart to the ancient religion of your fathers. . . . If you detest prejudices from which we still suffer. . . . If you believe that a large number of your coreligionists, overwhelmed by twenty centuries of misery, can recover their dignity as men, conquer their dignity as citizens, if you believe that one should moralize those who have been corrupted and not condemn them, enlighten those who have been blinded, and not abandon them. . . . If finally you believe that the influence of the principles of [17]89 is all powerful in the world, that the law which flows from them is a law of justice, . . . give us your membership, your cooperation.20

Thus, acculturation and embracing the values of the French Revolution did not mean an erosion of Jewish identity. Rather, Jewish solidarity, advocacy for Jewish rights around the world, and humanitarianism became a vehicle for French Jews to assert their Jewishness while, at the same time, demonstrating their commitment to a “universal” Enlightenment ethos and the French “civilizing mission.”21 But the Alliance quickly outgrew its French origins: by 1880, of 345 local committees founded in Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East, just 55 were in France, and the country with the largest number of subscribers and local committees (at 114) was Germany. In 1881, merely 23.6 percent of dues-­paying Alliance members were French.22 Still, the Alliance’s schools in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire promoted Francophone education, and with the organization’s headquarters and all its leading figures in Paris, the French capital remained very much at the center of Jewish international philanthropy and humanitarianism, all the way until the eve of the First World War. The Alliance’s single most important donors, meanwhile, were Maurice and Clara de Hirsch. ON RUE DE L’ÉLYSÉE

In 1878, the Hirschs purchased several houses on the fashionably located Rue de l’Elysée: number 2, at the corner of Avenue Gabriel, as well as numbers 4 and 6, for the price of 2.36 million francs, from Marie Eugénie, the Spanish-­ born widow of the late emperor Napoléon III.23 After extensive renovation, the Hôtel Hirsch opened its doors for an inaugural reception in March 1884,

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with some fifteen valets attending to a throng of guests from among Parisian high society, admiring the splendidly restored rooms of the palatial home, set out in white and gold and rich Aubusson tapestries, all “in the style of Louis XVI.”24 Two months later, the Hirschs hosted another party, this time to showcase the recently completed great ballroom—­designed to hold up to two thousand people25—­on the building’s main level. The guests danced to music played by a forty-­men strong orchestra and admired the elegance of the newly opened rooms, decorated in a “symphonie en blanc majeur,” as one observer put it (invoking the title of a poem by Théophile Gautier). The list of guests—­moving among the marble statues, the lit torches, the elaborate flower arrangements, and the large mirrors—­was impressive: a veritable “world fair of aristocracies,” in the words of Le Gaulois, “as if at the Opera, on the day of a gala, during the times of the monarchy.”26 Clara and Maurice’s son Lucien did not always share his parents’ enthusiasm for Parisian high society and its sense of aesthetics. “I also hate the style of decoration one usually finds in Royal residences especially the ‘Louis Philippe’ & ‘Restauration’ which are the most frequent aberrations of princely taste,” he quipped in one of his letters.27 On another occasion, he commented on how much he had enjoyed an evening at the home of Michel Ephrussi, a Jewish banker of Russian origin. To Lucien’s delight, it had been “just a small dance, but all the young and elegant young women currently in Paris were there.” The Ephrussi mansion, he observed, was remarkable for the simple elegance of its style, forgoing the excessive decorations that he associated with “princely taste.” “Of all the members of my tribe,” he wrote with his typical dry humor, “[the Ephrussis] are certainly those who have been most successful in terms of making a home (without spending a lot of money) and in terms of their social position . . . without the wife ever having taken any lovers.”28 By contrast, he confided, he dreaded an upcoming party at his parents’. Though complaining about the setup and decoration (“right in the middle of the grand room an enormous ottoman, made up of 4 settees!!! in velvet!!!!”), it turned out better than expected, especially since, as it turned out, the “absence of diplomats, which I always consider to be a good sign,” ensured that the party was not as dull as he had feared.29 It was thanks to Lucien and his interest in art and antiquities that the Hôtel Hirsch displayed an impressive collection of antique furniture, precious tapestries, and paintings such as The Flute Player by Frans Hals, a

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Virgin by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, or a portrait by Anthony Van Dyck.30 As Clara and Maurice’s longtime secretary, Paul Barrelet, noted, rather snobbishly, the baron and his wife themselves had “very little developed taste,” and everywhere “knickknacks and objects practically out of a hardware store brushed up against magisterial works of the masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”31 According to Barrelet (whose words we probably need to take with a pinch of salt), Clara and Maurice had little appreciation for beauty, art, literature—­or good wine, for that matter: many of their guests complained about the inferiority of their wine cellar. If they understood the value of displaying these works of art as part of their embrace of an aristocratic lifestyle, they had little use “for artists and literary men themselves: for the baron, the most admirable littérateur is nothing more than a ‘journalist,’ ” and his own reading was limited to newspapers and, later on, the memoranda of his various philanthropic enterprises.32 The lavish, even extravagant, mansion on Rue de l’Elysée was the perfect backdrop for the salons and soirées of Parisian society. The baroness’s Sunday dinners were much sought after, and receptions, parties, and balls at the Hôtel Hirsch were a mainstay of the Paris season.33 There was a dinner in honor of the Habsburg ambassador, Count Hoyos;34 a performance of a scene from Verdi’s Aida;35 or a ball, with all rooms brightly lit, where the old French aristocracy mingled with foreign ambassadors and representatives of the city’s world of high finance.36 Not long after inaugurating their new installations, the Hirschs entertained a distinguished crowd with a comédie de salon written by Philippe Marquis de Massa, a former military man and popular author of those small plays that could be performed in the city’s salons or taken on the road to the fashionable spas. (De Massa had already been writing comedies for the imperial court of Napoléon III and Empress Eugénie.) At the Hôtel Hirsch, a piece of his, called La cicatrice, premiered in late May 1884, with an orchestra playing an opening act and the distinguished guests in their evening gowns spread out across the ballroom and up the marble staircase.37 A year later, Maurice and Clara’s guests marveled at a musical adaptation of Lope de Vega’s Chien du jardinier, again with the spectators—­including the ambassadors of Russia, Belgium, and the Ottoman Empire—­lined up on the grand staircase for better views.38

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Much admired indeed it was, that monumental staircase in white marble designed by the architect and sculptor Émile Peyre. Measuring no less than seven meters across at the bottom, the elegantly curved stairs ascended, lined by stone banisters featuring moldings in the form of acanthus leaves, to a landing and from there, two lateral staircases led up to the first floor where, in turn, a marble colonnade opened up to a glass-­clad conservatory.39 According to a reporter from Le Gaulois, even the grand stairway of Charles Garnier’s famous Paris opera house (opened in 1875) offered “no more than a reflection of the splendor of the royal staircase that M. de Hirsch has had built in his hôtel, as an incomparable monument of wealth and style.”40 That, undoubtedly, was the point. As Norbert Elias observed in his famous study of early modern court culture, “A duke must build his house in such a way as to tell the world: I am duke and not a count.”41 In the same vein, European Jewish notables who eagerly pursued entry into the rarefied circles of the aristocracy, even in the France of the Third Republic, sought to claim their place at the pinnacle of society in an age of emancipation by embracing their noble titles and emulating the lifestyle of their Christian aristocratic peers. The urban mansions and castle-­like country estates were their most conspicuous claim to social status. This “new aristocracy,” as Le Gaulois—­always a useful guide to the world of the noble and famous in Parisian society—­ pointed out, “more and more attach themselves to the old aristocracy, are more and more acculturated into our society, and tightly bound up with our city.”42 With the Rothschilds on top (in the early 1880s, they owned no less than eight hôtels in the city of Paris), the Hirschs, the Gunzburgs, the Heines, the Erlangers, the Camondos, the Foulds, and the Ephrussis formed the core of the Jewish Tout-­Paris, proudly displaying their titles of nobility and other honors from various European countries.43 There were those, of course, who resented the arrival of this new elite, which had made its fortunes in banking, finance, and railroads. Many of them hailing from Jewish families in Germany (including Rothschild, Bischoffsheim, Heine and, of course, Hirsch), their loyalties were questioned especially in the aftermath of the Franco-­Prussian War, and traditional anti-­ Jewish prejudice merged with an antimodernist, antirepublican, antiliberal ideology that was ascendant in the 1880s and 1890s. The cause célèbre of

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FIGURE 2.1. Grand staircase, Hôtel Hirsch. Monographie du Palais des feu le Baron & la Baronne de Hirsch: Décorations intérieures & extérieures (Paris, [1906]).

this confrontation between the “two Frances,” showcasing the power of the new antisemitism, was of course the Dreyfus Affair, when, in 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer of Alsatian-­Jewish origin, was falsely accused of being a German spy.44 In the 1880s, the most prominent exponent of antisemitic prejudice was Edouard Drumont, whose book La France juive, denouncing the alleged dominance of Jews in the French Republic, came out in 1886 and was reprinted no less than one hundred times in its first year. In 1892, he launched La Libre Parole, an ultraconservative, anticapitalist, and antisemitic newspaper that would survive until the 1920s.45 In La France juive, Drumont relentlessly attacked what Le Gaulois had called the “new aristocracy,” the leading Jewish banking families that had established themselves in Paris (and whom Langrand-­Dumonceau had unsuccessfully tried to depose). For Le Gaulois, their presence was a sign of the city’s position as a financial center that could compete with London and an

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ascendant Berlin, a source of pride that France continued to attract some of the largest fortunes from around Europe.46 Drumont, in contrast, peddled what became a mainstay of modern antisemitism: an elaborate conspiracy theory in which Jews, in cahoots with other elites, schemed to control national politics, economic life, and culture from behind the scenes. While the Rothschilds were Drumont’s primary target, Baron Hirsch also featured prominently in La France juive. For Drumont, Hirsch was a parvenu, though in a backhanded compliment, he noted that, at least, Hirsch lacked the Rothschilds’ arrogance and haughtiness. “He is infinitely more open, more straightforward than those Princes of Israel, and, overall, less ridiculous than they are. He is insolent, no doubt, but his insolence is mocking and informal.” The Rothschilds, Drumont noted bitingly, “believe that they pertain . . . to the aristocracy; Hirsch, by contrast, believes that the aristocracy pertains to him.” Drumont claimed that Hirsch had gained his place in society through a ruthless pursuit of power: “he knows the going rate of each [moral] scruple and the market price of every conscience. Along with Bismarck and Gambetta, he is one of the three great despisers of mankind of our era.”47 Drumont complained that after they had shunned Hirsch in his early years in Paris, “today the most distinguished people are happy to mount his famous staircase.” For the author of La France juive, the iconic marble staircase, which had become a symbol of the Hirschs’ place in Paris society, was in fact not all that it was made out to be. “These stairs, by the way, do not deserve the noisy admiration that they attract.  .  .  . In reality  .  .  . one cannot imagine anything more incoherent and more disproportionate than this stairway. It is big enough at its bottom that an entire regiment could parade on it, and so narrow at the top that . . . it appears like a hidden staircase.” It was precisely from atop his famous stairs, Drumont claimed, that Maurice de Hirsch had once told his son, gazing down on the assembled dukes, princes, and marquis: “Look at all these people, in twenty years, they will all be either our sons-­in-­law or our porters.”48 Thus, for antisemites like Drumont, the monumental staircase at Hôtel Hirsch, symbolizing the social ascent of a new Jewish elite in the age of emancipation, was itself incongruous and out of proportion, just like, in his view, the place of Jews in modern France. From the height of their position, the antisemitic conspiracy theory

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went, these Jewish elites were about to take control over society, either by relegating the old, landed aristocracy to an inferior position or, even worse, by intermarrying with them. This was, then, one of the clearest expressions of a modern antisemitism that was no longer concerned primarily with Jewish religious difference (though Drumont peddled traditional Catholic anti-­ Jewish stereotypes as well) but saw a racialized Jewish minority as a danger precisely because it embraced integration and assimilation into the fabric of wider society. NOBLESSE OBLIGE

Given the fault lines of political debate in France, when the place of Jews once again appeared as a litmus test for competing visions for the French nation and its destiny, it was not surprising to have an influential Jewish newspaper, Archives Israélites, declare: “Caesarism, Boulangism, nationalism, in a word, all the movements hostile to the Republic and against which it had to defend itself found in the enemies of Israel ardent thurifers and precious instruments. . . . The line is very clear, clearly delimited, between those who want to set our country back by five centuries and those who are resolved to follow the path of freedom, progress, and social justice opened by the movement of 1789. And the Jewish question is the infallible criterion by which one can recognize one’s own.”49 In reality, though, the Dreyfusard and anti-­Dreyfusard camps of the late nineteenth century were not monolithic blocs, and the attitude even of some of the most prominent defenders of Dreyfus, like the writer Émile Zola, toward the Jews and Judaism were ambiguous. (The image of Jews in Zola’s L’argent appeared to many plainly antisemitic.)50 Still, in the overall French political landscape, one certainly expected Jewish leaders to side with republicanism and republican secularism (or, rather, laïcité, as the French call it), and Jewish elites—­not only in France—­with liberalism.51 Maurice de Hirsch, however, fit rather awkwardly into this alignment of fin de siècle Jewish politics, most notably when he became a supporter of the short-­lived Boulangist movement in the late 1880s.52 In 1887, after being sacked as minister of war, the popular general Georges Boulanger decided to launch his own political movement, a popu-

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list campaign built on the promise of revanche against Germany, avenging France’s defeat in 1870; rejection of parliamentarianism and the promise of establishing a strong presidency acting in the name of the people, dismissing the “parliamentary caste”; and restoration of the monarchy. Boulanger also denounced the anticlerical secularism of the Third Republic, arguing that the state as he envisioned it “must repudiate the Jacobin heritage of the present Republic.”53 With its mix of populist nationalism and reactionary monarchism—­the historian Zeev Sternhell has interpreted Boulangism as a proto-­fascist movement defying the typical categories of left and right54 —­ Boulanger attracted an eclectic group of supporters, from working-­class neighborhoods in Paris to the followers of Philippe, Count of Paris, the Orléanist claimant to the French throne who had been exiled by the republic to England in 1886. Many of Boulanger’s backers embraced openly antisemitic ideas, although the general himself denied anti-­Jewish comments he was alleged to have made. In fact, one of the leading voices of the movement was Alfred Naquet, a Jewish scientist and politician who had started out on the far left of the National Assembly and ended up on the Boulangist benches. Fielding candidates in districts throughout France in the elections was expensive, and expectations to propel Boulanger into power and thus trigger a political revolution that, as some hoped, would bring back the monarchy hinged on mobilizing financial support. Thus, on March 30, 1888, one of the staunch supporters of Philippe d’Orléans, the Marquis of Breteuil, decided to call on Baron Maurice de Hirsch. Finding Hirsch in his smoking room, Breteuil got right to the point: “The monarchist cause,” he explained, “needs a fairly substantial sum, though it is nothing to you, some 200,000 francs.” He could reach out to two individuals, the marquis proceeded: either to Hirsch, “whom I consider a gentleman,” or to Alphonse de Rothschild, “whom I consider to be a banker.” Hirsch took the bait, signing a check there and then, assuring Breteuil that he did not need to know any further details and would not require a receipt.55 A few weeks later, on May 3, 1888, Hirsch went to visit Breteuil, who was about to depart for England to meet with the Count of Paris. “I am well informed,” Hirsch began, “and I know the use made of the money that you came to ask me for a few weeks ago, for the monarchist cause.” That, Hirsch assured Breteuil, was a cause he

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applauded. “It has been several years that I have been following closely your politics, and this is the first time that it seems to me that you have a trump card in your game.” The trump card, it appears, was the electoral prospect of Boulanger, who might finally allow the monarchist dreams of restoration to be realized. At the meeting, Hirsch proposed a tactic to get Rothschild to subscribe generously to the campaign, though the Count of Paris did not like the idea and demurred.56 Half a year later, on December 13, Hirsch was once again Breteuil’s guest for breakfast. “The baron was in an excellent mood,” the marquis noted in his diary, and he decided to take his chance: was Hirsch in a position to reassure the Count of Paris, about to go on a trip to Spain, that he could depend on the baron’s support? That evening, Hirsch informed Breteuil that he would give another 5 million francs to the cause—­with one condition (typical for the way Hirsch operated): he would appoint a committee to audit the use of the funds.57 In January 1889, Boulanger won his seat as deputy for Paris, with 244,000 votes out of 404,000 cast. His supporters urged him to seize the momentum of his popularity and stage a coup. But the general dithered and the moment passed. The movement was deflated, the Boulangists lost the general election in the following summer, and Boulanger himself left France. He met a pathetic end when he put a bullet in his head over the grave of his late mistress, at the Ixelles cemetery in Brussels. The Third Republic had survived the threat. Among the wider public, speculation was rife about the sources of Boulanger’s finances. A report by the Austrian embassy in Paris wondered how Boulanger had been able to afford his upscale mansion in a fashionable district with the modest pension he was receiving from the state. And who was paying for “agitation,” for public demonstrations, and for elections? The general’s electioneering of the summer of 1888 alone, the embassy noted, had devoured some 400,000 francs, and a number of names were bandied around as possible supporters of Boulanger, including the American businessman Mackay, the Countess of Uzès, and the owner of the Grands Magasins du Louvre, the city’s premier department store.58 In an additional, confidential note, the embassy reported that, according to unconfirmed rumors, Baron Hirsch had been one of Boulangism’s benefactors, recruited by the Marquis de Breteuil.59 The issue would not go away and appears to have damaged

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Hirsch’s reputation in France. The following year, in May 1889, the French government received a letter from the prominent general Gaston de Galliffet, remembered for his role in the violent suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871. (He would later become minister of war, in the years of the Dreyfus affair). Galliffet called on the authorities to expel Baron Hirsch, who was not a French citizen, from France because of his alleged support for Boulanger. When the government discreetly reached out to the baron and suggested it would let the matter drop if he pledged a donation of 100,000 francs to the centenary celebration of the French Revolution, Breteuil advised him to call their bluff: “Tell them that there is no truth in the matter and add that it is shameful to deal in such a way with a foreigner, and that you are going to leave France.”60 In the fall of 1890, several French newspapers again raised the suspicion that Hirsch had been the mysterious donor behind Boulanger’s campaign. The government now took up the question of expelling the foreign banker from the country, but, as Breteuil had predicted, expediency won the day. Hirsch, in turn, once again denied his involvement—­but, as a report from the Austrian embassy observed, “the obvious favors that Baron Hirsch received socially from the Prince of Orléans suggest, at the very least, that the latter owes him a debt of gratitude.”61 And, in fact, Hirsch’s support for the monarchist cause was arguably designed, in part at least, to enhance his position within the aristocratic class, and to earn the symbolically valuable protection of the Prince of Orléans. In 1889, the bet seemed to pay off: at the instruction of the prince, the Duke of Chartres nominated Baron Hirsch for membership in the exclusive Cercle de la Rue Royale, together with the Jockey Club something of an inner sanctum of the Tout-­Paris. But things did not go well, and Hirsch’s application was voted down, humiliatingly, with eighteen against and only two in favor.62 That was not the end of the story, however. Not long after, the club learned that a certain millionaire—­ Baron Hirsch—­had purchased the building that housed its headquarters for more than 2 million francs and now wanted its tenant evicted. A scandal broke, and eventually a compromise was reached, with the Cercle paying 64,000 francs a month in rent to the Jewish banker it had blackballed.63 The question remains why Baron Hirsch decided to make such a large monetary contribution to Boulanger’s ill-­fated political campaign in the

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first place. What could have motivated a foreign Jewish banker, hailing from Germany, to be supporting the Boulangist cause, which was identified with anti-­German revanchism, ultramontane Catholicism, and anticapitalist populism? (Lucien referred to the general on one occasion as the “damn Boulanger” who seems to have “gone completely mad and wants at all cost begin a war with Germany.)64 We actually know little about Maurice de Hirsch’s politics in general. According to the Jewish Chronicle, “in politics Baron Hirsch took no active part, but his views inclined to the sturdy Radicalism of the self-­made man.”65 Once, a correspondent for the London Daily Chronicle reported, as he strolled by the speaker’s corner in Hyde Park accompanied by Hirsch, the pair “drew up to listen to one of the Socialist orators who was addressing the crowd in a really able manner.” After listening for some time, Hirsch turned to his companion and said: “I agree with every word that man has said. I will talk to him.”66 What is more, around the same time that the baron was giving money to Boulanger, the Austrian crown prince Rudolf convinced Hirsch to provide a subsidy of 100,000 gulden to Rudolf ’s friend Moriz Szeps, a journalist and founder of the liberal Wiener Tagblatt who found himself in financial trouble, and in the crosshairs of the German-­nationalist and antisemitic movement in Austria led by Georg von Schönerer.67 It appears that, for Hirsch, politics were less about competing ideologies—­though he would embrace a lifelong battle to fight antisemitism and improve the lot of disfavored Jewish communities in eastern and southeastern Europe—­and more about networks of patronage. He gave to Boulanger because Breteuil asked him, and because it gained him the recognition that he sought from the Prince of Orléans; he gave to Szeps in Vienna because Crown Prince Rudolf had lobbied him to do so. Thus, building a position for himself within aristocratic society allowed Hirsch to carve out a position of influence—­the fiasco with the Cercle de la Rue Royale demonstrates how limited it remained, all told—­a position that he would later use to advance his various philanthropies on behalf of Jews in the Ottoman lands, in the Habsburg Empire, and in Russia.

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FRIENDS IN HIGH PL ACES

Maintaining an aristocratic lifestyle meant frequent travels and, importantly, owning a proper country house—­or, as in the case of the Hirschs, a number of country houses across Europe.68 In addition to their chateau of Beauregard on the outskirts of Paris, Maurice and Clara purchased a country estate called St. Johann, in what is today Slovakia (the Hungarian part of the Habsburg monarchy), in 1879. Taking possession of their new property, featuring a castle complete with “a draw-­bridge, portcullis, and all the mediaeval accessories of a once impregnable fortress” and extensive hunting grounds,69 the Hirschs were greeted by thirty young men mounted on richly adorned horses, welcoming the new owners with cries of hurrah. After passing through the local town, bedecked in flags and other decorations, they drove up to their castle where they would, in the years to come, host many of their aristocratic guests for elaborate hunting parties.70 Two years later, in 1881, Hirsch acquired another estate, Eichhorn, near Brünn (today, Brno in the Czech Republic, then in the Austrian part of the empire), including a nearby sugar factory and, like St. Johann, ample grounds for hunting.71 The purchase of the two country estates in the Habsburg Empire followed on the heels of Maurice and Clara’s acquiring Austrian citizenship, in 1877, though Paris remained the gravitational center of their life. It is not entirely clear what prompted Maurice to request naturalization in Austria, but it is likely that he sought official protection from the Habsburg government for the Ottoman railway business, and he transferred the company headquarters to Vienna the following year. After duly submitting documentation of his release from Bavarian citizenship and taking an oath of allegiance at the Austrian embassy in Paris, he was formally admitted as a citizen of Austria and entered into the census rolls in Vienna.72 As was customary at the time, Clara obtained Austrian citizenship automatically as a result.73 The Hirschs’ lifestyle involved frequent travel, not only between Paris and their various country estates but also to the spa of Carlsbad or down to the French Riviera, where on one occasion the Habsburg emperor, entering the grand dining room of the Hôtel Paris, ran into a crowd that included not only Maurice and Clara de Hirsch but also the baron Alfred de Rothschild, the Jewish banker Gerson von Bleichröder from Berlin, Princess Soltykoff

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(a Russian aristocrat), the Countess of Devonshire, and the American railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt.74 By the 1890s, the Hirschs were also spending more time in England, once renting Merton Hall in Suffolk for the astronomical sum of 4,000 guineas for eight weeks (of which they were in residence during only four).75 This constant travel between France, England, relatives in Brussels and in Munich, and the two country estates in the Habsburg Empire would have been impossible without the dramatic expansion of rail travel in the second half of the nineteenth century. One could get to St. Johann or Eichhorn from Paris in about twenty-­eight hours.76 St. Johann could be reached via Hohenau (today on the border between Austria and Slovakia), which was two hours by train from Vienna (and another hour’s drive from the station to the castle), whereas Eichhorn was an hour away from Brünn, connected by the express train to Vienna in a two-­and-­a-­ half-­hour ride.77 The attraction of St. Johann, Eichhorn, and Beauregard—­and a favorite aristocratic pastime—­was hunting. In the gendered division of labor and play of the time, Clara de Hirsch hosted dinners, balls, and musical soirées at Rue de l’Elysée; Maurice, for his part, would strategically award sought-­after invitations to shooting parties on the Hirschs’ various estates. In the woods of St. Germain, Hirsch welcomed the president of the French Republic,78 and at St. Johann, a veritable who’s who of European nobility were frequent guests. Baron Hirsch was “one of the few millionaires I have met who knew thoroughly how to enjoy himself,” observed Lady Jennie Churchill. (Her son, Winston Churchill, as a young man once spent his summer vacation with the Hirschs in Paris).79 At the estate in St. Johann, Jennie Churchill enthused after one visit, without any apparent irony, that life was “simple and healthy.” Following breakfast, “eight or ten victorias [four-­wheeled horse carriages] would appear at the door” and take the guests to where the hunting would take place.80 The shooting was extravagant. In the month of October 1889, during which the Duke of Chartres, Philippe and Auguste of Saxe-­Coburg, and many others were participating, the final tally of the hunting was positively appalling: 14,356 pheasants, 6,818 hares, 494 rabbits, 31 roe deer, as well as foxes, ducks, and falcons.81 A year later, the Prince of Wales—­the future Edward VII—­was the guest of honor, along with Lady Churchill, the Sassoons (of the famous Baghdadi-­Jewish Sassoon business dynasty, which operated in India, China, and England), and others. The av-

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erage number of birds bagged at the end of each day of hunting was reported to be over 2,400.82 At times, the supply of game ran short: Lucien wrote in a letter to Jessica Sykes that, in expectation of hunting guests from France, including the Duke of Chartres, Maurice was in distress because there were simply not enough hares around. The solution was to buy up game elsewhere for hunting at St. Johann, much to Lucien’s dismay: “I cannot see any sporting challenge in killing animals that have been trapped, transported, and then released again,” but considering the distinguished guests traveling all the way from Paris, “one has to offer them something to shoot at.”83 The wealth, indeed, the extravagance, of the kind of entertainment that the Hirschs put on for their aristocratic guests presented a stark contrast to the poverty of the working-­class neighborhoods in Paris and Vienna, and the villagers on the family’s estates. Lucien tells of an evening that he spent with his parents at a local tavern near Planegg, his grandparents’ residence near Munich, where a ragtag theater troupe was performing with improvised scenery. One of the actresses had just given birth to a child, “and the two [parents] have about 50 pfennigs in capital among them to pay for meeting the demands of their new heir.” Naturally, Lucien added, “one provided help for them from the castle,” and the following Friday night, the group offered a special performance in honor of the Hirsch family. Lucien’s words demonstrate empathy—­but also a sense of distance, wrought by the insuperable difference of social circumstance, repeatedly referring to the actors as “those poor devils.”84 Maurice and Clara—­best known to posterity, of course, because of their philanthropy—­subscribed to the view, in Maurice’s words, that “the possession of great wealth lays a duty upon the possessor.” He noted that it was his “inmost conviction that I must consider myself as only the temporary administrator of the wealth I have amassed, and that it is my duty to contribute in my own way to the relief of the suffering of those who are hard pressed by fate.”85 Benevolence began close to home, not only at Planegg. When a fire destroyed fifty homes in the village of Szekula, in the vicinity of St. Johann, Hirsch was quick to inspect the damage personally and promised, on the spot, to provide 10,000 gulden to allow people to rebuild their homes.86

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Among the most celebrated guests of the Hirschs’ at St. Johann were heirs to two thrones—­the Habsburg crown prince Rudolf (d. 1889) and Edward, Prince of Wales (d. 1910)87—­as well as Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria. Hirsch had first met Rudolf at a shooting party in 1886,88 and the two seem to have developed a close rapport, a genuine friendship, over the next few years. A few months later, Rudolf introduced Hirsch to Edward (“Bertie”).89 Edouard Drumont once acidly remarked that “Hirsch has never in his life met a human being who has reached out to him other than to ask him for money.”90 That was precisely how many contemporaries interpreted the relationship that emerged between the Jewish businessman and the two crown princes. Edward Henry Stanley, the Earl of Derby, confessed in his diary that he and his friends were wondering “about Baron Hirsch, whose influence over the P. of Wales was a puzzle to society, since he is neither a gentleman, nor reputed altogether honest.” He gave the following explanation: “It seems one Mackenzie, a Scotch capitalist, had lent the Prince 250,000 pounds sterling, first and last, which the latter did not expect to be called upon to pay: but, Mackenzie dying, his trustees were obliged to call in the debt. This caused confusion at Marlborough House, and Hirsch seized the opportunity to pay off the debt, make the Prince his debtor, and so secure for himself a social position.”91 It was probably true that Hirsch appeared on the scene just when both Rudolf and Edward were in something of a financial pickle. While Rudolf mediated a subsidy for his journalist friend Szeps, he also relied on Hirsch to pay for his ceaseless amorous escapades. When he purchased a house worth 60,000 gulden for his mistress Mizzi Caspar, for example, the money was reported to have come from his wealthy friend. Edward, too, was notoriously short of money and had to resort to Nathaniel “Natty” Rothschild for a loan more than once,92 and Prince Ferdinand was reported to have traveled to Paris, asking Baron Hirsch for a loan, to be secured by the assets of his mother, Princess Clémentine of Orléans.93 For the likes of Rothschild and Hirsch, supporting their spendthrift royal acquaintances certainly was a strategy to ensure their own place in society which, because of their Jewishness, they could never take for granted. Thus, Bertie was “dreadfully annoyed” that his mother, Queen Victoria, refused to invite Hirsch to a state concert at Buckingham Palace, but there was

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nothing he could do about that.94 And in Vienna, unlike the Rothschilds, Baron Hirsch never became hoffähig—­that is, formally admitted in the imperial court, his close relationship with Rudolf notwithstanding. But the unlikely friendship was more than simply a matter of mutual interest and convenience. It also amounted to a political statement, and a mark of their relative open-­mindedness, that both the Prince of Wales and the Austrian crown prince chose to surround themselves with Jewish friends. Some called it Bertie’s “Jewish court,” and Rudolf was often criticized in the antisemitic press of his home country for spending a great deal of time not only in Hirsch’s company but also in that of the writers Karl Emil Franzos, Joseph Weilen and Friedrich Kraus, the medical doctors Moriz Benedikt and Emil Zuckerkandl, and the journalists Moriz Szeps, Berthold Frischauer, and Max Falk—­all of them Jewish.95 Both heirs, together with the German crown prince Friedrich (who was married to Victoria’s eldest daughter, Vicky), stood for a liberal political realignment. Sadly, Friedrich died of cancer in 1888 after only ninety days on the throne. And on January 30, 1889, tragedy struck at the heart of the Habsburg monarchy when Rudolf, weakened by syphilis and at odds with this father, Franz Joseph, over his vision for the future of the empire, put an end to his own life. At the royal hunting lodge at Mayerling, where he had gone with his lover, the seventeen-­year-­old Baroness Mary Vetsera, the couple carried out the double suicide that they apparently had planned together. Rudolf left behind four farewell letters: to his sister Valerie; to his wife Stephanie, the daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium; to his former mistress, Mizzi Caspar; and to Baron Hirsch. In 1899, three years after Maurice passed away, the Austrian imperial family would convince Clara to give back the letter, and its contents have never become public.96 But considering that Rudolf had chosen to write some final words to Hirsch—­and not a single line to either of his parents—­we can surmise that the relationship between the crown prince and the Jewish baron was based on more than just Hirsch’s money. The year after Rudolf ’s death, in 1890, Baron Hirsch was often seen in the company of the Prince of Wales. In April, Bertie joined Hirsch’s shooting party outside Paris,97 and in October, the prince gave a breakfast at his hotel when visiting Vienna, to which he invited Baron Hirsch along with the king of Greece and the representatives of the British embassy; the following

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day, he took the train down to St. Johann to enjoy the shooting at Hirsch’s estate.98 By the early 1890s, Maurice and Clara had also begun to spend more of their time in England. Some twenty years earlier, Clara’s cousin, Henry Bischoffsheim, had settled in London, where he and his wife Clarissa owned a palatial residence on South Audley Street in Mayfair (Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s Allegory of Venus and Time graced the ceiling of the drawing room). The “Bischs,” as they were known, offered a valuable introduction to London society, though Lucien was not very fond of his aunt. When some rioters marched through South Audley Street (“a pretty beginning for the [Liberal] Gladstone Government”), breaking windows, “Mrs. Bisch was not at home. . . . What a pity,” Lucien added mischievously, “it would have been such a nice thing to be frightened of for la belle Clarisse—­can you imagine the scene?”99 Eventually, for the London season, Maurice and Clara took up residence at Bath House, on Piccadilly overlooking Green Park, which they purchased in 1890, and acquired Grafton House at Newmarket, to be close to the racetracks (apart from hunting, the races were of course another favorite aristocratic pastime). Like the Hôtel Hirsch on Rue de l’Elysée, Bath House quickly became a sought-­after venue of high-­society gatherings. The Hirschs were soon well enough connected to the highest circles of British society that on one occasion Princess Alexandra, Bertie’s wife, reached out to Baron Hirsch to ask whether he might have a job for the son of the British ambassador in Lisbon, who had been trying his luck as a cattle farmer in Argentina.100 In August 1890, Hirsch attended the auctioning of the yearlings from the royal stud, once more in the company of the Prince of Wales. In the pouring rain—­“many a fair woman essayed a smartness which proved a failure, and the lords of the creation, with their coat collars up and hats over their eyes, presented . . . an undignified appearance”—­Baron Hirsch sat impassively by Bertie’s side. When a much-­talked-­about filly came up for auction, he quietly observed the bidding for a while, eventually joining in and securing the purchase for a staggering 5,500 pounds sterling. But, as the reporter for a sports magazine wrote, “if she turns out well, Baron Hirsch, by this time next year, may have more than recouped himself.”101 And indeed, La Flèche, as the filly was named, brought in good prize money, winning, in 1892, a rare treble, at

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the One Thousand Guineas, the Oaks, and the St. Leger races. With a keen eye for positive publicity, Hirsch declared that “he raced for the London hospitals”; his donations to the city’s hospitals from earnings brought in by La Flèche’s winning streak reaching close to 40,000 pounds sterling.102

Whether in Paris or London, Maurice and Clara managed to weave a network of patronage through aristocratic sociability and philanthropic liberality. In the pursuit of enhancing their social status, they did not shy away from blatantly transactional behavior, such as when Maurice wrote generous checks to Boulanger or loaned money that he was unlikely to ever recover to members of Europe’s cash-­strapped heirs to the crown. From atop the famed marble staircase in Rue de l’Elysée, we get a glimpse of the social networks—­ the “social capital”—­that members of the European Jewish elite were carefully assembling by cultivating an ostentatiously aristocratic lifestyle. That staircase showcased, of course, the wealth of this “new aristocracy” of private bankers and railroad barons, but it also projected a desire to be recognized as a part of the leading class by the old, established elites. The luxury of the staircase, and the splendor of the entertainment, proclaimed: we belong. The soirées at the Hôtel Hirsch were a good illustration of the fluidity between the old aristocratic class and what the French called the haute bourgeoisie (or the Germans, Großbürgertum). As historians of the French Third Republic have shown, this ascendant bourgeoisie drew the old aristocratic elite into its orbit, surpassing it in political and financial power. But, at the same time, the new haute bourgeois elites eagerly acquired noble titles for themselves and fully embraced the habitus of the old aristocracy to complement their financial capital with social and cultural capital.103 There was nothing particularly “Jewish” about any of this, and yet the Jewishness of much of this “new aristocracy” continued to mark its members as distinct. In 1896, Vogue magazine observed how London’s Sunday evening entertainments (frequently attended by the Prince of Wales) were “the exclusive custom of the Hebrew portion of society, the Rothschilds, the Sassoons and Baron Hirsch,” with their Christian counterparts sticking to the notion that, “because there was no work on the seventh day there is to be no play either.”104 And thus, as much as the Jewish aristocracy appeared to embrace

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social and cultural assimilation, there remained something distinctly Jewish about the patterns of sociability among these leading families, the very sociability that allowed them to claim their place within aristocratic society.105 Whatever Jewishness may have meant to the Hirschs and the other leading families of their circle, it certainly shaped the ways they were perceived by others, establishing clear if often invisible limits to their social integration. As Edouard Drumont’s biting remarks on the disproportionate design of the celebrated staircase demonstrated, for families like the Hirschs, social class—­part of the haute bourgeoisie, mingling with the old nobility—­would never trump their Jewishness, which by the end of the nineteenth century was increasingly thought of in “racialized” rather than religious terms. Indeed, just as the court Jews of the old regime had attracted the scorn and hatred of anti-­Jewish prejudice, their heirs in the nineteenth century would be singled out in that great conspiracy theory called antisemitism, as the very embodiment of everything that was wrong and rotten about modern economic life, social dislocation, and cultural disruption. The “upper ten” of Jewish society, then, can be seen as members of a highly privileged group, as a dramatic if atypical example of the promises that emancipation held in stock for Jews in modern society. Or they could be understood as a manifestation of the Jews’ ultimate outsider status, which even the most privileged and well-­connected among them could not, in the end, escape.106

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3

A JEWISH FAMILY

“Since it is our day of the ‘great fast’ [the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur],” Lucien de Hirsch noted in a letter in October 1886, “I had a chance to quietly rest at home the entire day, except several interruptions by the boss”—­his father, Baron Hirsch—­“who does not know what to do with himself and runs after everyone like a soul in agony. How funny those people who don’t know how to occupy themselves except with serious business or hunting.”1 According to Clara and Maurice’s former secretary, Paul Barrelet, refraining from hunting on the highest Jewish holiday was a rare concession that the baron made to Jewish observance, but only to avoid public scandal. “Neither he nor the baroness ever paid any attention to the pious customs of Yom Kippur,” he wrote, and they never observed any of the holidays—­such as the Jewish New Year or the Day of Atonement—­that “most Israelites, even the least orthodox” had the custom of celebrating.2 Barrelet (himself a Protestant) tried to make sense of Maurice and Clara’s attitude toward religion. Whereas the children of Maurice’s brothers had all converted to Catholicism, Barrelet observed, Lucien had remained Jewish. Clara refrained from eating pork, whereas the baron had no such compunction. Basically, Barrelet concluded, the Hirsch family was Jewish “because of race and atavism,” not out of any genuine attachment 61

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to the Jewish religion.3 That assessment, of course, betrayed a Protestant understanding of what religion was, with faith and spiritual attachment as markers of religious identity, not the “atavism” of fossilized remnants of ritual and Jewish ethnicity. But even if Barrelet’s view of his former employers reflected his own Protestant conception of what would have made Maurice and Clara properly “Jewish,” he was on to something. He noted that, for all the talk about “racing for the London hospitals” and beneficence without regard to nationality or confession, the overwhelming majority of the Hirschs’ vast philanthropic giving went to Jewish causes, but never to religious institutions like synagogues. “Let others take care of the soul, if they are so inclined,” Barrelet quoted Baron Hirsch as saying, “but I will occupy myself with the body.”4 That probably encapsulates as well as anything the ethos behind Maurice and Clara’s approach to Jewishness, and to Jewish philanthropy. Despite their embrace of a habitus that gained them a place within Europe’s aristocracy, echoing the acculturation of an earlier elite of court Jews, they continued to see themselves linked by bonds of solidarity to other Jews. Yet as they translated this solidarity into works of philanthropy (as we will see in parts 3 and 4), they were not interested in “Judaism,” but in Jewish bodies. And this is what made the Hirschs a perfect example of Jewish modernity: as the historian Elli Stern has argued, “abstract conceptions of God, dogma, or ritual were not the primary elements that connected modern Jews to one another. Instead, it was a new conception of the physical world.”5

Given the paucity of private papers for Maurice de Hirsch himself, it is worth exploring in more detail the trajectory of Maurice and Clara’s son Lucien. Representing the next generation, his life—­and his thoughts—­provides an invaluable insight also into the world of his parents. Reading Lucien’s letters, and following him on his extensive travels through Europe, offers as good a view as any of what it meant, for an aristocratic family like the Hirschs, to be a “Jewish family.” In 1873, at the age of seventeen, Lucien de Hirsch enrolled at the University of Bonn, in Germany. He had previously attended the Athénée Royal school in Brussels, and, after the family had returned from Constantinople

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and settled in Paris, he studied at the prestigious Lycée Condorcet, whose list of alumni included many prominent names, from the industrialist André Citroën to the writer Marcel Proust.6 In Bonn, Lucien pursued a varied course of study: besides law—­“not all that bad, I find this subject much less boring and dry than I anticipated,” as he professed to Clara—­he took courses in archaeology, Greek antiquities, optics, zoology, and economics.7 He was delighted by a class he took with the organic chemist August Kekulé—­most famous for his discovery of the molecular structure of benzine—­and declared that “in the end, in essence, I consider the natural sciences to be the most reasonable thing to pursue, especially since I enjoy them.”8 Lucien’s great fascination, though, was classical Greece and he dedicated much time (and money) to his collection of ancient coins, a passion he discovered when he joined his parents in 1869 in Constantinople, at the outset of the baron’s Ottoman railroad business. At the time, the Austrian ambassador to the Ottoman capital, Count Prokesch, showed young Lucien his collection of ancient Greek coins, and the private tutor that his parents had engaged, the German geographer Theobald Fischer, instilled in Lucien a love for the ancient cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean.9 He and Lucien remained lifelong friends.10 (Fischer would later coin the idea of the “Mediterranean region” as a distinct geographic-­cultural area, pioneering a field that came to be known as Mediterranean studies and is more commonly associated with the French historian Fernand Braudel).11 Lucien also enjoyed drawing—­on one occasion, he reported from vacation in Brussels that he had been going to a painter’s studio every day and hoped to complete his oeuvre soon12—­and Barrelet credited him with a “quite remarkable artistic education.”13 The painter tutoring him in Brussels, Lucien told his mother, had been very enthusiastic about his progress, insisting he should quit university and enroll in art school instead. “I guess papa would not agree to that,” Lucien added laconically.14 In Bonn, Lucien’s life was that of a student much like that of his peers, hailing from the educated German bourgeoisie. Nothing in the surviving letters to his parents indicates that he felt any differently because of his Jewishness, and he never mentions any instance of anti-­Jewish prejudice. If he stood out, it was because of his class, hailing from one of the richest families in Europe and well-­connected in aristocratic circles. He socialized with

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other Jews, of course—­for example, when he attended a wedding-­eve party at the Cahns’ one Friday night; but the next day, he was invited to luncheon at the Mirbach home, one of the oldest families of Rhenish aristocracy.15 While Maurice and Clara insisted that Lucien should have a domestic servant attending to him in Bonn, he wondered what he would do with one; he was backed up by his grandmother, who thought it would be much better for Lucien to get used to not depending on servants. “Why,” she asked, “should Lucien be different from the other students?”16 And, indeed, in many ways his was the typical life of a student in a nineteenth-­century German university town: he took up fencing, a requirement for those joining a fraternity (though it does not seem that Lucien became a member), and didn’t hesitate to tell his mother about a party where he had downed “at least fifteen seidels of beer (minimum)” until the wee hours of the morning.17 At first, Lucien lodged with the middle-­class Humpert family, but he soon complained about the arrangement. He felt isolated from student life, and the house was not kept particularly clean (there were, he explained to his mother, only two maids for the entire household, apparently an unsatisfactory arrangement). Moreover, “the situation of the house in a narrow street, in the middle of the city, without any sewers” was far from ideal.18 Eventually, he managed to convince his parents—­Maurice was putting off a decision—­to move into a nice apartment in the city.19 He took lunches at the Stern—­“not restaurant style”—­where the regulars were “all respectable people, including the old general von Mirbach.” In the evenings, he would frequently eat dinner at the Lesegesellschaft, a venerable cultural institution in Bonn that counted among its members many university professors and local dignitaries, but also students from upper-­class families, including, at one point, the sons of the German emperor Wilhelm I.20 Maurice and Clara, in the meantime, repeatedly needed to return to Constantinople to deal with the baron’s railroad business. Lucien declared that he was “frantically reading the newspapers, especially the N[eue] F[reie] Presse and the Augsburger [Allgemeine]” (two of the leading German-­ language papers at the time) to keep abreast of his father’s dealings with the Ottoman government.21 He complained to his mother that her “letters are always terribly sparse” and “one never hears a word about the status of the negotiations and the like.”22 A few months later, when receiving a letter from

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Clara posted in Bucharest, he wondered what his parents were doing there and complained that he was entirely dependent on the news he could gather from the morning papers.23 Like his parents, Lucien was a frequent traveler, though for leisure not business: steamships and railroads made it possible. When Lucien decided to go to Italy after concluding his studies in Bonn in 1876, his father recommended that he avoid the sea route and take the train. “My journey has gone smoothly,” he reported back to Clara upon his arrival in Rome. “There only were a bit too many Englishmen . . . so that yesterday and today I found a seat in the smokers’ car, to be safe at least from the female kind of these tiresome people.”24 The grand tour had long been a rite of passage for wealthy young men from northern Europe, and in particular England, who headed to Italy to refine their classical education and to seek adventure. The railroad age had opened up such opportunities to many more, and especially the English middle classes were discovering the pleasure of travel and sightseeing.25 It was thus not surprising that Lucien found himself in the company of so many Britons on his way to Italy, though on the last leg of the journey, from Florence to Rome, he ended up sharing a compartment with a Shakespeare scholar from the university in Bonn, Professor Delius, “whom I have avoided until now on account of his deafness but who turns out to be a very agreeable man as long as one properly shouts at him.”26 Baron Hirsch initially had had other plans for his son’s vacation: he wanted him to spend time in England and present him to polite society, but Lucien demurred, explaining that, in March, the southern climate had a greater pull for him than the prospect of endless soirées and dinners in London.27 Instead, he enjoyed several weeks of travel around Italy, making his way to Sicily, where he arrived in the company of his old tutor and friend, Theobald Fischer, and a few others, in early April. Writing to his mother, Lucien marveled at the majestic view from the site of the ancient temples of Agrigento (dating to the sixth and fifth centuries BCE), “surrounded by the most marvelous green in all its shades, the fields of grain, the almond trees, the carobs and olive trees and cacti, here and there also orange and lemon trees. . . . In the background one has, on one side, the sea and, to the other side, the beautiful mountains. On top of all that, the magnificent yellow color of the limestone, out of which the buildings are made, and which

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g­ listens bright red when the sun sets.”28 Lucien appreciated such beauty—­of nature, of the antiquities—­and thus displayed a sensibility that his mother claimed to lack completely: “I have such bad taste,” Barrelet says Clara confessed to him on one occasion, “that I don’t find the Alps or the [Bavarian] Oberland charming in the least.”29 Perhaps this was true—­or perhaps Barrelet was simply invoking a well-­worn stereotype of Jews as quintessentially urban, with little sensibility for the soil and nature of their homelands, an image that Jewish elites sought to countermand with the pursuit of country estates like the ones the Hirschs owned in Austria and elsewhere. Much of Lucien’s travel involved shuttling between the various family residences in France, Austria, and England. In March and April 1880, however, he was able to fulfill one of his dreams and visit Greece. By then, he had become a serious collector of ancient coins and Greek antiquities. (His most precious possession, now in the Cabinet des Médailles in Brussels, was the tetradrachm of Aetna, a unique piece that today is considered the single most valuable ancient coin in the world.)30 The Greek government tried in vain to control the outflow of antiquities to northern Europe. Quite to the contrary: as Lucien enthused in one letter from Athens, apparently without any second thoughts, “because of the ban on exports the prices are very low” and, “if one lived here, one could, with some cunning and comparatively cheap, buy some beautiful sculptures.”31 While in town, he did make the rounds of the antiquities’ dealers, one of whom promised to produce a lovely relief from an ancient tomb, which he was keeping in hiding. That would certainly be more exciting, Lucien added, “than those stupid Tanagra [figurines], for which they ask 5,000 francs as if it was nothing, since the Russians have thoroughly spoiled the prices.”32 Two weeks later, though, Lucien did end up purchasing some of those sought-­after terra-­cotta figurines that he considered exceptionally beautiful.33 When Theodor Herzl visited Maurice de Hirsch years later, in June 1895, he took notice of the Tanagras, on display in a glass vitrine. “The baron must have hired someone for good taste,” Herzl noted wryly.34 Lucien de Hirsch was thus a typical European traveler feeling entitled, because of his passion for all things Greek and ancient, to participate in the widespread plunder of antiquities from that country, the foundation of innumerable private and public collections (the so-­called Elgin Marbles at the

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British Museum are perhaps the most notorious example). Lucien was also typical in adopting an Orientalizing gaze on the country he was visiting. Describing an excursion in the northeastern Peloponnese, he wrote that it was “remarkable where one can travel on horseback here in Greece,” the Greeks being “so negligent and lazy that they will not dismount even in the narrowest of passages,” in the event almost causing a disaster when two of the horses stumbled on a particularly narrow mountain path.35 The “first Greek that has impressed me,” he observed on another occasion, was a wealthy Athenian who had set up a model farm, installing a large new hydraulic pump and experimenting with the growth of Indian cotton as well as vegetables and grain, for which he had imported the seeds from Turkey, England, and France. According to Lucien, he was a competent businessman and “treated the peasants in a most reasonable and noble manner.”36 At least in his professed admiration for the entrepreneurial, modernizing, and paternalistic landowner, Lucien was very much his father’s son. On the other hand, considering how central the cause of Jewish philanthropy was for his parents, references to anything Jewish in Lucien’s letters are extremely rare. From all his travels, there is a single mention of Jews in the Greek city of Chalcis—­ Lucien had fun seeing a store sign that spelled ΑΣΕΡ ΚΑΙ ΜΟΣΩΝ (Asher and Moshon)—­and he observed that this was, as far as he could tell, the only Greek city that had any Jews (Ioannina and Salonika, of course, were Ottoman at the time and would not become part of Greece until 1913).37

By 1882, Lucien was known as “a great numismatic before Jehova,” in the words of Le Gaulois—­and he was, given his family’s wealth, one of the more eligible bachelors in society. In fact, that year the Parisian newspaper reported on the engagement of Lucien to the daughter of Baron Henry de Worms, a British conservative politician, and his wife Fanny, a daughter of the Viennese Jewish banker Baron Eduard von Todesco. The young couple had allegedly met in the Austrian spa town of Marienbad, “a romance aroused by the hygienic naiads of the place,” as Le Gaulois put it.38 The story is a mystery: there is no indication that Lucien ever did get engaged or married, but the canard was picked up by several European newspapers (a few months later by Salonika’s La Epoca, which embellished the alleged engage-

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ment and turned it into a wedding).39 It was apparently not the only time that false news about Lucien’s upcoming nuptials were spread. In one of his own letters, two years later, he noted sarcastically: “I congratulate myself on being engaged to Miss Alex Peel but unfortunately I found myself engaged here with Mme de St. Sauveur, a young widow with 5 children !! so I am in great anxiety at the prospect of a case of bigamy or breach of promise.”40 While Lucien was making fun of the rumors about his alleged engagement, Maurice and Clara were getting anxious to see their son respectably married. According to the reminiscences of Margot Tennant (who later married Henry Asquith, British prime minister from 1908 to 1916), she once was summoned to a tête-­à-­tête by Maurice de Hirsch when she was visiting Paris. Baron Hirsch had a proposal to make: “I want you to marry my son Lucien.” After confirming that she knew whom he was talking about—­“Your son is the man with the beard, who wears glasses and collects coins, isn’t he?”—­ Tennant tried to gently talk Hirsch out of his plan. The baron insisted: “He is shy and I want him to make a good marriage; and above all he must marry an Englishwoman.”41 The anecdote is not altogether implausible: Maurice and Clara did, it appears, see their son’s future in England, and having him marry into the British aristocracy certainly would have been consistent with their own desire for acceptance in aristocratic circles. Hirsch also professed on many occasions that, to him, assimilation and intermarriage were the future of the Jews, and the only way to overcome the so-­called Jewish question. As the Austrian journalist Moriz Szeps explained to his friend Crown Prince Rudolf, “Baron Hirsch has an interesting approach to antisemitism: the complete fusion of the Jews with the Christian population.”42 It was an approach that informed Hirsch’s ideas about fostering modern education among the Jews of eastern Europe, and a view that would cause much consternation among many of the baron’s Jewish contemporaries in later years. Maurice de Hirsch may not have prevailed over Lucien in 1876 about going to England and being introduced to London society, but in the mid-­ 1880s, Lucien found himself spending more and more time in Britain, eventually acquiring a home for himself (he otherwise continued to live with his parents, traveling between the family’s properties in France and Austria) at 12 Berkeley Square, in Mayfair. As to marrying into the English aristocracy, though, as Lucien confessed to Clara, “this idea is not easily realized.”

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Surprisingly, as there is little in his letters that indicates any attachment to Judaism, getting married to some “completely unknown gentile [irgendeine wildfremde Goje], especially if she were English, is an uncomfortable thought, and among the non-­gentiles I haven’t discovered anybody yet that I like.”43 In 1884, though, notwithstanding his dismissive attitude about some “unknown gentile, especially if she were English,” Lucien fell in love with a woman who was both Catholic and English. She was also already married. LUCIEN AND JESSIE

The hundreds of letters that Lucien exchanged with Lady Jessica Sykes, née Cavendish-­Bentinck, in the three years of their relationship, tell us a great deal about the shared mentality of Lucien, scion of the “new” Jewish aristocracy, and his lover, a member of the old, landed, English aristocracy. At the same time, while there are only a few cursory references to Lucien’s Jewishness in the correspondence, we do get the occasional glimpse into how it continued to mark someone even as “assimilated” as Lucien as different. Jessie, as she was known, had married Sir Tatton Sykes when she was eighteen, a match engineered by her mother with whom she had a troubled relationship. According to Jessie, it took her husband—­thirty years her senior—­six full months before consummating the marriage (and then only because she got him drunk), and it was an unhappy union from the beginning.44 Sledmere, the Sykes’ country estate in Yorkshire, was a big house and could be beautiful: “This place is just at its best,” Jessie wrote to Lucien on one occasion. “The lovely trees, which are its principal if not its sole beauty, are gorgeous in this autumn times.”45 But it was also in dire need of modern upgrades, the greatest nuisance being the central “soil shaft”—­the house did not have drains, and Tatton was too stingy to install water closets—­so that a nauseating smell invaded the space every time one opened one of the “­cabinets” on each floor. It would take fifteen years before Jessie could convince her husband to have modern plumbing installed.46 In 1879, Jessie bore Tatton a son, Mark, who would later go on to become a prominent Tory politician and is most well-­known for his role in negotiating the Sykes-­Picot Agreement in 1916, in which Britain and France divided up respective spheres of influence in the Middle East, anticipating the final

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demise of the Ottoman Empire. (Palestine was to be partially under British command, partially an international zone.) Once she had produced an heir, Jessie entered into a number of short-­lived affairs, and sometime in 1884, she met Lucien de Hirsch, who was her age and with whom she fell deeply in love. “My dearest love,” she wrote to him after they had spent some time together, “I have been so happy during the last ten days, that I have hardly had time to think of anything but the fact that I love you, & that I am quite sure you love me.”47 But she was also anxious about the inevitable periods of separation: “I was always of opinion that ‘Loin des yeux, loin du coeur’ [‘out of sight, out of mind’] is in most instances a true proverb. . . . We are so separated in every way & you are leading so different a life and associating with so many people—­that I fear very much for the future.”48 Lucien reciprocated her feelings, marveling in one letter “how well we seem to agree in our views about most things, our tastes and even our physical natures: at least I think you must have the same sensation as I have, when I touch you I don’t feel as if it was another person, there is something so sympathetic about your skin: it is just as if you were a bit of myself.” Still, “it is awful to speak of these things when one is so far away from one another.”49 Tatton apparently knew nothing—­and if he did, he would have wanted to avoid public scandal. Among the British upper class, after all, “adultery was a sport that had to be played according to strict rules. The first of these was Never Divorce.”50 On one occasion, Jessie wrote to Lucien wishing that he could spend time with her at Sledmere, where she could have him “for two or three days all to myself, no neighbours, no pestering friends—­or interfering relatives. The inoffensive ‘alte Herr’ [‘old man,’ referring to Tatton] who is always either out—­or stretched in a state of coma in his private sitting room being the only inhabitant.”51 Life with Tatton was becoming more and more disagreeable, primarily on account of his unmatched stinginess. “That vile old Alte,” Jessie complained to Lucien, “has been simply too devilish”: the previous evening, when she returned tired and shivering from a day of hunting, “he saluted me with the news that he had spent the afternoon going to the Bank & playing me some tricks & after dinner—­when I remonstrated with him & told him this kind of thing could not continue—­he pulled my hair kicked me & told me if I had not such an ugly face—­I might get some one to pay my bills instead of himself.” “I was afraid to hit him back,” she

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added laconically, “because I am so much stronger I might hurt him.”52 Reflecting on her relationship with Lucien, Jessie wrote a few months later: “I have a code of morals—­which some people might think very loose—­at the same time there are certain things I feel very strongly, are right or wrong—­ right—­if they are according to the laws of nature & the greatest law of all—­ which is that every creature must be of some use or object in the world.” As far as she and Lucien were concerned, “I do not consider anything connected with our liaison—­so far—­as being wrong at all—­I should think it repulsive if not actually criminal—­were I married to a man—­qui réclame ses droits [who asserts his rights],” but under the circumstances, she felt justified in pursuing her relationship with Lucien.53 In the meantime, Lucien and Jessie saw as much of each other as they could, most often in Paris or during Lucien’s prolonged sojourns in England. Those blissful moments were interrupted, though, when it occurred to Tatton that Jessie and he would go on a lengthy trip to India; they left in November 1885 and were on their way back to Europe by February 1886. Apart from the circumstance that she was traveling with Tatton, whose hypochondria and misanthropy tested her patience, Jessie enjoyed the trip. The drama started when Tatton realized, at the Paris train station, that he had not packed enough tea for the route; in Suez, he impulsively decided that he was too sick to continue the journey, then changed his mind after all their luggage had already been brought out of the hold and their bills had been settled; and upon arrival in India, he refused an invitation to stay with the chief justice of the Bombay Presidency and dragged Jessie to a “dreadful” and “uncomfortable” hotel.54 In her political views, Jessie was nothing if not an ardent believer in the benevolence of British imperialism, and not shy about showing her Tory colors. (There is no indication whether Lucien shared her enthusiasm for empire.) She passionately voiced her disdain for Gladstonian liberalism: “One thing one does learn in India,” she explained to Lucien, “is the utter folly of the English Liberal foreign policy & the absurd way they & Lord Ripon [the Viceroy of India under Gladstone, from 1880 to 1884] together have mismanaged this tremendous Empire.”55 She marveled at how “very wise & very beneficent” British rule was: “The greatest care is taken of all the natives but—­it was intended & very properly—­that they should have

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no share in the actual Government of the country.” Only “radicals like Ld. Ripon” could have dreamed of appeasing “the natives and rather encourage[d] them to insult the Europeans.”56 Of the British military and civilian officials in India, though, she held a dim view, which illustrates how much she perceived the world not only in terms of race (the “natives” as opposed to the “Europeans”) but also in terms of class. The “civil & military dignitaries—­ ridiculously over-­paid & possessed of immense power” were largely recruited “from the English middle classes,” so “you can imagine how large-­minded & intelligent they are.”57 Add to this a dosage of class-­tinged sexism: “Certainly English women of the middle classes make the worst use possible of the gifts the gods have given them. It is a curious thing that shop girls, farmer’s daughters, housemaids even—­look smart & neat, & so do most of the upper ten—­but really your clergyman & Doctor’s female appendages, are terrible indeed.”58 Jessie’s observations about Indian society displayed, not surprisingly, the Orientalist clichés one might expect—­“Bombay is most interesting & I feel as if I were in another world”59—­and she was fascinated by the sheer diversity of India’s population. One group she singled out were the Parsees, whose place in society she explained in revealing terms: “All the commerce in the country is in the hands of the Parsees—­a Persian race—­with very Semitic features. . . . They are very intelligent & very rich & have a great deal of resemblance in many ways to the ‘Chosen People’—­which latter by the way barely exists in India & are not much admired.”60 Her aside, comparing the Indian Parsees to the Jews of Europe, was one of the few instances when Lucien’s Jewishness appeared between the lines of their correspondence.61 Lucien meanwhile regaled Jessie with stories about the latest entanglements of his father’s Ottoman railroad business and kept her abreast about how his racing horse, Althorp, was faring on the Newmarket racecourse.62 There was one occasion, however, when Lucien objected to what he believed was Jessie’s parroting anti-­Jewish prejudice. Reporting about a trip she had taken with Tatton to Norwich, Jessie described the town’s medieval church commemorating the martyr William—­the first-­ever recorded instance of an anti-­Jewish ritual murder accusation dating back to 1144. To Lucien, she explained that William “was a child of eight years who had been martyred by the Jews of Norwich—­in Tiza Esler [sic]. . . . I was told

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this legend, which is quite interesting.”63 Tiszaeszlár, in Hungary, had been the site of a much more recent blood libel when local Jews were accused, in 1882, of ritually murdering a fourteen-­year-­old Christian girl. The ensuing six-­week-­long trial generated international attention and widespread antisemitic agitation. It ended when the presiding judges declared the accused “not guilty,” but only because of lack of proof, leaving open the interpretation that the ritual murder accusation as such was not necessarily implausible.64 To be fair, Jessie had referred to the story as “a legend,” but Lucien was taken aback. “I am very sorry to see from your letter that you seem to believe in the truth of that ridiculous Tisza Essler [sic] ‘canard’ and analogous stories: I thought you were better informed upon [sic] those matters.” He does not seem to have been too distraught, though, as the very next sentence was about the miserable fall weather at Planegg, where he was visiting.65 Still, Jessie tried to explain. “What nonsense you talk about Tisza Essler of course I don’t believe it was true.” But, she couldn’t help but wonder, “I do think it not unlikely that the Jews in the Middle Ages may have occasionally attempted to commit a reprisal or two, considering how they were outraged robbed & persecuted—­& of course a Christian child is easier killed than a Christian man.”66 This time, Lucien let it slide.

All through 1885, 1886, and early 1887, Jessie and Lucien exchanged hundreds of letters and tried to spend as much time in each other’s company as they could, while eagerly seeking to keep their relationship a secret and avoid a scandal. (Lucien also, on occasion, sent money to Jessie, always careful to hide its source, as Tatton repeatedly refused to pay her bills, or even the bills incurred for running his own house at Sledmere).67 Jessie usually wrote in English, occasionally switching to French; Lucien, in the beginning, likewise wrote in English but, at Jessie’s insistence, increasingly used French instead. Writing from Paris, that came “quite naturally” to him, “for when I am in France, I often think in French, whereas when I am elsewhere I think in German or in English.”68 Both loved literature, they shared a passion for ancient Greece, and they spent much time discussing horse races. We also get a glimpse of how Lucien saw the world around him. Commenting on his father’s endless negotiations concerning the future of the Ottoman railroads,

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he volunteered his estimation that “those people down there [in Constantinople], like all Orientals, take any concession as a sign of weakness.”69 Perhaps more surprising than this conventional Orientalism was the fact that he did not seem to much like the French either. On one occasion, Lucien expressed his doubts about the prospects of French colonial ambitions, adding: “after all it doesn’t matter much what they do as neither of us cares particularly for Messieurs les Français,” 70 and on another occasion, commenting on a recent altercation in the National Assembly in Paris, he concluded: “I am sorry I did not see this bear fight myself it would have confirmed my feelings towards the ‘grande Nation.’ ” 71 Sailing on board the SS Parramatta from Aden to Bombay, Jessie was bored by the company of “rather uninteresting people of the English bourgeois class,” and even more annoyed by the musical performances of someone she described to Lucien as “a compatriot & co-­religionist of yours.” The man’s name was Ellinger; apparently, he was a Jewish musician hailing from Mainz, in Germany, though of late a resident in Manchester.72 Jessie’s description says something about how she saw Lucien—­and, perhaps, how he saw himself: Jewish and German. The latter part of the equation is more surprising as Lucien was born in Brussels and was a Belgian citizen, whereas his parents had acquired Austrian citizenship in 1877. Presumably what made him “German,” in Jessie’s eyes, were the Bavarian origins of his family, and she likely knew that German continued to be the shared language between Lucien and his parents. Still, the label that she attached to her lover was somewhat incongruous and, perhaps, a reflection of a cosmopolitan outlook cultivated by Lucien, which could not easily be captured in simple, unambiguous terms of national belonging. About his Jewishness, on the other hand, there was no question. But, again, the term “coreligionist,” so frequently used by contemporaries, obscured more than it revealed when one considered that “religion”—­whether understood in terms of faith or observance of traditional rabbinic Judaism—­was of little importance to either Lucien or his parents.73 Relations between Lucien and his father appear to have gotten more tense in 1885 and 1886, as Maurice continued to push his son to get married and Lucien sought a degree of independence. When negotiations with the Ottoman government regarding the railroad business were heating up once

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again, in 1885, Hirsch wanted Lucien by his side and objected to his son’s plan to travel to England. “I really can’t go to England next Monday,” Lucien explained to Jessie, as it would raise “paternal indignation to a pitch.” His father had already lectured him about “not show[ing] enough of the famous ‘sentiment de famille’ [‘family sentiment’] nor pay[ing] him sufficient attentions, when I am at home, that I took no interest in his affairs, that I was an ‘égoïste’ & thought of nothing but my own convenience &ca &ca.” 74 Lucien decided to stay with his father in Austria and later admitted to Jessie that he was glad to have done so, as negotiations with the Ottomans had been entering a critical phase.75 Maurice also continued to pester Lucien about settling down and getting married. “My padrone  .  .  . speaks seriously of going to Constantinople in April,” Lucien wrote to Jessie, “but he does not want me to come with him because I am supposed to go to England to find ‘a wife.’ ” 76 In the spring of 1886, as Lucien was settling into his new home on London’s Berkeley Square, Maurice was still unhappy. Trying to assert himself in a lengthy reply to a letter he had received from his father, Lucien insisted that there could be no reason to doubt his “filial love and attachment” considering that he had been “always living at home like a small child until my thirtieth birthday.” Being held “on a leash” for too long had only made him more “indecisive, shy, and distrustful,” echoing precisely something that Jessie had said to him not long before.77 Lucien insisted that he had always been loyal to Maurice and Clara, and establishing himself for a while in England was not about to change that: but, he insisted, he needed to be “independent,” and would no longer accept his aunt Clarisse Bischoffsheim’s attempts to find him a bride “by flaunting your [Maurice’s] wealth and making me out to be a sucker.” 78 Lucien proudly reported to Jessie that he had answered his father “in the same style as his letter” and “given him some snuff.” 79 The following day, though, he dispatched another letter to Maurice, just in case, assuring him that he had no intention of escaping the “natural dependence and attachment of a child toward his parents” and that his anger had primarily been directed against Clarisse.80

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In early 1887, Jessie was on another oversees trip with Tatton, this time to Syria and Palestine. (Lucien had been annoyed: “it is certainly quite curious to see the Holy Land, but it seems to me that once would be enough [Tatton had been there before]. The idea of staying there for three months appears dreadful to me.”)81 On April 6, 1887, a telegram from Lucien’s old friend Paul Goldschmidt in Paris reached Jessie, by then in Damascus: “Lucien gravely ill since eight days.”82 Jessie immediately sat down to write a letter, “uncertain whether you will ever get it—­as I shall not send it until I get a telegram saying you are better.”83 It would be the last letter Jessie ever addressed to Lucien, who died that same day of complications from a pneumonia.84 Two days later, more than five thousand people gathered outside the Hôtel Hirsch on Rue de l’Elysée to join the funerary procession. One more time, the Tout-­Paris—­diplomats, aristocrats, individuals from the banking world, but also artists and literary figures—­had come together, this time to offer their final farewell to Maurice and Clara’s only son. The day after the funeral, officiated by France’s chief rabbi, Zadoc Kahn, Clara and Maurice, grief-­stricken, left Paris for Brussels, not to return until some ten months later, in February 1888.85 For the time being, despite discussions about transferring Lucien’s body to the family mausoleum in Brussels, they decided not to do so, at least for as long as Paris remained their primary residence. “It is a comforting feeling to visit [the grave] once in a while,” Clara explained to her sister Hortense. “Maurice feels this need almost more so than I do.”86 The death of Lucien was a turning point in Clara’s and Maurice’s life. Maurice now redoubled his efforts, as we will see, to extricate himself from his Ottoman railroad business, and the couple began to focus its energy, and enormous resources, on new philanthropic initiatives, on a scale never seen before anywhere in the Jewish world. R AISING LUCIENNE

What it meant to be a Jewish family took another turn with the revelation that Lucien was a father. Not long after their son’s death, Maurice and Clara had word from a certain Irène Premelić, a “beautiful and blonde daughter of Croatia,” as one newspaper would later describe her,87 who aspired to become an actress on the Parisian stage. To their consternation, Irène informed them

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that Lucien was the father of her little daughter Lucienne, born on October 6, 1885, in Paris. And indeed, Baron Hirsch’s solicitor, S. Vanier, who described Irène as “remarkably intelligent and refined,” had no doubt about the late Lucien’s paternity.88 We don’t know whether Lucien had continued to see Irène after she had given birth to his daughter and while he was in his relationship with Jessica Sykes, but he did continue to support her in the two years before his death. Vanier mentions that she stayed at the Hôtel Prince de Galles, at a cost of 400 francs per month, and that Lucien had provided her initially with 2,000 francs per month, subsequently more, and had bought 15,000 francs worth of furniture and 14,000 francs worth of linens, clothes, and toiletries for her.89 As Irène explained to Vanier, she preferred to remain in Paris, continue her musical education with the hope of one day appearing at the Opéra Comique, and that she would not be separated from Lucienne. She would most certainly not go back to Austria, a place that to her invoked some “foul memories” and where she had kept “bad company.” But Baron Hirsch would have none of this. He agreed to provide a lifelong monthly income of 1,000 francs, with a supplement of an additional 1,000 francs in support of Irène’s musical training, but insisted on several conditions: she would not seek to establish contact with her daughter, who would be adopted by Maurice and Clara and raised by them; she would agree not to live in France; and, “whether or not pursuing a career in theater,” continued support was conditional on her conducting herself “without giving any occasion for criticism or any well-­founded suspicion of her reputation.”90 Irène agreed to these terms—­not that she was not strong-­willed, but she didn’t have much of a choice—­and in September 1887, she signed the contract that gave Lucienne (who would henceforth be known as Lucienne Premelić de Hirsch) in adoption to Maurice and Clara.91 For Clara and Maurice, ensuring the best future for their granddaughter was certainly a paramount goal, but no less important was their concern for the family’s reputation and the need to avoid scandal. In a letter to her sister Hortense, Clara de Hirsch observed that Clara and Hortense’s mother “knows about the baby” and that she felt very sorry for her, “as she has such puritanical ideas and had such a high opinion of poor Lucien.”92 But even if she did not share her mother’s “puritanical ideas,” Clara, too, was eager to see

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Irène respectably married, and preferably out of the way. That should not be too difficult, she hoped, as she shared Vanier’s estimation that Irène was “exceptionally intelligent and talented.”93 And indeed, by June 1889 a husband had been found. “One cannot deny it, money has great power,” Clara commented wryly when telling her mother that the impecunious Baron Raffaele Siciliano di Rende of Naples had agreed to the match.94 At first, Irène was elated, but she soon realized not only that her husband had no money but that in fact he was buried in debt. The Sicilianos, she complained to Maurice de Hirsch in a letter barely two months after the wedding, had the pretense of princes but piles of debt, and Raffaele had not brought as much as a shirt into their new household. She had been so desperate, she explained, that she had been close to drowning herself. But—­she always knew how to pull the baron’s heartstrings—­“the image of the smiling Lucien” came to her, and she let herself be convinced by her new relatives to ask Hirsch for help instead.95 Thus began a long cycle of correspondence, in which Irène frequently saw herself in need to appeal to the baron’s generosity, and Maurice lectured her on the importance of frugality. Irène’s letters are written in a somewhat familiar German (she also was fluent in French, English, and Italian). Maurice’s responses, in turn, come across as more stilted and were, for the most part, written in French, since he usually relied on his French secretary for all correspondence (thankfully for the historian, as his own handwriting was quite illegible). When he did adopt a more personal tone, Maurice’s letters displayed a clearly gendered language, encouraging Irène to “accept this good, fatherly advice” and not respond “with nervous breakdowns, fits, and tears.”96 Hirsch repeatedly chastised Irène for her spending habits—­“you must not throw out your dresses after using them for but a short time in order to buy new ones, but you have to manage with a few each year”97—­and grew particularly irate at her habit of visiting European spas where she went to see specialists and cure her vocal cords. “This is a veritable folly,” he commented with sarcasm, “that famous voice of yours, which has never earned you a single penny, in that famous throat of yours, which needs to be restored every year by constantly spending absurd sums of money.”98 But Irène was not deterred, and, in fact, she was seeking recognition and not just financial support. Asking to be allowed to see Hirsch when he was vacationing in Monte Carlo, she insisted: “Be so kind as you can be when you want to and

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let me render you a short visit. I only have you in the entire world and I am happy to see you from time to time and to hear your voice, ‘même si vous grondez’ [‘even when you are growling’].”99 The marriage between Irène and Raffaele was not a happy one. “My husband is like an animal,” she wrote savagely, “he eats, sleeps, smokes, sits, and rests, like a lazy, dirty, idle Italian, whom I hate more than anything in this world.” Even though she was longing to have children, “I prefer to forgo that wish rather than have contact with this disgusting individual.”100 We don’t know whether she was looking for satisfaction elsewhere, but a letter from Maurice in April 1895 insinuated that she was putting her good reputation at risk. After a recent sojourn at Cannes, when Clara and Maurice were also there, Maurice suggested that Irène “remained what she had been before and that everything, your demeanor, your speaking, and your actions betray that you have retained your old habits, lest more be said.” Nobody in her hotel, “from the owner down to the least servant, believed that you are a real lady [eine wirkliche Dame],” and he threatened to cut off her monthly pension if she did not improve her ways. Hirsch insisted: “You have to lead a simple, bourgeois life, with or without husband I don’t care”—­though he recommended that she “keep him and give him a few hundred francs a month, so that you can maintain his title.”101 But Irène was nothing if not resilient, and she was not afraid to let Maurice know how much his letter had hurt her. How could he believe the calumnies of people with whom she had barely exchanged two words? “You make accusations against me,” she wrote, “which I don’t accept because they are unjust, and because of which you are breaking your promise to help me: how can a Hirsch do such a thing?”102 In the end, as he was wont to do, Maurice relented. By July 1895, he was back to complaining about her spendthrift habits, declaring that “I will one last time close my eyes” and granting her request for additional money.103 Maurice de Hirsch’s paternalism, his insistence on frugality and bourgeois respectability, his threats of cutting funding “once and for all,” the blunt, sometimes hurtful language, and the inevitable climbdown: all of these were features that Hirsch displayed vis-­à-­vis Irène and that would appear time and again in his philanthropic dealings as well. Clara and Maurice could be exceptionally generous, but Maurice in particular had a habit for micromanaging that made dealing with him difficult, as the successive directors of the JCA in Buenos Aires would find out the hard way. Irène

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Premelić understood this as well as those who worked on the many philanthropic causes supported by Hirsch. She was more skillful, though, than most when it came to asserting her rights and seems to have understood the way Maurice operated—­and how to disarm his threats—­better than anyone.

Little Lucienne—­Lily, as everyone called her—­was adopted by Maurice and Clara in the fall of 1887, but since they were called once again to Constantinople to sort out lingering disagreements between Hirsch’s railroad company and the Ottoman government, the couple left Lily in Brussels, where she would stay with Clara’s sister Hortense. Hortense and her husband, the Belgian engineer, businessman, and politician Georges Montefiore-­Levi—­a relative of the famous Moses Montefiore of England—­grew exceptionally fond of Lily, as did Clara’s mother, Henriette Goldschmidt.104 The Brussels family was thus delighted when Maurice and Clara decided, in April 1888, that Lily would remain with Hortense for another year, which they considered prudent while Irène was still in Paris (she would marry Siciliano the following year).105 Around the time that the Hirschs adopted Lucienne, Clara also adopted two young boys, Arnold and Raymond Deforest, born January 1879 and February 1880, respectively. (In neither case did the Hirschs insist on raising the children as Jews.) The circumstances are somewhat nebulous: some have claimed that the boys were the illegitimate sons of Maurice, though they have cited no evidence.106 Others explain that they were the children of an American couple of circus artists, Edward Deforest and Juliette Arnold, who had left their children behind in Paris when they went on tour to Constantinople, where they died of a typhoid epidemic in 1882.107 According to the Marquis of Breteuil, Hirsch adopted these two orphans as it allowed him to preserve his fortune after the death of Lucien: the Deforest boys would inherit their legitimate portion, and the remainder would be available for charitable projects.108 (That, however, does not explain the fact that Clara, but not Maurice, adopted Arnold and Raymond, who took on Deforest-­ Bischoffsheim as their last name.) There is, perhaps, yet another possibility: when Vanier met Irène Premelić in 1887, he directed the conversation toward what he referred to, somewhat mysteriously, as the “visits to Passy,” a Pa-

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risian neighborhood. She volunteered some details, noting that “there are two boys, the elder being nine years old. They are the sons of an American who has gone back to her country.” She assured Vanier that Lucien had most likely been unaware.109 What was Irène’s connection to the Deforest boys, who are likely the subject of this conversation? Of what was Lucien unaware? Had one or the other perhaps also been fathered by him? We don’t know, except that Clara, according to her secretary, loved both “with the kind of exclusive love of a grandmother.”110 The younger, Raymond, suffered from poor health his entire life and died at the young age of thirty-­two in 1912. Arnold (d. 1968) ended up in England, where he was known as a motor-­race driver and liberal politician. He became a naturalized citizen of Liechtenstein in 1932 and took on the title of Count von Bendern. Lily, meanwhile, remained with her relatives in Brussels, giving rise to some tensions between Clara and Hortense. Clara was “hurt and bitter” when her sister failed to bring Lucienne to spend a few days with her at Boitsfort, the family’s Belgian country residence, and, while assuring Hortense and Georges that she had no intention of taking Lily away from them, she implored them to send her to Paris for at least two or three weeks once in a while.111 On another occasion, Maurice insisted to his brother-­in-­law that he and Clara wished Lily to visit at least for a few days at Beauregard,112 and complained that, while “taking away the child from you would render you unhappy,” for him and Clara to “abandon” their adoptive daughter was simply an “abnormal” idea.113 But, ultimately, Lucienne was brought up in Brussels and in 1894, Maurice and Georges were even discussing the possibility of the Montefiore-­Levis formally adopting the child. Again, Maurice called the very nature of such a secondary adoption to be “abnormal” and “extraordinary,” considering that Lily was “the child of my son, whom I have adopted and given my name.” Recognizing the Montefiores’ “attachment to Lily and the tenderness with which they embraced her” did nothing to absolve Clara and Maurice from their own responsibilities toward the girl.114 As reluctant as Maurice declared himself, he did consult with his solicitors about the possibility of an adoption by Hortense and Georges. One of the problems was financial: the Austrian courts might allow such a “transfer” of the adoption, but only if they were convinced that it would be in the child’s interest. “Given the position of wealth of the original adoptive

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FIGURE 3.1. Clara de Hirsch with Arnold and Raymond Deforest. Archives Générales du Royaume, Brussels, Séquestre Balser 304.

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parent,” Maurice observed, a very substantial sum—­at a minimum 5 million francs—­would have to be provided by the Montefiores. The only reason that he was willing to even contemplate such a scenario, Maurice explained, was that “I could thereafter make free use of the fortune that I had intended for the child for my philanthropic works instead.”115 Georges objected, noting that he had numerous family members (though no children of his own) whom he would be expected to take care of, not to mention his own philanthropic initiatives.116 He later appears to have come around to accepting this condition for adopting Lily, though, but now it was Clara who indicated she could not have it on her conscience to deprive Georges and Hortense’s “mostly poor relatives” from their share in the inheritance.117 Another stumbling block was religion. Hortense felt drawn to Catholicism (she eventually converted, something that Clara learned from the newspapers),118 and she insisted on raising Lily as a Catholic. Maurice put his foot down: “I categorically forbid that Lily be inducted in the Catholic Church. . . . I have never withheld from you my desire that the child should eventually embrace the Protestant religion, and I am absolutely not renouncing this idea.” He even threatened that, if the Montefiores refused to respect his and Clara’s wishes, he would “take the child away from you right away, whatever the cost.”119 But despite Maurice’s assertion that Lily was only “ondoyée” (a form of emergency baptism), but not properly baptized in the Catholic faith,120 Hortense went out of her way to get the vicar of Esneux to consult with the bishop of Liège, who in turn discreetly turned to the ecclesiastical authorities in Paris, who determined that the girl was to be considered as properly a member of the Catholic Church.121 Maurice and Clara were thus pursuing a losing battle; still, Clara insisted that her sister should hire a Protestant nanny for Lily, either English or German, so that she would grow up “less Catholic in her outlook.”122 The fight over Lucienne’s religious upbringing offers quite an extraordinary glimpse into the religious mindset of two of Europe’s most prominent Jewish families at the time: the Hirsch/Bischoffsheim, and the Bischoffsheim/Montefiore. Whereas the latter wanted their foster child to be inducted into the Catholic Church, Maurice and Clara had a clear vision of Lily growing up to be a Protestant; Jewishness never even entered into the discussion. Thus, when Baron Hirsch was preaching “fusion” between

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Jews and Christians as the best response to the so-­called Jewish question, he meant it. While the battle against antisemitism and for the (self-­) emancipation of the Jews became the mission of his life, especially after the traumatic loss of Lucien, he was interested in Jewish bodies, not the endurance of Judaism. Maurice and Clara could thus contemplate an adoption of their granddaughter by relatives who would raise her in the Catholic faith, and even see the benefit of such an arrangement as it would allow them to dedicate a larger portion of their wealth to come to the rescue of their fellow Jews in eastern and southeastern Europe. Assimilation and Jewish solidarity, as it turns out, were not mutually exclusive.

The Hirschs were a European family, and as such, they were participating in a European culture, a transnational space for the circulation of ideas, stuff, and people, stretching across the continent.123 Two and a half years before his death, Lucien had responded to a letter that he received from the Crimean port of Sevastopol where Jessie was passing through during a sightseeing tour with Tatton. Lucien noted that he was sorry to hear how “disappointed” she was with her experience in southern Russia. “I hope,” he continued, “that you are rapidly approaching civilized countries.” He also hoped to have an opportunity to catch up with her during a visit in Austria.124 For Lucien and Jessie, as for other Europeans, the world consisted of “civilized” countries and those that were not, or not quite so. Russia, Greece, or the Ottoman Balkans (“la Turquie d’Europe,” as the region was called at the time) were something of a frontier; India, where Jessie visited with her husband, and Syria were fascinating but alien, and certainly not “civilized.” For the Hirschs and their peers, theirs was a transnational, pan-­European life, where crossing borders was a matter of routine and the nation-­state far from an all-­encompassing point of reference. If James de Rothschild (d. 1868) thought “of the map of Europe in terms of railways rather than borders,” as Niall Ferguson put it,125 the same can be said of the European Jewish elites more generally, as well as many of their non-­Jewish counterparts. Europeanness might not be articulated in any explicit terms—­it certainly wasn’t in the correspondence of Maurice, Clara, and Lucien—­but it was taken for granted. Regardless of citizenship (Belgian, in the case of Lucien;

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Austrian, in the case of Clara and Maurice), one could be at home equally in Paris or Bonn, in Eichhorn or in London. For many historians, the Jewish experience of emancipation in the nineteenth century revolved around nationalism, the ability of Jews to integrate into the nation-­states in which they lived, and their allegedly fervent embrace of patriotism. But in the decades before the First World War, the idea of the nation-­state was by no means defining everyone’s horizon of expectation even in western Europe, not to mention the fact that most Jews, including those of the Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Empires, continued to live in multinational empires rather than anything resembling a nation-­state. The example of the Hirsch family demonstrates that questions of national belonging and identity were far more complicated than suggested by the term “assimilation.” In the eyes of Jessica Sykes, for instance, Lucien was both “Jewish,” regardless of his indifference to Judaism as a religious practice, and “German,” despite his being neither a German citizen nor a resident in Germany, apart from a couple of years attending university in Bonn. The Hirschs may have been unusual in their complete disinterest in demonstrations of patriotism, but their case is entirely typical in the sense that, to the extent that Jews assimilated (or “acculturated”), they pursued assimilation into the milieu of a particular social class, never into some abstract “national” culture. For the Hirschs, the reference point was the cosmopolitan, pan-­European aristocracy. But at the same time, although Maurice de Hirsch himself frequently spoke of assimilation into gentile society as an ideal, the family’s philanthropic commitments (to which we will return in part 3) made clear that the Hirschs never ceased to see themselves as part of an interconnected Jewish world. In the next chapters, we will encounter the persistent onslaught of antisemitism in the shrill echo of Hirsch’s turbulent Ottoman railroad business among, especially, German and Austrian publicists, and we will see how combating what he considered to be the “root causes” of antisemitism would become the baron’s lifelong mission. But we need to be careful not to paint a monochromatic picture of Hirsch’s life, and we should beware of assuming that the experience of anti-­Jewish prejudice was the single most important factor in his view of the world. His unlikely business partnership with Langrand-­Dumonceau or his ill-­fated support for Boulangism illustrate

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that Baron Hirsch made decisions on the basis of many different factors—­ including rational choices about business or strategic moves to foster social networks—­that had nothing to do with political ideology or considerations of “Jewish” interests. In fact, Jewishness turns out to be an amorphous construct when we are trying to make sense of the lives of Baron Hirsch and his family. Clearly, the conventional binary between assimilation and particularism, between social integration and Jewish continuity, does little to account for how the Hirschs understood their Jewish identity, about the choices they made in their lives, and about the futures that they imagined for themselves and for their family.

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PA RT T WO

OTTOMAN RAILWAYS

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4

“A PHARAONIC PLAN”

In early January 1871, crowds thronged the streets of Constantinople, making their way to witness the inaugural journey of the first train to Küçükçekmece station, a little over twenty kilometers (twelve miles) away. The train was traveling along the first leg of a new railway that would one day connect the Ottoman capital with central Europe. “The carriages of the Turkish grandees, surrounded by Circassian and black riders, the Turkish women with their colorful dresses, and among them Europeans in tails and top hats: it was an image that one can only witness in Constantinople,” as one foreign reporter described the scene. When Mehmed Emin Ali Pasha, the Ottoman grand vizier, arrived around noon at the new train station that was decorated in the national colors, the official ceremony could begin. Five sheep were slaughtered, their blood sprinkled on the rail tracks, and the highest-­ranking Muslim dignitary in the empire—­the şeyhülislam—­offered a prayer. At Küçükçekmece, the grand vizier was met by Baron Hirsch, owner of the railroad concession, who introduced his company’s staff to the head of the Ottoman government.1 Ali Pasha, grand vizier since 1867, had been the driving force behind the idea of building a network of railways connecting Constantinople, the port city of Salonika, and the Ottoman Balkans with the railroads of Europe. 89

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­ ogether with Mustafa Reșid Pasha and Mehmed Fuad Pasha, he was one T of the leading figures behind the administrative, fiscal, military, and educational reforms in the Ottoman Empire, known as the Tanzimat, which had begun with the Gülhane (“Rose Chamber”) Edict of 1839.2 Following the Crimean War (1853–­1856), when the intervention of Britain and France saved the Ottomans from defeat after Russia had destroyed its fleet at the Black Sea port of Sinope, the need to address the military and political weakness of the empire became ever more urgent.3 The Ottoman leaders of the Tanzimat era pushed for a top-­down, government-­driven program of reforms, informed by a worldview that very much identified modernity with Europe—­in particular, France—­though their reform project also built on Islamic notions of justice and good governance.4 A second major edict, issued in 1856 by Sultan Abdülmecid I (r. 1839–­1861), declared the equality of all Ottoman citizens, seeking to counter the rise of nationalist movements across the Balkans by transforming the Christian subject populations into imperial citizens, and Muslims, Christians, Armenians, and Jews into “Ottomans.” (Some Ottomans, to be sure, remained more equal than others.)5 In economic terms, Ali Pasha and his fellow reformers pursued a policy of laissez-­faire, embracing Smithian principles of free trade, and welcoming private—­including foreign—­investment.6 As was widely recognized, the lack of a robust transportation network was one of the main impediments to economic growth. In the words of the Constantinople-­based newspaper Levant Herald, “in these modern days of competition, production goes for nothing, unless the produce has the means of conveyance at ready command.” 7 Ali Pasha, therefore, pushed hard to get the railroad concession for Baron Hirsch approved by the government, calling it “a vital issue for Rumelia,” as the European parts of the empire were called, and urging swift action. If the agreement with Baron Hirsch failed to go through, he warned, “it will be difficult to find another contractor” to take on the giant project.8 For the leaders of the Tanzimat regime, the building of railroads symbolized more than an embrace of “progress” associated with Europe. Railroads would allow the central government to exert closer control over its restive provinces in the Balkans, boost economic development, and, not least of all, permit the fast deployment of troops—­of particular urgency as the empire continued to face the Russian threat from the North.9 A couple of short rail lines branching out from Smyrna (Izmir) had been commissioned

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in 1856 and 1863, built by British entrepreneurs.10 But Ali Pasha had something altogether more ambitious in mind: an entire network of railroads of well over 2,000 kilometers (over 1,240 miles). A main line was to extend from Constantinople, via Adrianople (Edirne), Philippopolis (Plovdiv), Sofia, Nish, Pristina, and Sarajevo to the Save River on the border with the Habsburg Empire. Branch lines were going to run from Adrianople to Dedeagatch (Alexandroupoli) on the Aegean Sea; from Philippopolis to Bourgas on the Black Sea; from Pristina to the port city of Salonika; and from Nish to the border with Serbia, an autonomous principality only nominally under Ottoman sovereignty. After the original contract with Van der Elst and Langrand-­Dumonceau had fallen through (see chapter 1), Davud Pasha, the Ottoman minister of public works, signed a new preliminary agreement with Maurice de Hirsch on April 17, 1869.11

Railroads are, of course, more than merely a means of transportation. Throughout the nineteenth century, they proved a powerful tool in the formation of European nation-­states, integrating disparate regions into one national economy. Connecting countryside and cities, they played an important role in the dramatic urbanization of the latter half of the century. Railroads reshaped notions of time and space: coordinating schedules meant that time had to be standardized (as late as the 1870s, large cities in Germany each had varying local times), and the erection of public clock towers became one of the visible manifestations of the embrace of modernity alla franca—­“European style”—­in the Ottoman Empire in the last quarter of the century.12 Railways changed not only perceptions of time but also the experience of space. The tracks of the new railroads invaded urban space, train stations left their mark on large cities and small towns alike, and distances appeared to shrink. By 1880, one could speak of a continent-­wide network of railroads traversing much of Europe, though the connection of the Ottoman railways to the rest of Europe, as we will see, was still incomplete. The conquest of space made possible by the construction of railroads soon extended outside Europe. In North America, the transcontinental railways facilitated the country’s relentless westward expansion, and railroads became an instrument in imperialist projects ranging from Russia’s trans-­Siberian line to the railroads of the Raj on the Indian subcontinent.13

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Whereas Baron Hirsch’s railroad was imagined by the Ottoman statesmen that had first dreamed up the scheme as an instrument to strengthen central control in the European periphery of the empire, it also inspired the imperialist fantasies of many observers farther north. Though the Habsburg Empire does not usually feature prominently in the study of colonialism, the logic of “railway imperialism” also informed the thinking of Austrian politicians and publicists at the time. Thus, the liberal Neue Freie Presse believed that, thanks to the new railroad link, the Ottoman Balkans would acquire “the value and significance of precious colonies for the monarchy” and that Austria-­Hungary would “derive all the benefits of a rich colonial possession from the neighboring Turkish lands.”14 In fact, the liberal imperialists of Vienna were thinking even bigger. With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Neue Freie Presse claimed, a new railroad link from Vienna to the port of Salonika would make it possible that trade routes from the Cape to India, from Austria, China, and Japan now all converge in Austria, with trade flowing through the Suez Canal to Salonika, and then via the new railroad through Vienna to the rest of Europe.15 Baron Hirsch’s railway, its boosters believed, would allow the empire of Franz Joseph to finally become a major player in a rapidly globalizing world, and even to compete with maritime powers like Britain. Observers in England were skeptical on that account, though the London Times shared Vienna’s conviction that the economic development on the Balkans would help stabilize Ottoman rule and thus keep Russia’s pan-­Slavic agitation and imperial ambitions in check.16 The Times also imagined that “multitudes of those tired workers of Western Europe who every year roam the Continent in search of health and recreation” would take advantage of a modern, more convenient connection to lands south of the Danube, anticipating new opportunities for European tourists. (The tour operator Thomas Cook added the Balkans to its menu of destinations in 1889, a year after the railroad link was finally completed.)17 The London-­based newspaper was less sanguine, though, on the prospects of the potential benefits for Austria’s commerce. “[The Austrians] attribute their inability to compete chiefly to the want of railways,” the Times noted, when any “impartial inquirers” could see that the main reason was the backwardness of Austria’s industry compared to countries like England and France.18

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When Baron Hirsch obtained the concession to build the Ottoman railroads in 1869, he faced a formidable challenge. In the aftermath of the Crimean War and as the empire’s financial needs soared, both to underwrite its internal reforms and to strengthen its military, the Ottoman state increasingly turned to European bankers to finance its debt—­and was thus drawn more deeply into the global capitalist economy. That debt was growing at a dramatic pace: the inefficiencies of revenue collection, outdated policies such as the traditional tax exemptions for the capital city, and the privileges granted to European traders (and those enjoying European protection) under the capitulations treaties of previous centuries limited the fiscal leeway of the Ottoman government.19 As much of the capital inflow went to fund military purchases abroad and to the import of consumer goods, the trade deficit grew, whereas Ottoman production languished.20 Contemporaries, both Ottoman and Western, pointed to the profligate ways of Sultan Abdülaziz (r. 1861–­1876), and the “monstrous waste” all around. An anonymous open letter penned by a group of “Muslim patriots,” addressed to British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, French president Patrice de Mac Mahon, and German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, among others, denounced that “one looks in vain for those institutions of public utility to which most of the loans were ostensibly destined.” Rivers remained unnavigable except by small boats, no new ports and docks had been constructed, and agricultural produce could still be brought to market only with the greatest difficulties.21 A German observer, Charles Morawitz—­the financial director of Hirsch’s railroad company in 1871—­ later described the Constantinople of the 1850s as a “playground for speculators from across Europe” and observed that of the 2.5 billion francs of debt accumulated by the Ottoman treasury by 1875, only a tenth had actually been employed for a productive investment in infrastructure—­in particular, as he noted, Baron Hirsch’s railroad. 22 “For the use of the remaining nine tenth,” Morawitz claimed, “one might point to several palaces along the shore of the Bosporus, a few war ships that have never been used,” and some “very nice private mansions” around Parc Monceau in Paris, property of bankers from Constantinople’s Galata district who had comfortably retired to the French capital.23

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Raising the enormous capital needed for a project as large as the construction of over two thousand kilometers of railroad would, therefore, not be easy. The Ottoman government—­or rather, Baron Hirsch on its behalf—­ would have to find the money on European markets, which, by the end of 1869, had begun to sour on Ottoman debt. The contract between Hirsch and the Porte (as the imperial Ottoman government was often referred to) set the construction prize at 200,000 francs per kilometer; the concessionary was to receive a guaranteed annual rent of 22,000 francs per kilometer—­ that is, an 11 percent premium. The government committed to paying an annual rent of 14,000 francs per kilometer for the duration of the ninety-­ nine years of the concession to Hirsch’s Société Impériale des Chemins de Fer de la Turquie d’Europe, secured by Ottoman state bonds. The company operating the railroad—­initially, this was going to be the Southern Austrian Railroad, or Südbahn—­would pay an additional 8,000 francs per kilometer to the concessionary. The operating company, in turn, would cover its expenses from the revenue of running the railroad; revenue beyond 22,000 francs per kilometer was to be split between the Südbahn, the concessionary, and the government. Baron Hirsch’s plan nearly collapsed even before it had started, however, when the Viennese administration of the Südbahn decided to withdraw from the deal, despite the fact that the company’s shareholders had endorsed it at their meeting in Paris in July 1869.24 It appears that the Rothschilds, who controlled the Südbahn since they had bought it from the Austrian state in 1858, had decided against linking the fortunes of their Austrian railroad operations to the fate of Baron Hirsch’s Ottoman lines.25 While it is not clear why they decided to pull the plug, it is worth noting that the Südbahn operated the link to the Austrian port of Trieste, and that some contemporaries were far from convinced that Salonika was poised to emerge as the new gateway to the East India trade, as the boosters of the Ottoman railways would have it, believing that Trieste was the better bet.26 The withdrawal of the Southern Austrian Railroad put Baron Hirsch in a delicate position: one of the foundations of his business plan had been that a different company would operate the railroad and would pay an annual rent to him as the concessionary. Rather than abandoning his plans and joining Van der Elst and Langrand-­Dumonceau in their failed bids to build the Ottoman rail-

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roads, Hirsch decided on an audacious strategy. Instead of working with the Südbahn, he created his own railroad company, the Compagnie Générale pour l’Exploitation des Chemins de Fer de la Turquie d’Europe, headquartered (until 1878) in Paris. The company was to be led by Paulin Talabot (d. 1885), a prestigious French railroad engineer and entrepreneur whom Hirsch poached from the Südbahn.

Because of the massive load of debt carried by the Ottoman state, the premium that the government would have to pay to raise the capital necessary for construction was going to be high. To meet its obligations, the government issued 1,980,000 bonds at the nominal value of 400 francs each (or 792 million francs total), ceded to the Société Impériale at 128.5 francs each and thus effectively yielding the government 254.43 million francs, which would be used to pay the rent owed to the railroad company. The Société then sold the bonds to a financial syndicate, which included the Anglo-­ Austrian Bank, the French Société Générale, Banque de Crédit et de Dépôt des Pays Bas, and others, at a price of 150 francs each, giving Baron Hirsch a gain of 21.5 francs per share. (Hirsch himself later claimed that, after paying commissions and expenses, he had sold the shares for just 125 francs each to the syndicate, thus realizing a loss, something that did not strike his contemporaries as plausible and cannot be corroborated.)27 The first 750,000 shares were offered to the public in March 1870; the second issue of the bond followed in September 1872.28 Hirsch’s strategy was to place the Ottoman railroad bonds simultaneously across Europe—­according to one source, they were traded on no less than twenty-­eight exchanges29—­and to aggressively market them to small private investors, rather than relying on the major banking houses that typically underwrote the large government loans of the period. (The Rothschilds, for example, handled about three-­quarters of the foreign public sector debt issued in London between 1865 and 1914, including some 62 million pounds sterling worth of Russian government bonds between 1870 and 1875 alone.)30 Finding buyers for close to two million bonds was a tall order. To promote the shares, Hirsch resorted to the use of so-­called lottery bonds, appealing to small investors and a widespread appetite for gambling. Thus, while the

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interest was low at 3 percent, lots were drawn at random for full repayment every two months, a few of which, moreover, would also win a prize. The largest prize, at 600,000 francs, was very large indeed, though two-­thirds of winners stood to receive prizes of 3,000 francs or less. Considering that there were only three of the largest prizes each year, that there were close to two million lots, and that the amortization was extended over a period of a century, the chances of actually winning were remote.31 Still, Baron Hirsch’s company went to considerable length to maintain the mystique and excitement of the lottery. The procedure, as described by the press, began with the sealing of 396,000 capsules, containing five numbers each, in the presence of a representative of the Ottoman embassy, the Ottoman Imperial Bank, and of the railroad company in Paris. These were then shipped to Constantinople, where they were placed in a large wheel, under the watchful eyes of the Ottoman minister of public works, as well as agents of the Ottoman Imperial Bank, Hirsch’s Société Impérial, and several local banking houses, and then placed in a sealed metal box in preparation for the drawing. Each drawing, again in the presence of the various dignitaries, was done by children from a local orphanage and in a public ceremony: sixty capsules were taken from the wheel, and out of the remaining three hundred numbers, placed into yet another, smaller wheel, the winning lots were selected at random.32 The Ottoman lottery bonds were launched with a significant publicity campaign, and the issue of the first batch of 750,000 shares, offered to the public at 180 francs a piece, proved to be a success. To appeal to the Ottoman public, the Ottoman Imperial Bank—­which handled the issue of the bonds in Constantinople—­made sure to advertise that the Sultan himself had signed bonds worth 25,000 pounds sterling, the Sultan’s harem 10,000, and the Sultan’s mother 12,000.33 Two of the most important markets, though, remained off-­limits as the lottery element of the bond meant it could not be legally traded on the exchanges of London and Paris.34 Also in Vienna, the minister of finance, Rudolf Brestel, was opposed to allowing the “Türkenlose,” as they came to be known, and the Viennese stock exchange initially declined to admit them for trading.35 As Hirsch encountered these roadblocks, barring him from the Paris and, potentially, the Vienna markets and thus putting in jeopardy the entire project, he could rely on the outspoken support of Friedrich von Beust, at

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the time Austria’s prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. Beust’s correspondence with the Austrian ambassador in Paris, Richard Klemens von Metternich, provides a glimpse into the thinking of these two public figures, their assessment of the strategic interests at stake for the Habsburg Empire, and their—­contrarian—­views of Baron Hirsch. The Austrian minister instructed his ambassador to lobby the French government not to impede the trade with the Ottoman lottery bonds in Paris, suggesting that it was time to push ahead with a project that Emperor Napoléon III himself had long recognized as “the most salutary and most natural way to spread European culture on the Balkan Peninsula.” Beust expressed the hope that at least “those newspapers, which are open to the influence of the government,” as he put it delicately, could be persuaded to offer “moral support and encouragement” for Baron Hirsch’s project.36 Beust worried, as he explained to Metternich, that without access to some of the major exchanges in Europe, Hirsch would raise sufficient capital only to build the lines of the railroad within the Ottoman Empire, but would fail to create the all-­important connections with the European railways. Since Austria’s—­and Europe’s—­entire interest was predicated on the realization of these connections, Beust also suggested that the Vienna stock exchange should tie the authorization of the second issue of the Ottoman bonds to progress on the junction line through Bosnia. Unlike a planned link through Serbia, which was favored by the Hungarian government, Beust insisted that the Bosnian line was of particular interest for the Austrian part of the empire, as well as for France, in promoting Ottoman trade with western Europe.37 Beust emphasized that Baron Hirsch’s project merited support because of the larger, strategic interests of the Habsburg Empire and, indeed, of the other European powers. “Since the Crimean War,” he wrote, “we often proclaimed the civilizing task of the powers that united to ensure the integrity of the Turkish emperor [that is, of the Ottoman Empire], and we have often promised the Christian populations [under Ottoman rule] citizenship and equal rights on par with the followers of Islam, and we have promised the enhancement of their material welfare.” The railroad linking Vienna with the Balkans, with Salonika and Constantinople, was now going to fulfill these expectations and bring “civilization” and “material welfare” to Ottoman lands.38 The Austrian minister suspected foreign, nefarious interference

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behind the hostility toward the Ottoman railway project in Vienna. Singling out the weekly column appearing in the Oesterreichischer Oekonomist, which was attacking the solidity of Hirsch’s enterprise and insinuated that Beust himself had been bought off by the baron, he noted that, “though it is of course impossible to prove that this journalist has been hired directly for his work with Russian money,” his arguments derived directly “from the known arsenal of our northern adversary.” Thus, if the issue continued to be “blocked in the forecourts of the stock exchanges, then the governments, which recognize the designs of Russia but do nothing, will have given up an important weapon of defense, not to mention the lost opportunities of world trade with the Orient.”39 From the outset, the personal reputation of Baron Hirsch also came into play. Metternich expressed his own aversion against working with, or in support of, Hirsch, and Beust noted in his response that the ambassador’s negative assessment of the baron’s “person, his reputation, and unsatisfactory characteristics” was the same as those expressed by many in Vienna—­including in parts of the Austrian press. Beust himself admitted that, if he had had any choice in the matter, he certainly would have preferred “someone like Rothschild or Hottinguer,” invoking the names of two of the largest, most prominent, and most established European banking houses at the time.40 Yet, Beust pointed out, while Baron Hirsch’s company did not count among Europe’s greatest banks, Hirsch was the son of “a very respectable financier in Munich,” whom Beust had known personally. The hostility that Hirsch encountered, he suspected, was due to “the envy of the great financiers here [in Vienna] and in Paris, deriving not only from losing out on the monetary benefits [of the Ottoman railroad business], but also from injured self-­esteem that a [banking] house of lower rank is taking on such a large enterprise.”41 The suspicions that Hirsch was only interested in making a gain from selling the shares, and then would withdraw from the business without ever building the railroad, were nonsense, Beust argued, as the company stood to gain most from the actual construction work. What was more, Hirsch had hired many respectable people, including the well-­ known German engineer Wilhelm Pressel, a former director at the Südbahn company, and many former officials of Austria’s own diplomatic service, and Beust considered their collective reputation sufficient to offset any doubts that one might have about Baron Hirsch’s respectability.42

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This particular mix of arguments, involving national interest, imperial rivalries, and the personal respectability of Baron Hirsch as the entrepreneur behind the project, continued to inform both public debates about the Ottoman railways as they played out in European newspapers—­especially in Austria—­and private considerations expressed in diplomatic dispatches in subsequent years. In that sense, the story of Baron Hirsch and the Turkish lottery bonds represents a counterexample to the pattern observed by the economic historian Hannah Davies, who has noted that “highly personalized” narratives “depicting market movements as at least as much the result of individual actions as of anonymous market forces” were “a distinguishing feature of American financial market reports” but not found in Austria and Germany at the time. In those two countries, Davies observed, “the likes of Gould and Vanderbilt”—­two of the leading railroad entrepreneurs in the United States in the nineteenth century—­“were largely unknown.”43 Narratives that were spun around the Türkenlose and subsequent controversies about the Ottoman railroads, however, very much personalized the broader economic (and political) forces at play, focusing on the role of Baron Hirsch all the while giving short shrift to larger historical events—­such as the crash of the Viennese stock market in 1873, the Ottoman bankruptcy in 1875, or the impact of the Russo-­Ottoman War in 1877–­1878—­that would shape the subsequent story of the Turkish railroads.

In his letter to Ambassador Metternich, Beust acknowledged that Austria’s own financial administration was reluctant to admit the trade with Türkenlose because, to date, no foreign bonds were being sold on domestic stock exchanges and because of concerns that the Austrian market was already being flooded with similar papers, including lottery bonds.44 Indeed, a speculative fever seized the Vienna market in the early 1870s (as it did elsewhere, notably in Berlin). The Austrian economy was booming after a series of bumper harvests in the late 1860s, investors were in a buoyant mood, and massive investments in infrastructure—­in particular, railroads—­meant that there was an incessant demand for capital. Austria’s own railway network had grown from 6,125 kilometers in 1866 to 15,597 kilometers by 1873, and news about an increasingly interconnected world—­illustrated by the first transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866 and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869—­fanned

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fantasies about the future of global trade. The Viennese bourse found itself very much in the epicenter of the speculative excitement: from 1867 to 1873, the number of securities listed in Vienna increased from 169 to 605, and by 1873, the volume of securities trading surpassed that of other European centers.45 This was, then, the context for the launching of Baron Hirsch’s Ottoman railroad enterprise: counting on the appetite for speculation and a market that had increasingly drawn in small investors from the middling classes, Hirsch took the risk of placing almost two million shares of a bond that was backed by a government already buried under debt, and secured by the income from a railroad yet to be built. An anonymous pamphlet published in 1872, entitled Corruption in Austria,46 singled out “the press” for their role in the buildup of the speculative bubble, which would finally burst when the Viennese stock exchange crashed on May 9, 1873. The great depression that followed after the markets in New York and Berlin collapsed in September that year wrought economic havoc, and the liberalism that had dominated Austrian politics since midcentury came under siege from the rise of antiliberal, often antisemitic, populism that denounced the excesses of the laissez-­faire capitalism of the earlier period.47 Part of the assault on the media was the claim that newspapers had colluded with capitalists and corrupt politicians to push for the sale of highly speculative investments such as Hirsch’s Türkenlose. One allegation suggested that the Anglo-­Austrian Bank, part of Hirsch’s consortium, had paid bribes to seventy-­three different Austrian newspapers, including Vienna’s prestigious Neue Freie Presse, to push the sale of the Ottoman railroad bonds.48 In reality, coverage of Baron Hirsch’s railway project in the pages of Neue Freie Presse was ambiguous and, at first, even openly hostile, with articles appearing under the headline “The Turkish Swindle” (“Der Türkenschwindel”). The newspaper argued that it recognized the strategic and economic importance of the Ottoman railroad link, especially from Austria’s perspective (we saw an example of its imperialist boosterism earlier). “But this fraudulent project, tied to the name of Baron Hirsch of Brussels,” it wrote, again personalizing the narrative, “and now associated with a Viennese credit institution as reputable as the Anglo-­Austrian Bank, extinguishes the last spark of sympathy in anyone who has a real interest in the Turkish railroads.” It reminded its readers of the “fiasco” of Davud Pasha’s mission to Vienna in the

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previous summer, when he had failed to win over any of the major Viennese banking houses. It was simply “absurd,” the Neue Freie Presse maintained, to sell two million shares with a nominal value of 400 francs each, when the Ottomans would net only about 30 percent of that value, “and thus seal their bankruptcy.” Baron Hirsch, the newspaper claimed, was bandying about the names of potential supporters among the Viennese banks in Paris, and of Parisian banks in Vienna, and from both cities in Constantinople, when all of this was no more than an “egregious swindle.”49 Sure, one article noted sarcastically, “the [general] public is gullible and loves to buy bad investments.” But one would have to flood the entire continent with Türkenlose to sell all two million of them. The very premise of Baron Hirsch’s plan was preposterous: why should the Ottoman Empire, “of all the backward countries the one with the lowest credit,” embark on building an entire network of railways at once, when even “the richest, most civilized states” had done so only one step at a time? Thus, the paper concluded, only someone who “takes Turkey’s bankruptcy as an inevitable outcome” could have designed such a “pharaonic plan.”50

The Vienna stock exchange started to note the Turkish lottery bonds in July 1870 and the Viennese market would eventually absorb a large percentage of the shares.51 The Paris bourse, however, continued to remain off limits—­ though the Austro-­Hungarian foreign minister, Gyula Andrássy, wrote in 1872 that the French government had already promised to allow the lots turcs when the Franco-­Prussian War broke out in July 1870 and derailed those plans.52 This was not the only way that the war of 1870–­1871 complicated the Ottoman railroad enterprise. Baron Hirsch reported that, because of the war, numerous French and German engineers and other staff had been called home to fight, and much of the material ordered from northern Europe could not be delivered. Hirsch lamented a myriad of other problems, “primarily the lack of topographic data” in the Ottoman Balkans, so that the first step that the company had taken was to produce its own maps. The lack of roads created another difficulty, as both personnel and building material would be shipped by sea but could not easily be delivered to building sites further inland.53

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More than a transitory difficulty, however, were the diplomatic entanglements in which Hirsch was caught up from the very beginning. The crucial question from the perspective of the Ottomans, their immediate neighbors, and imperial interests further afield concerned the junction lines that were going to link the new Ottoman railways with those of Europe. The two main alternative routes—­one through Bosnia, the other passing through Serbia—had already been debated before Baron Hirsch got involved. A letter to Isaac Pereire, head of the Paris-­based board of directors of the Austrian State Railways (Staatsbahn), in April 1869, spelled out the merits of the two possible connections and the competing interests of the two leading Austrian railroad companies—­Staatsbahn and Südbahn—­as well as those of the Austrian government in Vienna and that of Hungary in Budapest, respectively.54 The letter warned that the Bosnian line involved the construction, on Ottoman territory, of some 1,250 kilometers across very difficult, mountainous terrain.55 By contrast, the line connecting Constantinople with the Serbian border would be only 750 kilometers long, and much easier to build. The Bosnian line was favored by the government in Vienna, as it would direct international traffic toward its territory, linking up with the railroads operated by Pereire’s rivals (and Hirsch’s short-­lived partners) of the Südbahn. By contrast, the Hungarian government favored a connection through Serbia, privileging a route that would pass through Budapest and that would bring traffic to the Staatsbahn. So strongly did the Hungarian authorities feel about this, Pereire learned, that they threatened to decline permission to build the junction with the Bosnian line (which would have to traverse, for a short distance, territory that belonged to the Hungarian part of the empire) unless the Serbian line was also included in the planning from the outset.56 The competing interests of the two halves of the dual monarchy were not the only ones to be considered, of course: the Ottoman government was adamant about the importance of the Bosnian line as, from its perspective, building the railroad was not primarily about opening the empire for European trade but, at least as importantly, connecting the restive province with the capital.57 For the Ottomans, the Bosnian connection was, as the Times of London noted, “not merely a commercial, but likewise a military question.”58 For its part, Serbia—­since 1829 a completely autonomous principal-

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ity though technically under Ottoman sovereignty until full independence in 1878—­dispatched its own representatives to lobby politicians in Austria-­ Hungary to endorse the Serbian railroad link. Count Mijatovich recalls in his memoirs that, on his first-­ever diplomatic mission, in 1869, he had been tasked to threaten that, unless the line through Serbia was approved, “Serbian bandits would destroy every night what the Turks built during the day” in Bosnia.59 To address the thorny question of the junction lines, Austrian foreign minister Beust convened an international conference in Vienna in the summer of 1871. The roster of attendees demonstrated that this was no regular business meeting, and that the Ottoman railroads were as much a commercial enterprise as they were a matter of international politics. In addition to Beust, who chaired the conference, the gathering was attended by Khalil Bey, the Ottoman ambassador in Vienna; the Serbian envoy, Marković; Count Andrássy, the Hungarian prime minister; the Hungarian minister of transport, Lois Tisza; the Austro-­Hungarian finance minister, Menyhért Lónyay; the interior minister of Cisleithania, Karl Sigmund von Hohenwart; Anton von Prokesch-­Osten, the Habsburg ambassador to Constantinople; several other dignitaries; and, finally, Baron Hirsch, who was joined by his legal counsel, Jules Dietz, and Ralph Earle, a onetime member of the British parliament, who was another of Hirsch’s close collaborators.60 The negotiation at Vienna, extending over three days, ended, in the view of the Neue Freie Presse, with a victory for Serbia, Hungary, and the Staatsbahn, as the sides settled on the principle that both connecting lines would be built, and that the approval of one connection point would be contingent on the approval of the other.61 This result was largely due to the brinkmanship of Count Andrássy, the Hungarian prime minister, who refused to entertain any solution that did not firmly commit the Ottoman side to allowing the Serbian connection to be built. The Ottoman envoy objected, to no avail, that none of the possible links across the Serbian border were in his government’s interest,62 not least because at times of war the (shorter) link through Serbia posed a military risk: the Ottomans were certainly aware that, just as the new railroad would allow them to deploy their troops more efficiently, the Serbs (or the Habsburgs) could do much the same once the railway reached across the border. That this fear was not unwarranted

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is suggested by the remark of a member of the Serbian government to the French consul in 1869, claiming that “the railroads will vanquish Turkey. . . . They will do more for the solution of the Oriental problem than rifled barrels.”63 In fact, the Ottomans were still dragging their feet over the completion of the railway connection in the early 1880s, realizing that the junction lines would “immensely increase Austro-­Hungarian influence south of the Danube,” putting them, in the estimation of the Times, “more or less at the mercy of Austria-­Hungary.”64 Baron Hirsch, meanwhile, tried to mediate between the competing positions, siding, as one might expect, with the official Ottoman position favoring the Bosnian line, but addressing the question from the economic point of view. Considering that the connection through Serbia was shorter and faster, it was liable to undermine the viability of the Bosnian track, which in turn was far more difficult, and thus more expensive, to build. Since the Ottomans were interested in building a railroad connecting through Bosnia, and the concession stipulated as much, it was therefore in the company’s interest to protect the line from the competition of a Serbian route. It is clear from the protocol of the negotiations, though, that ultimately the question at hand was a political one, and that it was the balance of political power, not commercial interest, that won the day. In the end, therefore, Hirsch could do little but offer a compromise that would make acceptance of the Bosnian line by the Hungarians conditional on the authorization of the Serbian one by the Ottomans, and which obligated his own company to build the railroad toward the Serbian border within three years once the exact point of interconnection had been determined.65

Things were, however, unsettled by the death of Ali Pasha in September 1871, leading to a dramatic shift under Ali’s successor, the Russophile Mahmud Nedim Pasha (nicknamed, because of his leanings, “Nedimov” by his detractors).66 Soon after Mahmud Pasha’s ascension to office (he remained in power until July 1872 and served another term in 1875–­1876), reports appeared that the Porte wanted to renegotiate the concession it had signed with Baron Hirsch in 1869. Though it denied those rumors at first,67 by early 1872, it was clear that the new grand vizier was pursuing a new policy. In addition

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to railways in the Balkans, he expressed the desire to extend the network farther east into Anatolia, focusing on an internal Ottoman network rather than the connection with central Europe, and he strongly believed that all railroads should be the property of the state. He also considered that those parts of the network that had been conceded to Baron Hirsch and that had not yet been constructed, should be built by the Ottoman state instead.68 And, indeed, on May 18, 1872, Mahmud Pasha and Baron Hirsch signed a new contract that voided the original concession, turning Hirsch’s Société Impériale into a government contractor, rather than an independent concessionary. The railroads would become state property, and the company would be dissolved with completion of the remaining work on the lines that it had already begun (see map 0.1):

∙ from Constantinople to Adrianople, Philippopoli, and Bellova/ Sarambey;

∙ from Dedeagatch to Adrianople; ∙ from Salonika to Uskub (Skopje) and Mitrovica; ∙ from Sarambey to the Salonika-­Mitrovica Railway; ∙ from the Adrianople line to that running from Rustchuk (Ruse) to Varna (which had been built by a British company in 1866, but had failed to earn a profit),69 passing through Yambol. In addition, the contract stipulated the building of a railroad from Banjaluka to the Austrian border, but it left the construction of the Bosnian trunk line—­from Mitrovica to Banjaluka—­to the state. It also included a provision that the company would build a line from Pristina to link up with the Serbian railroad, “in case that such a line will be constructed.” 70 In sum, the new contract reduced the size of the entire network to be built by Baron Hirsch to 1,250 kilometers, instead of the over 2,000 of the original plans. It also revoked the concession to exploit forests and quarries along the rail lines to the state, though Baron Hirsch was awarded the exclusive rights to the large forest at Bellova for a thirty-­five-­year period.71 (Mahmud Pasha would subsequently be put on trial in Constantinople over the latter stipulation, which did not stop the sultan from appointing him as grand vizier again two years later.)72 Meanwhile, the concession to the

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operating company, Compagnie Générale pour l’Exploitation des Chemins de Fer de la Turquie d’Europe, was reduced from ninety-­nine to fifty years, and it would now pay the kilometric rent of 8,000 francs to the government, rather than to Hirsch’s Société Impériale. The state, in turn, committed itself to developing the infrastructure that would permit the railroads to operate profitably: it would build roads to connect towns with the railroad stations, and it would invest in new docks and other upgrades at the ports of Constantinople, Salonika, and Dedeagatch.73 Two years later, newspapers like Neue Freie Presse still wondered what had motivated Mahmud Pasha to overturn the original concession and speculated that the reasons “probably had not been entirely clear even to himself.” What was certain, however, is that the new contract once again “put all the connecting lines [with Europe] in doubt” as it passed responsibility for the completion of the necessary link with the European railroad through Bosnia to the government, and left the Serbian connection up in the air entirely.74 Charles Morawitz suggested that this had been quite deliberate and Mahmud Pasha had been determined “to impede the connection of the Turkish network to that of central Europe at any price.” 75 But quickly accusations and rumors began to swirl that a combination of corruption, foreign interference, and Hirsch’s own machinations were to blame for what many expected to be the long delay, if not outright failure, of the railroad link that would allow Austrian and German commerce to conquer new markets. The Times of London warned, “This railway question has opened out again the old rivalry between the Powers in Constantinople. The junction by rail between Austria, Hungary, and Turkey is not viewed without some jealousy by some of the Maritime Powers, which see in it a drawback to their own commerce.” 76 That was precisely the suspicion among publicists in Austria and Germany, who accused Baron Hirsch of facilitating British and French imports by beginning construction from the Ottoman ports inland, at the expense of Austrian and German business. As Alexander von Peez—­ industrialist, publicist, and politician with leanings toward völkisch German nationalism and antisemitism—­complained in a session of the Austrian parliament, the impact of the railroad had been devastating for Austria’s commercial interests: the rail lines branching out from the coastal ports meant that “the English, French, and Belgian products can now be transported, for

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the same price, five to eight times as far inland as before, whereas Austrian [products] in the North still have to be carried by pack animal.” He blamed the obstinacy of the Hungarian government for the noncompletion of the Bosnian connection.77 Most observers looked elsewhere to assign blame, in particular Russia and its ambassador in Constantinople, Count Nicolai Ignatiev, and they suspected that Hirsch himself was in on the conspiracy. As Friedrich Engels, the socialist theoretician, explained in a letter to the German socialist leader Eduard Bernstein a few years later: “Mahmud Nedim Pasha is  .  .  . a paid Russian agent. . . . Nedim makes a profit: Hirsch pays him for selling out Turkey to him, and Russia pays him for selling out Turkey in the first place: Russian diplomacy makes business on a large scale.” 78 Others, too, blamed the Russians—­and in particular Ignatiev—­for consistently undermining any solution to the tangled question of the European railroad junctions and “setting off all mines to frustrate any possible arrangement [of the Porte] with Baron Hirsch.” 79 But there was a great deal of confusion, and spin, and the same newspaper that denounced Ignatiev’s “setting off all mines” in one article, declared, only a few weeks later, that talk of “Russian intrigues” was overblown, “General Ignatiev having worked with the greatest benevolence to facilitate the realization of the [railroad] connections.”80 Speculation that Baron Hirsch himself was behind the renegotiation of the original concession in 1872, whether in cahoots with the Russians, the British, or on his own account, never ceased.81 The Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, a paper of record in nineteenth-­century Germany, claimed in 1873 that Hirsch had paid a bribe of 400,000 Turkish pounds to Mahmud Nedim Pasha for the new contract.82 The Constantinople correspondent of Kölnische Zeitung, another prestigious German publication, situated the claim that Mahmud Pasha had been bribed by Hirsch in a broader narrative of corruption. Davud Pasha, the newspaper wrote, had allegedly received between 2 and 3 million francs from the baron for the original agreement in 1869 and had since gone abroad and refused to return to face the accusations against him in an Ottoman court.83 The same correspondent subsequently published the transcript of three letters from Baron Hirsch to the erstwhile minister of public works that appeared to confirm that Davud Pasha had been remunerated generously by the concessionary (half a million francs in

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one case, close to 28,000 pounds sterling in another).84 Construction and operation of the railroad itself, the journalist maintained, had been accompanied by systematically bribing Ottoman officials. He cited documents that he had seen, dating from 1876, which listed in detail the bribes distributed to various officials, including 4,500 Turkish liras to a certain Falk Bey, who was the commissioner in charge of overseeing Baron Hirsch’s railroad company.85 Others echoed these accusations of corruption: Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, the prominent Tanzimat statesman, wrote of the “large sum of money” that Hirsch had paid Davud Pasha to gain the railroad concession and suggested the baron had also bribed the Austrian chief minister Beust and several officials in the circle around Ali Pasha—­the grand vizier at the time—­and the sultan’s private office.86 And in the mid-­1880s, a former employee of Baron Hirsch’s railroad company contacted the Ottoman embassy in Vienna to offer his services to help track “the millions stolen by Baron Hirsch,” in exchange for a monthly fee. He claimed to have evidence that Hirsch had bribed Davud Pasha, as well as other examples of the baron’s malfeasance to the detriment of the Ottoman treasury. He promised more “dirt” on Hirsch but warned that the baron “has men everywhere” and that one would have to tread cautiously.87 It does appear entirely plausible, of course, that some of these allegations were true and that bribes were paid to Ottoman (and Austrian) officials and politicians. The narrative became more toxic, however, when charges of corruption—­common enough in the case of large-­scale infrastructure projects, especially in politically unstable regimes such as the Ottoman one at the time—­were combined with the insinuation that Baron Hirsch was secretly advancing the interests of imperial adversaries, whether the Russians, the British, or the French. While publicists and politicians in Austria celebrated the Ottoman railroad at its inception as an opportunity to advance Habsburg imperialism in the Balkans, the accusations against Baron Hirsch of colluding with Austria’s rivals became increasingly shrill as the long-­ awaited connections with the Austro-­Hungarian railroads failed to materialize. The question remains, however, why Baron Hirsch would have been scheming to overturn the original concession in the first place, and why he would have wanted to sabotage the link of the railroad across the border. An

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Ottoman government publication from 1875, after relations with the baron had soured, suggested that Hirsch had wanted to get out of constructing the Bosnian part of the railroad, which was more difficult and expensive to build than the other segments of the network, a claim that can be neither proven nor disproven.88 It may well be that Hirsch didn’t much mind ridding himself of this most complex part of the construction, and once the prospect of a shorter, faster connection through Serbia had been agreed on in 1871, it is possible that the economics of the Bosnian line no longer appealed to him. On the other hand, it is hard to see why the lack of a connection to the European railroads would have been in the company’s interest as most of the operating revenue would have been expected from an increase in international traffic, whereas unconnected domestic lines were never going to be profitable.89

The construction of the Oriental railroad was, from the outset, accompanied by very explicitly imperialist rhetoric, particularly in Austria, where, as we have seen, publicists and politicians dreamed of “deriving all the benefits of a rich colonial possession” by opening the Balkans to Austrian commerce. While the Habsburg Empire is not often associated with colonialism, the debates around the building of the Ottoman railroads show how Austria-­ Hungary very much participated in the larger discourse of European imperialism, from notions of a civilizing mission in the Balkans to its unapologetic claim to the right of exploiting the natural resources of foreign lands and opening them for the benefit of domestic industry and capital.90 In fact, imperialist propaganda likely played an important role in convincing thousands of small investors across Europe, and in particular in Austria and Germany, to buy Baron Hirsch’s Turkish lottery bonds, which ultimately made construction of the Ottoman railroads possible. The point here is not that Jewish financiers like Baron Hirsch played a role in Habsburg imperialism—­or European imperialism more generally. Rather, capitalism but also imperialism were central factors in reshaping European Jewish society itself and allowed for the rise of a new political leadership within the Jewish world. If Baron Hirsch transitioned from a scion of a family of court Jews in Bavaria to one of the leading figures in the global Jewish diaspora of the late

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nineteenth century, that could only happen under the conditions wrought by European imperialism and its insatiable quest to mobilize large amounts of capital. As the historian C. A. Bayly has argued, the “grand orchestrators of the new imperialism [of the late nineteenth century] were not international capitalists, as Lenin averred, but national governments.”91 Indeed, the story of Baron Hirsch’s Oriental railroad was certainly a story about the new possibilities created by technological innovation and new forms of procuring capital on an increasingly global financial market. But it was also a function of the clash between the government in Constantinople pursuing its own imperialist agenda—­“Ottomanism,” as it was called—­in the Balkans,92 and the competing national and imperial ambitions of Serbia, the Austrian and Hungarian sides of the Habsburg Dual Monarchy, and the Russians. Ultimately, the story of Hirsch’s Ottoman railroad enterprise was driven by the intertwined forces of nationalism and imperialism, the kinds of forces that Hirsch would have to navigate throughout his life, both in business and philanthropy.

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5

BUILDING THE OTTOMAN RAILROAD

In the face of ongoing political machinations, charges of corruption, and heated public debate, Baron Hirsch’s Société Impériale kept building. On June 17, 1873, a crowd once again gathered in the streets of Constantinople, this time to celebrate the opening of the 560 kilometers (348 miles) of railroad from the capital to Adrianople, Philippopolis, and Bellova (in what is today Bulgaria). One of the attractions, dutifully inspected by the grand vizier and members of the government, was the special train for Sultan Abdülaziz. Lavishly decorated with silk and damask, it had originally been commissioned by Napoléon III, but after the fall of the emperor following the French capitulation to the Prussians in 1871, it had conveniently come on the market. The train consisted of a parlor, sleeping and dining car, and—­ the object of particular fascination for the Orientalist gaze of European observers—­a special “harem carriage” equipped for two of the sultan’s wives. The inaugural train itself featured eighteen cars for the invited Ottoman and foreign guests, its locomotive painted in red and white, festooned with floral wreaths and pennants bearing the Ottoman crescent.1 The festivities were carefully choreographed by the government and can be read as a complex script conveying the message of Ottomanism, or Ottoman patriotism.2 At the first stop, shortly after midday in Çorlu, the train 111

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was met by what one of the participating journalists described as a “marvelous jumble of exotic garments and peculiar characters; Turks, Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, and Circassians . . . each in their national garb.”3 The colorful mix of ethno-­religious groups, all participating in a celebration of Ottoman progress, was reinforced by the official ceremony, featuring schoolchildren from the “Turkish,” Greek, and Jewish schools, each in different colors and each singing a different song. Later in the evening, upon arrival in Adrianople, a festive dinner featured, the Islamic prohibition against the consumption of alcohol notwithstanding, a selection of Rhine and Bordeaux wines, as well as champagne—­showcasing, perhaps, that the Ottoman Empire was very much in tune with “the West.” And yet, as the reporter for the Neue Freie Presse noted, “the entire celebration had an exclusively national character.” No members of the diplomatic corps were invited, and all toasts were pronounced in Ottoman Turkish—­one in honor of the sultan, one in honor of the grand vizier (at the time, Şirvanlı Mehmed Rüşdi Pasha (d. 1874)), and the final toast in honor of Baron Hirsch.4 The empire celebrated itself, and its embrace of the railroad age, as a union of many ethnic and religious groups; it showed itself in tune with Western tastes and fashion; but it also emphasized the national, Ottoman character of the new railway, as opposed to its being an extension of Europe’s reach into the empire’s Balkan heartland. Apart from the line from Constantinople to Adrianople and Philippopolis, Hirsch’s Société Impériale also completed those to the Aegean port of Dedeagatch, in August 1873, and from Salonika to Mitrovica, via Uskub, that same month. The segment between Banjaluka and Dobrljin (Novi Grad), on the border with the Habsburg Empire, was finished in December 1872. The Ottoman government, though, made little progress with its own obligations under the revised contract signed by Hirsch and Mahmud Pasha in 1872. Most consequentially, it failed to complete the all-­important central Bosnian line, and the already finished Banjaluka–Dobrljin segment was abandoned after only a few months.5 Construction for the “strategic line” that would run through Bosnia and eventually link up with the Austrian railroads had been turned over to the army’s corps of engineers, but, according to one report, construction began without proper studies of the terrain, building different segments simultaneously but coordinated so poorly that

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they did not actually link up, and running out of money so that material already ordered could not be received. After almost three years, barely ten kilometers had been built.6 Another problem was the link that Hirsch’s Société Générale was supposed to build between the main Adrianople line and the British-­built railroad that ran from Rustchuk to the port of Varna on the Black Sea. According to Hirsch, the company began construction in 1873, but when the government stopped making its twice-­monthly payments for the cost of construction, the company eventually shut down the building sites and laid off its workers.7 These were not the only problems. Despite the festive atmosphere of the inauguration in the summer of 1873, and the toasts to celebrate Baron Hirsch, relations between the Porte and its concessionary were deteriorating quickly. A report commissioned by the government about the quality of the recently completed railroad lines in 1874 was scathing. The report concluded that, in many places, the work had been carried out in a shoddy fashion and often in violation of the technical stipulations the two sides had agreed on. Work to protect the tracks from floodwaters was insufficient, the elevation of the embankment lower than required, and the materials used were deemed to be of inferior quality.8 Wooden bridge pillars were already in need of replacement after a mere fifteen months in service, echoing a complaint raised in the previous year when the government had begun to voice concerns about corners being cut, such as the use of wood rather than stone and iron in the construction of bridges, insisting that “this railroad should not be accepted unless it is built as safe and secure as railways in Europe.”9 Another complaint concerned the tracing of the railroad itself: to avoid expensive earthwork, additional bridges, and tunnels, the company had laid the track wherever it was easiest, at the cost of numerous curves and detours, while at the same time leaving even some of the most important and populous cities—­Adrianople, with 180,000 inhabitants and Philippopolis, with about 80,000—­at some distance from the rail line. The Adrianople station, the government report indicated, was five kilometers away from the city’s nearest suburb, and that of Philippopolis four to five kilometers; other towns were bypassed entirely. “Along the entire route,” the report noted, “one sees stations without a town or village [nearby], and towns and villages without a station.”10

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Other observers came to much the same conclusion. Count Emanuel von Ludolf, the Austro-­Hungarian ambassador in Constantinople at the time, offered his own observations after an excursion by train from Constantinople to Bellova, the end of the line. In particular, the first 150 kilometers (to Çorlu), he criticized, were very inadequate. The constant curves and sometimes significant inclines that were the result of the company going out of its way to avoid more expensive construction, and shoddy work on embankments that were routinely damaged in the event of strong rainfall, meant that the train could go at no more than 25 kilometers per hour (15.5 miles per hour)—­and even so, Ludolf noted, there had repeatedly been derailments. This part of the railroad, he concluded, was unsuitable for the international traffic that was expected eventually. Moreover, railroad crossings and embankments were not protected to prevent animals from wandering onto the tracks. For the moment, therefore, trains could only operate during daylight, and travelers had to spend the night at Adrianople—­the journey from Constantinople to there took about thirteen hours—­before they could continue the following morning on to Philippopolis. That second part of the railroad, Ludolf admitted, was much better, mostly because it now cut through a flat plain, and trains reached 50 kilometers per hour (31 miles per hour). “I do not think that I wrong Baron Hirsch if I say,” he concluded, “that he built a railroad—­which should have been of the highest quality, given the cost to the Porte—­that is barely suitable for local traffic alone,” at any rate on the route from Constantinople to Çorlu.11 Years later in 1888, when the first trains finally began traveling on the now completed route between Vienna and Constantinople, a British observer still lamented that the “contest of wits between a clever Austrian Jew and the impecunious and unscrupulous Turk” had created a railroad that was “a burlesque,” its “tortuous, unnecessary curves  .  .  . remind[ing] one of the meandering of a river.” He claimed, implausibly, that the kilometric guarantee paid by the government to Baron Hirsch had led to “more than double the necessary number of kilomètres [sic],” when, in fact, the contract had stipulated that the Porte would pay for no more than thirty kilometers above the 1,250 stipulated in the 1872 convention.12 Still, the “splendid curves which Baron Hirsch has invented to swell the number of his kilomètres” remained a complaint of travelers, and of the Ottoman government.13

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Maurice de Hirsch did not hesitate to fight back against the government’s commission and its negative report and invited two German engineers and one Austrian engineer to offer their own assessment on behalf of the company. The strategy was to hire individuals who, “standing entirely outside the disagreement, enjoy such a scholarly and personal reputation that there can be no doubt of their impartiality and independence.” (In this case, as during the subsequent arbitration between Hirsch and the Porte in the 1880s, the nationality of the experts was an important factor in considering their respectability and, in particular, impartiality—­Germans, it appears, were in particularly high demand.) In the event, the commission vindicated Baron Hirsch, concluding that the railroad had been built “according to the plans and norms authorized by the Ottoman government, according to all technical requirements, and in a way that allows the safe operation, even in case of much higher demand than at the present.”14 “We have found something entirely different,” the engineers noted, “than what we might have expected based on the rumors that are circulating about the Rumelian railroads.” It was true, the commission allowed, that Hirsch’s company had avoided large-­scale earthwork, tunnels, and bridges: but this could hardly have been otherwise, given the lack of skilled labor available locally, and the resulting detours had added no more than eight kilometers, out of a total of eight hundred kilometers built.15 Whereas Hirsch could be pleased with the report, it included several points that demonstrate how something as apparently technical and “objective” as railroad engineering was always intertwined with cultural assumptions—­in this case, an Orientalist view of the Ottoman Empire and the populations that the railroad was going to serve. The report argued, for example, that stations serving Adrianople and Philippopolis could only have been built in closer proximity to these centers at great additional expense, which would have been “too costly for these large, but industrially insignificant cities.” That was true especially, the engineers noted, “in a country where it is common, easy and inexpensive to travel by horse or donkey, and where time and personal comfort have very little value.”16 Not surprisingly, Ottoman contemporaries took exception: the cities in question had in fact a very active trade, the government retorted: “the value of time for its inhabitants is the same as for any other traveler,” and, if the empire had decided

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to build railroads, it had been precisely so it wouldn’t have to rely on transporting people and goods “on the back of a donkey.”17 Still, the engineers’ report was not entirely beside the point: while the railroad would eventually displace the need for using pack animals for long distances (in the early nineteenth century, caravans consisting of some twenty thousand horses were regularly making the fifty-­day journey between Salonika and Vienna), animals were still needed in large numbers to carry crops from surrounding areas to the nearest train station as agricultural production grew increasingly export-­oriented. According to one estimate, up to ten thousand camels were used to supply the British-­built railroad trunks in the Aegean area around Smyrna alone.18 No less Orientalist than the comment about the relative value of “time and comfort” was the cheerful assertion of the German engineers that the station buildings and other infrastructure for the traveling passengers were by no means insufficient and too small. “The Bulgarian, Circassian and Tartar population avoids entering European-­style interiors” and recoils from enclosed spaces anyhow.19 The government’s riposte dismissed that logic with its own, internal sort of Ottoman Orientalism: “According to the commission, there is no difference between the customs of the inhabitants of Constantinople, Adrianople, Philippopolis and the Rumelian countryside and that of Arab or Kurdish nomads. . . . [But] there really is no appreciable difference between Rumelia and European countries.”20 The discourse about the new railroad also acquired nationalist overtones. Despite the proud display of Ottoman patriotism in the inauguration of the line to Adrianople and Philippopolis in 1873, Ottoman observers were increasingly unhappy with the inherently multinational—­and foreign-­ dominated—­endeavor. A pamphlet published by the Ottoman government in 1875 not only denounced the alleged shortcomings of Baron Hirsch’s railroad but also bemoaned the overwhelmingly German character of the enterprise. Hirsch’s company, it declared, was “French only in name,” with almost all its administration consisting of German citizens. Moreover, German had become the company’s official language, which, unlike French, was hardly spoken by any local Ottomans.21 In sum: “No Ottoman employees in the operation of the Ottoman railroads; no French employees in the administration of a French company; all are Germans.”22 The critique was

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not unjustified: as one of the engineers who had inspected the railroad on behalf of the company and had found it satisfactory, boasted in an address in Berlin, “German diligence, German reliability, and German prudence” had ensured the project’s success. Equally important, he pointed out, was the role of German industry, which provided no less than 66 of a total 83 locomotives (whereas the 235 passenger cars were built in Belgium and Austria, and the 1,822 cargo cars in Hungary, in Belgium, and at a facility staffed mainly by Germans in Constantinople).23 The Ottoman government, for its part, complained that two years after the inauguration of the railroad, nine out of ten of the company’s employees should have been Ottomans. Instead, Baron Hirsch seemed to think it was sufficient if his staff simply donned an Ottoman uniform, and that he “fulfilled his obligation toward his Imperial Majesty, and toward the country, by painting a crescent on the carriages of his railroad.”24 Perceptions of the new railroad were thus embedded in broader political and cultural discourses: discourses about empire and the nation, about civilization and progress, and about “the Orient” versus “Europe.”

The crash of the Viennese stock market in May 1873 spelled trouble for those who invested in the Ottoman lottery bonds.25 Trading at a maximum of 182 francs in Vienna, the bonds fell to 115 in the aftermath of the crash, subsequently recovering to about 130 francs.26 But a bigger shock was yet to come as Ottoman finances continued to spiral out of control. If the country was already piling up more and more debt, with little to show for it, the failed harvest of 1873 and an unusually long and harsh winter that followed led to widespread famine across Anatolia, and economic conditions got only worse. Moreover, the burst of the speculative bubble in Vienna (and subsequently in Berlin and New York) meant that demand for risky Ottoman obligations dried up, and it became increasingly difficult for the government to borrow in order to finance a large annual deficit. In October 1875, the Porte had to declare that, for a period of five years, it would pay only half of the interest due to creditors, essentially defaulting on its debt. In 1876, the Ottomans stopped payments altogether, and in December 1881, the Sultan signed the so-­called Muharrem Decree (named after the date in the Islamic calendar, 28 Muharrem), establishing the international Ottoman Public Debt Administration.27

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With that, a large part of the imperial finances came under the direct control of an administrative body run by European technocrats. The debt administration refinanced the empire’s outstanding liabilities and relied on the revenue from sources as diverse as the Ottoman monopolies on salt and tobacco; taxes on alcohol, fishing, and silk production; income from Cyprus; tribute payments from Bulgaria; and more.28 For all its promise, the economic legacy of the Tanzimat was a shambles, leaving, in the words of one historian, “a mostly failed industrialization process, a fiscally bankrupt state, and an increasingly externally-­dependent economic and political system.”29 The Ottoman railroad bonds were, of course, affected as well. According to the decree of 1881, the state was to cease paying all interest on the shares, but the original plan for amortization remained in place: twice a month, drawings would continue to take place for repayment, though the actual amounts would depend on the funds available. Thus, in the first year following the decree, the lots that were drawn were repaid at a rate of 58 percent—­ that is, at 232 francs instead of the nominal value of 400 francs. (Lawsuits against the debt administration in Germany and Italy led to a compromise, and the coefficient was subsequently raised to 75 percent.) In practice, those who had bought Turkish lottery bonds essentially ceased to collect income on their investment and could at best hope for repayment of the bond’s now effectively reduced value during the annual lottery.30 Economic trouble was followed by political turmoil. Ever since the death of Ali Pasha, the grand vizier who had championed the railroads across the Ottoman Balkans, in 1871, the power balance in Constantinople had begun to shift away from the reformers at the Sublime Porte to the palace of the sultan. After bankruptcy and a rebellion of Slav peasants against their Muslim landlords in Hercegovina in 1875, followed by a rebellion against Ottoman rule in Bulgaria in the spring of 1876, Mahmud Nedim Pasha was dismissed (for the second time) as grand vizier. In May, reform-­oriented bureaucrats led a coup to depose Sultan Abdülaziz, who was blamed for the dire political and economic situation. (He either committed suicide or was murdered shortly thereafter.) The new sultan, Murad V, was in turn removed after only three months, when a fatwa (a religious ruling) from the leading Islamic authority in the empire declared him mentally unfit; he was succeeded by his younger brother, Abdülhamid II, who would remain on the

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throne until 1909. Meanwhile, the uprising in Bosnia and Hercegovina provided the opportunity for Serbia and Montenegro, both autonomous principalities, to launch a war against the Ottoman Empire. While the Ottoman army achieved some military victories against the Serbs, Russia intervened with an ultimatum. Diplomatic efforts led by Britain collapsed, and Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire on April 24, 1877. Under pressure from reformers within and from the European powers without, Sultan Abdülhamid II appointed the reform-­minded Midhat Pasha as grand vizier and promulgated a constitution. This first Ottoman constitution called for the establishment of an elected parliament and limited the powers of the sultan. Non-­Muslims were granted participation: a fixed number of parliamentary seats were allotted to the various religious-­ ethnic communities, and the European provinces of the empire were significantly overrepresented (at a ratio of about 2:1). The first parliament, elected between January and March 1877, convened on March 19, 1877, on the eve of the war with Russia. The war was to transform the Ottoman state forever, dramatically redrawing the political borders on the Balkan Peninsula. It also led the sultan to issue a “temporary prorogation” of parliament in February 1878; it would not reconvene for the next three decades.31 The Russo-­Ottoman War of 1877–­1878 ended with the decisive routing of the Ottoman forces, and the peace treaty, signed at San Stefano on the outskirts of Constantinople on March 3, 1878, was a deep humiliation for the empire. Losing territory to Russia, it would also have to recognize the independence of Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania, and a new Bulgarian principality would stretch all the way from the Danube to the Aegean, including Macedonia, thus providing a powerful foothold for Russia’s own imperial ambitions. Such a dramatic transformation of the delicate power balance in the Balkans, however, was unacceptable in particular to Britain and the Habsburg Empire, and the Great Powers descended on the German capital Berlin for an international conference, presided over by Bismarck, to determine the postwar order in the Balkans. There, between June 13 and July 13, 1878, representatives of the Ottoman Empire and Russia, as well as of Germany, Austria-­Hungary, France, Britain, and Italy, hashed out the terms of a new international treaty that was meant to settle the so-­called Eastern Question.

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The Berlin Treaty of 1878 marked an important turning point, not only for the Ottoman Empire. As Eric Weitz has pointed out, it enshrined “population politics,” making populations—­imagined as distinct nations—­ rather than territory its focus.32 The war itself had brought widespread violence against the civilian population in the contested territories, and the new railroad had carried countless refugees from the Balkans to Constantinople. Baron Hirsch, as we will see in chapter 7, mobilized a major rescue effort for Muslims, Jews, and Christians who had been displaced during the war, while European Jewish leaders, led by the Berlin banker Gerson von Bleichröder and the Paris-­based Alliance Israélite Universelle, ensured that the question of Jewish political rights in the Balkans was on the agenda at the Berlin Congress. Chopping off most of what had once been referred to as La Turquie d’Europe, the treaty recognized the independence of Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania. Bulgaria became an autonomous principality, though not in the expansive borders stipulated at San Stefano: Macedonia was restored to Ottoman rule, thus cutting off Bulgaria’s access to the Mediterranean, and the southern parts of Bulgaria remained with the empire as the autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia. Russia also gained some territory, and the British took control of Cyprus. Austria-­Hungary, meanwhile, occupied Bosnia-­Hercegovina, where it aggressively pursued the construction of some one thousand kilometers of railroad track in subsequent years.33 The loss of vast territory in the Balkans, compounded by about one million Muslim refugees that had streamed into Ottoman cities during the war and most of whom would never return to their homes, changed the Ottoman Empire profoundly. Sultan Abdülhamid II now began to pursue a policy that invoked Muslim solidarity, and what historians have called pan-­ Islamism gradually came to transform the meaning of Ottomanism and Ottoman citizenship.34 The redrawing of boundaries had dramatic consequences for the Ottoman railroad built by Baron Hirsch, and it is not surprising that Hirsch himself made an appearance in Berlin while the European powers discussed the future of the Balkans.35 At the session on June 26, 1878—­Hirsch was also in town at the time—­the delegation of Austria-­Hungary, led by Count Andrássy, proposed the following stipulation regarding those parts of the railroads that traversed Bulgaria:

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The Principality of Bulgaria, so far as it is concerned, takes the place of the Sublime Porte in the engagements which the latter has contracted, as well toward Austria-­Hungary as toward the Compagnie pour l’Exploitation des Chemins de Fer de la Turquie d’Europe in respect to the completion and connection, as well as the working, of the railways situated in its territory. The conventions necessary for the settlement of these questions shall be concluded between Austria-­Hungary, the Porte, Serbia, and the Principality of Bulgaria immediately after the conclusion of peace.

The proposition was uncontested and was adopted “without discussion” (it featured as article 10 of the final treaty; article 38 stipulated the same for the case of Serbia).36 The Ottoman railroads, therefore, continued to be entangled in the political questions of the time, and the crucial issue—­if, when, and how they would be linked up with the European railway network—­ remained up in the air.37 IN THE AFTERMATH OF WAR

“It was towards February 1882 that Mr. de Hirsch manifested, for the first time, the intention of passing the operation of the Oriental railroads to a different company.” Thus read an assessment of the Ottoman Imperial Bank, which functioned as the national bank of the empire but in fact was controlled and managed by British and French bankers.38 According to the document, there were two main reasons for Hirsch to consider selling his railway business: “First of all, the evident hostility of the Turkish government, which is growing by the day. Second, the manifest impossibility of delaying for a long time the execution of the connecting lines, stipulated in the Treaty of Berlin and desired by the Austrian and German governments.” Once completed, the note explained, Hirsch’s company would have to begin paying the Ottoman treasury 8,000 francs per kilometer in rent. Therefore, the bank suggested, it was in the company’s interest to maintain the status quo to avoid paying “an annuity that is very heavy and, according to the opinion of the competent individuals, absolutely ruinous.”39 Lucien de Hirsch confirmed as much in a letter to Jessie Sykes three years later, sug-

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gesting that the obligation to pay the rent would be “synonymous with the bankruptcy of the C[ompan]y.”40 In the end, Baron Hirsch did not sell out for another eight years, but tensions between the government and the railroad company grew, and increasingly appeared to be highly personal. As one observer noted, to Mehmed Saïd Pasha, the grand vizier during most of the period from 1880 to 1885,41 “the Baron was supremely unpleasant” and “the personification of the despicable.”42 The allegation that Hirsch and his company themselves were the ones who had an interest in delaying as much as possible the completion of the connecting lines between the Ottoman and the central European railways, in turn, became a common trope in the often hostile and, again, highly personalized reporting on the Oriental railroads in the Austrian and German press. Underneath the drama that played out in the pages of the newspapers, however, lay the hard-­nosed negotiation and brinkmanship between Baron Hirsch and the Ottoman government. Personalizing their grievances against Hirsch, the Ottomans pursued their own strategic and political priorities in their negotiation with the railroad company. Hirsch, for his part, was patiently seeking to improve the conditions for his business, and preparing his own exit strategy, having put out feelers for a possible sale as early as 1882. Ottoman hostility against Baron Hirsch dated back to the disagreements over the quality of the railroad’s construction, and resentment grew, especially after the bankruptcy of the state, over what many considered a deal that was economically disadvantageous to Ottoman interests.43 However, Hirsch’s services remained, for the time being, indispensable. Writing in 1875, the Levant Herald, published in Constantinople and expressing an Anglophile viewpoint, argued that there was “no doubt a strong personal animosity on the part of the Turks to Baron Hirsch, but this feeling ought not to interfere if he is in a better position than anyone else to complete the lines.” The newspaper claimed that, all grievances notwithstanding, “Baron Hirsch in his double character as a financier and a railway builder, has accomplished enough to create confidence in him.  .  .  . If  .  .  . Baron Hirsch made a profit out of his financial combinations with the Porte, that profit was due to his own credit, and not the credit of Turkey.”44 But even if the Levant Herald was correct that Hirsch was best positioned to complete the

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connecting lines to the border, it was by no means certain that the Ottoman government, especially after the lost war of 1877–­1878, was really keen on seeing them built. The empire’s politics, under Sultan Abdülhamid II, had certainly taken a turn away from laissez-­faire to greater protectionism, and was thus apprehensive about the impact of closer trading ties with Europe.45 Baron Hirsch’s representative in Constantinople, Otto von Kühlmann, observed in 1883 that “the Turkish government has a great aversion against creating the railroad junctions with the western parts of Europe. Doubtlessly a more convenient connection would facilitate the arrival of foreigners in the Orient, and it is unclear what impact that would have on Turkey, ‘blessed’ as it is with the capitulations [which accorded foreign citizens special protections, exempting them from local taxes and Ottoman jurisdiction].46 The latest war has greatly weakened Turkey militarily, and this feeling of vulnerability makes the Turkish government fear that the railroad connections would bring more benefits to its adversaries than to the country’s government.”47 This assessment was shared by others: was it surprising, the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna wondered, if the Ottomans distrusted the intentions of the Habsburg Empire after the latter had occupied Bosnia-­Hercegovina in 1878, and if they suspected that Austria’s ultimate goal was “to raise its flag over the docks of the port of Salonika”?48 In Kühlmann’s reading, the Porte was therefore doing what it could to delay the connections as long as possible, even if the status quo was not in its best financial interest. Since it could not openly oppose the junction lines, which had been enshrined in the terms of the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, the Ottoman government blamed the railroad company for failing to complete the connections. Kühlmann insisted that the accusation that the railroad company was deliberately delaying the junction lines was nonsensical: in reality, linking its network to the central European railways was in the company’s own best interest, as it could expect higher revenue and thus greater profit once the remaining lines were completed.49 Arguably, the truth lay somewhere in between: while the railroad company stood to benefit from international traffic once the junctions were complete, Hirsch also wanted (and eventually succeeded) to renegotiate the terms that obligated him to pay a kilometric rent of 8,000 francs to the ­Ottoman treasury. The Ottoman government, in turn, was caught between

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political, strategic-­military, and economic considerations that could not easily be reconciled. In December 1882, more than four years after the Treaty of Berlin, representatives of the Ottoman Empire, Austria-­Hungary, Serbia, and Bulgaria met in Vienna to reach an understanding about the railroad question. After more than five months of negotiations, the Conférence à Quatre concluded with an agreement on May 9, 1883, which determined that both a line connecting the Ottoman railroads through Bulgaria, and one through Serbia, would be completed by October 1886.50 Yet despite this new treaty, the Ottoman government continued to drag its feet. Kühlmann complained in October 1884 that the Porte had not even fixed the exact locations where its railroads and those of Bulgaria and Serbia, respectively, would join.51 At the same time, Hirsch’s competitors began to explore possibilities of taking over the entire Ottoman railroad business and of building the junctions—­ essentially confirming Kühlmann’s point that the railway would be economically far more attractive to the operating company once it was linked to the central European network. As one correspondent of the Ottoman Imperial Bank in Constantinople noted, rather cynically, the government and, in particular, the sultan, were so averse to dealing with Baron Hirsch that the time had come for a consortium led by the Ottoman Imperial Bank to make an offer: “even if the proposition is less advantageous to the Porte . . . any group, as long as it is not Mr. Hirsch, will be received well.”52 In their bid to gain the concession for the connecting lines, Hirsch’s competitors sought to exploit the deep-­seated distrust between the government and the baron. In a meeting with the grand vizier, A. Caporal, representing the interests of the Ottoman Imperial Bank, offered the government an opportunity to “disengage completely and definitively from Baron Hirsch” and, instead, “deal with an honorable, honest and powerful group, personified by the Ottoman [Imperial] Bank.” Caporal suggested that, in Europe, the Porte was suspected of colluding with Baron Hirsch, and the time had come to “clear the terrain of this character, who embarrasses and compromises your country.” Under a new concessionary, “your rail connections will be made more safe, and better, and your railroad lines will finally belong to you, as they will be operated by a company placed under your flag, and whose interests are aligned with yours.” Caporal insisted on the “honor-

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able,” “notable,” and “respectable” reputation of his company, in contrast to that of Hirsch, whom he described—­in a classic antisemitic image—­as “a parasite . . . who absorbs all the sap for his own, exclusive benefit.” He appealed to the grand vizier’s “patriotism” and “virility” to finally break with Hirsch.53 Caporal’s approach illustrates how economic and political decisions, including those made at the highest level, were never exclusively or even primarily driven by rational calculations of cost and benefit, but were very much subject to emotions and culturally embedded assumptions, including antisemitic stereotypes, rather than abstract notions of material or political “interest.”

The thorny question of the railroad junctions was not the only issue that troubled the relations between Baron Hirsch and the Ottoman government in the 1880s. Each side also accused the other of breach of contract. Apart from its complaints about shoddy construction and poorly designed routes, the most significant claim that the government had against Hirsch’s company concerned the repayment of a deposit fund that had been established in the original concession of 1869 to compensate for lost revenue in the first years of the railroad’s operation. The government’s demand, including interest, rose to a total of 40 million francs. The Porte also exacted payment of the kilometric rent from 1872 on, a total of 20 million francs, whereas the company maintained that it was not obligated to pay rent until the entire network was complete.54 For its part, the company invoked damages because the Porte had failed to make its payments for the construction of the Yambol line (between Rustchuk and Varna), which therefore remained incomplete, and because it had not honored its contractual commitments to build the infrastructure necessary for ensuring the growth of traffic on the railway, including roads and port facilities. Further disagreements concerned responsibility for wartime damages to the railroad and several other matters.55 These outstanding claims between the Ottoman government and the company repeatedly interfered with ongoing negotiations about the future operation of the railroad, as well as any possible sale of the business to another investor. Backed by Austrian diplomacy, which most of all wanted to

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see the railway junctions finally completed, Baron Hirsch insisted that resolving past claims, preferably through arbitration, should not be a precondition for an agreement about the future.56 But the Porte was reluctant to give up the leverage it believed it commanded so long as its claims against the railroad company remained unresolved: they could serve as a diversionary tactic to delay the railroad junctions which were seen by many in Constantinople with increasing suspicion,57 and they allowed the government to play off Baron Hirsch and his competitors, the consortium led by the Ottoman Imperial Bank, against one another. In the process, the Porte did not shy away from threatening the use of its ultimate weapon: an all-­out seizure of the railroad company and its assets. The Ottoman government first considered using the threat of expropriating the company in 1875,58 and the possibility was again discussed in 1882, though the Porte worried that such a drastic measure might push Austria into declaring war.59 The correspondent of the Kölnische Zeitung in Constantinople, Emil Budde,60 reported that year: “Since it is impossible to escape this gallimaufry in a correct manner, there is in leading [Ottoman] circles now a desire to approach this entire issue on the basis of emotional justice [Standpunct der Gefühlsrechte] and to ignore one or another formality, just to rid oneself of this leech. The sense of fairness in European public opinion will hardly object to this.”61 Baron Hirsch was well aware that the battle he was fighting was not only a contest with the Ottoman government but also a fight over public opinion, and he took the rare step of laying out his own position in a lengthy reply to Budde’s article, which appeared in the same newspaper eleven days later. In his response, Hirsch sought to depersonalize the narrative by making the railroad company the protagonist, rather than himself—­unlike the newspaper’s correspondent, who “had deliberately foregrounded [the company’s] president.” He expressed his disbelief that the article’s author could “counsel the Porte to violently flout its contractual obligations toward the operating company.” “Surely,” he added, “the sense of fairness in the public opinion of Europe must have deteriorated a great deal if such an act, defying any kind of justice, should not be denounced in the strongest terms.” It was clearly unacceptable, for a non-­Ottoman foreigner, no less, to suggest that the Porte should “attack foreign capital, which has been invested in the country in good faith, and to destroy in one violent act

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the one large enterprise that Western initiative [abendländische Initiative] has successfully carried out on Turkish soil.”62 Two years later, in 1884, the Ottoman government did use the threat of expropriation, issuing an ultimatum to Baron Hirsch to either accept its latest offer concerning the railroad connections and future relationship with the company within a week or, otherwise, face the prospect of the government taking over the business.63 In Lucien de Hirsch’s view, as he explained in a letter to Jessie Sykes, “our company is the only possible undertaker for the junction lines with Servia [sic] & Bulgaria,” and the subtext of the Ottoman threat to seize the railway meant that “the Turks . . . are now trying to get my father’s company out of the way & make a general mess, which will prevent the junction lines from being built for many years to come.”64 In the end, the government failed to follow through on its bluff and negotiations continued.

In 1878, Baron Hirsch had moved the headquarters of his Ottoman railroad company from Paris to Vienna. With the company now officially having Austrian, rather than French, nationality, Habsburg diplomacy became involved ever more directly. The most important issue for the Austrian diplomats continued to be, as before, the link with the central European railways. Still, Foreign Minister Gustav Siegmund von Kálnoky remained somewhat noncommital when Hirsch sought his assistance at a meeting in November 1883.65 “In the course of our conversation,” Kálnoky informed the Austrian ambassador to the Porte, Heinrich von Calice,66 “Baron Hirsch completely understood that we cannot take any measures in Constantinople and that, for the moment, he would have to deal with his business on his own.” When Hirsch requested help countering competition from the consortium led by the Ottoman Imperial Bank, Kálnoky made clear that this was “beyond his purview,” and even on the issue of the railroad junctions, he remained cautious: any official intervention at this stage, he explained, was “not feasible and perhaps even liable to obtain the opposite result” as such open support from the Austrian government was wont to “easily awaken suspicion in Turkish circles.”67 Despite this, however, the minister did instruct Calice to adopt a “benevolent attitude” toward the representative of the railroad company in

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Constantinople, and to convey the same message, “in a cautious manner,” to Ottoman officials as well, Hirsch being for the moment “the only serious contestant” in the bid to complete the railroad junctions.68 Never losing sight of the main goal—­accomplishing those connections—­Kálnoky also urged Baron Hirsch to be as conciliatory toward the Porte as possible, lest any further delays occur.69 When the Ottoman government threatened expropriation in 1884, in a meeting with Hirsch Kálnoky once again expressed some reluctance to get directly involved. Writing to Ambassador Calice in Constantinople, though, he did note that any “violation” against the company, as long as the latter was not at fault, would be unacceptable to Austria, and the government would have no choice but to extend its formal protection. As Kálnoky explained, the overriding issue remained the need to complete the junction lines, and if the Porte resorted to radical measures such as the expropriation of a foreign company, surely no one else would step in and risk a major capital investment under such circumstances, and the railroad would remain incomplete forever.70 Populist politicians like the leader of the antisemitic Christian-­Social Party in Austria, Karl Lueger, later peddled the notion that Hirsch, whose railroad business he associated with the “most outrageous swindle and the most outrageous corruption,” had been the “protégé of Austrian diplomacy.” 71 In reality, diplomatic support from the government in Vienna was always predicated on the larger goal of opening the Balkans to Austrian commerce and political influence, and never a direct commitment to Baron Hirsch. In February 1885, the Ottoman government finally awarded the contract to build the railroad junctions toward Bulgaria and Serbia to Hirsch’s competitors. They had not been wrong in their bet that the Porte was now eager to employ any viable alternative that might present itself, and in the end, the offer from Baron Hirsch and that received by the consortium led by the Ottoman Imperial Bank and the Comptoir d’Escompte of Paris were not very far apart. Hirsch had gone down from an initial construction price of 200,000 francs per kilometer to offering either 145,000 francs per kilometer at 6 percent interest, or 125,000 francs per kilometer at 7 percent interest.72 In contrast, the group led by the Ottoman Imperial Bank asked for more money—­175,000 francs per kilometer—­but at a lower interest rate, 5 percent. Crucially, though, the consortium agreed that the new company, the

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Société des Raccordements, was going to be an Ottoman company, subject to Ottoman jurisdiction, whereas Hirsch had insisted that his company not change its nationality until after settling all outstanding differences with the government.73 Once again, however, a political crisis upended any expectations that the Ottoman government might have had of extricating itself from its relationship with Baron Hirsch. In September 1885, a revolt broke out in Philippopolis, the capital of the autonomous region of Eastern Rumelia created at the Congress of Berlin, and, defying international agreements, the leaders of the rebellion unilaterally declared the unification of Eastern Rumelia with the Principality of Bulgaria. When Serbia decided to intervene and declare war on Bulgaria, it was quickly, and unexpectedly, routed, and the European powers could do little but accept the unified Bulgaria as a fait accompli. The Ottomans, too, mobilized their troops but, as Lucien de Hirsch noted with disdain, “they have about 300,000 men under arms since 3 months and at the same time the Sultan is such a miserable coward that he does not dare take any energetic step and on the other hand is afraid of disbanding the army he has set on foot for no purpose.” 74 In the end, the government in Constantinople had little choice but to recognize the new reality on the ground, appointing Prince Alexander of Bulgaria as governor of Eastern Rumelia.75 Mobilization was expensive, however, and the Porte once again had to reach out to Maurice de Hirsch in the quest for a new loan. Negotiations were heating up, and Lucien was convinced that, if his father could “only make up his mind to make a sufficiently large advance to the Turks, all the other points are pretty well settled, but it is very difficult to overcome his antipathy against embarking any fresh capital in this business.” 76 Throughout the prolonged back and forth, Lucien functioned as his father’s secretary, drafting letters, telegrams, and memos.77 Finally, after an endless string of proposals and counterproposals—­“the night from Saturday to Sunday came a [telegraphic] message in 7 parts containing more than a thousand words & we had to make a reply which had 450” 78—­and many last-­minute twist and turns, Hirsch and the Porte reached an understanding. The railroad company would facilitate a loan of 1 million Turkish pounds (23 million francs), which was to be secured by the annual kilometric rent that was due

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to the government. On December 22, 1885, the parties signed a new contract that brought to a conclusion the drawn-­out, years-­long negotiation about the future operation of the Ottoman railroads. The annual rent was lowered from 8,000 francs to a guaranteed 1,500 francs per kilometer, and any revenue beyond 10,333 francs per kilometer would be shared, with 45 percent going to the government and 55 percent to the company.79

A growing field of economic research—­called, somewhat clunkily, “new institutional economic theory”—­has challenged the simplistic assumptions of rational choice theory in understanding economic activity. In this view, economic behavior is constrained both by formal institutions—­the state and its bureaucracy, the law—­and by more intangible factors, such as conventions, codes of behavior, or cultural attitudes.80 The story of the Ottoman railroads is a good example. Of course, market forces of supply and demand were at play, and the desire to maximize profit informed the choices made by Baron Hirsch himself, as well as by investors across Europe who decided to put their money into Ottoman lottery bonds. But just as important were political factors, such as the Ottoman government’s push for modernization and the imperialist ambitions of various European powers. These political factors, in turn, were entwined with cultural assumptions about progress and civilization. Imperial rivalries were driven by the pursuit of “hard” political power, but also by assertions of “soft” cultural power in the service of ideologies as varied as the European “civilizing mission,” Russian pan-­Slavism, or Tanzimat-­era Ottomanism. What is true for the larger picture proved to be true on the ground as well: the technical expertise of engineers evaluating Baron Hirsch’s railroad construction was enmeshed with Orientalist beliefs about Ottoman backwardness, and the respectability of international arbiters rested, at least partially, on assumptions tied to their respective nationality. What stands out in particular from the contemporary sources, whether public accounts in newspapers and pamphlets or the confidential correspondence of diplomats and statesmen, was the degree to which the economic and political conflicts surrounding the Ottoman railroads were woven into highly personalized narratives about Baron Hirsch. Hirsch became the very personification of the

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“institutions” that constrained the economic and political choices of the various actors, from Vienna to Constantinople. More often than not, assumptions about “Jews” and “Jewish” economic behavior shaped these narratives: antisemitism, in fact, came to play an important role in how contemporaries made sense of the political and economic forces—­imperialism and capitalism—­that underpinned the larger drama of the Ottoman railroads.

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6

IMPERIALISM, RAILROADS, ANTISEMITISM

Around 11:30 a.m. on December 30, 1882, the Austro-­Hungarian ambassador in Paris, Count Felix von Wim­pffen, gave a last hug to his children before getting out of his carriage on Avenue Marceau, a leafy boulevard in the swanky western part of the French capital. Leaning against a wall, he removed a revolver from his pocket and shot himself through the temple. Later that night, reports appeared that the late ambassador had left final letters to his wife; to Count Zichy, the former Austrian ambassador in Constantinople; to the Austrian foreign minister, Count Kálnoky; and to Baron Hirsch.1 The suicide of the Habsburg envoy on a public street in the middle of Paris and, in particular, news of a note to the Jewish banker and railroad entrepreneur soon sparked numerous rumors: Had the ambassador perhaps been in financial trouble? And what had been his connection with Baron Hirsch? Less than two weeks later, an interpellation was submitted in the Hungarian parliament, asking the government to explain what the relation had been between Wimpffen and Hirsch, and seeking to determine the accuracy of a report in the German newspaper Deutsches Tagblatt, according to which the ambassador had implicated himself in abusing his office to favor Baron Hirsch’s railroad business in the Ottoman Empire.2 On January 17, 1883, 133

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Prime Minister Kálmán Tisza issued a strong denial, denouncing the letter published by the Deutsches Tagblatt and attributed to Wimpffen as a fake, and stating that an alleged confession sent by Wimpffen to his superior in Vienna, Foreign Minister Kálnoky, had never in fact existed. Victor Istoczy, a leading antisemitic politician who had submitted the question in parliament,3 was not satisfied: the newspaper in question, he maintained, was, after all, a respectable organ of the German conservative and antisemitic movement, and he insinuated that “all matters that are of particular interest to Jewry are never dealt with in the press, or in parliament.”4 The rumor about Ambassador Wimpffen admitting to a corrupt scheme to support the baron’s railroad business, and selling out Austria’s national interest, did not go away, however. It is a good example of how conspiracy theories can be immune to any number of denials, including clear evidence proving them wrong, and how they can become part of a broader narrative even if they are, by any objective measure, pure fabrication. In the case of Wimpffen’s suicide, it was therefore not sufficient when Baron Hirsch forwarded a copy of the ambassador’s letter to Deutsches Tagblatt, requesting that it publish the real letter and rectify its story. Wimpffen’s actual note had really been a personal request to Hirsch, asking him to take care of the ambassador’s wife and children and assist them with their return to Vienna. To dispel any doubt, the copy of Wimpffen’s letter had been certified as authentic by the secretary of the Austrian embassy, and the secretary of the German embassy in Paris, in turn, had notarized the signature of his Austrian counterpart. None of this stopped the nationalist and antisemitic newspaper Deutsches Volksblatt in Vienna from reprinting the forged Wimpffen letter once again, on Christmas Eve 1890.5 The Volksblatt dismissed the denials that had appeared “in the Semitic press” and reminded its readers of Wimpffen’s alleged accusations against Baron Hirsch: “You have guided my weakness of character, almost imperceptibly, to the level of dishonor. . . . You have deceived me and trapped me with your money, as you have done with Davud and Hamud [Mahmud] Nedim Pasha, Count Beust . . . and others, turning us into traitors of the fatherland, in order to gain, in addition to the millions that you took from the owners of the Turkish lottery bonds, further millions from Turkey.”6 When a protest from the foreign ministry forced the paper to reprint the earlier de-

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nials, as well as the copy of Wimpffen’s actual letter, that accomplished little. Manipulating the words of Foreign Minister Kálnoky, Deutsches Volksblatt used the opportunity to sow just a bit more doubt in the minds of its readers. The minister had written that “the above letter is an invention and has never existed.” But that was misleading, the newspaper insinuated: nobody could doubt that a letter had in fact existed, so what was the minister denying? The twisted logic of the conspiracy also led the Volksblatt to cast a further shadow of doubt on the facts of the case: was it not suspicious, it wrote, that the secretary of the German embassy had only notarized the signature that appeared on the copy of Wimpffen’s letter, but not the authenticity of the letter’s content? And was one really to believe a notarization signed by an employee of the Austrian embassy, when it had been that person’s former boss whose reputation was at stake?7 What the Wimpffen story did was to reinforce a narrative that was taking shape during the years of the “great depression,” beginning with the collapse of the Viennese stock market in 1873. Though, as historians have pointed out, this great depression (which lasted through 1896) was not, strictly speaking, a period of economic contraction, it engendered, especially in Germany and Austria, a general mood of crisis and pessimism.8 Political liberalism appeared discredited, and free-­trade economic liberalism gave way to an era of heightened protectionism and a keen sense of national economies entering into ever more fierce competition. In the great power scramble to secure zones of influence, the Ottoman railroads acquired an outsize importance for Austrian imperialists (who felt left behind in the dramatic colonial expansion overseas, dominated by Britain and France but also Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, in the last quarter of the century). For antisemitic populists and Catholic reactionaries, for whom the ills affecting the Habsburg monarchy—­from rising nationalist tensions to a sense of economic decline—­were increasingly associated with “the Jews,”9 Baron Hirsch became a symbol of the despised old order of political liberalism and laissez-­ faire capitalism. In such an environment, the story of the Ottoman railroads was told in increasingly shrill tones. The Deutsches Volksblatt looked back, in early 1890, to the “commercial monopoly” that Austria had enjoyed until the Crimean War in the Balkans and beyond, when “Vienna was the most important trading post and inter-

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mediary between Occident and Orient: the middle class [Bürgerstand] lived in prosperous comfort, and the workers had their good livelihood.” But, the newspaper claimed, Vienna’s liberal politicians had squandered the glorious potential, and Austrian businesses had been left behind when the British seized the moment and began to flood Ottoman markets with their goods. Even the concession to build the railroad from Vienna to Constantinople and Salonika had benefited no one but the British because Baron Hirsch had, nefariously, begun construction from the ports inland, thus privileging maritime commerce. Hirsch had effectively delivered the Ottoman markets to the British, the Volksblatt claimed, “and delighted the Austrians with his Turkish lottery bonds instead, assisted by Count Beust. . . . The Viennese middle class with its small, high-­value industry is now impoverished, whereas Hirsch and Ofenheim [another Austrian Jewish railroad entrepreneur] and their partners in corruption have become millionaires.”10 The Wimpffen story, then, fed into an antisemitic narrative that was spun around a number of prominent Jewish names and among whom, in the Austrian context, Baron Hirsch played a particularly important role. Years later, when Hirsch died, in April 1896, the Austrian biweekly Kikeriki published a satirical poem under the title “Baron Hirsch and Count Wimpffen”: Täglich durch die Juden­ blätter rauschen Judennekrologe Und um Israels größten Macher trauert jede Synagoge. Hinter seinem Sarge schreiten „Extrablatt“ und „Neue Presse“, Die die Türkenlose lobten einst voll Arglist und Finesse. . . . Auch Galizien, Argentinien, „Allianz“ und and’rer Osten Folgen dem, der sie beschenkte reichlich—­auf des Gojims Kosten.

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Everyday Jewish necrologies rustle through the pages of the Jewish papers, And every synagogue is mourning Israel’s greatest macher. Behind his coffin march the “Extra­ blatt” and the “Neue Presse,” Who once extolled the Turkish lottery bonds with malice and finesse. . . . Also Galicia, Argentina, the “Alliance” and the rest of the Orient Follow the one who gifted them so richly—­at the gentiles’ expense.

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Selbst Graf Beust zieht nach dem Sarge aus den Geister-­Dimensionen, Der jedoch dreidimensionig eingesackt die Millionen, Die der große Hirsch ihm zahlte, um Gesetze krumm zu biegen Und—­verflucht vom ganzen Volke—­ Hirsch’schem Schwindel zu erliegen. . . . Alles jammert, klagt und weinet;—­ Rothschild nur steht kühl zur Seite Und er denkt sich voll Vergnügen: „Bin jetzt nimmermehr der Zweite!“. . .  . . . Da horch! Was ist das! Plötzlich stockt das Jubeln, Jammern, Und es legt sich den Hebräern an die Kehle, wie mit Klammern, Denn vor ihnen steht urplötzlich ein Gespenst voll Blut und Grausen Und die Rede stockt im Munde und es stocken all‘ die Flausen. Das Gespenst, es ist Graf Wimpffen; drohend hebt er sich vom Grunde, Weiset auf sein letztes Schreiben, weiset auf die Todeswunde. Nicht nur Israel verstummet; Alles lauschet mit Entsetzen, Wie ein edler Geist verfallen in den teuflisch-­jüd’schen Netzen!11

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Even Count Beust follows behind the coffin from the spirit world, The one who, when alive, pocketed the millions That the great Hirsch paid him, so he would bend the laws And who—­cursed by the people—­ succumbed to Hirsch’s swindle. . . . Everyone moans and wails—­only Rothschild stands coolly to the side And thinks with delight: “Nevermore now just the second-­best.” . . . . . . But listen! What is that? Suddenly the cheering and the moaning stop, And clutch the Hebrews’ throats, as if with clamps, For in front of them, all of a sudden, appears a ghost full of blood and horror And the words stall in their mouths, and stalled is all the nonsense. The ghost, that is Count Wimpffen; menacing he rises up from the ground, Points at his last letter, points to his fatal wound. Not Israel alone falls silent; but everyone listens with terror, How a noble spirit was caught in the devilish Jewish nets.

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Kikeriki thus invoked all the familiar tropes, from the role of Vienna’s liberal newspapers in promoting the Ottoman railroad bonds to the corruption of politicians, in particular Count Beust, and the alleged collusion of Austrian diplomacy with Baron Hirsch at the expense of the country’s national interest, in the guise of the late ambassador Wimpffen. Baron Hirsch’s philanthropy—­in Galicia, the Alliance schools in the Ottoman Empire, or his colonization project in Argentina—­did nothing to redeem Hirsch’s public image and became, in the eyes of the antisemites, yet another manifestation of a Jewish conspiracy against “the gentiles.”

In reality, in its approach to the Ottoman railroad business, Habsburg diplomacy was guided by a single-­minded focus on accomplishing the link with central Europe. To the extent that Baron Hirsch’s company appeared to be the best bet, it could certainly expect support.12 But the fact remains that Austria’s diplomats were interested in the railroad, not in benefiting Hirsch.13 Nowhere was this tension more obvious than in the attitude of Count Calice, the monarchy’s ambassador in Constantinople in the 1880s. In an assessment that he sent to Foreign Minister Kálnoky in 1888, Calice made no secret of his deep personal dislike for Baron Hirsch—­and he clearly expressed his own anti-­Jewish prejudice. He denounced Hirsch’s “Russophile ideas and his views about the future of the Bulgarian question,” and suggested: “There can be no question of patriotism in his case. He became an Austrian citizen [in 1877] out of business interest, and he may well be tempted one day to become a Russian count or duke. In terms of his political colors, in my view he is more French than anything, and he is, after all, a Parisian financier. His hatred of Germany and Count Bismarck and his preference for Russia appear to me to derive from that same source.”14 Calice added that after the death of Lucien, in 1887, Baron Hirsch had been rumored to be “intent on saving his reputation, not valuing money much anymore, and desirous of being generous.” That, the ambassador claimed, was “nothing but a pose: it turns out he is as much a Jew as before, seeking to derive a profit from everything.” At the same time, Calice was irked by Baron Hirsch’s frequent donations to “foreign institutions” all over Constantinople, despite the fact that he had often sought the assistance of

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the Austrian government, that “most” of the Ottoman lottery bonds had been sold in Austria, and that Hirsch himself was an Austrian citizen. After he had complained to Hirsch about the matter, Calice noted with satisfaction, the baron had belatedly made donations for the Austrian school and orphanage, and the local Austrian Jewish community, the very next day.15 Opinions about Baron Hirsch were not necessarily more positive back in the foreign ministry’s offices in Vienna. In a note to the ambassador in Paris, Count Hoyos, the ministry referred to a recent inquiry from the Austrian Staatsbahn about the possibility of buying out Hirsch’s Ottoman railway business. The ministry’s position was that “we have no reason to value [Baron Hirsch’s] continued engagement, considering the lack of reliability that this financier has been demonstrating, as well as the fact that, despite frequent assurances to the contrary, he is apparently not interested in the issue [of the railroad junctions] but only in securing, and possibly increasing, his own financial benefit.” The ministry added, for good measure, that “the Austrian nationality of the company has been of very little practical use for the monarchy’s commercial interests.”16 The idea of building a Vienna-­Constantinople-­Salonika railroad link had sparked imperialist dreams in the Habsburg capital. When fantasies of colonial riches failed to materialize as the completion of the railway connections was repeatedly delayed, a narrative that made sense of the setback became increasingly personalized, focusing on Baron Hirsch in the guise of the “Parisian financier” and “the Jew.” Rather than the bursting of a speculative bubble in Vienna in 1873 or the effect of the Russo-­Ottoman War of 1877–­1878, not to mention the machinations of the Great Powers of Europe or the political chaos in Constantinople in the mid-­1870s, a story emerged in which it was Baron Hirsch, single-­handedly, who had betrayed the dream of Austria’s Oriental empire.

The most comprehensive version of this narrative was assembled by Paul Dehn, a German publicist who would later become a prominent member of the nationalist-­imperialist Pan-­German League.17 In his 1883 pamphlet Deutschland und die Orientbahnen, Dehn asserted that it was not only Austrian interests that were at play in the business of the Ottoman railroads but

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also those of “German Central Europe” writ large. “Asia Minor, with the route from Trabzon to Tehran, is not yet in Russian hands, and the Euphrates valley not yet in those of the English: Central Europe has still an open path to establish its own, direct and independent routes to India,” he argued.18 The Balkans and the Ottoman lands beyond were to be exploited through agriculture and mining and to serve as markets for the industrial production of Germany. Dehn also envisioned German colonization, obviating the need for the German “surplus population” to emigrate to the Americas.19 Yet, if “German capital, German intelligence, and German labor” were poised to succeed in the Ottoman Empire, German hopes had been destroyed by the machinations of “ruthless, predatory, usurious capitalism,” by “international capitalism in its ugliest form.”20 Dehn did not talk about abstract forces: he personalized his story and, according to him, Baron Hirsch alone was responsible for the fact that the Ottoman railroads had not been completed, that they had benefited British commerce, and thus effectively closed off the Ottoman markets to German and Austrian industry.21 It would have been better, Dehn claimed, if Baron Hirsch had “pocketed the entire revenue of his Turkish lottery swindle and not built any railroads at all, rather than the kind that are all but destroying any direct traffic between Turkey and Central Europe.”22 Instead, Hirsch had single-­handedly betrayed the interests of Germany and Austria, ensuring that Britain and France had all but displaced their central European competitors.23 Dehn’s account repeated all well-­worn accusations against Hirsch: his bribing of Austrian and Ottoman officials, the substandard execution of the railroad construction, the continuing lack of connecting lines to central Europe, and his taking advantage of the Ottoman government by not honoring the payment of the annual rent for the operation of the railway.24 The baron—­“an Austrian by choice, a Parisian by inclination, alas a German by birth”25—­had, for too long, “surrounded himself with the nimbus of a German name, of being a citizen of Austria-­Hungary, and as a resident of Paris, to impersonate in Constantinople a central European figure with a great cultural mission, rather than that of an international financier, and he could count on the special protection, if not the servility, of Austrian diplomacy.”26 Referring to the stipulations in the Treaty of Berlin protecting the interests of Baron Hirsch’s railroad, Dehn denounced that Hirsch and

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his company “appeared to be standing above the law, like a sovereign [ruler], as if he had an equal seat in the council of the Powers.”27 In a broader sense, he suggested, the drama of the Ottoman railroads represented the conflict between private capital and state interest28—­and it was private capital that seemed to have the upper hand. The time had come, Dehn urged, for Germany to intervene and assist the Ottoman government to wrest control over the Oriental railroads from Baron Hirsch.29 Was Paul Dehn’s pamphlet, for all the personalized vitriol, antisemitic? He never made any explicit reference to Hirsch as a Jewish banker, and he also denounced, though in passing, two Catholic bankers, Langrand-­Dumonceau and Paul Eugène Bontoux, both of whom had made a lot of their ambition to create a Catholic counterpart to an allegedly Jewish-­dominated high finance industry. (The spectacular failure of Bontoux’s Union Générale had led to a stock market crash in Paris in 1882).30 The rhetoric that Dehn employed is a good example of how antisemitic tropes could be deployed without ever making them explicitly about Jews. One way to do so was to personalize the attack by identifying a recognizably Jewish protagonist, Baron Hirsch, as the incarnation of predatory capitalism, and contemporary readers would have had no trouble connecting the dots. Thus, Dehn’s imperialism was closely tied to contemporary antisemitic ideas about capitalism, and Baron Hirsch, who was “central European” in name only, could be marshaled as the personification of the anonymous and threatening power of an increasingly globalized financial market that was seen as undermining the imperial ambitions of Germany and Austria. Dehn’s version of events was taken up by Auguste Chirac, a socialist and antisemitic publicist in late nineteenth-­century France. In his long and rambling L’agiotage sous la troisième république of 1888—­the two volumes together ran to over seven hundred pages—­Chirac relied heavily on Dehn for his portrayal of “a Jew called Baron de Hirsch,” but he tweaked the story to fit with his own Catholicism, and French nationalism. Thus, if it seemed natural enough to a Bismarck loyalist like Dehn to associate the Catholic Langrand-­Dumonceau with Hirsch, Chirac preferred to make Hirsch responsible for Langrand-­Dumonceau’s downfall as well.31 On the other hand, he called Hirsch “a Prussian” (and thus archenemy of France, though of course he was born in Bavaria and later became an Austrian citizen) and

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claimed that Hirsch had sold himself to Bismarck’s personal banker Bleichröder (when, in fact, Bleichröder was one of the competitors seeking to buy out Hirsch’s Ottoman railroad business in the mid-­1880s).32 While, for Dehn, Hirsch had endangered Germany’s imperial prospects in the Balkans and the Middle East, Chirac cooked up a conspiracy theory about the “true” background of the so-­called Eastern Question—­the fate of the Ottoman Balkans—­and placed Baron Hirsch at the center. The best proof, according to Chirac, was the Congress of Berlin in 1878, “dominated” by Baron Hirsch and his interests. In Chirac’s view, Hirsch had been single-­ handedly responsible for pushing the restoration of Ottoman suzerainty over Eastern Rumelia, against Russian wishes for a greater Bulgaria, an improbable diplomatic feat that allegedly allowed Hirsch to further delay the completion of the railroad junctures with central Europe. What is more, “the constant troubles in the Balkans are enriching the Jews. The railroad sections, deliberately left disconnected by Hirsch, are very lucrative for him in times of war .”33 Meanwhile, the British seized control of Cyprus, and the Russians directed their attention toward Afghanistan, while the fate of the Ottoman Empire’s Christian populations, “the actual cause of the war,” had been all but ignored. “Decidedly,” Chirac summed up his own twisted understanding of world events: “the Congress of Berlin was a Jewish triumph.”34 It has been argued that modern antisemitism functioned as a “cultural code,” which came to express an entire set of ideas that equated the “social question” with the “Jewish question” (in the phrase coined by Otto Glagau in the 1870s), and that linked antimodernism and anticapitalism, antidemocratic and antiemancipatory ideologies.35 What the example of Baron Hirsch and the Oriental railroads also shows, however, is that these ideas were effective precisely because they not only identified an invisible and conspiratorial power operating behind the scenes but did so by creating a highly personalized narrative. For antisemites, the “proof” of their theories lay precisely in the example of emblematic figures like Baron Hirsch. It was not only the antisemites, though, who sought to make sense of abstract, structural conditions, of market forces and the dynamics of great power politics, by focusing on the railroad entrepreneur as hero or, more commonly, as villain. In fact, as we have seen, Ottoman government officials, Austrian diplomats, and European journalists were no less likely to approach the thorny questions

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involved in the building of the railway, especially in the aftermath of the disruption of the 1877–­1878 war, by focusing on Baron Hirsch as the personification of the entire enterprise.36 BARON HIRSCH LEAVES THE STAGE

At the sultan’s request, Baron Hirsch was once again in Constantinople in December 1887.37 There, he made the acquaintance of the American ambassador, Oscar Straus, who described him as a “tall and slender man in his fifties, dark eyes sparkling with spirit and energy, clean-­shaven except for a full black mustache, dressed rather dudishly in a cutaway coat, white vest and white spats.”38 Baron Hirsch’s visit in Constantinople followed on the death of Lucien: to his longtime confidant and lawyer, Jules Dietz, Hirsch confessed on December 24, 1887, that he was “decided more than ever to retreat from the business of the railroad, having gained the conviction, during my sojourn in Constantinople, that I no longer have the necessary vigor to withstand the exhaustion of such a large business venture.”39 In reality of course, as we will see, Hirsch was about to embark on a philanthropic endeavor that would require no less vigor than the Ottoman railroads, but Lucien’s sudden death reinforced his desire to leave behind the Ottoman railroad business and to reassess his priorities. First, however, Hirsch needed to sort out the still unresolved claims pitting his company against the Ottoman government. Negotiations in Constantinople were dragging on, with Hirsch pushing for arbitration and the government preferring to engage with the baron directly. By early February 1888, Hirsch was ready to give up on the latest round of talks. Together with Clara, he embarked on the steamship of the Austrian Lloyd that would carry the couple and their servants to the Black Sea port of Varna, from where they would take the train to Vienna. Mere minutes before the steamer was scheduled to depart, the grand vizier’s launch appeared. The dignitary had dispatched his son to implore Baron Hirsch to stay, and to convey the message that the government was now ready for a deal. But when Hirsch rushed to see the grand vizier, it turned out that the latter still was not ready to accept his latest offer of 12 million francs to settle the outstanding differences. Returning to the port, the steamer had already left, with Clara and her entou-

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rage waiting on the quay, surrounded by their luggage. The drama repeated itself later that day when a private ship they had chartered was ready to leave and, once again, Baron Hirsch was called back at the last moment, this time by a delegate of the sultan himself. Hirsch ended up raising his bid to 15 million francs, making several major donations to local charities to earn Ottoman goodwill, and continuing to bargain.40 For all the mistrust that Sultan Abdülhamid II’s government had displayed against Baron Hirsch over the years, and for all the brinkmanship, threatening the expropriation of the company, Hirsch’s personal involvement continued to appear indispensable. Of course, larger political and economic interests were at stake, yet the personalization of the narrative about the Oriental railroads had its counterpart in the reality of the negotiations as they played out in Constantinople. Even where invisible forces—­international flows of capital, or the imperial and political ambitions of states—­were at work, both the protagonists and outside observers continued to perceive events as unfolding within a tangled net of personal relations.

In the summer of 1888—­more than seventeen years after the first segment of the Ottoman railroad had been inaugurated—­the first train that would go directly to Constantinople finally left Vienna. The contrast with the festivities of 1871 (or those of 1873, when the first train had traveled the new route from Constantinople to Philippopolis) was stark: no speeches, no reception, no ceremony. On board the train, there were no official delegates, neither from the Ottoman nor from the Habsburg government, but instead some sixty representatives of Austrian railroad companies and journalists. When the train later departed Constantinople in the opposite direction, back to Vienna, not a single passenger had boarded. The Porte had prohibited all public displays of celebration, even though, as one journalist observed, there were still crowds of curious onlookers gathering at the stations along the route.41 The bone of contention, as far as the Ottoman and Habsburg governments were concerned, was the Bulgarian decision to unilaterally take over the operation of the railroad on the territory of the principality,42 rather than handing its management over to the Ottoman-­based Société des Rac-

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cordements, which in 1885 had won the bid to build the remaining junctions, outmaneuvering Baron Hirsch. (The Times blamed the “characteristic childishness” of the Ottoman government for not awarding the contract to Hirsch’s company, the rights of which would have been protected under the terms of the Treaty of Berlin, thus avoiding the current problems.)43 As Grand Vizier Kamil Pasha explained to one reporter over coffee and cigarettes, the Ottoman government was “not against the railroad” and would “not disturb its operation,” and indeed wished to see it “bring the expected advantages to our empire and to strengthen the relations with our friends in Europe.” But, he warned, as long as Bulgaria usurped ownership of a line that properly belonged to an Ottoman company, the government would not join in any festivities.44 Thus, the diplomatic entanglements and political rivalries that had affected the Ottoman railroads from the outset continued to cast their shadow over a project that had inspired countless dreams of imperial expansion and golden business opportunities. The direct train from Vienna to Constantinople reduced what had once been a trip of seven or eight days to a journey of forty-­seven hours.45 That was expected to decrease further, to some forty hours, once the Wagons-­Lits company’s Orient Express (connecting Paris, via Vienna, with Constantinople) began traveling the route later that year, at first three times a week.46 Demand began to rise, and the number of travelers using the railroad doubled, from 2.48 million in 1889 to 4.14 million in 1899, though the growth in the transport of goods lagged behind that of passenger service.47 For the Ottoman Empire, the impact of the new rail link proved to have an ambiguous economic impact. Markets were opened to penetration by European imports, though there were also signs that export-­oriented agricultural production increased in areas made accessible through the railroad. But even if records show an increase in the tithe revenues from agriculture in provinces traversed by railroads, the benefits were often exceeded by kilometric guarantees that needed to be paid by the government to the private railway companies (not only in the Balkans, but also, later on, in Anatolia and elsewhere).48 The year that the first direct trains began to cover the distance between Vienna and Constantinople, Baron Hirsch and the Porte finally agreed to resolve the remaining mutual claims through arbitration.49 Since each side appointed two of the four arbiters, the verdict was not conclusive,50 and the

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parties consented to abide by the decision of a fifth arbiter, the prominent German legal scholar Rudolf von Gneist (d. 1895), professor of law at the University of Berlin and a leading figure in the German National-­Liberal Party.51 In February 1889, Gneist issued his conclusions, which amounted to something of a compromise. After taking into account the demands of both sides, he ruled that Baron Hirsch owed the Ottomans some 27 million francs.52 The Porte clearly was satisfied with Gneist’s ruling, awarding him the Order of the Mecidiye of the first class.53 The money—­which was expected to be delivered in gold bars54 —­certainly came in handy: when salaries were due ahead of the Eid al-­Adha festivities and three provinces were behind with their payments, the government decided to tap into the moneys received from Baron Hirsch to cover the cost, just as it had resolved, in anticipation of the windfall, to use some of the settlement funds to help out the province of Crete, all the more so considering the island’s “economic and geopolitical importance” for the empire.55 But the Hirschs were pleased with the outcome, too. As Clara de Hirsch wrote in a letter to Oscar Straus, “Gneist’s decision was on the whole very satisfactory,” even if the final sum still seemed a bit high.56 Gneist himself, in a private letter to Baron Hirsch, expressed his satisfaction that he had been able to clear Hirsch’s “good name” and that he had had the opportunity, “in a time of heavy prejudice,” to vindicate in his report the “correctness” of Baron Hirsch’s business dealings.57 The reference to “a time of heavy prejudice” was, of course, not gratuitous, considering a climate of growing antisemitic agitation and the antisemitic overtone of much of the public attacks on Baron Hirsch and his Ottoman railroad enterprise. Not surprisingly, though, Gneist’s ruling did nothing to stop the heated rhetoric of the antisemites. Reporting on the Gneist decision, the Deutsches Volksblatt reminded its readers that Baron Hirsch’s Ottoman railroad endeavor had been “a ‘business’ that is without parallel even in these times of capitalist exploitation and fleecing [großkapitalistischer Ausbeutung und Uebervortheilung].” The Ottoman Empire, at least, had gotten its railroads: but what about “the many small investors, especially in Germany and Austria,” who had spent their savings on the lottery bonds and seen their value collapse?58 If the antisemitic polemic against Baron Hirsch did not subside, settling the financial disputes between the Porte and the railroad company did open

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the path for Hirsch to finalize his exit from the enterprise. In April 1890, he sold the Ottoman railroads to a consortium led by the Deutsche Bank of Berlin and the Wiener Bankverein of Vienna.59 Thus began the “German period” of the story of Ottoman railroad development, driven both by business interest and by the kind of imperial ambition that had been laid out by the publicist Paul Dehn in the early 1880s. Under Sultan Abdülhamid II and following the catastrophic loss of territory in the Balkans in 1878, the Ottoman state turned its attention to its Middle Eastern provinces. Building a railroad link from Constantinople through Anatolia and farther east to Baghdad and Basra now took the place in the imperial imaginary that the railway to central Europe had held under the leaders of the Tanzimat era. That, in turn, complemented German ambitions to compete with Russia and Britain on the stage of world politics, and the Baghdad railway became an important vehicle to project German imperial power. For the Deutsche Bank to also take over Baron Hirsch’s railroads in the Balkans, therefore, was an important piece of a much larger project, the natural continuation of the railroad imperialism of the 1860s and 1870s, but now with Germany, rather than the Habsburg Empire, as the driving force.60

Hannah Arendt, in her Origins of Totalitarianism, posited a clear turning point in the mid-­1880s, with the onset of “high imperialism” and the European division of the African continent at the Berlin Conference of 1884–­ 1885. According to Arendt, Jewish financiers had played a crucial role in the mobilization of capital in cross-­national investments in the preimperialist era, an era in which, as she put it, the export of political power “followed meekly in the train of exported money.” Yet, “as soon as it became clear that export of money would have to be followed by export of government power, the position of financiers in general, and Jewish financiers in particular, was considerably weakened.” They were now superseded by “members of the native bourgeoisie” and by the “giants of imperialist enterprise,” in the case of Germany’s railroads in the Ottoman Empire by Deutsche Bank and Siemens, large joint-­stock companies rather than private banking firms.61 The shift should not be exaggerated, of course: private banks—­and Jewish-­owned houses among them—­continued to play an important role, at least until the

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First World War, as the “traders in information” and “big linkers” between industry and finance.62 Thus, if Bleichröder in Berlin kept his distance from the business of German colonialism and Baron Hirsch demurred when he was asked to invest in King Leopold II of Belgium’s venture in Africa, the house of Rothschild certainly continued to play a role in Britain’s empire.63 For Hannah Arendt, modern antisemitism had been a by-­product of the rise of the modern nation-­state. Imperialism was largely a separate matter, though she allowed that the Catholic anti-­Dreyfusards in France in the 1890s had been “the first to link antisemitism to imperialism, declaring that the Jews were agents of England.”64 As we have seen, antisemitism and imperialism had already been linked in Austria and in Germany a decade earlier. In fact, as the story of the Ottoman railroads demonstrates, antisemitism and imperialism were tightly intertwined from the outset, just as the modern “nation-­state” and the rise of “imperialism” cannot be neatly separated. France and Britain, certainly, were “imperial nation-­states.” But it was in the Habsburg Empire—­not a nation-­state at all—­and subsequently in Germany, that antisemitic attacks on Baron Hirsch were cast in terms of a betrayal, not so much of the nation, but of the nation’s imperial destiny.

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PA RT THR EE

THE POLITICS OF PHILANTHROPY

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7

PHILANTHROPY IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

IN THE “SHAT TERZONE” OF EMPIRES

Steady snow descended on Constantinople on a gray and frigid winter day in January 1878 when yet another train carrying refugees from the Russo-­ Ottoman War pulled into the city’s main station. Consisting of twenty-­ six railroad cars, uncovered and leaving the train’s travelers exposed to the elements, the convoy, which had left Philippopolis some forty-­eight hours earlier, discharged several hundred shivering, hungry men, women, and children escaping the war. Awaiting the refugees in Constantinople was Emmanuel Veneziani, a member of the Central Committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris and Baron Hirsch’s right-­hand man for philanthropic matters. After handing out bread, soup, and rice to some fifteen hundred people, Veneziani returned to the station; he was frustrated to learn that two representatives of the Turkish Compassionate Fund, a British charity, had put in no more than a cursory appearance. Two further trains were scheduled to arrive during the night: this time, no less than forty-­five railroad carriages entered the station, once again some of them uncovered, at 7:30 p.m. As the refugees descended from the train under heavy, icy rain, they found that no provisions had been made by local authorities, and again 151

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it fell to Veneziani to organize emergency food rations. Another twenty carriages arrived at 11 p.m.; on this last train of the night, three women had succumbed to the cold during the journey.1 The war between the Ottoman Empire and Russia in 1877–­1878 was a major crossroads for the Ottomans, who lost much of their territory in the Balkans even as France, Britain, and Germany intervened diplomatically to contain the expansion of Russian influence in the area. The war also triggered a major humanitarian crisis. Public opinion in Europe had first been captivated by the “Bulgarian horrors” committed by Ottoman irregulars during the Bulgarian uprising of 1876, followed by the news of widespread atrocities against Muslims by Bulgarian and Russian forces during the war. One million people or so were forced to flee, of whom only about a quarter were able to return to their homes after the fighting was over; centuries-­old Muslim communities across the Balkans ceased to exist. Tens of thousands of Jews were also displaced, and their fate raised questions about the future of the Jewish communities in the new, post-­Ottoman nations.2 While Jewish organizations like the Alliance Israélite Universelle, as well as local Jewish communities in Ottoman cities, sprang into action to assist Jewish refugees in particular, Baron Hirsch dispatched Veneziani to organize humanitarian assistance for the victims of war regardless of religion or nationality. In Sofia, Veneziani set up a well-­equipped field hospital that could treat two thousand wounded.3 Along the railroad line, at Tatar-­Bazardjik (Pazardzhik), Philippopolis, and Adrianople, he distributed firewood that was provided from Baron Hirsch’s forest at Bellova, and handed out mattresses, cushions, and covers.4 In Varna, on the Black Sea coast, Veneziani gave 5,000 piastres (500 Ottoman lira) to the local Orthodox bishop for distribution among the displaced families,5 and at Shumla he provided some 2,000 francs and clothing for the three thousand Muslim refugees who were housed precariously in tents.6 As Veneziani pointed out in his reports to the Alliance in Paris, Hirsch had charged him to care for victims of the war from all communities, and he wondered whether it might not be possible for the Alliance to emulate the baron and assist all refugees, and not only the Jews. “The result would be excellent,” he assured the Alliance, “as I have been able to witness because of what I have done for Turks, Greeks, and Bulgarians on behalf of Baron de Hirsch.” 7 In an address to a gathering of representatives

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of the Jewish communities of Constantinople in February 1878, Veneziani reiterated, to vocal expressions of approval, that Baron Hirsch had “elevated the Israelite name and given it renewed splendor” by expending his beneficence to “everyone, regardless of religion.”8 Ottoman newspapers reported that Sultan Abdülhamid II had granted Veneziani an audience to express his gratitude for Baron Hirsch’s assistance to the Ottoman war victims.9 The Jewish Chronicle estimated in May 1878 that the baron’s envoy had disbursed more than 30,000 pounds sterling to provide food, shelter, and other support to Jewish, Muslim, and Christian displaced persons.10 Though Veneziani frequently emphasized the nondenominational nature of his mission, the protestations of impartiality were not the full story. The night before meeting the refugee trains at the Constantinople station in January 1878, Veneziani had dispatched three representatives to attend to the arrival of an earlier transport. His instructions were clear: to find the Jewish refugees among the passengers and put them up in a heated room that the station manager had made available for them. In the morning, Veneziani could observe that “our Israelites were truly privileged when they arrived, as they were put up in a heated and comforting place, whereas a considerable number of Turkish refugees remained huddled together in the railroad carriages, shivering from cold and hunger.”11 Veneziani subsequently explained that the goal had been to dispense charity to the Jews “without arousing the envy of their non-­Israelite fellow refugees.” He also acknowledged, however, that “the sentiment of preference which naturally impelled me toward the Israelites probably led me to exaggerate my provisions, and the information that I received at dawn the following morning reminded me of the spirit of the mission that Baron Hirsch had entrusted me with.”12 As the refugee crisis in Constantinople worsened in the following days and weeks, Veneziani continued to walk the tightrope of his self-­professed, “natural” sentiments of Jewish solidarity and the universalist humanitarian agenda pursued by Baron Hirsch. When a postal train carrying refugees derailed some thirty kilometers outside Constantinople, he immediately organized a rescue train to pick up the stranded passengers. Fifty people had been wounded, and seven—­women and children—­had been killed in the accident, their lifeless bodies laid on the ground and covered with a mat. Along a fifty-­meter stretch, the tracks were twisted and broken, and two further

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convoys were stuck behind the derailed train. Provisions promised by the authorities never arrived, Veneziani complained, and the representatives of the Turkish Compassionate Fund were once again nowhere to be seen (though they were active elsewhere). But as he assisted the refugees—­mostly Muslims, among them, a smaller number of Jews—­Veneziani couldn’t help but offer differential treatment to his fellow Jews: when the refugees boarded the relief train that was to carry them to Constantinople, a “sentiment of partiality that you can imagine I had in favor of the Israelites” combined with Veneziani’s desire to offer them “a small compensation for the humiliations and troubles that they always suffer when they are in the company of Turks [i.e., Muslims].” Extracting the Jewish refugees from the general chaos, he led them along the train and had them installed in a first-­class carriage.13 The simultaneous celebration of nondenominational humanitarianism and the practical manifestations of Jewish solidarity should not be seen as contradictory, or in competition with one another, but rather as two sides of the same coin. What Hirsch’s humanitarian work was ultimately designed to do was to enhance the collective reputation of the Jews, much like his commitment to the “civilizing mission” of modern, secular Jewish education in Ottoman lands, North Africa, and Habsburg Galicia—­to which we will return later—­was meant to make Jews into respectable members of the modernizing empires in which they lived. (One could argue that this idea of philanthropy as a means to demonstrate the respectability of the Jews had already been present in Jewish responses to the French Revolution—­ for instance, when Abraham Spire of Metz “conjured a conception of self-­ emancipation through charity,” demonstrating the Jews’ worthiness of citizenship through acts of generosity.)14 Ottoman Jewish observers, like the empire’s Chief Rabbi Moshe Halevi, emphasized precisely this role of Jewish humanitarianism as a vehicle to enhance the collective standing of the Jews: “In the terrible test that we have just undergone,” Halevi declared in early 1878, “the Israelite name shone in great splendor thanks to the generosity of one of our own, Baron Hirsch, who sought to extend above everyone his generous hands, to bring humanity in its sorrow together, with one equal idea of benevolence.”15 On the occasion of the wedding of four young Jewish refugee girls who had been raped during the war, and for whom Baron Hirsch had provided a dowry, Halevi again reminded his audience how Baron Hirsch

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continued his support “in the service of humanity, for all of the refugees, of whatever religion,” and thanks to whom “the name of Israel is praised among the nations.”16 Although Veneziani was critical of the Turkish Compassionate Fund, assistance for Muslim, Christian, and Jewish war refugees was an international humanitarian endeavor—­and European observers were quick to contrast their own, Western, “can-­do” attitude with the old stereotype of “Oriental” fatalism. Thus, the correspondent of the German newspaper Kölnische Zeitung reported from the train station in Constantinople how an Ottoman official had intimated to him that “there is nothing we can do, Allah must help.” This was not, the correspondent was sure to emphasize, “the way that the humanitarian Europeans [die menschenfreundlichen Europäer] were thinking, who were toiling and laboring left and right of the railroad platform.”17 The report went on to describe the efforts of Baron Hirsch’s railroad company and its director, Kühlmann; of Veneziani himself, who was interviewed for the article; and of various other actors who were identified as “Western” (or, at least, Christian), including the Compassionate Fund and the Catholic sisters of St. Benedict and St. Joseph in the Constantinople neighborhood of Galata. The reality was, to be sure, more complex than the Kölnische Zeitung’s Orientalist caricature suggested: the Ottoman state understood quite well how imperial philanthropic patronage could be turned into political capital, and how to marshal it to enhance patriotic sentiment and loyalty to the Hamidian regime.18

Emmanuel Veneziani inhabited a space between Europe and the “Orient,” acting simultaneously as an outsider and an insider. Growing up in modest circumstances in the Tuscan port city of Livorno, he had left Italy at age twenty-­one and moved to Salonika, where he began to work as a tutor for the sons of the prominent Allatini family. Ten years later, he relocated to Constantinople, where he ascended to become a director of the Camondo banking house, and where he served, for several years, as head of the local Alliance committee. Veneziani eventually made his home in Paris, where he joined the Alliance’s Central Committee and became Baron Hirsch’s envoy in numerous philanthropic undertakings. After his role in assisting the war

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refugees in 1877–­1878, he was one of the Alliance’s delegates advocating on behalf of the civic rights of the Romanian and Serbian Jews at the Congress of Berlin in 1878; in 1880, he represented the Alliance at the Madrid Conference on Morocco, again to defend the rights of Jews in that country. A year later, Veneziani was sent to Brody, on the Habsburg-­Russian border, to attend to the thousands of Jewish refugees who were fleeing from Russia in the wake of the pogroms following the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. In 1887, he accompanied Hirsch when he went to Constantinople to sort out his railroad business, leaving Veneziani in charge of pursuing charitable work on the baron’s behalf. He remained Baron Hirsch’s point person for all his philanthropic projects until his death in February 1889, including exploratory missions to Palestine, Galicia, and Russia.19 In the view of the Times, Veneziani was, during the Balkan refugee crisis in 1877, “about the only one who [knew] how to set to work and obtain the desired result.” He was “thoroughly familiar with the different dialects spoken in this country,” and “the Mahomedan women did not even veil themselves when he came near them.” He had, in fact, successfully “contrived to gain the confidence and esteem of these unfortunate people.” Still, the task was overwhelming. As the Times reported, “Notwithstanding the constant effort of the delegates of English and Israelitish bounty, the want of knowledge of the country, and particularly the Turkish official routine, often prevents their attaining the object they have in view.”20 The wording was telling, describing English and Jewish humanitarian efforts in equivalent terms. The existence of a distinct, transnational Jewish philanthropic network was taken for granted, and Jews appeared to act collectively the way that English philanthropists acted in the name of their country. The nondenominational humanitarianism of Baron Hirsch and others was designed to enhance the collective reputation of the Jews and to establish their credentials as modern, civilized, and Western, but it also reinforced, at the same time, the fact that Jews were acting as Jews. There was certainly a lot at stake. In Veneziani’s estimation, the Russo-­ Ottoman War of 1877–­1878 was nothing less than a “war of extermination” in which “the vanquished must not just surrender but must disappear.”21 (Queen Victoria, using the same term, blamed Russia for “one of the most bloody wars ever known,” a “war of extermination (for that it is).”)22 As the

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imperial borderland of the Balkans witnessed the formation of newly created, ethnically based nation-­states, the war raised the question of what was to become of the hundreds of thousands of Muslim and Jewish civilians who had been displaced. In Veneziani’s view, the Ottoman government itself had little expectation that the Muslim refugees would ever return to their former homes in Bulgaria and developed plans for resettling them in Iraq.23 But the Jews, Veneziani reckoned, “for whom there is no question of sending them to Asia, will inevitably, whatever the ultimate form of its government, make their way back to Bulgaria.”24 Their future in a Bulgarian nation-­state, though, was anything but certain.25 During the war, Veneziani pointed out, Bulgarian Christians had come to see their Jewish neighbors as “traitors” to the cause of Bulgarian nationalism, earning a “fateful reputation of being either informers or fences [of stolen Christian property].” Veneziani cited the case of a Jewish ritual slaughterer in Adrianople, whose denunciations had allegedly allowed the Ottomans to arrest numerous Bulgarian nationalists; a Jewish judge who had served on an Ottoman tribunal that had convicted hundreds to the death penalty; and a certain Aaron Canetti, of Kazanlak, who had gained sad notoriety for fencing precious objects looted by irregular Ottoman forces from Bulgarian churches.26 In the aftermath of the war, and with Russian support, an aggressive Bulgarian nationalism was on the rise: the rural population in particular, according to Veneziani, was “primitive, fanatic, and devoid of any kind of culture, and its heart ulcered by several centuries of arbitrary domination and the Turkish atrocities of the latest repression.” Bulgarian militias were systematically expelling the last Muslim families who were still left behind in Adrianople, and Bulgarian nationalists fantasized about expanding their dominance over all of Thrace, Macedonia, and down to the port of Salonika.27 What then, Veneziani wondered in his correspondence with the Alliance headquarters in Paris, were the policy options available to advocate for Jewish rights in the new Bulgaria? Did it make sense to mobilize public opinion in European countries on their behalf? Or was quiet, personal diplomacy, engaging with the leaders of the Bulgarian church and Bulgarian nationalists, preferable? Veneziani believed that pushing for Jewish civic rights by mounting a public campaign was bound to provoke a backlash and was thus not

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advisable. Such a strategy might be an option, he pointed out, “if we had a [European] power supporting the emancipation of the Jews in the Orient with its Krupp canons and its bayonets, the way that Russia does . . . for Bulgaria. But we do not have this advantage. No power will ever make of our servitude a casus-­belli.”28 But how could European Jews, as nonstate actors, conduct effective diplomacy in order to advocate for the return of the Bulgarian Jewish refugees, and for their equal status as citizens in the new country? the politics of This was where Baron Hirsch’s humanitarianism—­ empathy—­came into play. In a plea for Jewish civic rights that Veneziani addressed to the Bulgarian nationalist leader Stoyan Tchomakoff, for example, he pointed out that, during the war, the baron had “never made the least distinction, nor manifested the least preference, in the field of [humanitarian] assistance, for any victims, whether they be Israelites, Bulgarians, Muslims, Greeks, or Gypsies.” He added that, since one had to “commence with one nationality”—­thus reflecting a political reality where the point of departure was the ethnic collective, not the individual—­he had begun with the Bulgarians when distributing the humanitarian assistance provided by Baron Hirsch in the city of Adrianople.29 Veneziani made a similar appeal in a letter to the former exarch Anthim I, chairman of the first Bulgarian parliament, reminding him of Baron Hirsch’s past assistance “to all victims of the war, regardless of confession.”30 Such efforts were not in vain: Anthim convened a meeting of the clergy that resolved to send out a circular to all parish priests, requesting them to “preach concord” and offer protection to their Jewish neighbors.31 Baron Hirsch’s nonsectarian humanitarianism, then, provided Veneziani with his key argument in his diplomatic outreach to advocate for Jewish equality in post-­Ottoman Bulgaria. He marshaled the example of transnational, nondenominational Jewish philanthropy to enhance the collective reputation of the Jews and to counter the image of Jews as anti-­ Bulgarian traitors loyal to the Ottoman state. He also urged those Jews who had returned to, or had stayed behind in, Bulgaria, to demonstrate their attachment to the new country. When visiting Jewish communities in Bulgaria after the war, Veneziani was pleased to see that many had swiftly removed the fez—­the typical Ottoman head covering—­and exchanged it for a European-­style hat, symbolically marking their allegiance to the new po-

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litical order.32 Paradoxically, in an era of ethnic nationalism, in southeastern Europe and beyond, emphasizing Jewish “cosmopolitanism” appeared as the best political strategy for a diaspora people that could not wield the power of a state. It allowed Jewish leaders to make the case that the Jews were not a party to the conflict between Ottomans and Russians, between Orthodox Christians and Muslims, and that it was precisely their universalist ethos, proven through acts of humanitarianism, that legitimized them as respectable citizens of whichever side of the conflict, and the shifting borders, they might find themselves on. (This “cosmopolitanism” found its echo even in the fervently patriotic sermons of rabbis during times of war, when references to the “homeland” often remained tellingly vague, patriotic sentiment failed to translate into vilification of the enemy, and loyalty to the nation did not imply an abandonment of Jewish transnational solidarity.)33 As nationalism asserted itself in what Omer Bartov and Eric Weitz have called the “shatterzone of empires,”34 as Ottomanism morphed into Sultan Abdülhamid’s new, pan-­Islamic agenda,35 and as the embrace of population politics led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in the pursuit of the dream of ethnically homogeneous nation-­states,36 philanthropy and humanitarianism became the primary vehicles for collective Jewish political action. The politics of empathy, prominently embraced by Baron Hirsch, were designed to build Jewish political capital as Jews sought to claim their place in the context of competing national projects that emerged in defiance of the imperial ancien régime across eastern and southeastern Europe.

Concern about the situation of the Jews in southeastern Europe brought together some sixty-­five Jewish dignitaries from across the continent, as well as North America, for a gathering in Paris, in December 1876.37 The Great Powers had called for a conference of ambassadors to meet in Constantinople the following month to discuss the political situation in the Ottoman Balkans, which had become increasingly volatile since the Bosnian and Bulgarian uprisings. The Jewish representatives sought to seize the moment to make a case for the civic rights of their fellow Jews in the region and decided to forward a memorandum to that effect to the ambassadors of their respective home countries. Maurice de Hirsch was one of those who attended the

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meeting, along with the Rothschilds of Paris; Adolphe Crémieux, president of the Alliance; France’s chief rabbi, Zadoc Kahn, and delegates from Germany, Belgium, Austria, Britain, Italy, Romania, and the United States. There was, as one historian has described it, a “concert of European Jewry,” of leading figures particularly in finance and banking, who were tied by commercial and family relations and “exchanged business, family, and political intelligence in the same mail pouches.”38 The ambassadors’ conference in January 1877 ended without a result, and in April 1877, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire, ending, as we saw, with disastrous losses on the Ottoman side. The real test case for what the “concert of European Jewry” might accomplish in its defense of Jewish rights, therefore, came at the Congress in Berlin, which began on June 13, 1878—­the largest such conference of European statesmen (and all men they were) since the Congress of Vienna that followed the defeat of Napoléon in 1815. The Paris-­based Alliance Israélite Universelle, an organization that is frequently remembered more for its extensive schooling network than for its intense advocacy and lobbying efforts, led the charge. In an appeal published at the outset of the congress, the Alliance declared: “In the name of the Israelites, in the name of humanity, do we turn solicitously to Europe on behalf of our unhappy coreligionists in Bulgaria, Rumelia and Romania. . . . May Europe make its powerful voice heard; may it declare the equality of all men, independent of faith, may it request enshrining this principle in the constitution [of the newly independent states] and may it serve as its vigilant guardian.”39 Gerson von Bleichröder—­the personal banker of Germany’s chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who was presiding over the congress—­ turned his business offices in the center of Berlin into something of a headquarters for a concerted, international effort to promote the case of Jewish civil rights in southeastern Europe. Through his mediation, the representatives of the Alliance—­Emmanuel Veneziani among them—­were able to meet with German foreign minister Bernhard von Bülow, who assured them of Bismarck’s support.40 The case of Romania appeared particularly urgent because of the sheer size of its Jewish population. The former Ottoman provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia (lost by the Ottomans in 1828, when they came under Russian control, which lasted until the end of the Crimean War in 1856), had func-

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tioned as an independent country in all but name since 1858. The case of the Romanian Jews had long agitated Jewish public opinion in western Europe: in 1859, a ritual murder accusation triggered violent attacks on the Jews of Galati (Galatz), and in the 1860s, Romanian nationalists fervently advocated against Jewish emancipation. “Awake, ye Romanians,” as one newspaper wrote in 1867. “Let us awake and assemble on that field upon which the sentiment of all political, social, national, and patriotic duty calls, the duty not to allow the naturalization of the Hebrews, of those outcasts, whom even our Redeemer Jesus Christ cursed, that they should possess no country, no home; were we to allow their naturalization . . . Romania would become a Palestine, and the free Romanian, the Christian Romanian would become the slave of these outcasts!”41 Romania’s constitution of 1866, infamously, excluded foreign Jews from ever becoming citizens but also reduced the civic rights of its native-­born Jews, and other laws provided for the wholesale detention and expulsion of Jews because of “vagabondage.”42 For the diplomats and statesmen assembled in Berlin, the question of Jewish emancipation was hardly at the top of their agenda, but they did agree that the recognition of Bulgaria’s autonomous status would be conditional on the guarantee of religious freedom. The congress then turned its attention to Serbia, home to a small Jewish population of less than two thousand, as opposed to under ten thousand in Bulgaria and more than ten times that in Romania (10 percent of the population of Moldavia, and about half of the inhabitants of Moldavia’s capital, Jassy).43 The French foreign minister, William Waddington, proposed adding a guarantee of “complete equality of rights,” as well as a commitment to religious freedom, as a condition for the recognition of Serbia’s independence. The Russian foreign minister, Alexander Gorchakow, objected forcefully: one was “not to confuse the Israelites in Berlin, Paris, London, or Vienna, who certainly should not be denied any civic or political rights, with the Jews of Serbia, Romania or some of the Russian provinces, who are . . . a veritable scourge for the indigenous population.”44 In the face of Russia’s objection, the congress settled on a general declaration about religious freedom, without mentioning Jews, and Serbia acceded. In the case of Romania, the congress rejected a clause proposed by the Italian delegation, which would have enshrined the provision that “Jews of Romania who do not belong to a foreign nationality have the right to

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acquire Romanian citizenship.” Instead, the treaty’s article 44 proclaimed that, “in Romania, the difference of religious creeds and confessions shall not be used against any person as grounds for exclusion or incapacity in matters relating to the enjoyment of civil and political rights.”45 Though vague, to Jewish observers it seemed like a victory. The concerted intervention of 1878, in a sense, followed the well-­ established tradition of shtadlanut—­the tried and trusted effort of well-­ connected Jewish “intercessors” to leverage their personal relations with monarchical rulers to intervene on behalf of their brethren, as in the case of Josel of Rosheim’s lobbying Emperor Charles V in the 1500s to advocate for improving the legal situation of the Jews in the Holy Roman Empire, or Samson Wertheimer’s appeal to Emperor Leopold I to stop the publication of a fiercely anti-­Jewish tract by Johann Eisenmenger in 1700.46 The famed Moses Montefiore of London was perhaps the latest and most prominent example of this tradition, with his insistence on face-­to-­face giving and his reliance on personal lobbying of individual rulers, as during his missions to Egypt and the Ottoman Empire after the Damascus blood libel in 1840 or his mission to Morocco in the 1860s.47 Now it was Bleichröder’s turn to celebrate a successful intervention at the Berlin Congress, receiving congratulatory messages from throughout the Jewish world, from Montefiore, Crémieux, and many others. A grand dinner at the Bleichröder residence in Berlin was attended by Disraeli; the Russian ambassador to London, Peter Shuwalow, who was more sympathetic to the Jews than his boss, Gorchakow; as well as Waddington and Andrássy. But the excitement was premature, and the diplomatic victory pyrrhic indeed. Romania remained defiant: anti-­ Jewish measures continued in 1878 and 1879, and the new Romanian constitution in 1879 declared that all Jews were considered to be “foreigners.” Jews would have to undergo a process of naturalization, which would be considered on a case by case basis, and until the eve of World War I, no more than fifteen hundred Jews had been naturalized.48 Despite Romania’s apparent unwillingness to honor the spirit of article 44 of the Berlin Treaty, Russia, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire recognized the country’s independence, while Germany, along with Britain, France and Italy, continued to insist that Romania implement its commitments as a precondition to international recognition. Bismarck in particular adopted the pose of the defender of Roma-

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nian Jewry and blocked any push for accelerating diplomatic relations with Romania when Britain and Italy began to waver, each for their own political reasons. In Berlin, too, Emperor Wilhelm I was getting impatient, confiding to an aide that there had been “many things decided [at the Berlin Congress] that I did not like, for example the emancipation of the Jews in Romania,” but he had been ill and thus unable to intervene.49 There was, however, a backstory to Bismarck’s political posture, and it had nothing to do with human rights.50 In 1870, the Prussian-­Jewish railroad entrepreneur Bethel Strousberg, who had obtained the concession to build the Romanian railways in 1868, was in trouble. Construction had stalled on some of the lines, the Franco-­Prussian War of 1870 created further problems, and by August 1870, the value of the Romanian railway obligations had declined from 70 to 43 thalers a piece. It also turned out that Strousberg had been using moneys meant for the Romanian railroads to fund some of his other high-­risk investments, and by the end of the year, he announced that he would default on the interest payment due on the Romanian obligations on January 1, 1871. Many leading Prussian aristocrats had invested in Strousberg’s Romanian railways, and Wilhelm I insisted that his friends be bailed out. Thus, Bismarck charged his personal banker, Bleichröder, and David Hansemann of the Diskonto-­Gesellschaft, to sort out the mess; Bleichröder would negotiate with the Romanians, and Hansemann with Strousberg. (In recognition of his efforts, in 1872 Bleichröder became the first Jew to be ennobled in Prussia.) Bleichröder and Hansemann set up a new stock company to complete the railroads and renegotiated the concession with the Romanian government, but throughout the 1870s, new difficulties appeared and ongoing negotiations between Bleichröder and Romania ensued. As revenue from the completed lines began to decline in the latter half of the decade, the two German bankers tried to push Romania to take over the railway and exchange the railroad bonds for bonds guaranteed by the government. The Romanians, however, resented being strong-­armed into this new arrangement that would benefit foreign investors but not the Romanian state, and things dragged on. It was in the aftermath of the Russo-­Ottoman War and the Berlin Congress that Bismarck realized that the question of Jewish rights in exchange for international recognition of Romania’s independence could be leveraged

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to force the government in Bucharest to give in to the demands regarding its railroads. Bismarck’s cynical play paid off: rather than emancipating its Jews, the Romanian parliament voted in February 1880 to swallow its pride and accept Bleichröder and Hansemann’s proposal, exchanging the 1868 railroad bonds for sovereign debt obligations at 6 percent interest, backed by revenue from the railways and the country’s tobacco monopoly. In the end, Bleichröder’s efforts saved the investments of many a Prussian aristocrat. The apparent victory for the Jews of Romania at the Berlin Congress in 1878, meanwhile, turned out to be a chimera as Bismarck dropped his resistance to recognizing Romania’s independence once the railroad question had been settled. That is not to say that antisemites did not make the most of the apparent, if ephemeral, success of the advocates of Jewish rights in 1878. Thus, Wilhelm Marr wrote in his pamphlet The Victory of Jewry over Germandom in 1879: “Who has had the real benefit from the blood shed in the Orient, at the Congress of Berlin? Jewry. The ‘Association Israélite’ [referring to the Alliance] was the first on site. Romania was forced to officially open itself up to corrosive Semitism. Jewry has not dared yet to make the same demand of Russia: but that will surely come as well.”51 If anything, then, the events of 1878 demonstrated both the power of collective Jewish action—­after all, the delegates of the Alliance were heard, and the question of Jewish emancipation was embraced by several European countries—­and its ultimate powerlessness, as other economic and political interests would always outweigh any consideration of Jewish rights. Jews might temporarily benefit from the contemporary linkage of imperialism and humanitarian intervention. But the fact that European governments could instrumentalize the push for Jewish civic rights to advance their own imperialist agendas had about as much to do with Jewish power as the British Raj’s campaign against sati, the self-­immolation of a Hindu widow on her husband’s funeral pyre, had to do with the political power of women.52 Ultimately, Veneziani’s dictum, that no country would “ever make of our servitude a casus-­belli,” was vindicated.

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VOCATIONAL TR AINING AND THE ALLIANCE ISR AÉLITE UNIVERSELLE

Recalling Baron Hirsch’s many acts of munificence in the city of Salonika, Rabbi Judah Nehama—­a leading figure of the Ottoman Haskalah and interlocutor of Jewish intellectuals from Samuel David Luzzatto in Padua to Leopold Zunz in Berlin—­contrasted the local tradition of charity with the transformative philanthropy of the great European benefactor. “It appears that poverty and generosity are engaged in a battle, and in the end, poverty wins,” Nehama lamented. As generous as support for the poor was, it seemed to do nothing but to perpetuate poverty itself. Baron Hirsch, however, had sought to “pull out the evil by its root,” earmarking his vast donations for education and, in particular, vocational training for the city’s Jewish youth.53 And indeed, as Hirsch himself explained in a letter to his friend Oscar Straus: “It is certainly much easier to rid oneself of the needy through gifts, yet the latter are not really helped by this. The thoughtless giver contributes to the misfortune, to the cancer that afflicts the compact masses of our eastern European and Oriental coreligionists: being raised for mendicancy and Jewish parasitism [das jüdische Schmarotzerwesen].”54 Uprooting poverty, for Baron Hirsch and the Alliance Israélite Universelle, was linked to a perception that the Jewish communities of the East—­in the Ottoman Empire, but also in Habsburg Galicia or in Russia—­were backward, lacked civilization, and needed to be “regenerated,” in the parlance of the day. Emmanuel Veneziani echoed this notion when he wrote, as president of the local committee of the Alliance in Constantinople, to Clara de Hirsch in 1874: “the ideas of our era,” that is, the modern age, “are for the most part alien to the Jewish population of these lands. They have remained immobile and isolated from the general movements of civilization and progress” on account of the “cruel persecutions that they have endured for so many centuries.” The task of modern education was to allow the Jewish youth to “shake off their moral servitude, which grows out of ignorance.”55 Hirsch agreed, writing to the Alliance’s Adolphe Crémieux: “During my repeated and prolonged sojourns in Turkey, I have been painfully impressed by the misery and ignorance of the great majority of Israelites who live in that empire. There is progress everywhere in Turkey, but the Israelites scarcely benefit from it on account of their poverty and their lack of enlightenment. To provide for

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the instruction and education of the youth is the most efficient remedy that one can take to address this ill.”56 Despite such perceptions, shared by Western philanthropists and local critics such as Judah Nehama alike, it should be pointed out that local Ottoman communities, too, were pursuing their own campaigns to modernize charity and promote “productivization” and vocational training; and so did the Ottoman state, which had begun, in the 1860s, to create a network of “vocational orphanages” (ıslahhanes).57 In fact, it was Western philanthropists and publicists who had invented the binary—­the alleged modernity of the Jews in the West on the one hand, oppression and backwardness of those in the East on the other hand—­in the first place.58 Historically, one could hardly argue that Jews under Ottoman rule had fared any worse than their counterparts in European countries of the ancien régime: nowhere in the Ottoman Empire, for example, was there an equivalent of the restrictive residence laws that had still plagued Baron Hirsch’s father and grandfather in Bavaria. The legal equality of all Ottoman subjects before the law, declared by the edict of 1856, remained a promise not entirely fulfilled. But, ultimately, it was the problems that affected all inhabitants of the empire—­such as economic underdevelopment or the authoritarianism of Sultan Abdülhamid II—­that had the most detrimental effect on the fortunes of the Jews. Still, for the Westernizers among the Ottoman Jewish elites and for the Jews of western Europe, there was an essential distinction between European “progress” and “civilization,” and Eastern stagnation and “lack of enlightenment.” Thus, Veneziani lamented on one occasion that he had been unable to have an Alliance appeal to the shah of Iran translated from French into Hebrew because “there are here [in Constantinople] no Hebraists who are able to understand French,” much less “translate European concepts [pensées européennes]” into Hebrew.59 When Maurice and Clara de Hirsch made their 1 million francs donation to the Alliance in 1873, Jewish notables in Constantinople had already been trying to set up new schools that would offer a modern, Western-­style education for some time. In Constantinople, Smyrna, and other places, the chief rabbis of the community were supportive of the educational reforms and even embraced the teaching of European languages, even though there were a few holdouts among the rabbinate—­for example, Menachem Suss-

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ino in Constantinople who opined that the new schools would be “places of darkness rather than homes of enlightenment” and that, if they taught the children French, the students would “come to think of themselves as philosophers and, upon their leaving the school, would transgress all the precepts of religion.”60 But for the most part, the issue was less an ideological one and had more to do with the allocation of scarce financial resources.61 When the Alliance committee in Constantinople sought to reorganize the Jewish community by adopting the French model of a centralized consistory, and to raise new taxes to support the new schools, both rabbis and lay leaders were opposed. The announcement of the massive donation received from Baron and Baroness Hirsch changed the equation entirely. Following months of fruitless negotiation, facing obstruction “from the intrigants and the fanatics” in the community, “the [Alliance] committee must not hesitate any longer and should boldly get to work, leaving the [Jewish] community to its own devices,” as Veneziani proclaimed on the occasion.62 Alliance schools sprung up throughout the Ottoman Empire, and the number of pupils grew significantly—­in Constantinople, from a total of 625 students in five schools in 1879, to over 3,000 in ten different schools by 1898. Other places saw similar growth, though Adrianople was the only major city that, by the early twentieth century, actually saw a majority of school-­age children attend Alliance schools. The traditional Talmud Torah schools—­long criticized by the modernizers for their unsanitary conditions and their “fossilized” approach to teaching—­survived, but they, too, were transformed by the growing popularity of the Alliance: the 1890s, in particular, saw a series of reforms, introducing new subjects and making traditional schools more similar to the Alliance establishments. Practically all Jewish and Christian children attended schools organized by their respective millets (ethno-­religious communities), or European schools; very few—­ eighty throughout the entire Empire—­attended Muslim primary schools by 1895, and just over five thousand state-­sponsored secondary schools.63 The success of the Alliance in reshaping the landscape of Ottoman Jewish education does not mean that conflicts between the partisans of traditional education and those favoring the Gallo-­centric model of the Alliance had vanished. But the battle lines were not always strictly ideological. In 1885, for example, Veneziani reported to the Alliance headquarters about a quar-

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rel that had broken out in Vidin (a port on the Danube River, in Bulgaria). One of the rabbis employed by the Alliance schools to teach Hebrew and Judaica had hit one of the children, in violation of the school’s policy. When the child’s mother had confronted him, he had dismissed her complaint and responded with a vulgar comment: “should your child die, I will make you another one.” It had subsequently come to blows between the woman’s husband and the rabbi, and, Veneziani lamented, “now, as is the custom in the Orient, there are two parties” dividing the community.64 At other times, divisions emerged that had to do with different ideas about the proper curriculum but that also highlighted the tensions pitting a highly centralized and paternalistic Alliance, taking its cues from headquarters in Paris, against local leaders. Thus, in Philippopolis, in 1881, a representative speaking on behalf of the Alliance Israélite Universelle addressed an assembly gathered at the local Alliance school and warned about a recent “coup” in which “the rabbis and certain individuals in the community” had taken control of the local school committee. Illustrating the cultural disjunction between the Francophone Alliance and its local constituents, the speaker, a certain R. Cohen, made his remarks in French, which were translated into Ladino by one of the teachers. He began by reminding his audience of the ultimate goal of the Alliance, “to raise us finally to the level of a civilized nation” by establishing schools “in the Orient and in Africa,” which he described as the “cradles of ignorance and fanaticism.” With the ideological pep talk out of the way, he turned to the conflict over the local school committee, denouncing the takeover by the rabbis and their allies, who, he suggested, “counted the will of the Alliance for nothing, claiming that the school had become worse than a profane [that is, Christian] church.” Having such outspoken enemies of the Alliance’s civilizing mission in control of the school was not to be tolerated, and the speaker ended with an admonishment, which brought home to everyone the power imbalance between the school’s benefactors in the West and its beneficiaries in the Balkans. If the situation was not remedied, he warned, “the school will be closed, the director will be recalled, and the building—­which is the property of Baron Hirsch and the Alliance—­will be used for a different purpose.” He added, for good measure, a reminder that “this institution is under the protection of France.”65

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There were other, gentler, ways to nudge Ottoman communities to embrace the educational ideas of Western philanthropists. In 1877, Baron Hirsch provided funds to support Jewish youths who were learning a trade; the sum that was made available in the city of Salonika, for example, was 3,000 francs. It came with a caveat, though: the community would forfeit the moneys that remained unspent if not enough apprenticeships could be filled. One might have thought, the local Ladino newspaper, La Epoca, wrote five years later, that this would have been an unlikely scenario—­and yet, it reported, “our city has found itself in precisely such circumstances” when, between March 1878 until March 1882, only seven apprenticeships had been awarded. Moreover, the newspaper lamented that most of those who did want to learn a trade wanted to become tailors (their families considered tailoring to be an honorable and respectable profession); they were reluctant to embrace other trades, rather living in poverty.66 For Baron Hirsch, even more than for the Alliance, vocational training was the centerpiece of his approach to education. In 1888, writing from Constantinople where he was pursuing his negotiations with the Porte about the Ottoman railways, Hirsch critically observed that the Alliance schools had “too many teachers” and neglected training the youths in manual trades. In Constantinople, he noted, “every day I see youngsters between 16 and 20 years of age, speaking French very well, who come up to me on the street to ask me for a job in some office and the like, and how many of them regret that, rather than knowing foreign languages, they did not learn a manual trade that would afford them a living.” He insisted that the schools should focus less on teaching French—­shorthand for the liberal arts education that many saw as a pathway to entering the middle class—­which was “useless,” and prepare the students for a trade instead.67 Although Maurice de Hirsch eventually turned his attention to eastern Europe—­to Habsburg Galicia and then, particularly, to the fate of the Russian Jews—­he never ceased his involvement in the Ottoman communities. Often, he was approached for help with the purchase of a new school building or some other need, but he also took the initiative himself. In 1887, for instance, he charged Veneziani with proposing a plan for a new charitable contribution for the community in Hasköy, one of the main Jewish areas of Constantinople. Veneziani proposed providing a midday meal for the pupils

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in the local Alliance school, and an extra piece of bread for the poorest by the end of the school day, at a cost of 10,000 francs per year. Hirsch agreed, raising the amount to an annual 15,000 francs and adding the proviso that, on occasion, warm clothes should be handed out to children from the poorest families as well.68 As far as the Alliance Israélite was concerned, Baron Hirsch, over many years, covered the organization’s deficit. “The Alliance lives from small voluntary contributions,” the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums reported in 1884, “as well as donations from Baron Hirsch, but the [other] Jewish financiers are entirely keeping their distance.”69 In 1883, Hirsch covered a deficit of almost 43,000 francs,70 and in 1887, Veneziani reported that Hirsch would, “as usual,” make up a shortfall that in this case came to almost 57,000 francs.71 Finally, in 1889, the baron responded to a request from the Alliance, which had sought 480,000 francs for buying new properties both in Paris and in the Ottoman Empire, by announcing “a magnificent donation,” an unprecedented gift of 10 million francs, which would set the Alliance on a secure financial footing for a long time.72

Both humanitarianism and education, promoted by philanthropists like Hirsch and enacted by organizations like the Alliance, were about managing and enhancing the reputation of the Jews. Certainly, Hirsch’s philanthropic activities in the Ottoman Empire were also intended to improve his own, personal standing and advance the interests of his railroad enterprise. In the “functionalist” interpretation of many historians, building on sociologist Marcel Mauss’s understanding of the economy of the gift exchange, Jewish philanthropy was a tool employed by elites to establish social control and manage power relations.73 But a merely functionalist reading of modern Jewish philanthropic activity misses the broader implications of philanthropy as an expression of Jewish politics, and politics, as one recent study has argued, entail “the deployment of material resources, but also the mobilization of favorable impressions.” 74 This is true not only of individual actors but also of groups. Philanthropists like Baron Hirsch, therefore, did more than cultivate their own public image as humanitarians, promote their business interests, or claim power within the Jewish community. What was at stake for them was nothing less than the collective reputation of the Jews,

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ensuring that, in the emerging global, racialized hierarchies of the nineteenth century, Jews would be seen as modern, “civilized,” and European. Imperialism was the backdrop for Hirsch’s Ottoman railroad venture, but also for his humanitarian and philanthropic interventions in the Balkans.75 If European humanitarianism was embedded in an ideology of universalism, however, Jewish philanthropy admitted the need for Jewish particularism and political self-­defense. “To be cosmopolitan,” as James Loeffler put it in a study of Jewish humanitarianism in the twentieth century, “one must first be rooted.” 76 That was true of the philanthropists in the nineteenth century as well: where Baron Hirsch emphasized the cosmopolitan character of his beneficence during the Russo-­Ottoman War, Emmanuel Veneziani felt the gravitational pull of Jewish solidarity. Both embraced the goal of the Alliance to turn Jews into proper (and, of course, Francophone) “Europeans.” But first, one had to ensure that Jews would survive, as an ethnic minority, in the “shatterzone of empires” on Europe’s margins.

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8

CIVILIZING MISSIONS IN EASTERN EUROPE

SCHOOLS FOR “HALF-­A SIA”

The sudden death of Lucien in April 1887 marked a major turning point in the lives of Maurice and Clara de Hirsch. Grief-­stricken, the couple left Paris immediately after Lucien’s funeral, and Hirsch soon redoubled his efforts to extricate himself from the Ottoman railroad business. The Hirschs also now began to expand their already significant philanthropic activities: “My son I have lost,” Baron Hirsch reportedly declared, “but not my heir, humanity is my heir.”1 Hirsch had long emphasized the nondenominational character of his philanthropy, to benefit not only his fellow Jews but “humanity.” That had not only been true during the Russo-­Ottoman War in 1877–­1878: in 1880, for example, he established a new orphanage in Budapest, insisting that it was to be “inter-­confessional.” (Girls who left the institution at age sixteen would receive the sum of 1,200 gulden, to serve as a dowry or as start capital for a trade.) Hirsch stipulated that twenty of the children would be Jewish, twenty Catholic, and another twenty Protestant. The quotas, of course, only reinforced the underlying reality of religious difference, but the approach was designed to broadcast Hirsch’s commitment to the integration of Jews 173

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into the surrounding society, and his own, ecumenical approach to works of beneficence.2 Through the years, Maurice and Clara’s philanthropy went to countless causes, both Jewish and “general.” In the early 1870s, Hirsch donated research materials to the School of Medicine in Constantinople, for which he was awarded the empire’s Order of the Mecidiye.3 In 1881, he gave 25,000 francs to help the victims of a devastating fire in Vienna’s Ringtheater, caused by a malfunction of the gas lights behind the stage that set off a blaze in which, by the official count, 384 people lost their lives.4 Still, much of the Hirschs’ philanthropy was dedicated to assist various Jewish communities (and sometimes individuals) in distress and happened on an unprecedented, transnational scale. That was possible, of course, because of the accelerated pace at which information could be exchanged between Jewish communities on the “periphery”—­in the Ottoman Middle East and North Africa, and in eastern Europe—­and those of the West, with the advent of the telegraph and new railroad lines allowing news to travel fast, and the growing Jewish press to pick up reports on events in faraway places.5 A single folder in the archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris illustrates the reach of the Hirschs’ beneficence, listing donations made to poor Jews in Mogador, Morocco (1874); a gift for the Alliance school in Tunis (1879); support for Russian Jewish refugees stranded in Brody, on the Habsburg border, and in Constantinople (in 1881 and 1882); assistance to victims of the many conflagrations that afflicted cities throughout the Ottoman lands, from Baghdad in 1889 and Smyrna in 1893 to Constantinople in 1896; donations to help indigent Jews in Tripoli, Libya, in 1894; assistance for the widow of the grand rabbi of Sofia, Bulgaria (1895), for poor Jews in Beirut (1895), and for families that had suffered from inundations in Philippopolis (1896).6 In 1888, Baron Hirsch pledged the eye-­popping amount of 12 million francs to establish a new foundation in Austria, in honor of Emperor Franz Joseph I’s fortieth crown jubilee. The goal was to create a network of elementary and vocational schools in the Habsburg provinces of Galicia and Bukovina, two of the empire’s poorest regions and home to its largest—­ and most traditional—­Jewish communities. In his memorandum to the government in Vienna, seeking formal approval of the organization’s statutes, Hirsch emphasized that he was “far from promoting exclusionary or

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strictly confessional tendencies with my foundation,” and explained that all of his philanthropic efforts “have always been to fight against separatist trends and tendencies among my coreligionists and to prepare the ground for their assimilation with their Christian fellow citizens.” 7 The foundation would focus in particular on preparing Jewish youths for manual trades and agriculture, lifting them out of poverty and nudging them away from peddling.8 It would also provide support for teacher training; purchase books and other materials for the schools; offer stipends, meals, and clothing for poor students; place Jewish apprentices with artisan masters or farmers; and offer small loans to help individuals set up a trade. Though targeting Jews primarily, the schools would be open to Christian children, and the foundation would cover the cost of religious education for the latter. The primary language of instruction was to be Polish in Galicia—­with German as an obligatory subject as well—­and German in Bukovina.9 As a local newspaper in Czernowitz (in the Bukovina region) pointed out, Baron Hirsch’s philanthropic project was going to fill the gaping hole left by the inaction of the state, which had done nothing to remedy a situation where official statistics recorded a staggering rate of analphabetism of 84 percent in 1881.10 Galicia—­its territory today divided between Poland and Ukraine—­was the name invented for the region that was incorporated into the Habsburg Empire as a result of the successive partitions of Poland, the southern part of the province with its capital city, Lemberg (Lviv/Lwów), in 1772 and the northern part, including Cracow and Lublin, in 1795. The neighboring region of Bukovina (today partly Ukraine, partly Romania), with Czernowitz as its major city, came under Habsburg rule in 1774. After the reorganization of the Habsburg state into the “dual monarchy” of Austria and Hungary in 1867—­the Ausgleich (compromise) following the empire’s defeat at the hands of the Prussians the previous year—­Galicia and Bukovina remained in the Austrian part of the empire, each with a degree of autonomy. The two regions were home to a diverse population; Galicia, in particular, had a large, Yiddish-­speaking Jewish community, whose religious culture was shaped by Hasidism. Around midcentury, Roman Catholic Poles and Greek Catholic Ukrainians (or Ruthenians, as they were called) each represented just under 45 percent of the province’s population, and the Jews about 10 percent.11 By 1890, there were over 768,000 Jews living in Galicia, 11.63 percent of the

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overall population. They were a disproportionately urban population, representing more than a quarter of the inhabitants in Cracow and Lemberg and the majority in towns like Buczacz, Stanislau, or Tarnopol.12 (As late as the year 1900, only 14 percent of Galician Jews earned their living in agriculture, compared with 77 percent of Poles and 95 percent of Ukrainians.)13 Bukovina, in turn, was dominated by Ukrainians and Romanians; in the capital, Czernowitz, more than a third of the citizens were Jews.14 To the elites in Vienna, Galicia and Bukovina were a distant, foreign land, representing the “Slavic Orient.” The writer Karl Emil Franzos, himself a Jew born in Galicia but brought up speaking German and educated first at the gymnasium in Czernowitz, then at the University of Vienna, coined the expression “Halb-­Asien” (Half-­Asia) for his Galician homeland in an eponymous book he published in 1876. In the words of Franzos, Not just geographically are these lands placed between cultured Europe and the barren steppe across which the Asiatic nomads move; not just by the language of their inhabitants . . . are they separated from the rest of Europe; and not just by the landscape do these distant plains and gently merging mountain chains . . . remind one of regions which lie closer to the Urals or in deep Central Asia. No! Also in political and social relations, European culture and Asiatic barbarism strangely encounter one another, European striving and Asiatic insolence, European humanity and such wild, such terrible conflict between nations and religious communities that it must appear to a resident of the West as not just unfamiliar but actually shocking, unbelievable.15

It was this Orientalist juxtaposition of Western civilization and Galician barbarism that informed the educational and reform agenda of the Israelitische Allianz in 1873, a philanthropic Jewish organization established in Vienna with a similar outlook as its French counterpart, the Alliance Israélite Universelle. The organization began to open Jewish schools throughout Galicia, a project that would be continued and vastly expanded under the auspices of Baron Hirsch’s new foundation in the early 1890s.16 Maurice de Hirsch assured the Austrian government that the best guarantee for the “progressive spirit” of the Galician schools, designed to create

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“an industrious and physically healthy generation of Israelites in Galicia and Bukovina,” was the seat of the philanthropic operation—­Vienna—­and the makeup of the governing board.17 Reaching out to Adolf Jellinek, a moderate reformer and prominent rabbi in Vienna with whom he cooperated closely, Hirsch explained that he considered the inclusion of Christian members on the foundation’s board to be essential, “lest it acquire the character of Israelite particularity, which would certainly not be beneficial.” He also believed, rather optimistically, that “the participation of Christians in our project will ensure that it will be impossible for the opposing, that is, the antisemitic party to agitate against it,” a hope that predictably was going to be disappointed.18 First, though, the foundation’s statutes needed the approval of the Viennese government, and while the emperor, Franz Joseph I, had swiftly accepted the donation in December 1888, more than a year later the government was still dragging its feet. In February 1890, Hirsch complained to Jellinek that he was “too deeply offended by the reception that my philanthropic plans have encountered with the state administration to be willing to haggle over concessions and counter-­concessions,” and he was even considering revoking the gift altogether.19 There was a great deal of speculation in the press about what was causing the endless delays. The Bukowinaer Rundschau, published in Czernowitz, at first suspected the machinations of Polish nationalists, lamenting that their “parochialism” (Kirchturmpolitik) was liable to undermine a unique opportunity that stood to benefit all of Galicia and Bukovina, not just its Jews.20 And there was reason for concern, as Hirsch’s initiative had come under attack in Polish newspapers, even in the ostensibly liberal Dziennik Polski of Cracow, which reprinted a nationalist and antisemitic diatribe that had previously appeared in Gazeta Polska, in Czernowitz. Under the telling title “A Trojan Horse,” Gazeta denounced the Hirsch Foundation as a threat, both from a “social” and a “national” point of view.21 Opening up farming to the Galician Jews, the Polish newspaper argued, was bound to cause the ruin of Christian farmers. “In the hands of the Jews, farming will take on the form of speculation . . . and the soil will only serve as a sponge, from which the Jewish landlord will squeeze the last juices of life.” The paper based its assertion on a clearly racialized notion of Jewish alterity, claiming that the threat derived from the “ethnic character of the Jews, and neither Baron

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Hirsch nor the entire phalanx of philanthropic millionaires can change that character.”22 Such prejudice was not uncommon. In 1892, one Viennese paper reported, a Polish prayer book published with the endorsement of the prince-­bishop of Cracow included a plea to save Galicia from its enemies. An explanatory note offered a hair-­raising conspiracy theory, according to which wealthy philanthropists like Hirsch and Rothschild were spending a fortune to allow the Galician Jews to become artisans and farmers with the single purpose of driving out their Christian competitors so they could take over the land.23 But the Gazeta Polska voiced another, political complaint about the Hirsch Foundation: with the seat of its board and administration in Vienna and German as (one) language of instruction, the philanthropic enterprise was bound to “either create an undefined, international Jewish society, a separate nation among other nations, or worse, take on an outright Germanizing character.”24 Either way, the new Jewish schools would be a threat to Polish national identity. After all, as the nationalist newspaper Czas, published in Lemberg, noted, given the reality of Polish division and Russian authoritarianism across the border, “Galicia is destined to be a sanctuary for the preservation of [Polish] national elements in immaculate purity, and likewise, the faith of our fathers and their treasures.”25 Despite sniping from antisemites and nationalists, however, it was not in fact the Polish side that was holding up approval of Baron Hirsch’s foundation. In March 1890, the Polish politician Count Tarnowski, a member of the Galician parliament, convened a commission to review the impact of the Hirsch Foundation; the commission concluded that the project was “not only in specifically the Jewish, but also in the general national interest” and instructed Tarnowski to “use his influence with the government to ensure the prompt activation of the foundation, providing that the national [Galician] character of the Hirsch foundation and its direction are maintained.”26 Half a year later, in November, when still no response was forthcoming from Vienna, the parliament in Lemberg passed an “energetical appeal” to the government, requesting clarification of why the “highly benevolent and desirable foundation of Baron Hirsch” had still not been authorized. The leaders of all the Polish political parties signed the resolution. 27

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By all accounts, the delay had nothing to do with local opposition, and everything to do with Viennese politics. As one of Baron Hirsch’s confidants explained, Prime Minister Eduard von Taaffe and several other members of the cabinet were clearly in favor of the foundation, but approval was being obstructed, first and foremost, by Julius von Falkenhayn, minister of agriculture, who—­according to a press report—­objected to the fact that Christian children were allowed to attend the schools as well.28 Falkenhayn was joined by Julian Dunajewski, minister of finance, and Alois von Prazak, minister without portfolio. Whereas Falkenhayn’s position may have also been a matter of antisemitic prejudice, the three—­Falkenhayn, Dunajewski and Prazak—­had been united in their opposition to a German-­Czech compromise (Ausgleich) that was being debated at the time. (The Czechs, following the Austro-­Hungarian Ausgleich of 1867, were seeking a similar degree of wide-­ranging autonomy from Vienna. Under Taaffe, Czech had been recognized as an official language, along with German; in 1897, when Prime Minister Casimir Badeni recognized the full equality of German and Czech in Bohemia, the move set off a major political crisis.)29 Thus, one reading of the situation was that the trio was holding up approval of the Galician foundation, not so much because of genuine concerns over Hirsch’s project, but to spite their opponents in the cabinet.30 The main disagreement between the government and Baron Hirsch was over the makeup of the foundation’s governing board in Vienna. According to one newspaper, the minister of justice, Friedrich Schönborn, and Baron Prazak insisted on greater government oversight of an organization with financial means as significant as those of the Hirsch Foundation, lest the money came to be used “for [party] political purposes, in elections and other cases.” (This objection to the political power of a privately endowed philanthropic enterprise, and the insistence on state oversight, was by no means unusual: witness, for instance, the heated debate in the US Congress about the charter sought by John D. Rockefeller for his philanthropic foundation in 1913; in the event, Rockefeller’s request failed.)31 Therefore, the cabinet in Vienna insisted on appointing half of the eighteen members of the board, something that Baron Hirsch would not agree to. In the end, Hirsch suggested that the government appoint four people to the board. By January 1891, the compromise was finally accepted, and the statutes for the new foun-

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dation were approved: the “civilizing mission” among the Jews of Galicia and Bukovina could begin.32 In 1892, the Baron Hirsch Foundation took over ten elementary schools previously operated in Galicia by the Israelitische Allianz of Vienna and increased the number of students by 10 percent, to over 3,100 boys. In the 1892–­1893 school year, it added another ten schools: whereas in those ten towns, only 200 of some 2,700 school-­age boys had previously attended a school, the number now was 865.33 Hirsch’s endeavor was thus off to a promising start, but there was also criticism. Bukovina, much smaller than Galicia, found itself “in the role of a step child,” as the Rundschau in Czernowitz lamented; it did not even have a representative on the board in Vienna.34 It is “uplifting for any friend of education and culture to see the industriousness of the Hirsch Foundation in Galicia,” the paper observed, adding: “but, alas, in Galicia only.”35 The local committee in Czernowitz, meanwhile, was made up of representatives of the Jewish community who, in the view of their critics, were only concerned with advancing their personal interests and accumulating honors and public recognition, and leveraging the money of the foundation for their own political gains; nepotism was rampant.36 A different kind of critique was voiced, a decade later, by the social activist and feminist Bertha Pappenheim—­also known as “Anna O.,” the pseudonym that Josef Breuer used for his patient in his book Studies in Hysteria, which he published together with Sigmund Freud in 1895. Pappenheim noted that the Hirsch Foundation’s board included “only men, in their majority bankers, also industrialists, lawyers, and rabbis,” but nobody with any practical experience in pedagogy or in agriculture (which the foundation supposedly was promoting)—­and not a single woman. “Does a people, a tribe, a family consist only of members of the male sex?” she wondered, denouncing the fact that the foundation had established schools for boys, but “not taken into consideration at all the intellectual instruction of girls.” By doing so, she claimed, it was “committing the same injustice that the Galician or the Russian state has committed against the Jews.”37 Neglecting female education, Pappenheim warned, was undermining the very cause for which the Hirsch Foundation had been created. “The civilizers must not content themselves with turning the cheders [where Jewish children got their traditional education] into schools: one must try to penetrate into the individual houses and

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shacks, into the individual families.”38 Only including “the factor ‘woman’ ” could ensure a genuine and wholesale transformation and regeneration of Galician Jewish society.39 The harshest criticism of the new schools, however, came from the Orthodox. Galician Jewish society was traditional, Hasidism exerting a strong influence, and the modernizing, secular outlook of the new schools was met with skepticism or outright hostility. (One Hasidic rebbe allegedly decided to uproot and move his entire community of followers to another town when confronted with the opening of one of the Hirsch schools.)40 The German-­ Jewish Orthodox newspaper Der Israelit defended the traditional Jews of Galicia against accusations of “the darkest zealotry,” noting that Jewish parents in the province were surely in favor of seeing improvements in the primary education of their children—­but that the fidelity of their children to the traditions of rabbinic Judaism was even more important.41 Der Israelit felt vindicated when a pamphlet by one Alexander Schorr of Drohobych (near Lemberg) appeared in 1892, highlighting the failings of the foundation’s local administration. “Frankly,” Schorr wrote, “the selection of the members of the East Galician executive committee has not been particularly felicitous. . . . It must appear especially disconcerting that, in the committee, the dominant influence is of those who notoriously lack any communal spirit for Jewish interests, and who only discover their Jewish heart when it comes to divvying up the mandates in the city council and the chamber of commerce that are allocated to the Jewish voters of Lemberg.”42 Among the examples of mismanagement that Schorr listed, and which Der Israelit highlighted as well, was the case of a Hebrew teacher who was described as highly qualified and who had, as part of his job interview, offered a translation of a biblical text based on that of Moses Mendelssohn: he had lost out against another candidate “with very minimal Hebrew knowledge,” who was reading the biblical text with the help of a “Polish-­language [Christian] missionary Bible.” When it came to hiring a female teacher in another school, the committee had given preference to a candidate “who was less qualified” but “instead had a more attractive appearance to recommend her,” instead of the “highly qualified daughter” of a respected scholar.43

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Hirsch was not unaware of such criticism, which was not limited to the schooling enterprise in Galicia. In January 1889, he had created welfare committees in Vienna, Cracow, and Lemberg, which were tasked with providing local poor relief. The bureaus in Cracow and Lemberg received an annual contribution of over 144,000 gulden, but six years later, as the Viennese newspaper Die Neuzeit noted, “it has not borne any perceptible fruits.”44 Frustrated with the meager results of the charitable work that was carried out in his name, in June 1895 Hirsch resolved to thoroughly reorganize the administration of welfare in all three cities. The comprehensive plan to reform the Viennese Damencomité (Ladies’ Committee), headed by Annica Benveniste, included three main points, beginning with an expansion of its membership. Implied in this measure was that the committee had not been able to do due diligence and investigate, as it was instructed to do, all petitioners to determine whether or not they were in fact eligible to receive aid.45 That measure was to ensure that the right people received the right kind of support, to discourage abuse, and to weed out “professional beggars.” People who had received charity before should not be considered again. In Hirsch’s view, by delegating this job to its secretary, the committee had failed to conduct its reviews with the necessary “diligence and immediacy.”46 The second measure was intended to create greater oversight and to centralize philanthropic activities in Paris. The Viennese committee was thus instructed to submit, twice a month, all petitions that it received and thought viable for consideration by Baron Hirsch’s headquarters at Rue de l’Elysée. Each petition was to be accompanied by a brief evaluation, and the Paris office would render a decision within two weeks. The third goal of the reform program was to redirect charitable support for the poor toward providing small, repayable loans that allowed individuals to set up shop as artisans or otherwise become economically independent, and thus respectable members of society. Hirsch asked the Viennese committee to always earmark the larger portion of its donations for such loans. Instructions to the committees in Cracow and Lemberg followed along similar lines.47 What Hirsch may not have expected was for the Viennese Damencomité to forcefully push back against the reform. In particular, the committee objected to the insinuation that it had neglected its duties to carefully vet all petitions and insisted that its members were best placed to carry out the task

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as they were thoroughly familiar with local circumstances. To determine “whether and how to assist the small business owner, the artisan, the clerk burdened by debt, the widow working to sustain her family, etc. etc.,” the Vienna office was carrying out five or six hundred reviews every month; what was needed was another staff member, not an expansion of the oversight committee. In fact, anyone who requested a loan for a business that exceeded forty or fifty gulden was called in for a personal interview for the committee to ascertain whether the person was worthy of receiving aid. Given this already time-­consuming process, the committee pointed out that adding yet another layer of review and sending twice-­monthly detailed reports to Paris was going to overwhelm the local office in the face of the usual flow of two thousand to three thousand aid requests received each month. “With all our ability to sacrifice and the altruism that we dedicate to this task,” Benveniste and her fellow committee members warned, “we are not humble enough to accept this new kind of [centralized] authority.”48 The Vienna committee also took issue with the new focus on repayable loans: not only would this create entirely new difficulties if they now were expected to evaluate the creditworthiness of each petitioner, but it would also displace aid from where it was most needed. Whereas the indigent could rely on public welfare and those with credit could obtain support from various cooperatives, or even private lenders, those caught in between—­the working poor who were just getting by from day to day—­should be the target of Hirsch’s benevolence.49 In a private letter to Hirsch, Benveniste declared that “under no circumstances” would she and her colleagues continue their work if Hirsch insisted on his reforms.50 Hirsch’s response to Benveniste made clear that he would not give in and illustrates how his thinking evolved in the course of the 1890s. Noting wryly that “in deeds of beneficence” there was no place for “personal vanity,” he insisted on the reforms that he had laid out. Leaving final decisions to his charitable organization in Paris, he argued, ensured greater “objectivity, which is impossible on a local level, even with the best intentions.” He was also unwilling to reconsider the new focus on repayable microloans: repayment would ensure that the philanthropic capital would not be exhausted but would grow instead. The new policy would also mean that the recipients of aid could see themselves “not as beggars but as creditworthy persons,” thus

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contributing to their general moral betterment. The new instructions, Hirsch insisted, represented “an evolution based on economic experience” since he had first established the committee in 1889. What had begun as a “purely humanitarian” endeavor was now to be consolidated “on a philanthropic-­ economic basis.”51 The local committees in Cracow and Lemberg likewise responded with skepticism to Baron Hirsch’s new instructions. In the end, the disagreements led to the resignation of the Vienna committee in September 1895.52 In the face of resistance, Hirsch went a step further and announced that he would dismantle the committees in Lemberg and Cracow altogether. Explaining that his priority in Galicia had always been to “wrest the young generation from squalidness,” he decided that the moneys previously allocated for charity in Cracow and Lemberg would henceforth be employed to provide food and clothing for poor schoolchildren so that more families could afford to send their offspring to the schools operated by the Hirsch Foundation in Galicia.53 The emphasis on microloans that Baron Hirsch envisioned for his philanthropic operation in Vienna and Galicia in the mid-­1890s was consistent with the ideas that he set out in his response to Andrew Carnegie in the North American Review in 1891. There, Hirsch explained that he was “decidedly against the old system of alms-­giving, which only makes so many more beggars.” Instead, philanthropy should “make human beings who are capable of work out of individuals who otherwise must become paupers.”54 In the opinion of some observers, both Jews and gentiles, this focus on prevention, rather than amelioration, of poverty was a distinct feature of Jewish philanthropy. For the Austrian social scientist and statistician Ernst Mischler, for example, it was this feature that made Jewish welfare not only distinct but superior to its Christian counterpart.55 While Hirsch’s approach echoed the Victorian distinction between the “unworthy paupers” and “worthy poor,” he never embraced the contemporary notion of “scientific charity” (popular at the time in the United States), which saw poverty as a reflection of character and indeed biological predisposition (paving the road to eugenics). For Hirsch, the problem was one of opportunity, not of moral failing or hereditary pauperism.56

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“THE JEWS MUST DISAPPEAR”

While working to improve education in Habsburg Galicia, in 1888, Maurice de Hirsch also entered into negotiations with authorities in St. Petersburg about a major schooling initiative in Russia, funded to the tune of 50 million francs. “Philanthropy is undoubtedly one of the characteristic marks of the age,” London’s Jewish Chronicle commented, “but among a whole galaxy of benevolent acts this one gift stands forth prominent and all but unparalleled.” Baron Hirsch’s bold initiative to create an entire network of modern schools for elementary and vocational training was “laying the foundation of a positive revolution in the state of the Russian Jews” and promised to “attack the very roots of the difficulty which we Western Jews are able to deal with only on the surface. . . . Western populations are looking askance at the Russian Jew, or are trying to keep him out; Baron de Hirsch would so order things as to keep him at home, or if he does emigrate, to make him worth having.”57 According to the proposal that Hirsch was pitching to the Russian government, the goal of the schools was going to be nothing less than encouraging the “fusion” of the Russian Jews with their fellow citizens.58 When Hirsch dispatched Léonce Lehmann and the Marquis d’Alzac for negotiations in St. Petersburg in 1888, he reiterated that the objective was “the moral uplift of an entire population in order to facilitate and hasten their assimilation with their co-­citizens.”59 If this language echoed the moralizing, Westernizing ethos of the Alliance and its schools, Hirsch’s letter to the chief procurator of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, went further, rejecting the Church’s insistence that the new schools should cater exclusively to Jews: “Nothing is further from my thinking than having this Foundation serve to further accentuate the religious difference between my coreligionists who are subjects of his majesty, the Czar, and the rest of the empire’s population. My goal is, to the contrary, to lift up the Israelites from the state of ignorance in which they find themselves now, to dispel the darkness that surrounds their minds . . . and therewith to facilitate a social fusion, which after some generations can lead to a religious fusion.”60 When the government returned an amended draft of the proposed statutes, Hirsch protested against a change that would have

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perpetuated the clear distinction between Jewish and Christian schools. “I have no design,” he wrote to the Russian minister of education, “to create special Israelite schools in Russia of the kind that already exist, and which are, in general, the main obstacle to raising the moral and intellectual level of the Jewish population in Russia and its assimilation, as soon as possible, to the rest of the empire’s population.”61 In the end, in the face of Russian obstruction, the plans fell through. In the meantime, however, Hirsch had sat down with the Paris correspondent of the New York Herald to explain the vision behind his idea of creating mixed Jewish-­Christian schools in Russia. His thoughts sent a shockwave through Jewish public opinion, provoking a heated debate on both sides of the Atlantic.

On Saturday, January 12, 1889, the readers of the New York Herald, one of the most widely circulated papers in the United States, were treated to a rare interview with Baron Hirsch, which appeared under the provocative title “The Jews Must Disappear: A Hebrew Millionnaire Spends Enormous Sums to Assimilate Them with Christians.” Adding a dramatic flourish, the journalist claimed that he had asked a Jewish acquaintance in the French capital, tongue in cheek, when the Messiah was expected to come, only to receive the startling answer that “he has come [already] and is at this moment in Paris.” His interest piqued, the Herald’s correspondent secured a meeting with Baron Hirsch, who had been described to him as the “apostle” of the “doctrine of assimilation with Christianity,” to find out more.62 Hirsch, with eyes “bright, gray, brimful of intelligence,” his long mustache giving him the air of “an Austrian cavalry officer” rather than that of a banker, made no pretensions of being a messianic figure. His proposals for solving the predicament of the Jews, however, were certainly radical. “My idea is this,” he explained. “I am a bitter enemy of fanaticism, bigotry and exclusive theology. The Jewish question can only be solved by the disappearance of the Jewish race, which will inevitably be accomplished by the amalgamation of Christians and Jews.” Outlining the rationale behind his plans for new schools in Russia, he noted that millions of Jewish children in that country “do not even know the Russian language and speak a sort of Hebraic jargon of their own. They are frightfully handicapped in all that con-

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cerns earning their bread and making their way in life. There is a complete Chinese wall around them isolating them from the rest of humanity. My idea was to knock out the corner stone of this wall by establishing schools in Russia on the condition that they should be open to Jews and Christians on terms of perfect equality.”63 The interview displayed an intriguing tension between Baron Hirsch’s sense of solidarity with other Jews—­“I am a Jew myself, and I felt for those of the same race,” he declared—­and a desire to overcoming Jewish difference. Assimilation, to him, was “the universal tendency of modern times,” arguing that “younger members of the families of Rothschild and Montefiore and dozens of others are assimilated—­that is to say, are married with the Grammonts, the Richelieus and the Roseberys.” Assimilation as intermarriage was not limited to high society: “In Saint-­Antoine and Belleville,” two working-­class districts in Paris, “mixed Christian and Jewish marriages take place every week. The Jewish race is now disappearing.” For Hirsch in 1889, then, the solution to the problem of Jewish alterity and to the persistence of antisemitism was a radical form of assimilation. “Let them be amalgamated by Christianity and merged in Christianity,” he explained to the Herald. “Let the fusion be complete; let Jewish isolation be broken down; let the Jews as a distinct sect disappear. . . . This will be the solution of the Jewish question and a blessing to civilization.”64 As we saw earlier, Hirsch had privately expressed the same view on Jewish-­Christian “fusion” to Crown Prince ­Rudolf ’s friend, the journalist Moriz Szeps; in a letter to Meyer Isaacs of New York, he likewise insisted that he had long considered the “amalgamation of the Israelite element with the indigenous element” as the best way forward for the Jews.65 Baron Hirsch’s declarations created a sensation, in particular among American Jews. A day after its publication the Herald reported that the interview with Hirsch “has been the absorbing topic of discussion during the last twenty-­four hours.”66 Rabbis took to denouncing the famous philanthropist’s ideas, the Boston newspapers reprinted the original story, and responses—­both in support and against Baron Hirsch’s views—­arrived in the Herald’s editorial offices not only from around New York City but from Baltimore, Boston, Hartford, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, DC.67 Though the newspaper’s Jewish readers were expressing a wide range

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of opinions, a consensus was emerging: as a headline in the Herald declared on January 17, it had been inundated with “Letters Breathing American Patriotism and Liberal to the Limit, but Stopping Short of Agreeing to the Suicide of Judaism.”68 One of the New Yorkers who had read the interview with Baron Hirsch first thing in the morning the day of its publication was Gustav Gottheil, the rabbi of Temple Emanu-­El, a flagship of American Reform Judaism. Speaking to the crowd gathered at the magnificent “Moorish”-­style synagogue on Forty-­Third Street and Fifth Avenue that Shabbat, Gottheil changed the topic of his sermon to address the “oracular utterance of Baron Hirsch,” which “must have startled you as it startled the whole community.” Gottheil lamented that the interview had exposed “a purpose, an ulterior end” of Baron Hirsch’s philanthropy, which apparently was designed “to strangle our faith with a silken gloved hand.” But, he assured his congregation, “we will not be killed even with a golden dagger, and a hundred times a hundred million francs cannot buy us.” Gottheil voiced his indignation at the “arrogance of a man who, besides his princely money gifts, has no claim whatever, either as a scholar nor even as a believer, to be our leader in our religious aspirations. . . . Financial talent and a philanthropic heart are not sufficient to understand a question involving the religious faith of eight millions of people—­of a people with such a history behind them as the Jews.” There was, thus, a larger issue at stake for Gottheil: the competing claims to the mantle of leadership in the modern Jewish communities of the West, once the old, traditional framework of Jewish communal life had lost its power. Against the “patronizing” by philanthropists like Hirsch, Gottheil defended the role of the religious leaders, of a reform-­minded rabbinate, as the legitimate voice guiding the Jews through the challenges of modern times.69 Gottheil did agree, however, with Hirsch’s embrace of social assimilation, if not with the idea of interfaith marriage and religious “fusion.” Thus he declared: “Amalgamation—­yes, in social life, in all civic relationships, in rights and services of the State, in charities, in all things except in those in which man is not morally free to choose and in which he dare make no sacrifice—­in his belief.” 70 Interestingly, the rabbi of an Orthodox congregation in Washington, DC, echoed the sentiment when he declared that the “separatism of us Jews applies only to our religious belief, the same as drawn among

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Christians between Protestant and Catholic, Presbyterian and Unitarian, and so on. But socially we know of no differences.” 71 The response from some Christian observers of the debate, though, suggested that, even in the United States, things were more complicated than suggested by the rabbis’ celebration of civic inclusion alongside religious pluralism. One Reverend William A. Leonard wrote, for example, that in his view Jews were “remarkable . . . for the unity of their social relations. It is better that it should be so than that they should bring into the world a mongrel race, and so lose their integrity as a people and their sturdy virtues as well.” Alexander Crummell, the prominent African American minister who served as the spiritual leader of the Black St. Luke Episcopal Church in Washington, likewise considered Hirsch’s program of complete assimilation to be implausible: “The obliteration of race is an impossibility. There are thirty millions of negroes on the American continent. Nothing but the wildest imagination can conceive of their being amalgamated with the white race. What is true of the races I have mentioned is also true of the Jews.” 72 Crummell’s comment needs to be understood in the context of his pan-­A frican views,73 but the frequent slippage between “race” and “faith” in the American debate about Baron Hirsch’s interview illustrates a broader racialized view of Jews in the United States in the 1890s. In the face of such notions, it also becomes clear just how radical Hirsch’s vision of Jewish “amalgamation” really was. One of Rabbi Gottheil’s charges against the Parisian philanthropist was that he was “too French.” The baron, Gottheil claimed, “knows only the dead and formal and law bound Judaism of France, where State patronage makes the synagogue a State prison for free thought.” Not so in America with its tradition of religious liberty which, to Gottheil, represented the way that the “Jewish question” would inevitably have to be answered: “in the American fashion.” 74 Others, though, took exception to Gottheil’s position and defended Baron Hirsch’s embrace of radical assimilation. A Mr. Frankel, who had previously worked at the Alliance headquarters in Paris and was now a resident of New York, told a reporter for the Herald that Baron Hirsch was right: “The only salvation of the Jews is assimilation. . . . Intelligent and liberal Jews are beginning to see the manifest destiny of our race. The Baron is in advance of his time.” Frankel pointed out that those denouncing Hirsch most loudly were the rabbis, whose “professional or pecuniary advantage”

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meant that they had the most to lose. True leaders, however, could see the writing on the wall: was it not the late Adolphe Crémieux, former minister in the French government and long-­serving president of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, who had shared Hirsch’s belief in assimilation, marrying a Christian wife and raising his children as Christians?75 What was at stake in the polemic that was playing out in the pages of the New York Herald in January 1889 was the negotiation of the limits of acceptable discourse about the place of Jews in modern society. With his declarations concerning Jewish assimilation, Baron Hirsch intervened in this debate. By raising the issue of intermarriage and “fusion” with Christian majority society, Hirsch challenged the basic assumptions of the discourse of religious reform (not to mention religious orthodoxy), and he defied the monopoly of the rabbinic elite (regardless of their place on the spectrum of modern Jewish religious ideologies) to speak on behalf of the Jews. Hirsch’s position thus laid bare the tension in the views of those who sought to distinguish, like Gottheil, between “social” and “religious” assimilation: the illusion that one could set limits to the project of assimilation, that “individual mobility would not conflict with group survival,” as the historian Paula Hyman once put it.76 “Assimilation” is, to be sure, a charged term in Jewish history. “In contemporary parlance,” as David Myers observes, “this word induces panic in Jewish community officials, who point to high intermarriage rates and weakening organizational affiliation as signs of the impending disappearance of the Jews.” Historically, however, as Gerson Cohen argued in an article provocatively entitled “The Blessings of Assimilation in Jewish History,” the consistent absorption of linguistic and cultural norms by Jews from the non-­Jewish environments that they inhabited was the precondition for the very survival, and vitality, of Jewish culture.77 Other historians have warned that “assimilation” is too blunt an analytical term to describe the self-­understanding, the reality of social relations, or the political and religious outlook of even those modern Jews who explicitly embraced “assimilationism” as a goal.78 In the case of Maurice de Hirsch, too, there always remained an unresolved tension between his explicit advocacy for social and even religious “amalgamation” and the reality that neither he nor his wife Clara nor their son Lucien ever took the step of abandoning Judaism and

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converting to Christianity, not to mention Hirsch’s lifelong commitment to Jewish philanthropy. A week after the interview with Baron Hirsch had appeared in the New York Herald, the Brussels-­based L’Indépendence Belge ran a full-­length French translation of the original article, under the headline “A Solution to the Semitic Question.” 79 (As it happens, Baron Hirsch was among the group of investors who had bought the liberal Belgian newspaper five years earlier.)80 The German Orthodox Der Israelit, in turn, learned of the controversy from the Indépendence Belge and dedicated a front-­page lead article to Baron Hirsch’s ruminations on assimilation. “If the news is indeed true, then the beneficence of Mr. von H. would be one of the greatest dangers to Judaism,” Der Israelit wrote, allowing for the possibility that the famous philanthropist’s views had been misrepresented. If true though, Der Israelit concluded, Hirsch’s opinions were scandalous and proved the worst suspicions that Orthodox Jews were harboring against his educational enterprise in Galicia; still, the paper assured its readers, “no one will succeed in bringing about the annihilation of the Jewish nation, neither by fire and sword nor by assimilation.”81 Further east, Ha-­Magid, a maskilic newspaper published in the Prussian city of Lyck by Dov Gordon and supportive of the early Zionist colonization efforts in Palestine,82 dismissed Baron Hirsch’s views as coming from someone who could not claim to speak for the Jewish nation as a whole: “As one of the great and wealthy men of the world it is incumbent upon [Baron Hirsch] to support the poor of his people and to rescue them from misery and to redeem them with his wealth and his riches. Whether his thinking about Judaism in general is warranted or not is all the same to us. . . . In the end, his actions are no doubt valuable and there is no relation or connection between them and his private views regarding the future of his people.”83 The paper thus echoed the position of American rabbis who questioned Baron Hirsch’s standing as a spokesman for his people, instead claiming this role for the proponents of Haskalah. But while Ha-­Magid welcomed the fact that American rabbis had come out forcefully to defend the future of Judaism against the proposed “fusion” with Christianity, it could not resist a polemical aside against the liberal religious leaders and their proclaimed opposition to assimilation. “Until now it was only those writers who write in the holy tongue

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[Hebrew] who have been fighting against the idea of assimilation [hitbolelut], and the European intellectuals laughed at them.” Now, Ha-­Magid felt vindicated as Western Jewish leaders were rejecting Baron Hirsch’s radical ideas. Yet the Hebrew newspaper remained skeptical of the liberal response, and in a surprising twist, its editor concluded: “Is not Baron Hirsch, with all his lack of faith in the eternity of Judaism, better and dearer to us than all those faithful reformers?” After all, Ha-­Magid reminded its readers, it had been those same reformers who had invented the “slogan ‘assimilation’ ” in the first place, whereas Hirsch was working, whatever his motivation, for the good of the Jewish people.84

The discussion about the future of Jews and Judaism played itself out on a transnational stage, with news and views being exchanged between western Europe, North America, and eastern Europe, but it was also shaped by the specific, national contexts of the various participants in this debate. American reformers, Orthodox Jews in Germany, and Zionists in eastern Europe all engaged with Baron Hirsch’s view on assimilation by fitting their response into their own narratives about the place of the Jews at the turn of the century. While agreeing in their rejection of Jews and Christians’ “amalgamation” in Christian society, they each envisioned different paths for the Jewish future. That said, we should not assume that there was unanimous rejection of Hirsch’s vision of Jewish assimilation, or, in fact, a clear fault line that separated “assimilationists” from their detractors. Hirsch’s views were certainly far-­reaching: he did not speak of cultural or linguistic assimilation but of assimilation associated with intermarriage, the weakening of Jewish difference, and the eventual disappearance of the Jews as a distinct minority group. It was a utopian (or, perhaps, dystopian) goal, but it reminds us of the fact that radical assimilation was by no means a phenomenon that occurred only on the margins of Jewish society.85 The tension between Hirsch’s lifelong commitment to assist Jewish causes and his simultaneous desire to see Jews fade into the rest of society may well reveal a deeper, inner ambivalence. He may have been torn between an emotional attachment to his fellow Jews, on the one hand, and what he believed to be a rational analysis of the “Jewish question,” on the other. This tension,

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however, was far from unique. It was echoed, for example, by young Russian-­ Jewish activists like Yonah Berkhin, who declared, in 1880: “I am a Jewish patriot. With all the strength of my soul, I am ready to be of service to the Jews, which means their unification with the Russians, since this is what History demands. But only when I am convinced that Russians do not distinguish between a Russian and a Jew.” Berkhin’s outlook has been described as “conditional nationalism,” “an active responsibility for the well-­being of Jewish society as long as it exists,” a view that can be applied to Baron Hirsch as well.86 If Hirsch eventually turned from education to colonization as a solution to the predicament of the Russian Jews, this did not imply a repudiation of his belief in the desirability of amalgamation. The same was true of the British-­born Israel Zangwill, who famously promoted amalgamation in his play about American immigrant society, The Melting Pot (1908), yet also espoused territorialism, a movement that sought to establish a Jewish homeland and foster a Jewish national renaissance in a territory that did not necessarily have to be Palestine.87 Before turning to Zionism, the movement’s founder, Theodor Herzl, too, had at one point suggested that mass baptism might overcome Jewish exclusion and antisemitism.88 What is more, Herzl never relinquished what he considered to be the “purpose and essence of modern Jewish existence: the integration of Jews into European civilization.”89 The same was true for Hirsch, who continued to share the nineteenth century’s unassailable faith in progress. It was this confidence that allowed him to declare that antisemitism, the target of which he himself had been so frequently, was nothing but “a veritable anachronism” and was bound to “disappear in some years . . . ‘ faute de combattants’ [‘for want of fighters’].”90 What remained unacknowledged, meanwhile, was the degree to which Hirsch and other Jewish leaders of his generation had internalized the anti-­Jewish ideas that were so deeply embedded in the European enlightenment, convinced that Jewish society—­especially “in the Orient”—­was in want of civilization, and that the ultimate fate of Jewish difference was what Immanuel Kant once called the “euthanasia” of Judaism.91

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THE RUSSIAN EXODUS

By late June 1890, Maurice de Hirsch’s vision for establishing mixed Jewish-­Christian schools in Russia had succumbed to fierce opposition from the head of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, Pobedonostsev, dubbed by one historian “the most articulate anti-­Semite in the [Russian] government.”1 Meanwhile, accounts of a renewed wave of anti-­Jewish legislation appeared in the press, raising alarm among Jews across western Europe and America. Newspapers were awash with rumors that the Russian government was about to double down on restrictions imposed on Jewish residence rights in the so-­called May Laws of 1882, which had been spearheaded by then minister of the interior Count Ignatiev—­the former Russian ambassador in Constantinople and Baron Hirsch’s nemesis from the early days of his Ottoman railroad venture—­in the wake of the assassination of Czar Alexander II and the ensuing wave of pogroms.2 In July 1890, the London Times warned that “all Jewish landowners, farmers, and agricultural labourers will . . . be expelled from their village homes, and . . . will be reduced to beggary.” At the same time, artisans and merchants who had been tolerated in cities outside the Pale of Settlement would now also be removed, further restrictions would be imposed on Jews attending secondary schools and universities, and they could no longer be employed in any government job. The result, the Times 195

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noted, would be disastrous, pushing hundreds of thousands into already overcrowded cities, and into poverty. “It is estimated,” the newspaper wrote, “that the total number of persons who will be expelled from their homes under the new law will not be far from one million. The consequent migration and congestion of the starving fugitives in those cities where Jews will still be allowed to dwell will be so dangerous, and possibly so pestilential in its results, that only one object can be contemplated by the instigators of these persecutions—­ namely the total extermination of the four million Jews of Russia.”3 In the view of Western observers, therefore, it appeared that the undeclared goal of the Russian government was nothing short of ridding its empire of most of its Jewish population entirely, with the Times speculating that the object was “to drive all the Jews from the rural districts into the overcrowded towns, there to be decimated either by the diseases resulting from congestion or by the starvation consequent on loss of livelihood. Such a persecution . . . means massacre, not by sword or dagger as of old, but by a slow automatic process of lingering death.” Surely, the Times warned, “civilized Europe” could not remain passive “in the face of events which disgrace an age of civilization.” Western interests, too, were at stake as the Russian persecution was liable to force a new wave of Jewish emigration: “Is the comity of nations to remain silent,” the paper continued, summarizing the widely shared concerns, “when one of its number so maltreats its subjects as not only to shock moral sense, but to inflict on the rest, by the migration of its countless victims, a material injury?”4 It was the specter of mass migration that was foremost on the mind of most western European observers. A little over a week after the Times article appeared, Baron Hirsch’s old friend Oscar Straus, the former US ambassador in Constantinople, informed Hirsch from New York that he had at once contacted the State Department about the dire news concerning the Russian Jews. The American envoy in St. Petersburg had been met with official denials, the authorities disavowing the rumors that renewed restrictions were planned. The British ambassador, however, had “privately” confirmed that such measures were indeed being considered. (In fact, in 1890, Vyacheslav Pleve, the Russian assistant minister of the interior, had circulated a set of proposals for anti-­Jewish measures that would have returned to Ignatiev’s uncompromising approach of the early 1880s: only secondhand evidence of Pleve’s plans has survived, but appar-

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ently he intended that Jews still allowed in villages after 1882 would be gradually removed, separate Jewish quarters would be created in certain cities, and the residence rights of certain groups of Jewish merchants would be revoked.)5 According to Straus, Secretary of State James Blaine had instructed the US ambassadors abroad to push for a concerted diplomatic response to the Russian anti-­Jewish policy.6 Hirsch was glad to learn of the prospect of American protest, noting that “the more publicity is given these matters, the more disapproval is expressed on all sides, the better it is.” Alas, he lamented, political considerations were preventing the French government from taking a similarly principled stance.7 Like the correspondent of the Times, Jewish leaders in Europe and America fretted over the prospect of another wave of Jewish emigration from Russia, “a repetition of the exodus of 1882,” in the words of the American lawyer, publicist, and philanthropist Myer S. Isaacs.8 In 1881–­1882, thousands of Jews had fled the southern Russian province of Volhynia, crossing into the Habsburg Empire. The arrival of large numbers of migrants in the Galician border town of Brody triggered a humanitarian crisis, and rumors about generous support for the refugees by the Paris-­based Alliance only enhanced the “emigration mania.” In June 1882, there were some twelve thousand Russian Jews in Brody, with no place to go as Germany and Austria made it clear that they would not take in the Jewish refugees. By the end of the month, Emmanuel Veneziani, acting on behalf of the Alliance and Baron Hirsch, had drawn up a plan for the evacuation of the refugees, either through “repatriation” to Russia or by assisting their onward migration to North America.9 The crisis following the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881 and the subsequent pogroms had been, in more than one way, a product of the railway age. Pogroms against Jews typically began in an urban center and then spread, wavelike, to the surrounding countryside. “Contemporaries were well aware,” John Klier notes, “that a pogrom wave traveled along means of communication such as highways, rivers and canals, and especially rail lines.”10 At the same time, as historians like Klier or Gur Alroey have also noted, there was not in fact a direct correlation between pogroms and mass migration, and many emigrants actually hailed from parts of the empire that were not touched by the widespread violence. “The real stimulus of Jewish

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outmigration,” Klier argues, “was poverty and economic hardship.”11 Regardless of what motivated the exodus of Russian Jews as the century drew to a close, it was railroads that facilitated the mass migration: from a meager five thousand kilometers in 1866, the size of the Russian railroads would grow to fifty-­three thousand kilometers by the end of the century.12

Rumors about Russia escalating its anti-­Jewish policies in 1890 raised fears in the West that the exodus of the early 1880s would repeat itself. The situation deteriorated when in 1891 the authorities in Moscow began to expel thousands of Jews who had been tolerated in the city because they were officially registered as artisans or first-­g uild merchants.13 For years, the city’s police had been issuing residence permits to many individuals who did not actually meet those criteria, with many an accountant, journalist, or small-­ time trader listed as artisans. Authorities also turned a blind eye on others who had no permit at all. Many owed their residence to officially being in the service of some wealthy Jewish family: the Jewish banker and railroad entrepreneur Lazar Poliakov employed, on paper, some one hundred cooks and as many coachmen and maids.14 When Prince Vladimir Dolgorukov, the governor-­general on whose watch the Jewish presence in Moscow had thus been allowed to grow (he once opened the official winter ball with Rozaliia Poliakova, Lazar Poliakov’s wife),15 was removed from office in 1891, his successor, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, implemented a crackdown on Jews who were deemed to reside in the city illegally. Those without a permit had to leave immediately, others, when their current papers expired. In January 1892, Jews were still being dragged from their homes in Moscow and dispatched out of the city on icy, unheated trains.16 The renewed anti-­Jewish measures and stream of Jewish emigrants out of Russia drew widespread condemnation in the West. The American journalist Harold Frederic published an impassioned, book-­length account entitled The New Exodus: A Study of Israel in Russia,17 and Jewish leaders across Europe feared being overwhelmed by an uncontrollable flow of Russian Jewish refugees. In the summer of 1891, trains arrived almost daily at the Charlottenburg station west of Berlin, carrying thousands of poor Russian Jews, rescue committees once again springing into action as they had in

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1881 and 1882. Even the ultraconservative and antisemitic Prussian Kreuz-­ Zeitung criticized the Russian state for treating “the poor Jew . . . , in the truest sense of the word, like cattle, and no nobly thinking person can accept that—­even less so a Christian.”18 The reason for such a critique of Russian anti-­Jewish measures from unexpected quarters was, of course, their inevitable consequence of rising Jewish emigration to western Europe. In the view of the antisemitic Austrian newspaper Deutsches Volksblatt, “even if we had not written antisemitism on our flag . . . we would be obliged to raise the alarm about the immigration of the Jews who were expelled from Russia. The infiltration of so many foreign elements presents not only an economic, but also a sanitary danger for the indigenous population.”19 Openly antisemitic papers were not alone in this assessment: a correspondent for the London Times spoke of “the plague of the invasion which is spreading throughout the world, which is increasing every day, and which can bring only economic embarrassment and dangers both hygienic and social,” and warned of “the continual dispersion of the Jews, whom the sternness of Russia expels from its soil.” The article noted with alarm that the immigrants “have established themselves almost autonomously, and are fast increasing,” and their presence in the British capital was “step by step becoming menacing, because its interests are absolutely removed from those of the rest of London.” An “entire population of dealers, as disgusting as the goods they sell,” was becoming a “permanent focus whence issue pestiferous germs that pervade the metropolis.” Therefore, the Times reported approvingly, Baron Hirsch had begun to develop a philanthropic scheme designed to manage the mass migration of the Russian Jews and direct it overseas, “to protect Europe against the untoward economic consequences of these barbarous customs.”20 In fact, one might argue that Jewish philanthropists sprang into action less to combat persistent anti-­Judaism in Russia than to assuage anti-­immigrant, nativist antisemitism in the West. In retrospect, the crisis of 1891 no longer appears as the major turning, or tipping, point as it seemed to contemporaries, and hardly features prominently in accounts of Russian Jewish history: by 1891, Pleve’s proposals were quietly shelved and never even reached the State Council in St. Petersburg. 21 What appears as a major crisis at a particular juncture in history may well not be seen as such by subsequent historians. The sense of crisis at the time,

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however, was real and shaped both thinking and actions of Jewish and gentile observers alike.22 If the Times had already speculated back in the summer of 1890 that the true goal behind the new anti-­Jewish measures was nothing less than the “extermination” of Russian Jewry, the expulsion of the Jews from Moscow encouraged ever more pessimistic assessments of the situation. In an interview with the same newspaper, Hirsch admitted, in May 1891, that the Russian Jews had “an incontestable right to the soil on which they live,” but added: “all this is a matter of pure theory.” In his view, a wholesale expulsion of the Jews from the empire was “an accomplished fact,” though “the needlessly cruel manner in which it has been carried out is a dishonor to the age in which we live.” Mass emigration, therefore, was an inevitable outcome, and it was incumbent upon Jewish philanthropists to assist in the evacuation of the Jews.23 Where, however, would they go?

The prime destination for the massive European emigration across the Atlantic in the second half of the nineteenth century was the United States: the country received more than 260,000 immigrants each year in the 1850s, and about one million at the height of the movement, in 1911, when Jews represented over 10 percent of all immigrants.24 Of the 2.5 million Jews who left eastern Europe in the decades between the 1880s and the First World War, the vast majority—­an estimated 85 percent—­made their way to the United States.25 Already in late 1887, Baron Hirsch indicated his interest in making a major donation to support Russian Jewish immigrants in the United States. Michael Heilprin, a Jewish scholar who was a regular contributor to the progressive magazine The Nation, and who had been active in relief work for Russian Jewish refugees in the early 1880s, expressed his admiration for Baron Hirsch’s “noble enthusiasm” that had “inspired the grandest act of benevolence recorded in the annals of history.” His response to Hirsch’s offer was nonetheless cautious. Heilprin noted that, even though the United States was large enough to in theory accommodate millions of Jewish immigrants, “the already established Jews revolt at the thought of such a consummation” and even “the most philanthropic and enlightened observer must desire that the influx of Jews from Europe be moderated instead of accelerated.” The new arrivals were “not greeted with open-­handed

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sympathy by those who preceded them,” Heilprin warned, “but looked upon with more or less admission, as intruders,” endangering the comfortable position that earlier Jewish immigrants had created for themselves.26 The reluctance of the American-­Jewish establishment to embrace the Russian Jewish immigrants was understandable, Heilprin suggested, considering that they “[brought] along a load of ignorance, uncouth habits, and crude notions.” Jewish charity, much admired as it was, had only made things worse by fostering, among its beneficiaries, “a habit of relying on individuals and congregational institutions, and in proportion weakened the instincts of manliness, self-­reliance, and honor.” Hirsch’s philanthropy would thus be better employed, not by disbursing ad-­hoc assistance to poor arrivals, but by instead directing its efforts to provide immigrants with “means for enlarging the scope of honorable efforts and the field of manly energy,” in particular, manual labor and agriculture.27 In his reply, Hirsch professed that he was in full agreement with Heilprin’s assessment and echoed the conviction that “the true help for our coreligionists who have emigrated to America lies in the field of practical labor, labor with their hand, to which they must be directed, despite the Jewish man’s revulsion against all professions that require his physical strength, rather than his alleged intellectual superiority.”28 Hirsch, Heilprin, and other Jewish philanthropists had thus fully taken on board the contemporary image of Jews as lacking proper “manliness,” as being in want of proper “masculine” traits of courage, self-­sufficiency, and physical health.29 Heilprin did not live to see Baron Hirsch’s involvement in North America come to fruition—­he died in May 1888. Instead, Hirsch reached out, this time through the mediation of Isidore Loeb, secretary of the Alliance Israélite, to two other prominent American Jewish businessmen and philanthropists, Moses Dropsie of Philadelphia and Myer Isaacs of New York.30 The proposals that Isaacs and Dropsie drew up in response to Baron Hirsch’s initiative illustrated a larger division in the thinking about philanthropy and its place in a modern, capitalist society: should assistance proceed according to a clearly thought-­out plan, led by the guiding hand of the philanthropist, or should philanthropy instead empower individual agency, guided by the invisible hand of the market? Myer Isaacs, for one, reiterated Heilprin’s concern that assistance to immigrants would encourage further “indiscriminate

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emigration from European Ports” and he worried that “European Committees would shift the burden of their poor, paying their passage to America.” Instead, Isaacs suggested, potential immigrants should be carefully selected for their “aptitude for labor or special skill,” and the money provided by Baron Hirsch should be employed to settle those targeted immigrants in colonies divided into ten-­acre lots per family. Each colony would contain workshops in which the settlers would be trained in various trades, and they would receive loans, secured by their mortgaged homes or land, to allow them to build a business.31 Dropsie considered Isaacs’s approach to be “so unsatisfactory” as to warrant a counterproposal. He, too, insisted that the “merely charitable aid to those immigrants who remain in the sea-­boarded cities should be limited to a very short period after their arrival,” but he objected to “the vulgar idea . . . that the mass of them are indolent or unworthy.” To the contrary, Dropsie claimed, most Russian Jewish immigrants were industrious and quite capable of making a living on their own, and support from Baron Hirsch’s endowment would be best utilized to provide start-­up funding for individual migrants. This should include small loans, apprenticeships, support for learning English, and help to establish a business or a farm, all within the first year of their arrival to avoid creating dependency. “My inclinations are towards the granting of help to individuals as such,” Dropsie explained, and he worried that Myer Isaacs’s idea of creating Jewish colonies, subsidized by the Hirsch endowment, would violate the American sensibilities about the separation of church and state. Americans, he argued, “recognize that aid to the poor is a legitimate exercise of religious feeling and a proper performance of moral duty.” In contrast, “aid which takes a secular form, such as the organization of a mercantile or agricultural enterprise on a considerable scale, would inevitably tend to raise a popular prejudice against the Jewish Church [sic].”32 Yet, in Dropsie’s mind, there was an even more important objection to the idea of establishing immigrant colonies. Such colonies, he maintained, were based on the premise that immigrants “who settle upon land as farmers” would do so “according to a preconceived charitable plan of a directing mind, to which the individual colonists conform.” The problem was that in such cases, “there will always be found a large proportion of individuals ut-

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terly unfitted for the work, but who are attracted thereto by vague hopes of ease and plenty to be obtained without corresponding labor.” Instead, he insisted, one should provide support for those “persons entering upon a useful basis in the natural way and according to their individual capacities,” and he argued that to “insure mercantile success there must be free competition.” Any centrally directed colonization effort would inevitably lead to the waste of precious resources and was bound to fail in its objective.33 A similar disagreement about the merits of relying on a preconceived plan and the guiding hand of the philanthropist came to the fore in other contemporary discussions about how best to deal with the stream of emigrants from the Russian Empire. For Bernhard Traubenberg, writing in the German Jewish Der Israelit, the “wild, surging billows” of Jewish immigration to North America were bound to prove disastrous for Russian Jews, who were suddenly uprooted from their native soil and their communities, liable to “lose their connection with the past, with tradition, and with their Jewish nationality [Volkstum].” Traubenberg praised in contrast the methodical colonization project that Baron Hirsch would soon pursue in Argentina—­the topic of the next chapter. “Here,” the author noted, “there is plan and pre-­calculation.” Unlike the uncoordinated rush to the ports of North America, in Baron Hirsch’s approach to managing migration, one could detect an “organizing, guiding, carefully managing hand,” leading Jewish immigrants in Argentina to agricultural labor, rather than to proletarianization in the sweatshops and factories of North America.34 The opposite view was taken by Rabbi Isaac Rülf, from Memel in East Prussia, who argued (in the pages of the same newspaper) that it was incumbent on European philanthropists “to support the emigrants, not emigration.” In his view, the entire premise of the guiding hand that would manage migration according to a preconceived plan was flawed. Migration happened through the creation of a chain effect, the first migrants drawing members of their families and communities after them. Thus, there was no need for—­indeed, no rational basis on which to justify—­the management of migration flows and, instead, philanthropists would do well to focus their attention on assisting individual migrants, not creating all-­comprehensive plans that would inevitably fail in their encounter with reality.35 Unlike Dropsie and Rülf, Baron Hirsch fully embraced the notion that philanthropy should follow a clearly designed and closely supervised plan.

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While the Baron de Hirsch Fund, formally incorporated in New York City in February 1891,36 would support the kinds of initiatives that Dropsie had laid out—­the Baron de Hirsch Trade School in New York, English language classes, legal aid for immigrants, and so on—­it also invested in agricultural colonization from the outset. For this purpose $240,000 were assigned, with the Woodbine Colony established in New Jersey as one of the first projects that the fund took on. Starting out with fifty colonists in 1891, the colony had a population of some twenty-­five hundred by the turn of the century and hosted, after 1894, the newly established Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School. Echoing the problems that emerged in Baron Hirsch’s Argentinian colonies, the settlers, who were supposed to be self-­sustaining after the first year, ceased to make their loan payments in 1893 and denounced the colony’s administrator, Hirsch Loeb Sabsovich, as “ruling Woodbine like the Czar of Russia.” In the end, the problems in Woodbine appeared to vindicate the early critics of colonization, like Dropsie, and the Hirsch Fund subsequently focused on assisting individual immigrant farmers throughout the country.37

Myer Isaacs, who became the first president of the Baron de Hirsch Fund in New York, had insisted from the beginning that the work of the organization “must be understood as in nowise intended to promote, stimulate or assist emigration to the United States” and warned that “[assisting] emigration into the United States is opposed by law and antagonistic to public sentiment.”38 This anxiety over the Russian Jewish migration crisis was also palpable at a conference of Jewish delegates convened in Berlin in October 1891. The American delegate, identified as “Dr. Goldmann” from New York (presumably Julius Goldman, of the Goldman-­Sachs family), informed his European counterparts about growing nativist sentiment in the United States. “It is not as if America no longer signified free asylum in the mind of liberal men,” he explained in a somewhat elitist fashion, “but in a republic, the best elements do not always have the most votes, and one must take into consideration the demagogues and the masses.” American public opinion made no distinction between German, Russian, or French Jews—­they were simply Jews, and the lamentable state of the Russian Jewish immigrants was having a detrimental effect on the standing of American Jewry in general.

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With considerable hyperbole, Goldman insisted that there was a danger of “creating a new Russia in America” and the Jewish immigrant ghetto of the Lower East Side in Manhattan could turn into a “second Pale of Settlement.” American Jews would not stand idly by as poor and destitute immigrants arrived on the shores of their country, “and until the principles of nationality are not replaced by those of humanity, we cannot ignore our duties as American citizens toward the common good” of the United States.39 Opening the Berlin conference on October 20, the president of the Berlin Jewish community, Siegmund Meyer, laid out the divisions about the best way to tackle the latest surge in Russian Jewish mass emigration. Baron Hirsch, he noted, had concluded that the Russian government was set on expelling all its Jews and had therefore developed a plan that would lead to the evacuation of millions of Russian Jews over a twenty-­five-­year period. A contrarian view held that it was irresponsible to uproot the Russian Jews from the country in which they had been born, and that instead of emigration, pushing for emancipation and assimilation in Russia was still the best solution. But even if one accepted that liberation through emigration was to be the goal, it remained an open question whether “it is really in step with the entire development of world history to concentrate a large number of Russian Jews in one place and artificially create a new Jewish commonwealth [ein neues Judenreich].” Finally, Meyer warned, the discussion about the fate of the Russian Jews was being derailed by the division between liberal and Orthodox interests—­identifying the latter with the push for a Jewish return to Palestine, which was gaining ground since the crisis of 1881–­1882 and the rise of the Hibbat Zion movement.40 Baron Hirsch found himself right in the middle of all these debates: How to assess the fate of Russian Jews? Was the government bent on expulsion, or was there still a future inside the empire? Should the Russian Jews be evacuated through a carefully planned philanthropic scheme, or was it better to provide individuals with assistance but otherwise accept the natural flow of migration and the forces of an increasingly global labor market? Was it best to disperse the immigrants to avoid a backlash, or should one seek to direct them to a particular place? If so, what should be the role of Palestine, the ancient Jewish homeland, within the broader context of Jewish migration? For Hirsch, as for a growing number of publicists, political activists, and philan-

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thropists, when the prospect of a renewed Russian Jewish exodus forced the issue in 1891, the answer to these questions was to pursue Jewish colonization projects overseas, but not necessarily in Palestine. COLONIZATION FEVER

When the Times first reported, in July 1890, on the restrictions to be imposed on the Russian Jews, Jewish organizations and philanthropists were not the only ones to consider colonization overseas as a possible solution. The very day that the article appeared, John Lister Kaye, third baronet of Grange, sat down in his study at St. George’s Place in London to pen a letter to Baron Hirsch with a proposal: “I have read in the ‘Times’ today an account of the new edict of the Russian Government that in future Jews cannot own, hold or occupy land in Russia or Poland.” He continued: “I notice that it is calculated that this edict will render homeless quite one million Jews in Russia and Poland of the agricultural classes. I hope that you will not object to my laying before you plans by which 1440 families can be in the opening of 1891, settled on completely equipped farms in the Canadian North West. . . . I am willing to undertake the management of this enterprise and to arrange for the safe conduct of the families from Russia to Canada, if you approve of my plans.”41 We do not know how Baron Hirsch responded to Kaye’s idea. (Much of the JCA’s activities in Canada postdated the baron’s life, though Hirsch provided donations to the Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society in Montréal in 1891, and for an agricultural colony in Saskatchewan in 1892.)42 However, what John Lister Kaye’s proposal had in common with most other colonization schemes that were floated at the time to provide a refuge for the Russian Jews was its focus on agricultural settlement. In his own analysis of the modern Jewish predicament, Baron Hirsch observed how “the progress of the Jewish race as a whole has been altogether remarkable in the past forty or fifty years.” However, it had been precisely their success in the wake of emancipation that had triggered the rise of the antisemitic movement. Within the discourse of antisemitism, as Hirsch noted, one of the most common accusations was that Jews were “not capable of anything but commerce and finance, and they do not want to dedicate themselves to working the soil like the rest of their fellow citizens.”

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The reason for this economic imbalance, which Hirsch did not dispute and which he agreed was problematic, was, however, the centuries-­long exclusion of Jews from owning land, not a natural disinclination against agricultural labor. In fact, he argued, agricultural colonies that had already been established in the Americas indicated that Jews were just as capable as anyone of working the land and gaining their living through farming.43 The focus on agriculture as a benchmark of Jewish respectability built on the well-­established physiocratic discourse of the Enlightenment that tied the idea of emancipating the Jews to realizing their “moral regeneration” through manual labor and, in particular, agriculture.44 Hirsch was right, of course, that the overrepresentation of Jews in commerce, finance, and the professions—­real or imagined—­was a central element of the modern antisemitic discourse, and that the alleged reluctance to engage in agriculture was tied to the perception of Jewish rootlessness, alienating them from what romantic nationalists considered as the true “folk,” peasant society, as the repository of an unadulterated national spirit. Hirsch’s own focus on agricultural labor might appear quaint for a businessman who had made his fortune in building railroads, the very symbol of nineteenth-­century industrialization. It is also true, however, that agriculture remained the dominant sector in all European countries (with the notable exception of Great Britain) and that landownership continued to be a sign of social standing and political power into the early twentieth century.45 Kaye’s unsolicited proposal for a Jewish colony in Canada was only one of many such plans that reached Hirsch’s desk. In January 1890, the secretary of the Alliance committee in Paris forwarded two other projects for agricultural colonization to Hirsch, one suggesting settling Russian Jews in Argentina, the other creating colonies in the Ottoman province of Smyrna, in Asia Minor. The Alliance itself would not endorse either and it remained opposed to the idea of encouraging Jewish emigration out of Russia. The proposal for a large-­scale colonization scheme in Argentina to accommodate Russian Jewish migrants, submitted by one Wilhelm Löwenthal, was characterized as plainly “unrealizable.”46 Baron Hirsch, writing from a vacation in Thetford, England, was less dismissive. He liked the ambitious scope of Löwenthal’s proposal, indicating that “I am, in principle, more inclined toward a big project, and if I resolve at some point to give away a

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very ­substantial amount, then I would insist to create something durable.” Hirsch asked to meet with Löwenthal upon the latter’s return from Argentina, noting that he was by no means opposed to the idea of “establishing large colonies in a country like the Argentine Republic, which would serve, for the near future, as a home for those of our coreligionists who must look for a refuge in distant parts of the world.”47 Thus, the seed was planted for what would, before long, become Baron Hirsch’s most ambitious philanthropic scheme of all, the mass settlement of Russian Jews in agricultural colonies in Argentina. The idea to create agricultural colonies in Smyrna province, in turn, was suggested by Shemtob Pariente, the director of Smyrna’s Alliance school.48 Hirsch considered Pariente’s proposal to be useful locally, but he believed that it would be colonization on too small a scale to help address the predicament of Russian Jewish emigration. He also objected, “on principle,” to purchasing land for colonization purposes anywhere in the Ottoman Empire, where the authorities were bound to subject the colonists to endless “chicaneries and difficulties.” More importantly, Hirsch was convinced that “the Jews in that country will sooner or later be once again under Russian rule. The fate of Turkish Asia leaves no doubt about that.”49 When a delegation of the Russian Hibbat Zion movement approached him in 1891, Hirsch responded with similar objections. The Zionist activists would do well to realize that “religious memories and ancient traditions” were a feeble ground on which to build a large-­scale colonization enterprise that needed to be able to accommodate hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Agriculture in the Ottoman Empire, Hirsch cautioned, was nowhere profitable, and Ottoman officials would exploit the colonists wherever they could. As in his response to Pariente, he reiterated his conviction that the Ottomans were likely to be defeated by the Russians in the not-­too-­distant future, thus bringing those Russian Jews once again under the very government that they were trying to escape.50 Hirsch was not the only one to harbor those fears; an article in the London Times likewise suggested that settling Russian Jews in Palestine might well “turn out to be a case of jumping out of the frying pan into the fire,” in the event of Russia’s taking control over Palestine and its Christian holy places.51 The question of Palestine loomed large in debates over Jewish colonization in the early 1890s. Jews had, of course, for centuries preserved the

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notion that their current condition was one of exile, and that they would be restored to their ancient homeland in messianic times. But the idea of actively fostering a collective return, in the historical present, was a modern phenomenon that only appeared around the middle of the nineteenth century. Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai in Bosnia, for example, advocated a Jewish national revival and a mass return to Palestine, developing his ideas within the traditional messianic imaginary but also explicitly invoking the model of contemporary nationalist movements in the Balkans. In 1860, an association to promote Jewish colonization in Palestine (known in Hebrew as Hevrat Yishuv Eretz Yisrael, and in German as Colonisationsverein für Palästina), was established in Frankfurt an der Oder, led by Haim Luria and involving Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer. Like Alkalai, Kalischer was very much aware of European nationalism but advocated for a Jewish return to the Holy Land from within a religious framework. In 1836, he had suggested to Baron Rothschild in Frankfurt am Main to purchase the site of the former Jewish temple in Jerusalem.52 The pogroms in the Pale of Settlement in 1881–­1882 set in motion the rise of a new, and increasingly secular, quest to reclaim Palestine as a site for Jewish settlement. In the course of the 1880s, societies affiliated with the Hibbat Zion (or “love of Zion”) movement sprang up around the Pale of Settlement,53 and in 1882, a group of young Jews (known as the Bilu) from Kharkov decided to establish an agricultural colony in Palestine. (A similar initiative, seeking to create agricultural colonies in North America, had sprung up in Odessa in 1881, initiated by a movement that called itself Am Oylom.)54 As early as 1870, the Alliance Israélite had established an agricultural school southeast of Jaffa, and, from 1883, Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Paris began to support agricultural settlements in Palestine (though, to be sure, neither the Alliance nor Rothschild saw this project in Zionist or political terms). Altogether, there were “two wavelets of immigration,” as the historian Derek Penslar has called them, that brought some thirty thousand eastern European Jews to Palestine in 1882–­1884 and in 1890–­1891.55 Historians have often conflated the idea of (agricultural) settlement in Palestine and Jewish nationalism—­both elements could be merged, of course, as they were in the later Zionist movement. But colonization in Palestine and Jewish nationalism were two separate developments of the n ­ ineteenth

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century and did not necessarily overlap. Reimagining the Jews as a “nation,” in the modern sense of the word—­most importantly, in Leon Pinsker’s Auto-­ Emanzipation (1882)—­did not necessarily tie the political future of the Jews to a return to Palestine. Jewish nationalism could very well mean a quest for political and cultural autonomy within the context of an existing empire, in the diaspora, and not necessarily the creation of a national homeland, much less a nation-­state, in Palestine. On the other hand, Palestine could be a destination for Jewish immigration and colonization, alongside other countries, but without the pursuit of a nation-­building agenda. While the Holy Land inevitably had a particular historical or religious resonance for the Jewish settlers, they did not necessarily seek to create a separate political entity and might well pursue their colonization enterprise under the umbrella of Ottoman rule. This was obviously true for Rothschild’s involvement with the Palestinian colonies, but even Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism and author of the Jewish State (1896), did not pursue the idea of a separate Jewish “nation-­state” as single-­mindedly as the retrodictive teleology of the Zionist historical imagination would have it.56 Baron Hirsch, for his part, delegated his longtime confidant, Emmanuel Veneziani, to inspect the colonies established by Russian and Romanian Jews in Palestine, in particular the colony of Samarin, created by immigrants from Romania in 1882 (and later taken over by Rothschild and renamed Zichron Yaakov).57 Veneziani’s report was far from encouraging. A group of Jewish immigrants that he encountered in Haifa appeared “unhappy, miserably lodged, destitute of everything, wanting bread, stricken down by fever, sufferings and privations.” In Samarin, things looked better. “The men,” Veneziani found, “are robust and appear to be active. . . . I saw neither dirt, vermin, fevers, nor traces of privation and hunger,” and, overall, the settlers were “filled with good will, patient and resigned, and capable of the greatest efforts, provided that they are honestly and intelligently directed by a paternal and firm hand.” Nevertheless, Veneziani cautioned, “the success of the Colony appears to me to be very remote and problematical.”58 It is therefore not surprising that Hirsch decided against supporting the settlement effort in Palestine. In 1891 he suggested that the “negative outcomes” of the settlements, funded by Edmond de Rothschild to the tune of “several million francs . . . without any results,” were proof enough that colonization in Ottoman Palestine was not viable.59

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Meanwhile, at the conference on the management of Russian Jewish emigration convened in Berlin in October 1891, delegates heard a report from the chair of the “colonization committee,” the Galician-­Austrian writer Karl Emil Franzos, whom we encountered earlier.60 The committee had taken a little over a month to go through potential locations for Jewish colonization around the globe—­as one critic remarked, many families took longer to decide where to go on their summer vacation61—­and had discarded, one after another and for various reasons, places in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Palestine had generated a heated discussion, and the committee had decided that it was beyond its purview as the question was really one of “Weltanschauung”—­an ideological question more than a practical one that could not be evaluated, as the rest of the territories around the world apparently could, in purely “scientific” and “objective” terms. Another delegate, Hirsch Hildesheimer, a prominent representative of German Jewish Orthodoxy and a member of the Ezra Society in Berlin, affiliated with the Hibbat Zion movement, objected to the committee’s cavalier dismissal of Palestine, insisting that it should be considered at least as an option, besides the United States or Argentina. In the end, the conference adopted a compromise proposed by Isidore Loeb of the Alliance, and amended by the Berlin professor Moritz Lazarus, according to which 30,000 francs collected by the German refugee relief committees was to fund “preliminary studies” for colonization in Syria and Palestine.62

In May 1891, in a statement to the Reuters news agency, Baron Hirsch declared that the forced departure of the Jews from the Russian Empire was now inevitable, and that the main task of Jewish leaders around the world was to ensure that the evacuation would be done “in a humane, gradual, and moderate manner.” He added, provocatively, that the prospect of expulsion did not appear to him as “altogether a misfortune for the Russian Jews,” because it provided the opportunity to tackle the “Jewish question” more broadly.63 Thus Baron Hirsch’s most ambitious, most far-­reaching, and most generously funded philanthropic scheme was born: the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) with an initial capital of 50 million francs, or 2 million pounds sterling, formally incorporated in London in 1891. (This was subsequently topped off by another donation in 1892, the value of which Gustav Held, Hirsch’s close associate, estimated at 7.2 million pounds sterling.)64

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The charter of the new organization declared that its primary purpose was “to assist and promote the emigration of Jews from any parts of Europe or Asia in which they may for the time being be subjected to any special laws or political or other disabilities to any other parts of the world and to form and establish colonies in various parts of North and South America and other countries for agricultural commercial and other purposes.”65 In a subsequent memorandum in preparation for a gathering that he hoped would bring together the major Jewish leaders from around the world in London, Baron Hirsch acknowledged that the potential relocation of millions of people presented a serious dilemma.66 On the one hand, dispersing the Jewish migrants throughout the world was liable to reinforce their vulnerability and sense of inferiority. On the other hand, directing them toward any particular country risked a backlash against the massive influx of new immigrants. What to do? Hirsch suggested that there was indeed a possible answer, “though it might appear fantastic at first sight”: I am speaking of the purchase of an entire country, which meets all desirable conditions and where the colonists would become the uncontested owners. Concentrating there those who are forced to emigrate—­ and I am only talking about those who meet this condition—­one would not have to worry about the sensitivities of the original inhabitants, nor about the inferiority of the new ones. Does such a country exist? Is such an acquisition possible? In what form could one make it happen? Could one perhaps form a society like the old East India Company?67

The Jewish Chronicle drew a similar comparison when it explained to its readers that Baron Hirsch’s plans were “conceived in as business-­like a spirit as the project, for example, which called the Chartered Company of South Africa into existence.”68 As the invocations of the East India and the British South Africa Company suggest, European colonialism loomed large over this chapter in the story of nineteenth-­century Jewish philanthropy. Nobody took up Henry Morton Stanley’s recommendation, reported in the Birmingham Daily Gazette, for a Jewish colonization project in central Africa where, as he assured the interviewer, a land awaited the Russian Jews that was “rich in bananas . . . and diamonds” and where there were “simply natives waiting and anxious

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to be exploited.”69 But if that was an extreme example, the underlying mindset—­that colonization oversees could serve as an answer to the “Jewish question,” just as it might alleviate Europe’s “social question”—­was shared by many. Thus politicians in several European countries—­the Habsburg Empire, Germany, and Italy—­responded to anxieties about the impact of emigration at home, and the fate of migrants abroad, by reimagining emigration as colonization. The Austro-­Hungarian Colonial Society, founded in 1894, for instance, pursued the goal of fostering the creation of autonomous settler “colonies” in existing states abroad, and Italian nationalists linked the protection of Italians abroad to their own imperial ambitions.70 The Jewish case and the questions it raised were different, of course, in that Jews had no government to rely on, and no European nation-­state would ever see Jewish migrants as an instrument for its own empire building. The offices of Baron Hirsch were inundated with a myriad of plans, offering more or less detailed analyses of the climatic, political, and economic conditions for settlement in various parts of the world. One such proposal suggested the creation of Jewish colonies in Mozambique where, the cover letter explained, the colonial power, Portugal, was “ceding property to private societies, following the model, it is said, of the old East India Company, with the government giving up all rights other than the administration of justice.” 71 Further suggestions included land in Tunisia, territories along the eastern coast of Africa, Griqualand in southern Africa, Cyprus, and “Syria” (in particular, areas in the Galilee—­today Israel—­and the Beqaa valley—­ today Lebanon).72 Yet others decided to take things into their own hands and create their own colonization schemes for Russian Jews, as did one Paul Friedmann who, in 1891, spent his life savings on an ill-­fated settlement project on the coast of the Red Sea south of Aqaba, in what is today Saudi Arabia. The expedition ultimately ended in disaster when one of the colonists, whom Friedmann had expelled from the staging camp on the Sinai because of insubordination, died in the desert. At that point, a third of his small group of Russian Jewish colonists decided to return to Europe. When asked about what had inspired his unlikely project to create a “Jewish state” (“Judenstaat”—­the same term Herzl would use a few years later) in Arabia, Friedmann proclaimed: “I desired to be a small Hirsch.” 73 Many of the plans focused on the republics of Central and South America, including Honduras, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. Quite a few letters were

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exchanged, meanwhile, regarding a possible colonization project in Mexico. Meyer Isaacs, Jesse Seligman, and Julius Goldman, of the Baron de Hirsch Fund in New York, informed the Alliance in Paris that “many propositions from private parties have been received for the sale of lands in Mexico, but it is thought more desirable to treat directly with the Government of Mexico and thereby receive such sanction and protection as they may feel called upon to concede.” 74 The Mexican ambassador in Washington, Mathias Romero, promptly obliged by assuring the Central Committee of the Baron de Hirsch Fund that, as far as his government was concerned, “there will be no objection whatever to the emigration of persons professing the Jewish creed.” Mexico was “desirous of encouraging immigration of permanent working and useful settlers, who may contribute to the progress and welfare of the country.” In fact, Romero noted, “some Asiatic colonists, whose religious ideas differ more widely than the Jewish, from those entertained by the majority of Mexicans” had met “no opposition on account of their religious creeds.” 75 Ernest Cassel, the London-­based banker, who was of German-­ Jewish origin, likewise lobbied his old friend, Maurice de Hirsch, for the Mexican option. “The finances of the country are in good order and President [Porfirio] Diaz is a reasonable, talented man who is very interested in fostering a good immigration to his country.” 76 Another of Hirsch’s associates, Jacob Schiff—­also a German-­Jewish banker now based in New York—­ pointed out that members of the Mormon community had long studied the question of where to establish new settlements, “and that this community of farmers should have finally decided on Mexico is certainly an argument in favor of the possibilities that this country must be offering to any colonist.” 77 Baron Hirsch, however, remained noncommittal. By the fall of 1891, he had already decided that the initial focus of his grand colonization scheme for Russian emigration was going to be Argentina. He had fully taken on board the proposals first formulated by Wilhelm Löwenthal in December 1889.78 BARON HIRSCH AND ARNOLD WHITE

In 1889, Maurice de Hirsch met with the English publicist Arnold White at the newly opened Albemarle Hotel, on Piccadilly. White was worried that the baron would consider him nothing but “a crank,” and, consider-

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ing White’s notorious anti-­immigrant and antisemitic rantings, “crank” was probably putting it mildly. But much to his surprise, Hirsch seemed to have taken to this former coffee planter in Ceylon turned political agitator, author of a book denouncing the evils of poverty and (Jewish) immigration to London’s East End, The Problems of a Great City, published in 1886. As a matter of fact, Hirsch invited White to visit him in Paris to continue their conversation, which had revolved around the question of Jewish emigration and the possibilities of diverting the stream overseas.79 Hirsch and White certainly made for an odd couple, especially when one considers White’s ruminations on the “Jewish question,” to which he dedicated his book The Modern Jew, which appeared in 1899. While professing his friendship for Baron Hirsch and his own involvement with Hirsch’s philanthropic work, White opened the book by observing that there was “one subject of common interest to the nations of Christendom”: the “waxing power of the Jewish race, their aloofness from the nations among whom they dwell, and the waning patience of the people among whom they settle.” As far as Britain was concerned, Jewish immigration posed a grave threat as “each immigrant foreign Jew settling in this country joins, not the English community as the Huguenots and Hollander refugees from the Roman Catholic persecutions of the seventeenth century joined us, but a community proudly separate, racially distinct, and existing preferentially aloof.” His conclusion was chilling, arguing that there were “two methods, and only two, in which the evil results of a Jewish imperium inside the English Empire can be obviated.” It could either “be destroyed and its members expelled as was done in the thirteenth century in most countries in Europe,” or the Jewish community “must review their conduct and heartily work for instead of against the process of absorption.”80 Hirsch decided to employ White as his envoy to negotiate with the Russian government the terms of an evacuation plan that was forming in his mind.81 Ironically, the most immediate problem that Hirsch was facing in pursuit of his large-­scale colonization plan was that, while it appeared that Russia was determined to drive out its Jews, emigration out of the Russian Empire was illegal. Whereas in Austria, for instance, emigration was a basic right according to the constitution of 1867, Russia’s persistent opposition toward emigration set it apart from other countries.82 The various restric-

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tions on emigration, moreover, were used by the Russian authorities in the service of population politics, typically allowing the emigration of national or religious minorities only if they forfeited their citizenship and the right to ever return to Russia. This had been the case with the Crimean Tatars at the time of Catherine the Great and after the Crimean War in 1855, and also with German colonists. The same principle applied to Jews, who were 184 times more likely to emigrate than ethnic Russians, with the latter representing less than 4 percent of the overall number of emigrants.83 In practice, though, it proved almost impossible to enforce these policies; most emigration occurred illegally, and a report from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1891 admitted that it was impossible to verify the legal status of returnees.84 A massive emigration scheme such as the one envisioned by Baron Hirsch, however, could not simply circumvent official policy. What is more, it was predicated on a careful preselection of potential colonists by committees to be set up across the Russian Empire, and thus a formal agreement with the government in St. Petersburg was imperative. White was, therefore, commissioned by Baron Hirsch to offer an evaluation of the potential aptitude of Russian Jews for agriculture—­his conclusion was unambiguously affirmative—­and to negotiate a deal that would allow the formation of local colonization committees and create a mutually agreed upon procedure to facilitate the orderly departure of the emigrants. Hirsch informed White that in his view, and despite all the official protestations to the contrary, “the systematic persecutions of this recent period have, in fact, a deeper significance, that we are not simply dealing with a simple measure of local police, carried out on a lesser or larger scale and with more or less violence, and that in reality one is now seeking to bring the entire Jewish population to leave the empire by rendering their existence in Russia intolerable.” In Hirsch’s estimation, Russian anti-­Jewish measures were based “on certain political, economic and religious principles.” No lobbying or diplomatic agitation was going to change the government’s attitude; the task left to philanthropic intervention was, essentially, to make the inevitable exodus as humane as possible.85 “If we were in the Middle Ages,” Hirsch suggested, the solution could have been much easier and faster. The history of various countries offers plenty of examples of entire populations that were uprooted because of their religious faith. But we are at the end of the

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19th century, and what once could not be accomplished except by iron and fire, can be accomplished by less terrible means. . . . Under the current circumstances I would not consider it to be a misfortune without compensation if an imperial Ukase was promulgated that orders the Jews to abandon Russia within a determined time frame. It is clear that, in carrying out such a plan, measures would have to be used that are humane and worthy of a civilized State.

With a plan to evacuate the Russian Jews in large numbers and resettle them abroad, primarily in Argentina, “the Jewish question can be solved within a relatively short number of years, and the end of the 19th century will not be a witness to the return to the horrors of medieval fanaticism.”86 Little did Hirsch and his contemporaries know what the twentieth century would bring. When White arrived in St. Petersburg, he found Pobedonostsev “like a porcupine with his quills stiff and his eyes glaring: angry beyond measure with the Jews and with their friends in Western Europe.”87 The Russians, White noted, “hate the idle cry of the English who hold a meeting to denounce Russia, and then go home to dinner,” adding: “There is no doubt the Jews are going to be turned out, but it is quite possible to arrange that the process shall be gradual and humane.”88 According to White, Pobedonostsev remained skeptical about Baron Hirsch’s project, regarding Hirsch “as an amiable dreamer, whose plans are destined to disappointment.” Pobedonostsev insisted that “it was no more possible to restore the Jews [to] their ancient agricultural capacity than their warlike spirit and their love of arms and conquest.” “He spoke of the intellectual ability of the Jews in Russia with something like horror,” White continued, “indeed he seemed to invest the Israelite population with demoniacal capacity” and “broke out into a tirade against Marx and Lassalle, against Socialism and against the Jews generally.”89 Following another meeting with Pobedonostsev, White reported that he “spoke to me much of Socialism and evidently he justifies the Jewish persecutions to his own mind by the conviction that Socialism nihilism & Jews are intimately allied.”90 In White’s view, the head of the Holy Synod had “a mind warped by superstition & by the belief that he is on earth the viceregent of God almighty.”91 It is certainly strange to see White comment with some disdain

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on Pobedonostsev’s anti-­Jewish prejudice, considering his own opinions of the Jews. But, it appears, he was effective in his negotiations not only with the head of the Church but indeed with the relevant government ministers. In June, White was able to inform Hirsch that the Council of Ministers was considering the issuing of gratuitous emigration certificates, in lieu of regular passports, for all Jews who wanted to depart under the auspices of the JCA, with the proviso that they would renounce their citizenship and never return to Russia.92 White also noted that the Russians had made inquiries about the Parisian philanthropist and his intentions, and he “gather[ed] that your acts during the Turkish war are now being recalled, and I am glad to think that your great work today, will have been aided by the services you then rendered to the wounded.”93 Hirsch’s nondenominational humanitarianism during the Balkan crisis of 1877–­1878 had earned him much-­needed good will one more time. In May 1892, the Russian government finally gave its formal approval to Baron Hirsch’s emigration scheme, including the creation of special committees to vet potential colonists in St. Petersburg and throughout the Pale of Settlement. It agreed to provide special exit permits to the Jewish emigrants, who would only be allowed to return if they were denied passage through any of the countries that they would have to cross on their way to their new homes, or if they should be denied admission and be removed from the countries of their destination. In such cases, the JCA would carry the cost of their renaturalization—­an abusive clause, to be sure, especially since the agreement left the estimation of such cost to the discretion of Russian officials—­and Baron Hirsch agreed to put 100,000 rubles into a trust fund to cover such eventualities.94 With that, the grand project to evacuate the Russian Jews—­the plan spoke of 3.25 million individuals over twenty-­five or thirty years—­and resettle them in colonies overseas, in particular in Argentina, could officially begin.

Speaking at the Berlin conference on the migration crisis of 1891, the writer Karl Emil Franzos had lamented: “We do not have a state: instead, private benevolent organizations without authority, money, credit, or the administrative machinery of a state, are supposed to solve this huge problem!”95

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But others were more optimistic about the political power of philanthropy. In the estimation of the head of the committee of the Alliance Israélite in Königsberg, Baron Hirsch had met the Russian government practically at eye level. Hirsch’s JCA represented, for this enthusiastic observer, “a power that can impress even the mightiest of autocrats, the Russian Czar, a force that, established on the unshakeable ground of morality and humanity, can stand up even to the first power in the world with a certain degree of equality.”96 The Jews might not have a state, and no European country might “make of [their] servitude a casus-­belli,” as Veneziani had put it in 1878. But that did not mean that Jews could not become political actors in their own right. Philanthropic humanitarianism could serve to enhance the collective reputation of the Jews and forge bonds of solidarity across national and denominational lines, as it did during the Balkan crisis in the late 1870s. It could be marshaled in defense of Jewish minority rights, as the “European Jewish concert” tried to do at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, though in this case it was a pyrrhic victory. And philanthropy could fill the void left by the state, as it did in Galicia where imperial and provincial government had done little to bring down a staggering rate of illiteracy. Jewish philanthropy was not only a private initiative that complemented the actions of the state: increasingly, it took on the role of the state—­acted, perhaps, like a state—­to reshape the future of the Jews. American philanthropy, as the historian Jeremy Beer has observed, “is not simply charity brought to scale.” Rather, the difference between the two is that “the logic of philanthropy invites us to see voluntary giving within a primarily technological and global rather than a theological and local framework.”97 This is true of nineteenth-­century Jewish philanthropy as well. Hirsch’s philanthropy was modern in the sense that it offered a technocratic solution to the “root causes” of Jewish suffering, pursuing an ambitious experiment in social engineering. The goal was to make Jews conform to a particular idea of respectability, economic utility, and morality through the promotion of agricultural and manual labor, either through mass schooling at home or, if that failed, through mass colonization overseas.98

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PA RT FOUR

ARGENTINA

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THE DISCOVERY OF ARGENTINA

“Public attention has been strongly aroused by the arrival of Russian-­Israelite immigrants since the middle of the year 1891,” noted Juan Alsina, the Argentine government’s commissioner-­general for immigration, in his annual report. He allowed that it was too early to fully understand the impact of this new class of immigrants: “Is it possible,” he wondered, “to deny this race the ability to develop? Or might it become an obstacle to the fusion of all the different races that have turned to our land, into one?” Only time would tell.1 The 2,850 Russian Jews who disembarked in Buenos Aires in 1891 and drew Alsina’s attention represented one-­tenth of the 28,266 immigrants who had arrived in 1891, a sharp drop in immigration from just two years earlier when a decade-­long boom of arrivals had reached its peak with almost 219,000 in a single year.2 The downturn, caused by Argentina’s financial meltdown and ensuing crisis of 1890, would not be permanent, and the country attracted, between 1880 and the beginning of the First World War, some 4.2 million immigrants—­more than any other nation except for the United States.3 In terms of Jewish migration, too, by the early twentieth century, Argentina had emerged as the third-­most-­important destination for the ever-­growing number of Jews leaving the Russian Empire, less than the 223

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United States and Great Britain but well ahead of Palestine.4 The Argentine constitution of 1853 explicitly mandated that the government foment immigration from Europe and guaranteed foreign residents the same civil rights as citizens.5 “To govern is to populate,” the intellectual Juan Bautista Alberdi once summarized the predominant sentiment among the young republic’s liberal elites, and successive governments sought to promote European immigration that would “drown in waves of industry the Creole rabble, inept, uncivil, and coarse, that stops our attempt to civilize the nation,” as Domingo Sarmiento (president of Argentina from 1868 to 1874) put it.6 The law on immigration and colonization of 1876 made this nexus explicit, linking the settlement of European immigrants to the development and agricultural exploitation of the vast lands incorporated by the Argentine state after the defeat and decimation of the indigenous populations. Not all, or even most, immigrants, Jewish or gentile, settled in agricultural colonies, of course, but the idea of “conquering the desert” through colonization became a powerful myth.7 State policies certainly shaped the conditions that made immigration and colonization possible, whether through the military campaigns against the Indians or the building of railroads, which linked the fertile lands of the pampas to the Atlantic seaboard and, in particular, the federal capital, Buenos Aires. Whether or not the state could play a useful role in actively recruiting immigrants from Europe, on the other hand, was hotly debated by contemporaries. Under President Juárez Celman, in 1886, the government opened information offices across Europe to promote immigration to Argentina and offered subsidized passages across the Atlantic. The practical impact of such measures, however, was negligible—­or, if anything, deleterious, as the Buenos Aires–­based La Nación sharply noted. “One has invested pointlessly in sustaining this system. . . . A large number of paupers have been brought to the country with subsidized passages and now roam the streets of our large cities . . . It was said, when the subsidized passages were instituted, that their objective was to promote immigration from among the races of northern Europe. The annual statistics demonstrate that this objective has not been achieved.”8 Echoing the contemporary discussion among Jewish leaders about the benefits of managing migration versus allowing the natural flow of migratory movements, La Nación criticized government subsidies as

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creating an “artificial” immigration that was of no benefit to the country. In fact, if “the Argentine Republic [was] known in the most humble villages of Europe,” it was because of the letters that enterprising individuals who had migrated on their own account were sending home, thus attracting relatives and neighbors to find the means to join them and creating a virtuous chain migration.9 The historical record bears out this critique, which was shared by officials like Juan Alsina: transnational social networks were more important in generating migratory movements than government incentives, and changing global economic conditions were more relevant in drawing immigrants to Argentina’s shores than the fantasies of liberal elites about the “civilizational” potential of European immigrants.10 The plan that Wilhelm Löwenthal, a native of Romania and hygienist trained at the University of Berlin, submitted to Baron Hirsch in December 1889 added a twist to the contemporary rhetoric linking immigration, colonization, and civilization. Earlier that year, Löwenthal had been invited by the government in Buenos Aires to inspect the colonies established by European immigrants and to prepare a report about their “climatological, sanitary, and social conditions.”11 He returned from his mission not only convinced by the tremendous potential of Argentina and its future development but envisioning the fertile lands of the Argentine pampas as a new homeland for the “oppressed and unfortunate Jews of Russia and Romania.” Rather than bringing civilization to the country by cultivating its soil, as in Alberdi’s famous formula, cultivating the soil would civilize the Jewish immigrants, offering them “the possibility for regeneration” through agriculture, “the most moralizing type of labor.” For Löwenthal, the east European Jews were “endowed more with cunning than spirit, more superstitious and fanatic than religious, . . . guided mostly by fear and little by principles, moreover dirty and disgusting, . . . little muscular . . . and, in consequence, cowardly,” invoking the entire inventory of a racializing discourse that was shared, oddly enough, by Jewish modernizers, Jewish nationalists, and their antisemitic antagonists alike. “And yet,” Löwenthal added hopefully, give the Russian Jews the opportunity to become agricultural colonists in Argentina, “and you will see reborn the torso of the Maccabees!”12 On his voyage through Argentina, Löwenthal had encountered a group of Jewish colonists hailing from Podolia (in today’s Ukraine), who had crossed

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the Atlantic on the German steamer Weser, just two weeks before Löwenthal’s own arrival in late August 1889. Numbering some eight hundred men, women, and children, they had initially wanted to emigrate to Palestine and join the fledgling agricultural settlements there. They dispatched emissaries, including one Leizer Kaufman, to Paris where they sought, in vain, to obtain support from Baron Rothschild or the Alliance. Instead, as one later colonist put it, “looking for a route to Palestine, in Paris, [Kaufman] discovered a different land: Argentina.”13 The representative of Argentina’s immigration office in the French capital, Pedro Saavedra Lamas, convinced Kaufman and his group to try their fortune in South America, with the government in Buenos Aires paying their passage. A commercial agent, J. B. Franck, brokered the sale of land, and in June 1889, the Podolian would-­be colonists embarked on their journey. Upon their arrival in Buenos Aires, however, the purchase fell through. Apparently, they had been misled by Franck about the true price.14 Thus, by the time they met Löwenthal, they were still stuck at the Hotel de Inmigrantes, the temporary accommodations set up by the government, a large, round-­shaped wood structure located in the vicinity of today’s Retiro train terminus. At the time, Buenos Aires was home to two Jewish congregations—­an Ashkenazi community, whose rabbi was one Henry Joseph (later colonists never failed to be shocked to learn that Joseph was married to a Catholic woman),15 and a Sephardic community, many of whose members hailed from Morocco. The first Sephardim had arrived in Argentina, in 1859 or 1860, from Tétouan,16 and, as La Nación reported in the mid-­1890s, contrary to what was generally assumed, their community was “much more numerous and . . . much wealthier” than that of their Ashkenazi counterparts.17 The head of the Ashkenazi Congregación Israelita, Simón Kramer, intervened on behalf of the hapless Podolian immigrants, raised money to support them, and helped broker a new contract with the lawyer Pedro Palacios, who had extensive land holdings in the province of Santa Fe. Two days after meeting with Löwenthal, the immigrants were on their way to their new home, some 325 miles northwest of Buenos Aires.18 Nothing, however, was prepared to get the would-­be colonists settled. For weeks, they held out in tin shacks or abandoned railway cars, suffering from cold and hunger;19 when one visits today the cemetery of what became the

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FIGURE 10.1. Hotel de Inmigrantes, Buenos Aires, in use between 1888 and 1911. Photograph by Alexander Witcomb. Archivo General de la Nación Argentina. Wikimedia Commons.

colony of Moisés Ville, a memorial put up in the 1960s recalls the children—­ according to the prevalent, though unsubstantiated story told after the fact, no less than sixty—­who succumbed to a typhus epidemic.20 Some families ended up working on nearby farms; others decided to try their luck in the cities of Rosario and Santa Fe, and, as Löwenthal learned several months later, “a number of families who haphazardly went to Buenos Aires, are going to waste, the men hanging about the streets and women and girls giving themselves over to prostitution.”21 Eventually, those who remained were able to take possession of their land, some ten miles from the Palacios railroad stop, creating the colony Kiryat Moshe, or Moisés Ville. Almost a year later, in December 1890, Löwenthal, who was back in Argentina by then, could report that some five hundred individuals were inhabiting Moisés Ville, and he insisted that “the immense majority” of them were “laborious and model colonists.” Palacios had made their lives difficult, and they had suffered no end of abuse, unfamiliar as they were with the country, with its language,

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and, for the most part, with agriculture. Still, Löwenthal insisted, “the Russians have valiantly battled this pile of difficulties and have overcome it with just an admirable energy.”22 Wishful thinking or not, the very perseverance of the Podolian immigrants was proof to the Romanian doctor that Russian Jews were quite capable of reinventing themselves as agricultural colonists, and that a colonization scheme on a grand scale, of the kind that he had pitched to Baron Hirsch, was entirely feasible. As Carlos Steigleder in nearby Sunchales explained to Löwenthal, the difficulties faced by the Russian Jewish colonists in Moisés Ville were by no means unusual. Esperanza, for example, established in 1856 and later a center of colonization in central Santa Fe, had long struggled, despite receiving government support.23 Still, Argentina’s booming, export-­driven agricultural economy in the decades from 1880 to World War I created an incessant demand for immigrant labor (grain exports to the United Kingdom, for instance, grew eightfold, from 88 tons in 1888 to 664 tons in 1894),24 and the resultant population growth was spectacular: 254 percent, between 1869 and 1895, in the city of Buenos Aires, and a whopping 345 percent in the heartland of agricultural colonization, the province of Santa Fe. As elsewhere in the country, this growth was driven by immigration, much of which, to be sure, flowed to the large cities and drove Argentina’s incipient industrialization, and not only into agricultural colonies: in 1895, 52 percent of the population in Buenos Aires was made up of foreigners, and in Santa Fe, no less than 41.9 percent.25 Of those, the vast majority hailed from Italy and Spain, followed by immigrants from France, Russia—­in the latter case, mostly Russian Jews—­and, especially in agricultural regions like Santa Fe, a good number from Switzerland and Germany.26 Baron Hirsch’s colonization scheme in Argentina was, therefore, part of a much broader phenomenon, an age of mass migration that saw the movement of millions of Europeans overseas (between fifty-­five and fifty-­eight million to the Americas, in the century between 1840 and 1940), not to mention millions of others on the move in a migration system that connected Southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and the South Pacific.27 For all the idiosyncrasies of the Jewish condition, Jewish migrants in the late nineteenth century participated in what the historian Jürgen Osterhammel has called an “emerging international labor market [that] filled a vast space from the

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Jewish Pale of Settlement in western Russia to Chicago, New Orleans and Buenos Aires.”28 In fact, most of the Russian-­Jewish arrivals in Buenos Aires interviewed on behalf of the Immigration Department in 1895 responded, when asked about why they had decided to leave their native land, that they had come to Argentina because “business at home was bad” and “in order to improve their situation.” A few invoked restrictions specifically imposed on Jews, noting that they had been unable to acquire farmland in Russia, but, remarkably, not a single one mentioned fear of persecution or pogroms as an incentive to emigrate. The interviews also illustrate the importance of networks in choosing a particular destination, in this case Argentina: some indicated that a representative of Baron Hirsch’s organization had recruited them, but many were joining family members who had previously made the journey and were already living in the country.29 Global developments—­the historian Jose Moya speaks of the demographic, liberal, agricultural, industrial, and transportation revolutions as contributing to the mass migration of the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries—­thus intersected with networks of family and philanthropic patronage in creating a new stream of Jewish migration to Argentina.30 Jewish colonization in Argentina, therefore, was not an insular phenomenon and needs to be understood in this larger context, in terms of both global migrations and Argentine nation building.31 But, as Juan Alsina’s comment about the potential of the Russian Jews to fully assimilate suggested, it was by no means clear to contemporaries how to fit the Jewish migrants into the local and global racial hierarchies of the period.32 In his report three years later (when, incidentally, at 2,890, the number of Jewish immigrants given was very similar to that in 1891),33 Alsina again pressed the importance of education and assimilation for the recent Jewish arrivals, who were “so different from the others, so separate from the Argentines by race, language, religion, and customs.” If immigration from northern Europe was long hailed as an ideal in the quest to “civilize” (or “whiten”) the country, the Jewish immigrants also compared unfavorably with those from the continent’s South. “With respect to hygiene and personal cleanliness, these Russian Israelites contrast with the other immigrants who are arriving directly from Europe,” and their “old, tattered, dirty linens” differed, “like day and night, from the clean and white linens” of the Italian and Spanish

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immigrants.34 The fact that the “Israelite immigration,” for all its modest size, warranted separate chapters in Alsina’s annual reports speaks for itself. If the experience of the Jewish colonists, therefore, was not unlike that of their Christian counterparts, it was also not quite the same. Historians have long dismantled the old myth that Jewish migration was inherently different because, in contrast to other European migrants, Jewish migrants fled the violence of pogroms rather than pursuing better economic prospects. In reality, the factors that convinced them to leave, and the choices they made in terms of where to go, were not so different from the considerations that motivated other migrants.35 Even the apprehension of government officials about the suitability of Jewish immigrants was not entirely unique. Examples of a New World version of Old World antisemitism, to be sure, could certainly be found, particularly in Julián Martel’s novel La bolsa, inspired by Drumont’s La France juive, in which he blamed Jewish speculators for the Argentine economic crisis of 1890.36 But other immigrant groups were also singled out as inherently different and detrimental to the future of the country, as evidenced in the racialized view of Italian immigrants in Eugenio Cambaceres’s En la sangre of 1887, or Ramos Mejía’s Las multitudes argentinas of 1899. Immigrants from the Ottoman Empire—­known as “turcos,” though often Syrian or Lebanese Arabs or Sephardic Jews—­likewise were considered by some as “not suitable for populating the country” and for forging an Argentine nation (in the words of La Nación).37 Still, there were differences in the Jewish migration experience in Argentina. Thus, more than half of Italian immigrants ended up returning to their homeland, as did close to half of all immigrants from Spain. Seasonal workers—­the so-­called golondrinas—­crossed the Atlantic for the three-­ month harvest season and then returned to Europe.38 As Ezequiel Gallo notes, most of the European colonists who settled in Santa Fe arrived in Argentina with the expectation of eventually returning to their home countries.39 The Jewish migrants, however, had usually come to stay. The terms negotiated by Arnold White that allowed Russian Jews to depart stipulated that they lost their claim to citizenship and the right to ever go back, though the Russian government was not necessarily able to enforce these policies.40 It is true that, as Jonathan Sarna has estimated, returning to Europe was a lot more common among Jewish migrants than is popularly imagined: in the

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case of the United States, he estimates the rate of return between 15 and 20 percent in the 1880s, though it would be much lower in the early twentieth century, when a Jewish return rate of 7.1 percent compared with 32.2 percent among all immigrants.41 Either way, migration was certainly never simply a linear process, a permanent move from one place to another:42 thus, as we will see, a number of colonists who had joined Baron Hirsch’s enterprise in Argentina subsequently ended up in North America, sometimes against their will (in one moment of frustration, Hirsch declared that, if it were up to him, he “would send all these immigrants away, down to the last one, the good ones to the United States and the bad ones to hell”).43 On another occasion, several Russian-­Jewish families who decided to abandon Argentina wound up in Moçâmedes, in Angola, where they convinced the Portuguese colonial authorities to assign them land for a settlement.44 The fact that the Jewish colonists in Argentina arrived under the auspices of a philanthropic organization such as Baron Hirsch’s JCA likewise set them apart from other migrants—­a distinction not lost on outside observers. A report to the British Foreign Office, for instance, noted that “the Jewish emigrant to the Argentine Republic, backed up by large capital, is in an enviable position. He enjoys every possible advantage that money can confer, and acquires in a short time a prosperous state, such as emigrants of all other nationalities could not possibly obtain for many years.”45 The reality, however, was a bit more complicated.

In 1891, when Mordecai Alpersohn, a native of Kamenets-­Podolsk in western Ukraine, disembarked in the middle of the Argentine winter after a thirty-­two-­day-­long sea journey that had brought him and three hundred other Jewish immigrants from Hamburg to Buenos Aires, very little was in place for their arrival.46 Wilhelm Löwenthal, appointed as Baron Hirsch’s first director in Buenos Aires, had returned to Argentina not long before, in early June. He had barely set up shop and begun exploring options for purchasing land for the baron’s first colony (Moisés Ville, though subsequently incorporated into the JCA, had not been a foundation of Baron Hirsch’s), when he learned that a few dozen Russian Jews had already reached Buenos Aires, in late July. Two hundred fifty more followed soon after, and by mid-­

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August, Löwenthal was informed that 775 additional migrants were en route, and another 4,000 anxiously awaited their departure in Europe.47 News of Baron Hirsch’s plans had received wide coverage in the European Jewish press, and the escalation of measures against the Jews of Russia—­ including their expulsion from Moscow—­led to an uncoordinated scramble of would-­be colonists pushing westward. The Jewish refugee committees in Germany swiftly dispatched them to Argentina, without, as Löwenthal would repeatedly complain, bothering to inform him ahead of time.48 Alpersohn’s first encounter with the Jews of Buenos Aires was disconcerting. Waiting just outside the Hotel de Inmigrantes was a group of “ten richly adorned ladies and a few potbellied gentlemen in top hats,” theatrically lamenting the fate of the new immigrants. Alpersohn soon learned that they belonged to the so-­called tmeʾim, or “impure,” as other Jews in the city called them, a group of Jewish pimps and prostitutes. At the turn of the century, Buenos Aires was notorious as a center of the international sex trade, in which a good number of Jews were prominently involved. As Löwenthal’s successor, Albert Goldsmid, noted on one occasion, “There are a large number of the most vicious Jews on God’s earth living in this town, men who earn a living by keeping houses of ill fame into which they entice girls of their own race.”49 Of the 164 pimps and traffickers included in a book of photographs, Galería de sospechosos, published by the Buenos Aires police in 1894, the vast majority were Jews from eastern Europe.50 This was certainly a remarkable number, considering that the census of 1895 counted only 753 Jews in the city (though this may have been an undercount: the newspaper La Nación claimed, in 1894, that there were 3,000 Jews residing in Buenos Aires).51 The association of sex trafficking with the Argentine capital left its imprint on contemporary Yiddish literature. When the narrator in one of Sholem Aleichem’s “railroad stories” meets a gentleman from Buenos Aires on a train in Russia and asks him, just before they part, what his business is, the latter responds: “What do I deal in? Ha ha! Not in esrogim [the citrus fruit used by Jews during the Sukkot festival], my friend, not in esrogim!” Sholem Aleichem could safely assume that his reader would have no doubt about what the “man from Buenos Aires” was really trafficking with.52 Eventually, Alpersohn and his fellow travelers were able to get rid of their unwanted welcoming committee, though not before a couple of

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“pious Polish Jews” decided to break from the group and go “to where there is no return,” joining the tmeʾim and staying behind in Buenos Aires.53 A day later, they received a visit from Löwenthal, whose tall stature, proud face, and piercing dark eyes Alpersohn would still remember many years later.54 Little did the new colonists know that Baron Hirsch’s representative had only just managed to finally secure 10 leguas (50 square kilometers) of land to establish the JCA’s first settlement in the province of Buenos Aires, a good 180 miles southwest of the capital.55 The new colony, like the earlier settlement of Moisés Ville farther north, lay in the midst of the Argentine pampas, the grassy plains that are one of the three richest farm belts in the world,56 with their fertile soil, temperate climate, and precipitation throughout the seasons. It was going to be called Mauricio, after its benefactor.

They would have to leave right away, Löwenthal’s staff explained to Alpersohn and his fellow colonists the following Saturday afternoon, and take a horse-­drawn streetcar to the Once railroad station, where a night train would take them to their new home. The religiously observant in the group protested as they didn’t want to violate the Sabbath, but to no avail. Scheduling departure for the Jewish day of rest may not have been a deliberate slight, as Alpersohn suspected, but it was an early indication of the cultural mismatch, and conflicts to come, between the officials of Hirsch’s organization and its colonists.57 Considering that Löwenthal had literally just concluded the purchase of the land that would house Colonia Mauricio a few days earlier, the rushed departure of the colonists was bound to create problems. But he had little choice in the matter after Alsina, the commissioner-­general of immigration, issued a stern warning and “invited Dr. Löwenthal to reflect on the grave consequences that would emerge for his mission if the men who have arrived were to remain in the cities,” especially in Buenos Aires, where their competing for jobs would push salaries lower and “excite [public] opinion, engendering systematic opposition against the Israelite immigrants.”58 In fact, Alpersohn’s group had already been preceded by another 350 people who had made the nine-­hour trek by train from Buenos Aires to the station at

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Carlos Casares, from where it was another nine miles to the future Colonia Mauricio.59 In the rush to organize the removal of the new colonists, there had been little time for preparations. Only seven carriages were available to help with the transport from Casares to Mauricio, barely enough to accommodate the women and children while the men had to make the last part of the journey on foot, guided by the colony’s Italian-­Jewish engineer Augusto Terracini, already, as he was wont to be, slightly drunk. Exhausted from their trip—­ and hungry, because Löwenthal’s staff in Buenos Aires had neglected to provide them with provisions before their departure—­the colonists made their way through the heavy rain that had begun to fall, soaking the ground. When night fell, some strayed from the poorly marked path, and the colony’s administrator, the Romanian-­Jewish Lucien Gerbel, had to dispatch a party of gauchos to find those who were lost, wandering about the countryside. Once at Mauricio, things hardly improved: the only covered structure was an old barn, which had once served as a pigsty, now turned into an improvised accommodation for the women and children. When the tents that the JCA administration in Buenos Aires had promised finally arrived, at first there were too few to house everyone. As most of them were pocked with holes, they failed to provide much shelter from the relentless rain.60 “In that awful night,” Gerbel wrote later about the chaotic arrival of the first Jewish colonists in Mauricio, “our gauchos demonstrated admirable energy and compassion.”61 To the newly arrived colonists like Alpersohn (who referred to them, in Yiddish, as shpanier), these gauchos looked exotic, and perhaps vaguely threatening, “brown, tall, with long, black, shiny hair and with deep, dark, but fiery eyes.”62 As Gerbel explained to the readers of a German-­Jewish newspaper, the gauchos were the descendants of indigenous and Spanish ancestors, a result of the conquest of the fertile soils of the pampas, and the decimation of the local Indians.63 At the time, gauchos were marginalized people, seen as barbaric and uncivilized, and their nonsettled lifestyle was criminalized. Sometimes they clashed with the European colonists and were associated with rural crime,64 including the gruesome murder of four members of the Russian-­Jewish Waisman family in Moisés Ville in 1897.65 Another victim was the father of Alberto Gerchunoff, one of the most important Argentinian-­Jewish writers, who was killed, also in Moisés

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Ville, in 1892.66 Gerbel, however, offered a different view. “The gaucho,” he explained, “never attacks the colonist, he only seeks to steal from him, and he usually undertakes his little forays by himself. . . . he never kills in order to steal and he uses his weapon, his sharp knife, only to avenge any insult to his sense of honor.” Granted, Gerbel allowed, there had been incidents in Moisés Ville where gauchos had tried to rape Jewish women. But he added, in displaying a typical misogyny, one had to wonder whether these female colonists, some of whom of doubtful moral character, might themselves have invited such assaults.67 Mordecai Alpersohn, too, tells that the “savage gauchos” had gotten word that “beautiful women” were living at Mauricio and began to harass the colony. After one of them assaulted and raped Rose, the midwife, the colonists began to panic. One of the colonists, Dovid Chernitz, took charge of organizing a security detail, and, as Alpersohn puts it, “the half-­savage creoles [i.e., gauchos] came to fear him a great deal, as he liquidated quite a few of them [veil er hot file fon sey avek gelegt].”68 The juxtaposition of “civilization” and “barbarism,” identifying the former with European immigration and the latter with the country’s native and Hispanic legacy, was a mainstay of nineteenth-­century Argentine liberalism, expressed by the likes of Sarmiento and Alberdi. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, the public discourse about Argentine national identity had begun to shift. A new guiding myth emerged, reevaluating the Hispanic and Creole roots of the nation, and appropriating now the figure of the gaucho as the embodiment of authentic argentinidad. Intellectuals rediscovered and promoted the epic poem El gaucho Martín Fierro, by José Hernández (originally published in the 1870s), turning the gaucho into a symbol of the Argentine nation.69 Alberto Gerchunoff, whose own father had been murdered by a gaucho in Moisés Ville shortly after the family’s arrival in Argentina in 1892, and who had grown up to become one of Argentina’s best-­known writers and public intellectuals, now invented a myth of his own: the “Jewish gaucho.” Gerchunoff dedicated his eponymous book, Los gauchos judíos, first published on occasion of the centenary of Argentina’s May Revolution in 1910, to “the venerable memory of Baron Moses [Maurice] Hirsch, the founder of the Hebrew colonies in the Argentine Republic. His was the first bread that I ate in the lands of America.” The book reimagined the story of Jewish immigration to Argentina—­Gerchunoff did not shy

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away from tweaking the tragedy of his own family, so that, in Los gauchos judíos, the murder of his father occurs in a town in Russia, rather than in Argentina—­and claimed the authenticity of the gaucho for the Jewish pioneers of the pampas. At the same time, he invoked the proud Spanish legacy of the Jews, and thus appropriated Sephardic history, in an implausible attempt to root the Yiddish-­speaking Jewish colonists from Russia in the Hispanic culture of the Argentine nation.70 Incongruous as it was, Gerchnunoff’s vision of the Jewish gaucho (with Sephardic roots) inscribed the Jewish immigrants into the crisol de razas, the “melting pot,” of Argentine society. In the words of the influential writer Leopoldo Lugones, Gerchunoff’s mentor and friend, “the Argentine of today, though racial mixture has changed his physical appearance, still bears the gaucho’s heritage,” which Lugones identified with patriotism, loyalty, compassion, and elegance.71 By inventing the myth of the Jewish gaucho, Gerchunoff had ventured, two decades later, an answer to Juan Alsina’s apprehensions about the ability of the Jewish immigrants to fully assimilate into Argentine culture, to participate in “the fusion of all the different races,” into one Argentine nation.72 TROUBLE IN THE COLONY

Some early reports that reached Baron Hirsch in the fall of 1891 about his first colony in Argentina, Mauricio, were troubling. One immigrant, a certain Jurawski, who was a chazzan (cantor), shochet (ritual slaughterer) and mohel (circumciser), had opted to open a store in nearby Casares, instead of settling down in the colony. Worse, Jurawski’s sister was pursuing a permit from the local authorities to open a brothel in the same town.73 A few weeks later, Löwenthal told Hirsch about the sixteen-­year-­old daughter of another of Mauricio’s first colonists, Chaim Baischt, who had gone into “service”—­ Löwenthal insinuated but didn’t spell out what kind—­with the Marquis de Villaret, who lived in the vicinity of Mauricio. She refused to return to her parents, alleging that her father had sold her to one of the traffickers in Buenos Aires upon their arrival from Europe. Once Gerbel, the administrator, managed to get her back, Baischt promptly went to Villaret and offered his daughter up again, for a payment. Baischt was expelled from the colony,

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but before leaving, he beat the sixteeen-­year-­old so badly that she sought refuge in the administration building, where she was henceforth employed as a kitchen maid.74 “The pimps and their allies,” Löwenthal lamented, “are inciting the colonists,” many of whom were “gullible enough to believe the fairy tale that Baron Hirsch sold them as slaves to the Argentine government.” 75 (The rumor that colonists were essentially victims of human trafficking echoed contemporary European anxieties about emigration, and the allegedly nefarious role of migration agents, leading, for instance, to some high-­profile court trials with clearly antisemitic overtones in Austria.)76 Sure enough, a delegation of Mauricio colonists showed up in Löwenthal’s office in Buenos Aires, demanding to know whether “they are really destined to become slaves.” In the patriarchal tone that was typical of Löwenthal (and his successors), he chastised the group for believing such fanciful rumors. “They were very contrite,” he added, “and solemnly promised to henceforth behave like obedient children.” 77 In Mauricio, Löwenthal was pleased with the twenty-­three Christian families who had already been living on the colony’s land as tenant farmers, mostly French immigrants but also two local, Argentinian families; two Italian immigrant families; three Spanish; two Swiss; and one African American family from the United States. But the Jewish colonists, Löwenthal lamented, were woefully unprepared for agricultural labor, except for two Jewish farmers, one a gentile who had converted to Judaism at age nineteen, from the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire, the other a Prussian Jew who had fought in the war against France in 1870.78 New arrivals did little to lift his spirits: Mendel Weichselblatt of Kamenets-­Podolsk, one of ninety-­ six immigrants who entered the port of Buenos Aires in early October, on board the Porto Alegre, confided to Löwenthal that in reality he was the only one who had actually been expelled from his home by the Russian authorities. “The others,” Weichselblatt claimed, “had [deliberately] provoked their expulsion by going to a city where they were not allowed, so that they might register with the [refugee] committee and be sent here [to Argentina].” Two of them had actually stolen things from their fellow travelers on the sea journey, and Löwenthal concluded that the group consisted of “bad material, work-­shy yet demanding people.” 79 When Löwenthal arrived for his first visit in Mauricio, on October 6,

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it had been raining for two weeks straight. He had to admit that not everything that was amiss was the colonists’ fault: the rain had soaked the ground, and people were squeezed into their temporary shelters. Since there was not enough firewood, it was cold, and many of the immigrants were still waiting for their luggage, which they had left behind in Hamburg, or even at the Russian border crossing. Some men had come without their wives and children, and now realized that they would not be able to send for them anytime soon. Still, Löwenthal insisted, nobody had voiced a legitimate grievance against Gerbel and Terracini, who were overseeing the administration of the colony and the allotment of the land.80 The colonists, of course, saw things differently. One of them, Benjamin Elfenbein—­a glazier by profession and, according to Löwenthal, a socialist to boot—­tried to organize a strike, not wanting to participate in unpaid preparatory labor to get the colony up and running. According to Löwenthal, they had come to Argentina expecting “to find here ready-­made cities into which they just need to settle and have God and Baron Hirsch take care of everything else.”81 During another visit, in mid-­November, some six hundred colonists surrounded the administration building where Löwenthal and his wife were staying, still complaining about the missing luggage, the families they had left behind, and the precarious situation of the colony. They also requested the withdrawal of another of Löwenthal’s aides, a non-­Jewish German, Friedrich Könekamp, with great agricultural expertise but a bad temper, who was quick to draw his revolver when the colonists were slow to follow his instructions. Late that night, some two hundred holdouts still besieged Löwenthal, “their faces distorted by rage, clenched fists, and raised cudgels.”82 After having defused the situation, Löwenthal insisted to Hirsch that he needed means to enforce discipline. “I wouldn’t and mustn’t use the force of arms,” he admitted, but a small police force of volunteers might help. “They could,” he added, “if there is no other way, use their batons—­a few bruises . . . may be just what these people need.”83 Predictably, relations between the JCA and its colonists remained tense, with plenty of blame going around. Mordecai Alpersohn directed his ire not at Löwenthal but at the local administrators, including Gerbel and Terracini, who were, according to Alpersohn, treating the good colonists badly and the bad elements with favoritism, all in order to enrich themselves. When Gerbel set up a central warehouse

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to supply the colonists with everything from foodstuff to household articles, the price of which would be annotated and added to the debts they incurred with the JCA, rampant abuse set in. People began to steal “left and right” and entire cartloads of goods destined for the warehouse ended up being sold at a nearby railroad stop. Among the victims of this widespread fraud were the unfortunate illiterate colonists to whose ledger the stolen goods were added without their knowledge.84 Alpersohn admitted that the “stream of emigration had brought a good bit of dirt” to Mauricio, “a few killers right out of prison, plenty of thieves, a couple of apostates, and everywhere prostitutes from Warsaw and Odessa.”85 But, in his view, the main problem was that Gerbel and his fellow administrators were turning a blind eye to, or making common cause with, the worst elements. Abuse by the administrators—­according to one testimony, they would withhold food rations from those who complained—­arbitrary disciplinary measures, and examples of corruption and embezzlement were eroding the morale of even the most committed colonists, as Mauricio’s first doctor, Joseph Yafe, wrote in a series of scathing articles published in the Hebrew newspaper Ha-­Melits (published in St. Petersburg).86 Thus, as the colonist Alpersohn put it, the “seeds of hatred and humiliation were planted between us and the functionaries of Baron Hirsch,” and the seeds germinated: “We felt it in the depths of our souls for the next thirty years. . . . Every functionary of the Colonization [Association] was our enemy, and we his. It was not the hatred of the master against his slave, or of the servant girl towards her mistress; rather something like that between the stepmother and her children. We see them, the functionaries, as a type of thieves, who are stealing the patrimony of our father, Baron Hirsch . . . and look at us with contempt.”87 Beyond expressing the legitimate grievances of many colonists, Alpersohn’s gendered image—­Baron Hirsch as the father figure, the colonists as the children, and the JCA as the unloved stepmother—­also says something about a mismatch of expectations: most of the colonists understood Hirsch in terms of traditional charity, as the paternal figure taking care of his less fortunate fellow Jews. For Baron Hirsch, in contrast, and for his adjutants like Wilhelm Löwenthal, the colonization enterprise in Argentina was a project in social engineering. Beyond the incompetence or corruption of local administrators, or the presence of “bad elements” among the colonists, the troubles

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of Mauricio showed the limitations and pitfalls of subsidized immigration and top-­down colonization, much like contemporary observers noted in their critique of the “artificial immigration” promoted by the Argentine government (demonstrated by the marginal role played by official, government-­ sponsored colonies, which made up not even 5 percent of the total, in the case of the province of Santa Fe).88

Despite the initial setbacks, Maurice de Hirsch remained bullish about Jewish colonization in Argentina. Everyone agreed that the early problems in Mauricio had much to do with the premature arrival of the first colonists. Where Löwenthal had expected to have a year to complete preparations, he had found himself in a squeeze to get everything ready within barely eight weeks.89 If anything, Hirsch was sensing a growing urgency to accommodate a rising tide of Russian-­Jewish emigrants, thinking on a scale that far exceeded the plan that Löwenthal himself had originally presented to the baron and which had projected five thousand colonists per year.90 Writing in August 1891 from the spa town of Carlsbad, in Bohemia (today’s Czechia), Hirsch explained that, “the closer I am to the scene of the suffering of our Russian coreligionists, and the more I am in contact with people who have seen the accumulated misery at the Russian borders with their own eyes, the more it becomes clear to me that the plan that I have designed must of necessity acquire far greater dimensions than anticipated.”91 A month later, Hirsch speculated that he might be able to help the Argentine government out of its deep financial crisis, much as he had leveraged similar promises to the Ottoman government in the past, in exchange for obtaining concessions for five thousand or even ten thousand leguas of the best land for Jewish colonization. Along those lines, he calculated that acquiring four thousand or five thousand leguas (about the size of New Jersey or Vermont) in Chaco or Misiones, two inland territories in northern Argentina, should be able to accommodate two million immigrants. And why not build a railroad to connect those areas to the ports of the Atlantic seaboard? The cost, Hirsch suggested, would be justified if a large enough number of migrants could be settled.92 In October 1891, as we saw, Hirsch was hoping to convene a gathering of Jewish notables from around the world to discuss his idea of purchasing

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“an entire country” to deal with the stream of Jewish migrants from eastern Europe.93 Wilhelm Löwenthal responded enthusiastically, considering Argentina might be just the place to accomplish this goal. His eyes on Chaco and Misiones, Löwenthal claimed that, once a territory had sixty thousand inhabitants, it would become a full-­fledged province, with its own legislature and provincial government, within the Argentine federal state. (Löwenthal maintained that the country’s constitution included this stipulation, but it did not.) Thus, it would be possible to build the Jewish “Zukunftsreich,” a future Jewish commonwealth in Argentina. Or, more than a little unrealistically, Löwenthal wondered whether Paraguay might be an even better option. There, one could easily take over the central bank, and thus the government, to create a self-­governing Jewish homeland.94 The enthusiasm was not matched, however, by Baron Hirsch’s fellow philanthropists. Jacob Schiff of New York dismissed the prospects of an international, coordinated effort to relocate large numbers of Jewish migrants and did not believe the gathering Baron Hirsch had in mind would yield any practical results. According to Schiff, “it lies in the nature of the predicament that affects all of Israel,” dispersed as the Jews were, “that the measures to be taken in order to improve the fate of our unfortunate Russian coreligionists must be of a different nature in each country.”95 While in the end nothing came of Baron Hirsch’s London conference, negotiations with the Argentine government appeared to proceed satisfactorily, if on a more modest scale. By October 1891, Hirsch and Löwenthal were discussing the purchase of thirteen hundred leguas of land (still one and half times the size of Rhode Island), rather than the fantastical numbers they had bandied about before. On October 20, Löwenthal was able to report to Hirsch that he had signed a contract with José V. Zapata, Argentina’s minister of the interior during the presidency of Carlos Pellegrini, for the purchase of thirteen hundred leguas state land in the territories of Chaco or Misiones, at 200 pounds sterling per legua.96 Löwenthal was ecstatic: nobody could believe, he assured Hirsch, that the Argentine government had agreed to cede such wide-­ranging concessions to a foreign private entity. Again, he insisted that the colonists, once reaching sixty thousand, would be able to declare their own, self-­governing province, though the contract did not actually say anything to that effect. Still, the terms were certainly generous to the JCA, the price was low, and President Pellegrini was on board.

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The president, Löwenthal boasted, had been won over because he was convinced of Hirsch’s “humanitarian and noble intentions,” but also because of Löwenthal’s own lobbying efforts, facilitated by Martin Meyer, a prominent member of the Buenos Aires Jewish community who also happened to be Pellegrini’s son-­in-­law.97 The reality, however, was more complicated than Löwenthal allowed. The contract was subject to approval by the Argentine parliament, and as soon as details of the deal were made public, the Buenos Aires newspapers savaged the agreement as giving away public land practically for free. “The entire press is presenting a united front against the contract,” Löwenthal was forced to admit, and the controversy was being used “as a handy tool” by Pellegrini’s opponents in Congress.98 El Diario called the contract “ignominious and depressive for the Argentine Republic,” and El Argentino insisted that Pellegrini should never have negotiated a contract with an organization—­Hirsch’s JCA—­one of whose local agents was the president’s own son-­in-­law.99 Throughout the process, Baron Hirsch complained, Löwenthal’s reporting was inconsistent. After first claiming that the contract for the purchase of the thirteen hundred leguas was practically a done deal, he had cabled Hirsch, on November 17, promising that he would send more detailed news the following day, and in yet another cable, sent November 20, declared that “no final decision” had been made. Eventually, Hirsch learned from a British landowner in Argentina, Hume, that parliament had rejected the JCA’s contract. While Baron Hirsch himself had not been entirely satisfied with the deal, he was furious that he was receiving news about the vote in Congress through a back channel, and not from Löwenthal himself.100 Thus the ambitious plan to acquire, in one full swoop, a vast expanse of territory for colonization in Argentina came to a premature halt.

Wilhelm Löwenthal liked to think of himself as Baron Hirsch’s Moltke, the Prussian general who had led his country’s army in its successful campaigns against Austria (in 1866) and France (in 1870). Lamenting the distance between Buenos Aires and headquarters in Paris, he proclaimed that he felt “the longing of the chief-­of-­staff, who is conscious of his responsibility, for his commander in chief,” and wished he could seek Hirsch’s council each day,

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much like Helmuth von Moltke had allegedly done with the Prussian monarch.101 Löwenthal marveled at how Hirsch, even though he had never been to Argentina, “assessed—­or, better: grasped the entire scope of circumstances a great deal better than anyone else!”102 But when Hirsch, as troubling news poured in from Mauricio and the land purchase in Chaco and Misiones capsized, began to interfere more directly, Löwenthal changed his tune. He now insisted that it was hardly possible for Hirsch, from his desk at Rue de l’Elysée in Paris, to fully understand the reality on the ground. “The cables brought orders,” Löwenthal complained on one occasion, “which are unworkable and contradict the state of affairs over here. They demonstrate your assumption that everything is going topsy-­turvy, and that you have to take the reins in Europe in order to rescue the badly endangered project.”103 But, as he reiterated in another instance, “You simply cannot properly evaluate the situation on the ground here from Europe. You are making theoretical judgments, on the basis of my reports, which are by necessity not comprehensive, and which you receive four weeks after I send them.”104 Still, Hirsch continued to micromanage the colonization effort in Argentina—­predictably with mixed results. He was not alone: the European directors of the Santa Fe Land Co. (in which, incidentally, Baron Hirsch bought a stake in 1894),105 for example, directed operations from a distance but without having a clear understanding of local conditions. Once, they initiated a plan to “transport, with the help of tugboats, on the Salado River—­which is not navigable—­great quantities of quebracho wood—­which does not float—­from forests where, coincidentally, the quebracho tree is most notable for its absence.”106 Hirsch’s instructions to Löwenthal tell us a great deal about the way that the baron understood the nature of philanthropic colonization, which he believed should be run in a “businesslike” manner (he often used the German term geschäftsmäßig to drive home this point). Thus, he recommended a rigorous fifteen-­hour workday, something that Löwenthal insisted was “simply impossible in a hot country, in the middle of the summer.” In some cases, Hirsch’s demands were plainly unrealistic, as when he asked that six hundred houses be built within a month for the colonists in Mauricio, where they were still living in provisional dwellings. Löwenthal objected that this was not feasible because even the measuring of the land and the assignment of lots to individual families had yet to be completed. No more practical were Hirsch’s ideas about what

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to do about the eight hundred Russian Jewish immigrants who were on their way from Constantinople, where they had been detained on their way to Palestine before agreeing to join the Hirsch colonies in Argentina. Hirsch suggested they should be placed temporarily with some local estanciero (landowner), enlisting the support of the Buenos Aires Jewish community, and making sure to accommodate their religious needs. “I, who live here,” Löwenthal objected, “know perfectly well that this is completely impossible. There is no landowner who could house 800 people and feed them kosher food,” and past experience had shown that one could not count on assistance from the local Jewish community.107 In the end, the immigrants who arrived from Constantinople were accommodated for several months in the Boulevard Atlantique, a seaside hotel that had succumbed to the crisis of 1890.108 By late November, the relationship of mutual trust between Löwenthal and Hirsch was deteriorating further. One day, on the twenty-­ninth, Löwenthal wondered why Hirsch had ordered a temporary halt to all land purchases: was it because he had decided to pursue colonization elsewhere, perhaps in Australia, at the expense of the project in Argentina? By the following day, after receiving another batch of correspondence from Paris, Löwenthal learned that the suspension of land purchases was because Baron Hirsch considered the entire colonization enterprise “in grave danger because of [Löwenthal’s] management.”109 Hirsch chastised his representative for “pampering” the colonists, for displaying “Jewish anxiety” and being a weak leader, and for being impractical and inefficient in his organization of the Mauricio colony.110 Baron Hirsch’s displeasure rose when he learned that Löwenthal had deposited the 200,000 pounds sterling that had been placed at his disposal for the JCA’s operations in Buenos Aires in a bank account in his own name. “What happens,” he thundered, “if you were to die and the money is deposited in your name, considering that you are married and have children who are minors?”111 Though Hirsch wasn’t insinuating impropriety or misappropriation of funds, Löwenthal was deeply offended. “You have completely destroyed my energy and sense of motivation,” he confided to Hirsch, reflecting the increasingly sour tone of their correspondence.112 What Löwenthal didn’t know when he wrote those lines was that his letter of dismissal was already signed and on its way. It was delivered by the Buenos Aires–­based businessman Adolfo Roth, who had collaborated with the JCA

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and was just returning from Europe, where he had met with Baron Hirsch. After Löwenthal’s dismissal, for the next ninety days, Roth would serve as the JCA’s chief administrator in Argentina. Thus, the relationship between Hirsch and Löwenthal, who had suggested the Argentine colonization scheme to the baron in the first place, came to an acrimonious end. The debacle of the botched land purchase from the Argentine government; the precarious and anarchic beginnings of the Mauricio colony; in short, Löwenthal’s “evident lack of organizational talent,” had soured the relationship for Hirsch.113 Hirsch’s indictment of his first director in Buenos Aires was unforgiving, if perhaps not entirely fair. Löwenthal had been forced to improvise when faced with the unexpected arrival of the first immigrants just a few weeks into his tenure, though he could only blame himself for initially sending overly optimistic assessments back to Europe about how many colonists he would be able to take in and settle. But Hirsch would probably have done well to listen to Löwenthal’s apprehensions about Roth: “The man inspires great mistrust in me,” Löwenthal wrote, before learning of his own dismissal, “as he does among many respectable people who have known him here.”114 Colonists like Mordecai Alpersohn contrasted the “niggardly” Roth with a “grand and spirited” Löwenthal,115 and Hirsch himself would later have to admit that Roth had performed “ten times worse than Mr Loewenthal.”116 Roth successfully completed the purchase of territory for new colonies in the province of Entre Ríos, which would become the heartland of the JCA’s colonization efforts in subsequent years, but local rumor had it that he colluded with the owner of the land to inflate the price, taking a cut for himself.117 When Albert Goldsmid took over from Roth in April 1892, he was aghast at the mismanagement of his predecessors. “This Association has since its inception been looked on as a milch cow by all the most unscrupulous people in the country,” Goldsmid told Hirsch, and Roth had only made things worse.118 The contracts he had signed with various suppliers were “little short of criminal.” In Mauricio, an Italian called Ferrari was hired to build at an exorbitant price three hundred “houses of crumbling brick, with no mortar between the vertical joints and the whole buildings so rotten that they are bound to let in the wet & tumble down in a few months.” Ferrari had already received an advance of 60,000 pesos, for a contract of 180,000 pesos, and

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was now threatening to sue the JCA when Goldsmid refused to receive “his rotten houses.” Another contractor, Kenyon, was building houses in Entre Ríos, but as it turned out, the deal did not include the roofs—­a new estimate for their cost doubled the price for the entire project. And the horse-­ drawn carts that Roth had purchased were unsuitable for the countryside, being built to travel only on paved city roads, and many of them were “in the last stages of decay.”119 Once Roth had been relieved by Goldsmid, he took to badmouthing his successor in correspondence with Hirsch—­and to do “all he can to throw dirt on the Association in the press here,” as Goldsmid lamented, “moving heaven & earth to discredit” the JCA’s work.120 Years later, Roth himself found a tragic end when, on Yom Kippur—­the Day of Atonement—­in 1909, he suddenly showed up at the great synagogue of Buenos Aires, at Calle Libertad. Once the last service was concluded, he returned home and shot himself, and the money that he had allegedly embezzled while working for the JCA had vanished.121 In a somewhat ungenerous comment about the inception of Argentine colonization under Löwenthal, Albert Goldsmid noted: “Dr. L. from all I can learn of him appears to have been an able scribbler with great imaginative powers, with no knowledge of any practical use whatever.”122 His observation was not entirely off the mark: the disastrous beginnings under Löwenthal reflected the tension, not easily reconciled, between a utopian vision of large-­ scale social engineering and mass colonization—­a vision shared by Löwenthal and Hirsch—­and the need for pragmatic, technocratic, localized leadership on the ground.123 Goldsmid would have to contend with that same tension as he tried to get Baron Hirsch’s colonization project back on track.

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11

THE YEAR OF ALBERT GOLDSMID

FROM ARGENTINA TO ZION

Albert E. Goldsmid considered himself “a Nationalist Jew,” as he told the assembly gathered to consecrate the new synagogue at Cardiff, Wales, a few years after completing his mission on behalf of Baron Hirsch in Argentina.1 Born in Pune (Poona) as the son of a senior civil servant of the Bombay Presidency, Goldsmid was educated at Sandhurst, joined the British military in 1866, and would go on to become a celebrated hero in the Anglo-­Boer War at the turn of the century. Both his father and his maternal grandfather had abandoned Judaism and been baptized, and Goldsmid himself was raised Anglican. As a young man of twenty-­four, however, he decided to reembrace the Jewish heritage of his family and converted to Judaism, later becoming an ardent follower of the early Zionist movement and the head of Hibbat Zion in Great Britain and Ireland.2 Indeed, it was in that light that Goldsmid understood his own role leading Baron Hirsch’s colonization project in Argentina between April 1892 and May 1893: “We shall begin with A, with Argentina,” he proclaimed during his first visit to Mauricio, “and we shall arrive at Z, at Zion.” The colonists greeted the colonel’s declaration with cries of “hurrah” and “long live Baron Hirsch.”3 Mordecai Alpersohn 247

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recalls being conflicted at the sight of the medium-­height colonel, wearing his uniform, wondering what “our money-­magnates, our rulers” had been thinking when they sent this military man to guide the colonization in Argentina: “are we supposed to be soldiers?” Yet, as he caught a glimpse of Goldsmid’s sky-­blue eyes, his sympathetic gaze, he felt reassured, perceiving “not soldierly severity, but the tenderness of the ghetto dreamer.”4 In more ways than one, Goldsmid represented that unique period in Jewish history in the late nineteenth century: the ambiguities of religious identity, a Jewish existence in a global and imperial age, the social integration into European society, and the quest for radically reimagining the Jewish future. Expectations for Goldsmid to right the ship were high. In an open letter published in March 1892 in La Prensa, a newspaper in the Argentine capital, several colonists from Moisés Ville angrily complained that what they were experiencing was “not colonization or anything of the sort, everything is a farce.” But they were confident in the “arrival of Colonel A. Goldsmid, convinced that he will do us justice.”5 Back in eastern Europe, a 112-­page pamphlet, published anonymously under the title Ein ernst vort iber di emigratsie (An earnest word about emigration), celebrated the fact that Hirsch had chosen to appoint Goldsmid, “a lover of Zion of the best kind, a first-­class Jewish nationalist,” as his new director in Buenos Aires.6 It is worthwhile delving a bit deeper into this text, which appeared, in Yiddish, in Warsaw in 1892, for a glimpse into contemporary views of emigration, colonization, and the relative merits of promoting settlement in the Land of Israel—­as the Zionists advocated—­or in Argentina, the approach of Baron Hirsch’s philanthropy. While, in retrospect, “Zionism” and “philanthropic colonization” may appear like vastly different, if not opposing, political projects, both were a manifestation of a growing, if still minoritarian view, that the future of the Jews (at any rate of those in the eastern portion of the continent) would have to be sought beyond the shores of Europe. That said, the author of Ein ernst vort expressed apprehension about the impact of the “emigration mania” that was sweeping over eastern European Jewish society. “All business is being disrupted,” the text complained, and the mass departure was “making our economic situation worse by the day.” It explicitly invoked the negative example of the many Christian Poles who had caught the “Brazil fever” of the early 1890s. Local newspapers were warning

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of the slavery-­like conditions awaiting the Polish and Ukrainian peasants, some one hundred thousand of whom left their homes in the Habsburg and Russian Empires for Brazil during those years,7 and Ein ernst vort promised that it, too, would reveal the dangers of an unorderly exodus to Argentina, drawn by the promise of Baron Hirsch’s unprecedented philanthropy.8 The pamphlet recounted the myriad problems that the first colonists had faced in Mauricio during the tenure of Wilhelm Löwenthal, who had treated them “worse than slaves,”9 a situation that had been widely denounced in the Hebrew press. Ein ernst vort also questioned whether colonization on a large scale was feasible in Argentina at all, criticizing in particular Löwenthal’s fixation on vast land purchases in the Chaco region, “a land devouring its inhabitants” (Num. 13:32), and warning that “both the white immigrants and mestizos” living in the country descended from the Spaniards, with their “deeply ingrained hatred of the Jews.”10 What the author of Ein ernst vort could not know was that Baron Hirsch himself had already concluded that the Chaco was not suitable for his colonization project after receiving a report from the engineer Herman Werren in January 1892 that contradicted an earlier, upbeat account by Charles Cullen, whom Hirsch had appointed to join Löwenthal in the exploration of lands for a future expansion.11 Ein ernst vort described emigration mania as a “storm that blows through the land, whirls up sand and dust, topples trees, flattens fences, rips off roofs, and devastates entire areas.”12 The migrants were like rainwater running through the streets, which janitors tried to keep away from their doorsteps with their brooms, and which inevitably gathered up and mixed with wastewater as it rushed through the gutters. “A sad metaphor,” the text admitted, but that was the situation of the Jewish migrants: shoved on and on, farther and farther, as no European country was interested in taking them in, and even in North America, they were pushed away from the large cities of the Eastern Seaboard across the continent’s vast expanse. Not only that, given widespread poverty in eastern European Jewish society, was it a wonder that there was “no lack of wastewater,” of vagabonds and beggars, joining the stream of emigrants?13 That, predictably, had been the fate of the agricultural settlements in Palestine and Argentina as well: many a ne’er-­do-­well was signing up for a free passage to Palestine or to South America, subsidized by Rothschild or by Hirsch, following the motto “if it’s free, why not take advantage?” (az men

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gibt, vi zol men es nisht nemen?)14 In Palestine, Ein ernst vort warned, that had put the existing colonies in serious danger of being overrun; thankfully, the Ottoman authorities had put a stop to the “invasion” of Russian-­Jewish paupers and banned them from settling in Palestine.15 One of the worries expressed in Ein ernst vort was the prospect of assimilation as a result of migration to Argentina, as the emigrants would get “mixed up” with other peoples and “cease to be Jewish.” The author of the pamphlet was either unaware, or chose to ignore, that such “amalgamation” of Jews and gentiles was precisely what Baron Hirsch had advocated only a few years before in his widely discussed interview with the New York Herald, but he did single out the German-­Jewish benefactors of the Russian refugees for embracing assimilation as an objective. “Opposed as they are to the terms ‘Jewish people’ and ‘Jewish nation,’ ” the author of Ein ernst vort argued, the German Jews could not understand what was truly at stake: colonization in Argentina and colonization in Palestine were not competing with one another but involved two entirely different projects. While the former addressed the “brodfrage [bread question] for our poor Jews,” a humanitarian quest to alleviate the suffering of the pauperized Russian-­Jewish masses, the latter was focused on the “lebensfrage [life question] of all of Israel.” Only in Palestine could the “national question” of Jewish homelessness be solved, and the “religious question” of bringing Judaism into the modern age be addressed. To that end, gradual settlement of pioneers, not mass migration, was needed in Palestine; Argentina, in the meantime, might serve as a stepping-­stone.16 From the perspective of the early Zionists of Hovevei Zion, then, Baron Hirsch’s Argentine project was not a threat to their long-­term aspirations of national revival in the Land of Israel but really a matter of humanitarianism, necessary in the short term but unsuited to resolve the underlying problem of Jewish existence. Hirsch himself would certainly have agreed that he had no interest in the “national question,” but he also believed that he, too, was addressing the very root cause of the Jewish predicament, by promoting agricultural colonization in South America, rather than merely engaging in humanitarian crisis management. Others saw colonization in Argentina, supported by Baron Hirsch, and in Palestine, supported by Rothschild, as the manifestation of the same, physiocratic project to remake Jewish society. Aharon Eliezer Klenetzki, in another pamphlet published in Warsaw, in 1893 in Hebrew, praised the

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two benefactors and their initiative to move Jews away from commerce and trade into agricultural labor. “Look and see with your own eyes,” Klenetzki called on his readers, “what the blessings of the holy Torah are: with what will the one who walks in its path be rewarded? Not with trade and property, not with commerce and business, but ‘I will give rain in due season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit’ [Lev. 26:6].”17 Thus, both Rothschild and Hirsch deserved praise for guiding the Jewish people onto a path to redeem itself through agricultural colonization. The booklet culminated in a prayer, to be recited on behalf of the “two barons”: “You are the Lord our God, who has chosen Baron Rothschild in our days, to establish settlements for the children of Israel in the Land of Israel. You are the Lord our God, who chose in the year 5651 [1891], of the sixth millennium, Baron Hirsch, the third Moses, who has opened for your people the gates of subsistence and nourishment.”18 Playing on Hirsch’s Hebrew name, Moshe (Moses), Klenetzki used a trope that adherents of the Jewish enlightenment had invoked to link the father of the Berlin Haskalah, Moses Mendelssohn (d. 1786), to the biblical Moses, appropriating a common medieval praise for Moses Maimonides (d. 1204), “from Moses to Moses, there has not been anyone like Moses.” In the event, Klenetzki used the image of Hirsch as the “third Moses” to associate the redeeming qualities of the baron’s philanthropy with the Moses of the biblical exodus, as well as with the most celebrated Jewish philanthropist of the mid-­nineteenth century, Sir Moses Montefiore of London, another hero frequently invoked by Zionist writers for his pioneering role in supporting the Jewish communities of the Holy Land.19 “NET TOYAGE”

As a senior officer in the British army moving in London’s highest circles—­he had first made the acquaintance of Hirsch at a dinner hosted by the Prince of Wales20—­A lbert Goldsmid was well received in Buenos Aires, adding some glamour to the job as Baron Hirsch’s representative. He proudly reported that he had joined the Círculo de Armas, an exclusive club in the capital, and he was invited by President Pellegrini to the review of troops on Independence Day, and to his presidential box at the opera. The day that Luis Sáenz Peña assumed the presidency in October 1892, Goldsmid called on

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him, ­delighted to hear the president’s son sing the praises of Jewish colonization in the country—­“which is gratifying,” Goldsmid added, “as the Sans [sic] Peña family are the leaders of the Catholic party here & many people anticipated we should meet great opposition from them.”21 While Goldsmid basked in the light of porteño high society, the state of the colonies continued to be decidedly less glamorous. In Mauricio, “all the colonists are huddled together, in galvanized iron temporary erections looking like a village of huge sardine boxes,”22 and Moisés Ville was “a disgrace to the Association. I shall never forget the sight of the poor people in their rotten tents children lying on the damp ground in the bitterly cold weather—­the men demoralised by a life of utter idleness—­the administration worse than useless.”23 Conditions in Mauricio might be improved, but Goldsmid despaired of what had been the first Jewish agricultural settlement in the country, Moisés Ville. When Löwenthal had purchased the colony, it was interspersed with areas that remained the property of the previous landowner, and “Palacios having so large a number of reservations in the colony, the result has been that our colonists are in some cases tenants both of Palacios and ourselves.” Moreover, Palacios had “admitted as tenants on his reserved portions in our colony, Jews who are keepers of houses of ill fame, who do all that lies in their power to keep the colonists in a state of ferment.”24 In fact, one of the first people Goldsmid encountered on his maiden trip to Moisés Ville was “a flashily diamond bespangled Jew, keeper of houses of ill fame in Buenos Ayres, but who has a house at Palacios,” and who was “one of the fomenters of disturbances at Mosesville.”25 It would be best, he counseled Hirsch, to abandon the colony altogether and offer the “good” families a place in one of the new colonies in Entre Ríos.26 The state of Mauricio was deplorable, too, though one could not, Goldsmid allowed, blame the colonists themselves for all problems that had arisen. The colonel admitted that “the life of herding together for some months, demoralised by the lavish extravagance and waste they saw around them, is enough however to have demoralised people in a higher state of culture.”27 In a conversation with Hirsch’s secretary, Sigismund Sonnenfeld, in Paris, the colony’s first doctor, Joseph Yafe (Joffe), offered a lengthy list of complaints against the inept administration of the settlement. (Sonnenfeld maintained that one had to take Yafe’s declarations with a pinch of salt, because the

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man was “a fanatic”; Goldsmid considered him “a hysterical madman” and implored Hirsch not to send him “any more Russian Jewish doctors” who were, in his experience, either “madmen, socialists or rogues.”)28 According to Yafe, despite Goldsmid’s efforts to bring down the excessive cost of administration, there were still some forty officials on the JCA payroll in Mauricio alone. The engineer hired by Löwenthal to measure out the terrain, Terracini, meanwhile, had done such a poor job that his work needed to be redone: with grievous consequences, as in the case of one colonist who had already finished constructing his house and digging a basement where he planned to establish a dairy, when Terracini told him that everything had to be demolished because he had made a mistake and, as it turned out, his lot was actually on the opposite end of the colony.29 Most importantly, the persistent “uncertainty of the colonists about their future” was, according to Yafe, the main handicap to Mauricio’s development.30 Indeed, one of the major problems for which none other than Baron Hirsch was responsible was the continued uncertainty about the provisions under which the immigrants were to be settled in the JCA colonies. According to Löwenthal’s original plan, adopted by Hirsch, colonization was going to be conducted like a business—­though a not-­for-­profit business—­and land and initial support received by the colonists would be considered as a loan, not a grant.31 But if the colonists were expected to repay the JCA for the cost of the land, for the sums expended on setting up the colony, and for the agricultural implements and seeds provided in the first year, then it remained unclear what the precise conditions would be, whether and how much interest would have to be paid, and over how many years the liquidation of the loan would occur. Incredibly, as late as 1895, new arrivals interviewed by the Office of Immigration in Buenos Aires declared that they had not yet signed a contract and did not know the nature of their obligations toward the JCA.32 When prices of the individual lots were finally fixed and the contracts made ready in the fall of 1895, as we will see, their terms caused a great deal of anger and resentment among the colonists. Throughout Albert Goldsmid’s tenure in Buenos Aires, and for a couple of years thereafter, draft contracts made their way back and forth across the Atlantic. Hirsch particularly disliked a clause in Goldsmid’s initial proposal that provided for legal arbitration in cases of disagreements between the JCA

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and individual colonists. “The contract is drawn up as if the two contracting parties were of equal stature,” Hirsch objected, when in fact “the colonists must accept that which we consider to be right and equitable to grant to them, and that it is up to us to dictate the terms.”33 Goldsmid, however, was not quite prepared to give in. “What would be the result if [arbitration] were omitted, and if at the same time the Colonists bound themselves not to go to law with the Association?” he wondered. “You would have the unique spectacle of ‘Imperium in Imperio’ in this country, the colonists would be completely at the mercy of the Administration, and the result would be, that the suspicions of the Government would certainly be aroused.” “No country,” he concluded, “would allow any portion of the population to place themselves outside the pale of the protection of the Law,” and under the terms that Hirsch proposed, the colonists would be “in a worse position than Peons in this country.”34 To reinforce the point, Goldsmid told Hirsch a few weeks later that he had been informed, “in strict confidence,” that the governor of Entre Ríos was voicing concerns to President Pellegrini about the terms of the contracts, which “would virtually make slaves of them.”35 Hirsch, however, was dismissive and believed that any such apprehensions could easily be addressed by adding a preamble to the contract, stating the JCA’s “philanthropic nature.”36 The back-­and-­forth between Hirsch and Goldsmid illustrates the way that the baron understood “philanthropy”: it was, and was to remain, an inherently unequal and paternalistic relationship. This began with the underlying set of cultural assumptions—­the Russian Jews needed to be “civilized” and “regenerated”—­and played out in the day-­to-­day operation of the colonization project, in which the colonists would play an entirely subservient role, rather than one as the empowered pioneers of a new social order. The colonist Marcos Alpersohn resented forever being treated as a supplicant by the philanthropic organization’s representatives. As he recalled, it had begun back in Russia, with the committee that selected the would-­be migrants before sending them to Argentina: “as if before a Russian magistrate, everyone was questioned, and everyone was searched and patted down lest they carry any hidden money, and everyone was tormented a bit” by the committee members. Once settled in Mauricio, receiving food rations and subsidies continued to foster Alpersohn’s sense of humiliation. “All the den-

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igration, insult, shame, servility, and sycophancy that exist in the world,” he lamented, were manifested in the system of subsidies employed by the JCA.37 Whereas Alpersohn and his fellow colonists tended to blame the JCA’s local administrators while accepting Baron Hirsch as the benevolent father figure, Hirsch himself sometimes displayed the cutthroat attitude of the railroad capitalist when it came to the relation of the association with its colonists. “Of the hundreds or thousands of colonies that are spread all over Argentina, and in similar countries, none among the colonists receives subsidies as elevated as ours,” Hirsch wrote to Goldsmid. “Should one accept,” he wondered, “the principle prevalent in England, that the worker cannot work until he is handsomely nourished? But England, thankfully, is not the norm. Look at Italy, Turkey, Hungary, even Germany. The workers there are obliged to subsist on some onions, potatoes, and water.” Hirsch continued to lecture Goldsmid by noting that he personally had “had the opportunity to witness, during the Russian-­Turkish War, the Turkish troops, resigned during months to the most frugal alimentation, enduring the rigors of the campaign infinitely better than the troops of other countries.” He added, for good measure, that he had “come to the conviction that the agricultural crisis that is today afflicting England, has no other cause than the axiom according to which the worker cannot work unless he regularly receives every day an abundant, even succulent, nourishment.”38 The irony was, of course, that in reality the “agrarian crisis” in England—­and elsewhere in western Europe—­in the late nineteenth century had been created precisely by the broader, global developments that allowed Baron Hirsch to amass his fortune, and for colonization in Argentina to become feasible, in the first place: the transport revolution of railroad construction and steamships, and the concomitant emergence of a transatlantic market for grain and other agricultural products.39 Remarkably, in a letter denouncing the attitude of Théophile Wechsler, the Romanian-­born physician serving Mauricio in 1894–­1895, Hirsch even seemed to disassociate the colonization project in Argentina from “philanthropy” altogether.40 Wechsler, who “seems to consider our colonists to be a privileged race who need to be treated differently than ordinary peasants,” was “a utopian whose place, it would seem, is rather with a charitable or philanthropic outfit than in an agricultural colonization enterprise.” Hirsch, in

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contrast, was fighting “in the most absolute manner against the idea that our Jewish colonists, because they are Jews, should be treated any differently than one commonly treats the peasants of any other country,” for this was “one of the reasons that have particularly contributed to the rise and growth of antisemitism: that disposition of the Jews who think that they are made from a more delicate dough than common mortals.” Wechsler, and other critics, would do well to recognize that “we are not a philanthropic society, but a colonization enterprise.”41 Hirsch, the benevolent, paternal “new Moses” of the popular imagination, preferred to think of himself as a hard-­ nosed businessman, and of the regeneration of the Russian Jews in Argentina as a technocratic, even authoritarian, project of social engineering.

Wilhelm Löwenthal may have put it most succinctly when he told Baron Hirsch’s colonists in 1891: “all of you must first earn your right of domicile [Heimatrecht] through labor and good conduct.”42 The implication was that anyone who refused to play by the rules could be removed, and indeed, with the arrival of Colonel Goldsmid, a period of “weeding out the bad elements”—­Baron Hirsch used the term nettoyage, or “cleansing”—­began: those who were unfit, or unwilling, to endure hard agricultural labor would be expelled from the colony, and those who wouldn’t stay in Argentina, would be sent back to Europe and sometimes, onward to North America. Frustrated that the first groups of migrants had by and large no background in agriculture and angered by their repeated protests and the public disturbances they mounted, often outside the JCA’s head office in Buenos Aires,43 Hirsch wished he could “take the 2,700 colonists that are down there, men, women, and children, lease two or three large ships, and expedite them to the United States of America,” then “to start all over from scratch.” But he admitted that not only would this be unfair to “the many poor devils who do have the capacity to become good agriculturalists,” it would also create a negative impression with public opinion and the press, who would interpret such a radical measure as a sign of failure.44 That was the worry, too, of Hirsch’s main aide in Paris, Sigismund Sonnenfeld, who warned that the “broom” with which the baron wanted to clear out the “bad” colonists was bound to “raise up so much dust and create so much injustice” that the

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process was bound to further undermine the project. Apart from “humanitarian considerations,” such measures would inevitably provide fodder for antisemites, who would claim the trouble in Hirsch’s Argentine colonies was proof that Jews were, after all, unfit for agriculture.45 That was indeed the reading of the antisemitic Deutsches Volksblatt—­published in Vienna with the slogan “Buy from Christians only!”—­when it reported on the arrival in Hamburg of the first 140 colonists removed from Argentina, in July 1892.46 In his correspondence with Baron Hirsch, Goldsmid repeatedly came to the defense of the colonists, insisting that by no means were all of them “beggars” and that there was “excellent material to be found amongst them.” What was wanted most urgently, he admonished Hirsch, was the finalization of the contract between the JCA and the colonists, for without it “we shall get in a horrible mess.”47 Goldsmid went ahead with the removal of the first one hundred families from Mauricio who, “sick of delay kept creating disturbances,” but he also confessed that he was doing so reluctantly.48 Hirsch, in turn, complained that Goldsmid was too timid in his efforts at nettoyage, and that he was unduly influenced by his “fear of scandal.” “Why not proceed in a more radical manner with this nettoyage!” Hirsch insisted, adding that what was wanted was a main forte, a “strong hand,” to make a clean break.49 Goldsmid, meanwhile, objected to Hirsch’s suggestion that the “very bad” colonists might simply be “turned adrift,” as they would gravitate toward the cities—­Rosario and Buenos Aires, in particular—­where their appearance would hardly be welcome, and was bound to damage the reputation of Baron Hirsch’s colonization scheme overall.50 The solution embraced by Hirsch, therefore, was to offer removal of the expelled colonists out of Argentina, dispatching those that were ill-­suited for agriculture but otherwise worthy to the United States. Generally, the colonists would first be sent back to Europe, at the expense of the JCA, and from there on to North America. This is not to say, however, that individual colonists had no say at all in their relationship with the JCA. In June 1892, three dozen of them were protesting in Paris against being sent on to the United States,51 and in late 1893, the Hamburg committee despaired about not getting anywhere with two migrants, father and son, called Katzmann. “They declare that they will only go to [North] America if we guarantee them that they will be assigned a plot of land there for free, as the direction

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in Buenos Aires [allegedly] has promised, and which is certainly not in the cards.” Otherwise, they demanded to return to Argentina.52 Removing unwanted colonists from Argentina and sending them on to North America created its own set of problems, not least because authorities in the United States were expressing growing alarm about the influx of Russian-­Jewish “paupers.” (Herman Schulteis, an American immigration inspector, noted in a report that “the pauper Russian Jew is not welcome anywhere in Europe; and in Palestine and Argentina, where he is welcome, he does not remain.”)53 In early September 1892, Hirsch informed Goldsmid that, because of a cholera outbreak in Hamburg (during what was, in fact, the worst cholera pandemic of the century),54 the colonists returning from Argentina were not allowed to disembark, while the United States would not allow them in either. In Germany, some—­erroneously—­claimed that Russian Jewish migrants had brought cholera to the city, and thus no Russian Jews, regardless of where they were traveling from, were allowed to enter. Russia itself had closed its borders, too, so for the moment the removal of unwanted colonists was paralyzed.55 The process of nettoyage was also liable to backfire. By the end of 1893, Baron Hirsch had to admit that one factor that had “prevented the colonists from deploying all their energy and activity” was the “sentiment of doubt and uncertainty” about their future. “One cannot blame them for their mistrust when one reflects that many a family that deserved to stay had been removed, on a whim or by mistake,” and that others feared that a similar fate might await them, too.56 Indeed, as Mordecai Alpersohn would observe many years later, “that great Jew, Goldsmid, did indeed muck out the stable . . . though much dirt remained.” Yet, for all his good intentions, he also caused the remaining colonists “a great deal of pain and anguish,” and their gnawing sense of humiliation continued to fester.57 Irritated at the desultory results of colonization in Mauricio (and Moisés Ville), Baron Hirsch resolved to hit the reset button. First, he instructed Goldsmid to discontinue the système de régie, centrally provisioning the colonists with what they needed. Second, he decided that, in the future, instead of the haphazard recruitment of potential colonists, more homogeneous groups were to be formed already in Russia. These groups would then send delegates to Argentina, elaborate their own program for colonization

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on lands provided to them in Entre Ríos, and then autonomously organize their colonies under the supervision of the JCA office in Buenos Aires. Goldsmid, for one, was not convinced—­and complained, as Löwenthal had done before him, that it was “evident . . . from the general tenour of your letters in which you urge on me the immediate or very early abolition of all régie, that you have, owing to the distance at which you are from the theatre of operations, utterly failed to grasp the situation.” Given the colonists’ lack of experience with agriculture, “many of [whom] do not know which end of a plough should be next the bullocks,” and their lack of knowledge about the country, they would inevitably “become the prey of all the sharks in the neighbourhood.”58 Goldsmid was no more convinced that a scheme involving self-­governing autonomous groups of colonists could work: “from what I have seen of the Russian and Eastern Jews I do not believe that the group system as proposed can succeed; for the simple reason that distrust & jealousy, of each other are ingrained in their systems.”59 While Goldsmid was betraying his own, prejudiced view of the Russian migrants, believing that paternalistic oversight was indispensable, he was certainly right when he criticized Hirsch’s tendency to resort to centralized, hegemonic control from Paris, without a proper understanding either of local conditions on the ground in Argentina or of the cultural and social idiosyncrasies of the Russian Jews who were the beneficiaries of his philanthropy. Hirsch himself, on the other hand, considered the abandonment of the old provisioning system, as well as the formation of autonomous groups to settle newly established colonies, as a sine qua non for the future of the colonization project at large. “If we cannot succeed with the organization of the colonists in autonomous groups,” he warned Goldsmid, “we will see ourselves compelled to completely and definitively renounce pushing our enterprise in Argentina any further.” The small-­scale colonization of the past was ultimately “not worthy of [his] time and energy,” and, in order to establish and administer colonies on a “vast scale,” of which Hirsch continued to dream, self-­reliance and self-­government of groups of colonists with less oversight was imperative.60 There was, however, a contradiction in Hirsch’s new approach, still micromanaging operations from Paris while advocating for the colonists’ self-­reliance. There was also a contradiction in the emphasis on a careful preselection of groups of colonists in Russia, to consist of

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“honorable, laborious, and homogeneous” elements, and the simultaneous insistence on mass colonization that would alleviate the fate of “millions” of Russian Jews.61 In practice, such a preselection was cumbersome, and it is difficult to see how it could be scaled up to facilitate the mass colonization that Hirsch appeared to want. David Feinberg, the baron’s representative in Russia, described the procedure, which began by interviewing the head of each family to score their knowledge of agriculture, on a scale from 1 to 5. Proceeding only with those who showed potential, Feinberg then arranged to speak with every single member of a potential group to assess their compatibility and “homogeneous” outlook. Only once that was accomplished would he read to them the group agreement they were expected to sign and give them instructions for the dispatch of each group’s representative to Argentina, where they were to draw up a plan and a budget for settlement.62 By the end of 1892, Feinberg had managed to assemble nine groups of fifty families each.

“Alas! my dear Baron you have again taken a false step,” wrote Albert Goldsmid to Baron Hirsch in December 1892.63 He was referring to a special commission that Hirsch had appointed for a fact-­finding mission in Argentina, directed by the Russian-­Jewish engineer Maxim Kogan, and including Abraham Birkenheim, who held a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Moscow, and Emil Korkus, a German Jew who had joined the JCA head office in Paris the previous year, as its other members.64 It appears that Hirsch’s management style had changed little since the disastrous beginnings of the Argentine colonization project, and he continued to display his tendency of second-­g uessing his representatives, creating overlapping and competing competencies among them, reserving any ultimate decision-­making for himself, and frequently changing his own mind about the course of the project. Thus, the Kogan commission reported directly to Hirsch, but was also in theory subject to Goldsmid’s authority, inevitably leading to grievances on all sides. Kogan chastised the colonel for “always being passive, because he lacks the understanding to know what is good or bad, and so he prefers to do nothing rather than making a mistake.”65 Goldsmid was no more impressed with Kogan, “a man eaten up with

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vanity of his own importance,” “totally ignorant of the language laws & customs of this republic and without any practical knowledge of agriculture,” and dismissive of anyone who is “guilty of the imponderable sin of not being Russian Jews.”66 The irony was not lost on Goldsmid that Kogan criticized him for going too far with his nettoyage, when Hirsch had chastised him for not going far enough. Not surprisingly, he felt undermined, reminding the baron that he had by no means clamored to be appointed to his current position at the helm of the JCA in Argentina, and only accepted in order “to rescue the colonization scheme from the slough into which it had descended” at great personal cost.67 Among the disagreements between Kogan and Goldsmid was the future of Moisés Ville. As we saw, Goldsmid held a dim view of this first Jewish colony in the country. Kogan, however, who set out from Buenos Aires to reorganize the administration at Moisés Ville—­ against Goldsmid’s objections—­denounced it as “madness” to speak of the “immorality” of the settlement’s colonists, as Goldsmid had done in his reports. “It is pointless to ponder such questions,” Kogan noted. “The colonists are not children, nor soldiers or prisoners.” If anything, they had already proven, even before Goldsmid’s arrival in Argentina, that they were perfectly capable of administering themselves “honestly and properly” when they had set up a cooperative, the Sociedad Cooperativa. Wherever one saw “a good ox or a good horse” in the colony, Kogan claimed, it had been purchased by the colonists’ own cooperative, not by the JCA’s corrupt administrators.68 Goldsmid, in turn, vented his growing frustration about Kogan with biting sarcasm, exhibiting a deep misalignment with the Russian-­Jewish colonists. “No, the ideal Russian Jew of Kogan & Co is a vampire who should own no master,” Goldsmid thundered, “whose lies or thefts can be defended, and it should be the proud privilege of the rest of mankind to submit uncomplainingly to have their very life blood drained.” The colonel was quick to add that he was far from implying that “the mass of our colonists” fit that image and most were perfectly suitable for colonization work, but he could not stop himself from another polemic aside: “If the tales of Russian persecution emanate from equally responsible sources, I am beginning to think that the Russians must have been somewhat maligned.”69 Goldsmid’s ambiguous attitude toward the colonists reflected the tension inherent in the model of

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philanthropy espoused by Baron Hirsch, driven as it was by a sense of empathy for the misfortune of the Russian Jews, but also by the negative, even antisemitic, image of east European Jews that the Jewish philanthropists had internalized, and the desire to embark on a project of social engineering that would transform them in the image of respectability and industriousness that Western Jews had carefully crafted for themselves. Given the disagreements between Hirsch and Goldsmid, and the tensions between Goldsmid and the Kogan commission, it is hardly surprising that the colonel’s tenure, which had begun with great hopes and expectations, came to an end after only one year. Albert Goldsmid and his family returned to Europe on May 11, 1893, leaving the administration of the JCA in Argentina, for the time being, in the hands of none other than Maxim Kogan. Looking back, Mordecai Alpersohn couldn’t help but admit, his frequent criticism of Goldsmid’s administration notwithstanding, that it had been the colonel and would-­be Zionist Albert Goldsmid, more than anyone, “who had turned the immigrants into colonists.” 70

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SEEING LIKE A PHILANTHROPIST

CONSOLIDATION AND CRISIS

Maxim Kogan, who replaced Albert Goldsmid at the helm of the JCA’s Buenos Aires office for a mere four and a half months, had never really believed in Baron Hirsch’s scheme. That, at least, is what Goldsmid claimed his successor had confided to him once: Kogan thought that Hirsch’s money would have been spent more wisely in Russia, and that the current exodus of the Russian Jews could have been averted altogether.1 The new codirectors of the JCA in Argentina, Samuel Hirsch and David Cazès, who arrived in Buenos Aires in September 1893, were, as leaders, very different from the more charismatic Löwenthal and Goldsmid: they were technocrats, not visionaries. Both were recruited from the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Cazès, a native of Tétouan, had taught in various Alliance schools and had been, most recently, a school principal in Tunis; Hirsch, who was born in Alsace, entered the service of the Alliance as a teacher in Tangiers, and in 1881 became the head of the agricultural school Mikveh Yisrael, in Palestine.2 Hirsch and Cazès would oversee the JCA’s work in Argentina through the baron’s death in 1896 and continued in their post until 1903, finally providing much-­needed administrative continuity.3 263

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By the end of 1893, when Hirsch and Cazès took over, the JCA owned some eighty thousand hectares of land, divided among its four colonies: Mauricio, in the province of Buenos Aires; Moisés Ville, in Santa Fe; and Clara and San Antonio, in Entre Ríos. After further purchases in the course of the year, the JCA now owned a similar amount in undeveloped land, available for new groups of colonists. From its beginnings until September 30, 1893, when Cazès and Hirsch received their appointment, the association had spent about 500,000 pounds sterling overall, 285,000 of which in expenses unrelated to the acquisition of land. Even allowing for the fact that at least half of that sum would have to be written off, unlikely to ever be recovered through the colonists’ debt payments, the annual report to the JCA shareholders confidently declared that the organization’s finances remained strong. With interest on the endowed capital and deriving a considerable benefit from exchange rates when transferring funds from England to Argentina, the association’s principal capital was basically undiminished, despite the fact that the experience of the first years had “cost us dearly.”4 As Samuel Hirsch and David Cazès began their tenure in Buenos Aires, Baron Hirsch swung between pessimism about the future of his grand endeavor and optimism that mass colonization might yet be on the horizon. Thus, he ruminated, in his correspondence with his right-­hand man Sigismund Sonnenfeld, about a wholesale “liquidation” of the colonization enterprise, only to suggest, a mere six weeks later, that he would be amenable to even greater investment, building a railroad to open up new territories for settlement on a larger scale.5 Villages or Farms?

Moisés Ville had been grandfathered into the JCA’s portfolio, whereas the colony of Mauricio was the result of the rushed and improvised colonization effort by Wilhelm Löwenthal when the first immigrants arrived in the port of Buenos Aires before he could complete any of the land purchases he had been negotiating. The further expansion of the JCA’s work in Argentina, Baron Hirsch determined, was going to be more deliberate, more systematic, and less reliant on subsidies. To that end, as we saw, he had David Feinberg assemble in Russia groups of migrants, who would send their own delegates and make their own plans for establishing new colonies on JCA land in Entre Ríos. Soon, however, a fundamental disagreement emerged

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between the Russian delegates and the JCA administrators about the appropriate layout of the new settlements. The delegates insisted on establishing small villages, creating a nucleus that would allow for maintaining a sense of community, and the establishment of communal institutions such as a synagogue, a ritual bath (mikveh), and a school. This système village, as it was referred to in Baron Hirsch’s correspondence, conflicted with the système ferme, preferred by the JCA, establishing the colonists on stand-­alone farms. The great benefit of the latter was, of course, the shorter distance between home and field; with fifty families clustering into one village, on the other hand, colonists would have longer ways, and would need to retrieve their livestock each day from the shared pasture. Maxim Kogan, for one, was adamantly opposed to creating villages, and his uncompromising insistence on building individual homesteads meant that the work of the delegations was paralyzed, while the groups that Feinberg had assembled were impatiently waiting for the green light to leave for Argentina.6 The prolonged disagreements about the question of village versus ferme is a good example of a sometimes-­agonizing process in which Baron Hirsch moved from insisting on a matter of principle to being open to compromise, and from delegating the final decision to reasserting his own authority. After Kogan had failed to make headway, Hirsch instructed his new directors in Buenos Aires to come to a definitive conclusion. But while Samuel Hirsch and David Cazès were inclined to side with the demands of the colonists, the baron met in Paris with Kogan, who laid out his case against the village system. According to the plans drawn up by the colonists’ delegates, each family would hold a maximum of fifty hectares of workable land, impossible to be expanded in the future, which Kogan deemed enough to make a living but insufficient to create enough revenue to meet financial obligations toward the JCA, and thus acquire full ownership of their land over time.7 Yet, Baron Hirsch admitted, the arguments of those who insisted on the creation of village clusters were not to be dismissed either. One “must not lose sight of the religious, educational, and sanitary needs of the Russian Israelite colonists,” he allowed, and it would be difficult to meet those if the immigrants were settled on isolated farms. “The JCA would be wrong,” the baron noted, “if it forgot that it is, above all, an Israelite association, and that, as such, it cannot extract itself from the obligation to do justice to the spiritual needs of those who have entrusted it with their fate. The association

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must not alienate the colonists from the religious principles and practices that are so profoundly ingrained among them.” Communal institutions—­ synagogues, mikvehs, and schools—­were thus a legitimate concern, more easily accomplished by the système village. And yet, the latter had already proven to be disadvantageous financially, and past mistakes must not be repeated. Hirsch thus offered a compromise solution, a “mixed system,” according to which each group of forty-­eight families would be established in smaller units of four families each. At the center of the settlement, the JCA would build a main synagogue, a schoolhouse, and a hospital, whereas each smaller group of four units, or sixteen families, would have its own small synagogue and mikveh. In this scenario, the greatest distance from any one farm to the buildings of common use would be no more than 5 kilometers (3.1 miles), a distance which “in a country where everyone is on horseback” should be perfectly acceptable.8 From Baron Hirsch’s view, then, the JCA, as an “Israelite association,” was well advised to demonstrate neutrality in questions of religion and education. The priority was to convert the Russian Jewish immigrants into model farmers, but the task of the JCA was not to force a process of secularization. In this spirit, Hirsch informed the director duo in Buenos Aires that, if they acceded to the delegates of the first three groups and allowed them to establish villages, he would by no means agree to applying this system to the remaining six groups. “The villages of 50 families are absolutely out of the question and the mixed system is the only one to be applied.”9 Still, he seemed more determined than intransigent, and if the terrain allowed, it would be acceptable “to make important concessions in order to approximate our system as much as possible to the system of villages.”10 In the meantime, the baron’s collaborators in Russia were growing impatient. Baron Gunzburg in St. Petersburg admonished Hirsch to resolve the village versus farm question once and for all, as the groups selected for colonization in Argentina had been waiting for their departure for “over a year now.”11 But it was only in late 1894 that the remaining migrants, who by then had been awaiting their turn for some two years, were finally able to embark on their journey.12

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Schools

In 1891, Wilhelm Löwenthal openly wondered whether Baron Hirsch had perhaps meant shuls (synagogues) when he had instructed the JCA office in Buenos Aires not to bother itself with setting up “schools” in the new colonies, intimating that one should leave such “spiritual” matters to others. As Löwenthal reminded Hirsch, primary schooling was a legal requirement in Argentina, but the baron held firm: the time wasn’t ripe for thinking about such niceties.13 Personally, as Hirsch put it in a letter to Albert Goldsmid, he much “preferred a child that is capable to work the garden with his father . . . and work in the stable, to a child who knows how to read and write.”14 But by 1894, he had come around to accepting the need for the JCA to organize schools in Argentina, lest the colonists’ children “go savage [verwildern].”15 Even then, Hirsch professed great pride when he told a German-­Jewish newspaper about one colonist family in Argentina, in which “the father was a teacher, the daughters well educated, knowledgeable about music, speaking French, English, Italian,” but “they all now march behind the plough. Yes, I put great hope in them.”16 Such outright rejection of bourgeois notions of enlightenment and cultural refinement—­once a key to Jews’ aspirations to become proper Europeans—­reflected the radical nature of the social engineering project that Baron Hirsch was pursuing in the Argentinian countryside. True to Baron Hirsch’s principle that he had “no interest in producing scholars [Gelehrte],”17 David Cazès proposed establishing mixed schools for boys and girls, which would avoid the “luxury” of teaching subjects of “secondary importance” and focus exclusively on reading and writing Hebrew and Spanish, basic arithmetic, as well as practical lessons in agriculture in the school garden for the boys, and sewing classes for the girls.18 The plan outlined by Cazès suggested recruiting teachers from the Alliance Israélite Universelle’s schools in northern Morocco, from among Spanish-­speaking Sephardic Jews. In fact, he had already corresponded with the director of the Alliance school in Tangiers, who had recommended eleven graduates of the school for possible employment in Argentina.19 Responding to Cazès’s plans, Hirsch emphasized, as he always did, the importance of “economy.” He considered the salary scale envisioned by Cazès to be too high and deemed it unnecessary to hire a director in each colony. Not only was the title of di-

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rector “too pompous” (and accompanied by too high a compensation), but clearly one person could oversee the schools in more than one colony. To save money, Hirsch observed, one might also take the example of rural areas in Germany, where teachers often taught in two schools, in the morning in one place and in the other during the afternoon. In a departure from the abrasive style that he often employed with Löwenthal and Goldsmid, Hirsch gingerly added that “these are simply observations, by no means orders.”20 (Baron Hirsch’s insistence on “economy” also led him to suggest hiring female physicians for the colonies, “because they are less expensive than male doctors.” Sonnenfeld was skeptical that women doctors would “withstand the strains” and worried that “the Russian Jews won’t trust them.”)21 Drawing on his long-­standing involvement with Sephardic communities in the Ottoman Empire, Hirsch also wondered whether one could hire teachers there, given that there were “many young Jews, former pupils of the Alliance who speak Spanish and who are dying of starvation.”22 Jacques Bigart, the secretary-­general of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, was less convinced of the wisdom of recruiting teachers in the Ottoman Empire. He argued that “nobody there among the Israelite youth speaks a tolerable Spanish,” and Sigismund Sonnenfeld concluded that it would be useless to try.23 That didn’t go over well with Hirsch—­“when I give an order, then I expect it to be carried out”24 —­and Sonnenfeld dutifully wrote to the principals of Alliance schools in Constantinople, Salonika, and Smyrna. As he made clear, in all capital letters, what the JCA needed was former students who spoke “Spanish—­not the jargon, but good spanish,” and he emphasized that what was needed was primary education, “not to make scholars out of our colonists’ children.”25 The unanimous response was that there certainly were suitable graduates for employment in Argentina—­but, indeed, their Judeo-­Spanish (Ladino) was far from the “pure Spanish” that was sought.26 In the end, Baron Hirsch decided to leave the organization of schools in the Argentine colonies entirely in the hands of the Alliance, rather than having the JCA run its own schools.27 One of the first educators hired for the JCA colonies in Argentina was Joseph Sabah. Born in Smyrna in 1863, educated at the Alliance’s École Normale Orientale in Paris, he had served as a teacher first in Susa and Tunis, then in his native Smyrna. Traveling by way of Genoa, Sabah arrived at

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Montevideo in November 1894, where he marveled at the “Americans” who were waiting ashore, “surprised that I couldn’t find anyone with red skin.” Displaying a rather crude, racialized vision of the Americas, the Ottoman Jewish teacher remarked how “decently” everyone was dressed, commenting on how “four hundred years have served to transform this population.”28 Sabah’s destination was Clara, in Entre Ríos, where he would take on setting up the colony’s first school. The task was not easy, as many children frequently missed school, “during the winter because of the heavy rains, in the summer due the harvest, and in the autumn, due to the planting.”29 Still, the school proved a success—­A lberto Gerchunoff, author of the iconic Los gauchos judíos, was one of the pupils—­and Sabah began to worry whether the school’s progress might come at the expense of the project of agricultural colonization. In a letter to Jacques Bigart, he cited the example of the young daughters of the Tcherkoff family, who had arrived at the school knowing only Russian and who quickly picked up Spanish. Soon enough, the girls were off to Buenos Aires, the school having “provided them the wings to fly.” One, with a beautiful voice, was now giving private singing lessons; another, playing the piano, had entered the conservatory; and a third was studying medicine. Though taking some pride in the success of his former protégées, Sabah saw the “necessity to make the [children] understand and love the beauty of nature,” and to teach them to appreciate their lives in the colony and warn them of the many struggles and disappointments of life in the city.30 Contracts

After years of uncertainty, in 1895, the colonists were finally presented with a contract. “Since 1891, when the first Russian Israelite colonists arrived, until the middle of 1895, that is to say during four years, they have worked and lived without any legal document that would guarantee their rights or determine their obligations,” observed Juan Alsina, the republic’s director of immigration.31 But when the administrators of the four colonies—­Mauricio, Moisés Ville, Clara, and San Antonio—­gathered the colonists to read the contracts, their stipulations created a storm of indignation. “We will not sign this,” clamored the residents of Mauricio: “Interest? Five percent interest? Why would the good baron, that angel of redemption, demand interest from poor

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people like us!”32 But it was not only the 5 percent interest over twelve years to pay off the debts to the JCA for the cost of the land, the agricultural implements provided, and the subsidies received that angered the colonists.33 Overall, the conditions appeared excessively harsh and inflexible, and manifested the huge power differential between the philanthropic organization and its beneficiaries. Thus, the ten articles of the contract—­the colonists referred to them as the “ten plagues,” of Passover fame34—­obligated them to work their land by themselves, being allowed to hire outside help only with explicit authorization from the JCA; they were to deposit the entirety of their harvest in the storage facilities of the administration, which would not assume responsibility for any losses, and debt payments would be deducted from the proceeds of selling the harvest; in the event that a colonist was in violation of any of the contract’s stipulations, or fell behind on his payments, the JCA had the right to seize the colonist’s land and everything on it, and expel him and his family from the colony without indemnity; and the JCA remained the sole proprietor of the land until the debt had been paid off in its entirety. Finally, the parties would submit to the decision of an arbiter, to be appointed by the Alliance Israélite Universelle, in case of disagreement, and the arbiter’s decision would be subject to no appeal.35 The first open rebellion against the contracts occurred in Clara, then a month later in Mauricio. Some colonists decided to appeal directly to Baron Hirsch, assuming that the exploitative nature of the contract could not possibly have been authorized by him. Others decided to turn for help to the Russian consul in Buenos Aires, some took their complaints to the press, and still others sought assistance from Juan Alsina’s department of immigration. Representatives of the colonists in Entre Ríos traveled to the next larger town, Villaguay, demanding that the local chief of police come to their rescue, and another group of colonists seized JCA-­owned equipment that had arrived at the train station in Basavilbaso. Samuel Hirsch and David Cazès, for their part, retaliated by withholding supplies to the rebellious colonists, which, in the case of Mauricio, meant that many did not receive the seeds for the new planting season.36 In the end, as the situation deteriorated and conflicting messages arrived from Paris, Cazès and Hirsch agreed to several modifications to the contracts: the colonists were free to employ outside labor during planting and threshing; they would not have to deposit

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their entire harvest with the administration, but only enough to guarantee their annual debt payment; and failure to meet the contract’s conditions and payments would not lead to rescinding the contract in case of force majeure beyond the colonist’s control.37 The crisis of the contracts further undermined the already contentious relationship between the JCA and its colonists. Most held on to the—­ illusory—­belief that Baron Hirsch himself was unaware of what was transpiring in Argentina and would have never assented to the abusive stipulations of the contract. Even Théophile Wechsler, Mauricio’s former physician and a sharp critic of the JCA, believed that it wasn’t Baron Hirsch who was responsible for abuse and mismanagement but rather what he called the “régime of Turkish pedagogues,” “the Turkish yoke,” by which he meant Cazès, Samuel Hirsch, and David Haym, an Alliance-­affiliated teacher from Smyrna who had arrived in 1892, initially with the goal of establishing schools.38 Haym later became the administrator of Mauricio, much disliked by the colonists (who referred to him as “the white Jesuit” and “the French spy”), and later of Clara.39 Throughout his years in the service of the JCA, Haym filed frequent and unflattering reports about the colonization enterprise to the Alliance in Paris, and unlike many other critics, he took direct aim at Baron Hirsch himself. “I have seen from close up . . . , in the case of the Palestinian colonization, all the disadvantages of an administration led by the promoter of the project,” referring to Edmond de Rothschild, “no doubt motivated by good will and the best intentions, but where an authoritarian character and capricious demands have often aggravated the situation, rather than improving it.” The same, Haym lamented, was happening in Argentina. “At every moment and on every issue, I hear the phrase ‘Ah! Baron [Hirsch] does not allow this; the baron is opposed to that; these are the formal instructions of the baron,’ just like in Palestine. . . . It would be preferable for the baron to give plenty of money and fewer instructions.”40 As we saw in a previous chapter, in 1895 Hirsch reorganized his charitable committees in Vienna and Galicia, asserting more centralized control, rather than less, as Haym would have preferred. The same hegemonic logic informed the colonization project in Argentina, and successive directors of the JCA in Buenos Aires had reason to complain about an organization that centralized all power and decision-­making at headquarters in Paris, leaving

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little room for maneuver to the local administration—­and often ignorant of conditions on the ground. The truth was, of course, that Löwenthal, Goldsmid, Samuel Hirsch, Cazès, and a myriad of lower-­ranking officials themselves often had little “practical knowledge,” were not embedded in local experience, and had little understanding of the culture of the Russian-­Jewish immigrants. Yet despite the highly centralized setup, headquarters in Paris were also almost comically understaffed, certainly when measured against Hirsch’s initial ambition of removing and resettling millions of east European Jews. On one occasion, after Hirsch chastised his right-­hand man, Sigismund Sonnenfeld, for being overly “theoretical” and not “businesslike” enough,41 Sonnenfeld pushed back: more than “theory” was hardly possible, he argued, considering that his “margin of action was basically limited to nothing.”42 Hirsch’s insinuation that “half the staff is [always] out for a stroll” was not only unfair but ignorant of the reality that the JCA’s headquarters ran on a shoestring operation. “The JCA office consists of the following,” Sonnenfeld clarified. Beside himself, there were “Held, Schwarzfeld, and Moss, of whom Dr. Sonnenfeld and Schwarzfeld are also overseeing everything related to [general] charity and the Alliance, whereas Mr. Held is also entrusted with Baron Hirsch’s personal affairs. Mr. Vannière, whose mornings are required at Beauregard [the Hirschs’ summer residence], though volunteering his time in the afternoons, cannot really be counted as an employee of the JCA. Mr. Held is active mostly in a consulting function, and Mr. Moss’s time is taken up with the accounting.”43 The tense exchange of letters between Sonnenfeld and Hirsch illustrated the striking shortfalls of a philanthropic operation that had once been conceived as setting the stage for the mass removal of hundreds of thousands of Jews out of Russia and into colonies overseas, and that was tripped up by both local mismanagement and centralized micromanagement. “A BEAUTIFUL ILLUSION”

“The serious worry was,” Maurice de Hirsch admitted in an interview in spring 1894, whether the prospective Jewish colonists that the JCA sent to Argentina, “who had never worked in agriculture before and had no idea

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about farming, would be able to adjust to their new task in an entirely unfamiliar country . . . and completely uprooted from their old habits.” In other words, the burden of proof, in Hirsch’s view, remained entirely with the colonists, not with the philanthropist. But Hirsch felt upbeat and told the journalist of the liberal, Budapest-­based Pester Lloyd that he would, “in the not too distant future,” invite “representatives of the world press” to visit Argentina and witness “the thriving of our colonies” and see for themselves that Jews were perfectly capable of tilling the soil.44 Baron Hirsch’s belief that agricultural labor was the key to improving the moral standing of the Jews, and their collective reputation in the eyes of the gentile world, remained unchanged despite the many missteps of his colonization project in the previous three years. When Czar Alexander III died and Nicholas II ascended to the throne in November 1894, Hirsch allowed himself, momentarily, an even more optimistic belief. “I have learned,” he told Sigismund Sonnenfeld, “that there really is blowing a wind more favorable to our coreligionists [in Russia] and I believe that the young emperor appears to be disposed to act less cruelly [with them] than his father ever did.” That being the case, he cautioned David Cazès and Samuel Hirsch to act “with great prudence” in further land purchases, “for if there should really be a radical shift in Russia, we will need to examine whether colonization might not be more advantageous to be pursued in Russia, rather than Argentina.”45 Sonnenfeld was less sanguine, reminding Hirsch that “historical experience” had taught that in Russia, “every time there is a liberal regime, it will be followed by a reactionary one.”46 In fact, Nicholas II continued the policies of his predecessor, and the situation of the Russian Jews continued to be dire: witness the wave of bloody pogroms between 1903 (most famously, at Kishinev) and 1906, and the ritual murder accusation culminating in the Beilis trial in 1911.47 Baron Hirsch’s short-­lived sense of optimism about a possible change of direction in Russian politics that might obviate the need for mass removal of Jews overseas may also have grown out of his increasing concern about the pace of colonization in Argentina, despite the boosterism in his interview with the Pester Lloyd. Besides problems in the relationship between the JCA and the colonists and delays in the establishment of a stable administration, repeated harvest failures contributed to Hirsch’s anxiety about the long-­term prospects of his philanthropic enterprise in South America.

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In 1892, locusts had left Moisés Ville “virtually bare,” and on his train ride back from Entre Ríos to Buenos Aires in October that year, Albert Goldsmid “saw locusts in their billions all over the country.”48 (Colonists had to deal with locust invasions every fifteen years or so; in the province of Santa Fe in 1875, they had destroyed three-­quarters of that year’s harvest.)49 Joseph Sabah, the head teacher in Clara, reported to his superiors at the Alliance in Paris that in Entre Ríos, “generally, the harvest is good once every four years,” which exposed especially newly established colonies to a real possibility of failure.50 Inclement weather, from drought to unexpected spells of freezing temperatures, and locust invasions, led to repeated harvest failures in the JCA colonies. Facing another such disaster in March 1895, Baron Hirsch therefore admitted that he was no longer sure “whether Argentina really is, as one thought at the beginning of our work, the country par excellence for colonization,” and he decided to suspend both recruiting and sending new colonists and purchasing further tracts of land.51 A steep decline in grain prices that year added to Hirsch’s apprehensions. He was now “by no means certain about the possibility of expanding our work on a large scale,” anxious that “we would be causing the greatest harm to our coreligionists in Europe if our enterprise in Argentina were to be a failure.”52 Indeed, the problems of the JCA colonies were not unique as Argentina’s export-­oriented agricultural boom entered a slump in the early to mid-­1890s, with a dramatic decline in wheat prices, recurrent destruction of the crop by locusts, and growing unrest among the colonist farmers, many of whom joined the armed rebellions of 1893 in the province of Santa Fe, provoked, among other things, by a new tax on wheat imposed since 1891. (There is no evidence that the rebellions had a direct impact on Hirsch’s colonization enterprise, but they would certainly have alerted the JCA administration to the potential for radicalization among the colonists.)53 The specter of failure thus began to loom over Baron Hirsch’s project, something that Hirsch himself increasingly acknowledged in the course of 1895. A couple of years later, Théophile Wechsler, who had served as the JCA’s physician in Mauricio, published a post mortem of sorts, a highly critical analysis of what he sarcastically called “that brilliant nonsuccess” of Baron Hirsch’s grand colonization scheme.54 “The enterprise of the JCA in Argentina,” Wechsler argued, “has suffered from the same fate as so many other

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great enterprises, which have failed because of an error of calculation: one has believed it to be too easy [on l’a crue trop facile].”55 Baron Hirsch had believed it to be “a trifling matter to colonize in Argentina one million Jews in 25 years” (in fact, it will be remembered, Hirsch had wanted to settle an even larger number), a goal that Wechsler called a “naïve illusion” and “the caprice of a rich man.”56 Jewish colonists in Argentina were very much unlike Italian or German immigrant colonists in the country, Wechsler argued: whereas the latter had been farmers in their home countries, in the case of the Jews, the JCA first needed to “transform the tinsmith into a peasant.”57 Underestimating that task, the JCA administrators had derided their charges as “schnorrers” and “dirty people,” phrases that appeared to come right out of the playbook of antisemites.58 Rather than improving the future of the Jews, the JCA had made things worse with its incompetence and caused serious long-­term damage because, “by now, even those Israelites who, through their influence, or their means, could have contributed to save the victims of half-­ Asian barbarism [in Russia], have been convinced that the establishment of agricultural colonies is not the right remedy.” Baron Hirsch’s project in Argentina, Wechsler lamented, had earned the title of “the best caricature of all colonization, ancient or modern,” and the practical benefits of the vastly expensive enterprise were “close to nil.”59 Joseph Sabah in Clara came to the same conclusion: “When you know what is occurring in these colonies now, you probably won’t preserve, like me, any illusion about the future of this project. . . . It was a beautiful illusion.”60 To the extent that the colonization enterprise in Argentina had stabilized under Samuel Hirsch and David Cazès, it also was now much scaled down. Land purchases and recruitment of new colonists were suspended in 1895, and by 1896, there were still just 6,757 colonists, living on 910 farms distributed among the four colonies owned by the JCA in the country.61 That was not the end of the story, and Jewish colonization in Argentina outlived Baron Hirsch by many decades. But Hirsch’s critics were certainly correct when they observed that his philanthropy’s modest results stood in sharp contrast to the outsize expectations raised when the JCA was first established in 1891. True, as the Jewish Chronicle had reported then, Hirsch’s scheme was not something “that may be likened . . . to the Biblical Exodus; there is to be no quasi-­Messianic redemption,” but rather a “combination of

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philanthropy with the practical spirit,” and, “despite its grandiose character . . . the embodiment of the sober and practical aspirations of a most sober and practical mind.”62 In the end, however, it was precisely on this account that Baron Hirsch’s plan fell short: the technocratic planning mentality of the philanthropic class proved itself inadequate to a task as complex as managing the migration of hundreds of thousands of Jews from East to West and reengineering a society and its culture, across two continents, through agricultural labor. The anthropologist and political scientist James Scott, in Seeing like a State, has discussed the often-­disastrous failure of the various schemes to improve the human condition embraced by modern states. In nineteenth-­century Jewish society, it was organized philanthropy that took on the role of the state, trying to reshape the political economy of the Jewish diaspora and reinvent Jewish society through its hegemonic, technocratic, and physiocratic schemes of social engineering. Like their state-­run counterparts, these philanthropic projects were based on the “necessarily thin, schematic model of social organization and production animating the planning,” and, “for all their ingeniousness, [they] represented fairly simple interventions into enormously complex natural and social systems.”63 As Wechsler put it in his critique of the JCA, “one tried to colonize the Russian Jews in Argentina, without knowing anything of either the Russian Jews, nor of colonization, nor of the Argentine Republic.”64 When Theodor Herzl, the Viennese journalist and writer, went to see Baron Hirsch in June 1895 to win him over to his idea of creating a “Jewish state,” either in Palestine or elsewhere, he echoed the by-­then widespread criticism of Hirsch’s colonization enterprise. Alluding to the mismatch of the millions spent and the modest results achieved, Herzl told Hirsch that “the cost of each such exported Jew [Exportjude],” alluding to the Russian migrants in Argentina, “is not worth it. And how many specimens can you transfer there at all? Fifteen or twenty thousand! More are living in a single alleyway in Leopoldstadt,” the heavily Jewish district in central Vienna. “With twenty thousand of your Argentine Jews you haven’t proven anything,” he continued, “even if they are doing well. But if it goes wrong, you are providing terrible testimony against the Jews.”65 As Herzl mentioned in his introductory letter to Hirsch from a week earlier, the latter’s endeavors in South America had been “as expensive as useless.”

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“Until now you have only been a philanthropist, a Peabody. I will show you the path that will allow you to become more.”66 What Herzl didn’t understand was that Baron Hirsch himself had sought to be much more than a philanthropist, a humanitarian coming to the rescue of his coreligionists: the entire premise of the colonization project in Argentina was that it would be a pragmatic, businesslike enterprise that would offer a practical, technocratic solution to the Jewish predicament by simultaneously providing a haven for Jewish mass migration and demonstrating that Jews were capable of agricultural labor, thus redeeming themselves in the eyes of the world. And thus, despite his skepticism about the Hibbat Zion movement and his lack of interest in the “national question” of the Jews, Baron Hirsch was probably intrigued by the ambitious if utopian ideas of his young interlocutor, and when they parted, he assured Herzl that “this was not our last conversation.”67

In January 1896, Maurice de Hirsch turned to his legal counsel in England, Herbert Lousada, a prominent member of the British Jewish community who served as a member of the Anglo-­Jewish Association (created in 1871), as well as on the board of the JCA.68 Referring to his donation to the JCA in 1892, valued at several million pounds,69 Hirsch explained that he had made the gift “in complete confidence in the success of the colonization project undertaken by the JCA,” a confidence he no longer possessed. He no longer believed that the settlement of Russian Jews in agricultural colonies could be accomplished on the vast scale envisioned originally, and therefore inquired about changing the terms of the endowment to allow the support of “philanthropic objectives other than colonization.” 70 The problem, Hirsch added, was the downward spiral of prices for grain and other agricultural products, which had “completely upended the calculations upon which I based the future operation of the JCA,” a price decline that was unlikely to be reversed, given the constant technological improvements in both transport and agricultural production. It is surprising, in light of Hirsch’s role as a railroad entrepreneur, that he had not anticipated this dynamic. The second problem, Hirsch claimed, was the difficulty of finding energetic administrators who could “lead the uncultured masses.” Given the frequent “insubor-

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dination” of the colonists, it was simply impossible to manage colonies on a much larger scale.71 Hirsch was hoping, therefore, that the terms of his donation from 1892 might be altered, though without prejudice to the original, 2 million pounds sterling endowment the JCA had received at its inception in 1891. The deed of gift in 1892 stipulated that the money was to be used “for the benefit of the Russian Jews generally and principally for the promotion of the emigration of Russian Jews from Europe and the settlement of such Russian Jews in various parts of North and South America and other countries outside the limits of Europe such settlement to be made preferentially and as far as possible in agricultural colonies.” 72 Baron Hirsch now wanted the wording altered to allow support for other philanthropic causes. He was beginning to lose his long-­standing faith that colonization and agricultural labor were the key to the Jewish future. On April 29, 1896, an extraordinary general meeting of the JCA approved the change, allowing that Hirsch’s gift could be used not only for agricultural colonization but for “any other philanthropic purposes . . . for the benefit of Jewish communities or individuals, either in Europe or in America.” 73 A few days earlier, Baron Hirsch had traveled to inspect the construction of a new hunting lodge at the country estate of O’Gyalla, in Hungary, which he had recently purchased. Its furnishings were commissioned from the artistic furniture manufacturer supplying the imperial court in Vienna, Johann Klöpfer, and it was to feature another spectacular staircase, like its counterpart at Rue de l’Elysée in Paris, but this time inspired by the grand staircase of Vienna’s Bristol Hotel, where Hirsch had long been a regular guest. In the evening of April 20, 1896, Hirsch retired early after a dinner, hosted on the neighboring Ehrenfeld estate; that night, suddenly and unexpectedly by all, he died of a stroke. Baron Hirsch had been sixty-­five years old.74 ORPHANS

Baron Maurice de Hirsch was laid to rest at Montmartre Cemetery, in Paris, on April 27, 1896. The funeral procession included much of Parisian high society, aristocrats—­including Prince Ferdinand I of Bulgaria—­ambassadors, and delegations from the numerous Jewish institutions that had benefited

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from the late baron’s generosity.75 The chief rabbi of France, Zadoc Kahn, officiated at the funeral and declared, invoking the global significance of Hirsch’s philanthropy, that the baron “does not belong to this or that Jewish community, to this or that country’s Jewry, but he belongs to all of world Jewry [au judaïsme universel].” 76 Eulogies were pronounced at services in honor of Baron Hirsch, from New York City’s Temple Emanu-­El to the Grand Synagogue of Warsaw,77 and telegrams and letters conveying condolences from across the Jewish world—­from the Spanish and Portuguese congregation in Manchester to the Bikur Holim society in Philippopolis, Bulgaria, and from the association of former Alliance pupils in Tangiers to the Jewish community of Berlin—­were received at the headquarters of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris.78 Clara de Hirsch was the sole heir of a vast private fortune, which the baron’s close associate Gustav Held estimated at 150 million francs.79 One of Clara de Hirsch’s first acts was to establish a pension fund for the retired workers of the Ottoman railroads,80 which had been the foundation of the family’s extraordinary wealth, and she immediately threw herself into overseeing, and expanding, the Hirschs’ philanthropic empire. As her longtime friend Sara Straus—­the wife of Oscar Straus, the former American ambassador in Constantinople and later the first Jew to serve in an American president’s cabinet, under Theodore Roosevelt—­noted, Clara had long been “thoroughly conversant with all [of Maurice’s] schemes so that at his death she was able to continue, develop and complete the undertakings begun by him.” According to Sara Straus, “although the Baron was a determined, energetic character, while the Baroness was modest and retiring, in philanthropic matters the Baron yielded to his wife’s judgment.” “Uninfluenced,” Straus believed, “the Baron, cosmopolitan as he was, might have devoted his fortune to totally different purposes.” Clara, in contrast, “would not permit the money of which the poor, persecuted and oppressed Jews stood in so much need, to be deflected into alien channels” and she was “determined that her husband should direct his restless energies to relieving the distress of his co-­religionists.”81 After Maurice’s death, Clara soon reached out to Oscar Straus, in New York, expressing her desire to make a major donation to assist Jewish immigrants in the United States. Straus was glad “to know that you are bearing

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bravely under your grave bereavement by addressing your thoughts to helping the unfortunates even in this Western world.”82 Before long, Clara de Hirsch had committed $1 million to encourage Jewish immigrants to move away from the “New York Ghetto” into rural areas and created a trade school in New York City, as well as the Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls.83 Many other donations followed, from orphanages in Belgium and Russia to a new hospital in Salonika, and numerous gifts to assist immigrants in North America.84 When Clara de Hirsch passed away, just three years after Maurice, in 1899, the Jewish world once again came together in mourning, with services held from Tangiers, in Morocco, to the Stadttempel synagogue in Vienna, presided over by Chief Rabbi Moritz Güdemann.85 Back in Argentina, many colonists experienced the sudden passing of Baron Hirsch as the loss of a father figure. “From the highest heavens, we were thrown down to the depth of the abyss [tehom],” lamented Marcos Alpersohn in Mauricio. “All our fancies and hopes” were dashed and destroyed with the death of “our redeeming angel, our father, the baron.”86 According to Hirsch’s will, his shares in the JCA fell to four European Jewish institutions—­the Anglo-­Jewish Association and the Jewish communities of Brussels, Frankfurt, and Berlin—­each of which would appoint representatives to the organization’s board. Among the new leaders elected at an extraordinary session in July 1896 were several individuals closely aligned with the Paris-­based Alliance Israélite Universelle: Salomon Goldschmidt, the late baron’s uncle and president of the Alliance; Salomon Reinach, a philologist, archeologist, and scholar of religion; and Narcisse Leven, a native of Germany whose family had emigrated to Paris and who was the Alliance’s vice president from 1883 to 1898, when he was elected president. From October 1896 to his death in 1915, Leven would stand at the helm of the JCA.87 Following the new direction that Baron Hirsch had given to his philanthropy shortly before his death, the JCA decided to hold back on expanding the Argentine colonies for the moment (new colonists were not recruited until 1899),88 and the existing settlements underwent further restructuring. As it had become clear that “agriculture alone cannot guarantee the subsistence of the colonist in Argentina, given the many plagues, inclement climate, and the low grain prices,” the JCA for the first time allowed its settlements to branch out into raising cattle, which the organization had

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hitherto rejected as a commercial and speculative enterprise.89 Meanwhile, a massive departure of colonists, either on their own account or as a result of continuing nettoyage, shrunk especially the colonies of Entre Ríos: if at the beginning of 1896, there had been 5,756 colonists in Entre Ríos, the number had gone down to 5,350 by the time of Baron Hirsch’s death in April, with only 4,989 at year’s end.90 Unexpectedly, it was Moisés Ville—­the oldest of the settlements, which Albert Goldsmid had wanted to abandon entirely—­ that fared best, benefiting from the new changes that involved the planting of alfalfa, along with wheat, corn, and flax, and finally beginning to enjoy greater stability.91 At the same time, the JCA now also began to engage in the two places that it had hitherto eschewed: Russia, where it supported education and agricultural pursuits,92 and Palestine, where the organization began to pour money into the Alliance’s agricultural school, Mikveh Yisrael; purchased land for setting up a training farm in the Galilee; and, in 1900, took over the administration of the Rothschild colonies.93 In this sense, at least, Goldsmid had proved prescient: the Argentine project had, eventually, led the JCA to Zion.

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CONCLUSION

The day of Baron Hirsch’s funeral, on April 27, 1896, a somber memorial was held at the Alliance school on Rue Malta-­Srira in Tunis. The hall was decorated entirely in black, and the stage was adorned with two funeral wreaths and a large, black panel carrying the initials H. M. in large, white letters. The ceremony itself was the perfect testimony to the transnational nature of nineteenth-­century Jewish philanthropy, which more than anyone else the late Baron Hirsch had embodied. First, there was a young student at the local Alliance school, one Elie Helpérine, who was a native of Palestine but of Russian origin, and who was now reciting, in perfect French, the many benevolent deeds that Baron Hirsch had wrought for the Jewish refugees from Russia. Next spoke Rabbi Mordecai Sitruk, who read a passage in Hebrew, which he then expounded in Judeo-­Arabic, commemorating the deceased. After the performance of the choir, the former president of the Alliance in Tunis, Raymond Valensi, rose to render homage to the great benefactor of this French organization, followed by a eulogy offered by the school’s principal, M. Pariente, who once again passed in review the many philanthropic initiatives of Baron Hirsch, culminating with the “foundation of a large and very prosperous colony in the Argentine Republic.”1 Thus, Jews from across the world experienced the passing of one of the great Jewish 283

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figures of their era as a moment that symbolized the global, interconnected, pan-­Jewish world that nineteenth-­century philanthropy had built. If commemorative events, eulogies, and obituaries established a synchronic link across the Jewish diaspora, they also created a diachronic link by comparing Maurice de Hirsch with other great heroes of Jewish history. 2 Many obituaries and eulogies included different variations on the theme of Maurice de Hirsch’s Hebrew name, Moses. French chief rabbi Zadoc Kahn, for example, invoked the fateful name as a sign of Hirsch’s great significance for the Jewish people, associating him with his namesakes, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Moses Montefiore, and indeed the biblical Moses.3 A very different lineup of historical heroes appeared in the appraisal of Baron Hirsch’s life in the Ladino newspaper El Tiempo, published in Constantinople, which celebrated Hirsch as one of the four “most illustrious” Jewish figures of the past millennium. The paper singled out the first, Saadya Gaon (d. 942), for preserving Jewish unity in the face of the Karaite challenge; the second, Maimonides (d. 1204), for bringing together Jewish tradition and philosophy; and the third, Moses Mendelssohn (d. 1786), who had reconciled Judaism and Enlightenment. All three had responded to an intellectual challenge that posed a danger to the continuity of Judaism, whereas “in our days,” according to El Tiempo, “it was necessary to have recourse to that powerful force that dominates modern society, the force of money, and thus providence gave us this great philanthropist,” Maurice de Hirsch. Only marshaling the enormous wealth of someone like Hirsch made it possible, argued El Tiempo, to rescue hundreds of thousands of Jews from poverty and misery through education in the Ottoman Empire and in Galicia, and to relieve the suffering of Russian Jews in that “colossal work” of Jewish colonization in Argentina.4 The obituary in El Tiempo thus expressed the belief that philanthropy, not ideology, was the defining element of modern Jewish politics—­that the true leaders of the modern Jewish community were not rabbis, reformers, and philosophers, but philanthropists, and that humanitarianism defined the very core of modern Jewish identity, rather than rabbinic tradition or religious reform.5 The historical heroes invoked by Adolf Wahrmann, in a eulogy delivered at the great synagogue of Bottuschan (Botoşani), in northern Romania, in-

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cluded Maurice de Hirsch as “the last star in the triumvirate of Crémieux, Montefiore, Baron Hirsch.”6 The French Revolution and, especially, the European revolutions of 1848, Wahrmann explained, had “fostered the awakening of that sentiment that we call patriotism. And when our coreligionists sought to be accepted among the nations in order to partake in their troubles and in their joy, the antisemites of the time  .  .  . denied the Jews any feeling of love for the fatherland [Vaterlandsliebe].” 7 It was at that juncture that “providence” sent Adolphe Crémieux as the right man for his time: not only a leader of the French Jewish community and a founder of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, but also a member of parliament and minister of justice in the French government. If for Wahrmann, Crémieux had demonstrated Jewish patriotism, Baron Hirsch’s philanthropy would serve as a rebuke to the new antisemitism that had emerged in the final two decades of the nineteenth century: Today one is complaining less about the lack of patriotism among the Jews: one speaks less of it because patriotism itself has largely fallen out of fashion. . . . A shifting of the social circumstances has occurred, as during any period of transition in history. . . . The masses have remained behind. . . . [There is] an accumulation of wealth on one side, and the impoverishment of the masses on the other: a truly precarious situation. And just as the unfortunate Israelite people has always had to serve as the scapegoat in history, so it is again. . . . The rallying cry of the antisemites has become: Jewish capitalism.8

While Wahrmann’s assertion that nationalism was no longer a driving force behind Judeophobia was obviously an overstatement, he did put his finger on an important change on the European political scene in the 1890s when he linked the rise of political antisemitism to the disruptive effects of modern industrial capitalism and the emergence of the “social question.” For the Romanian eulogist, there was no better response to the antisemitic scapegoating of the Jews for the evils of capitalism than invoking the example of Baron Hirsch. Hirsch, he maintained, the “Jewish mega-­ capitalist and Jewish millionaire,” understood that his fortune endowed him with the responsibility to work for the common good. The Jewish

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philanthropist was the opposite of the “Arian millionaires,” Wahrmann insisted, using the term “arisch” to refer to Hirsch’s gentile counterparts and thus reflecting how the language of racialized antisemitism was permeating political discourse at the time. Whereas the non-­Jewish millionaire would squander his wealth on palaces, extravagant feasts, and hunting expeditions, the Jewish philanthropist would focus on works of beneficence.9 To be sure, the Hirschs owned their share of palatial properties, from the Hôtel Hirsch on Rue de l’Elysée to Bath House on Piccadilly, and their landed estates in Bohemia and Moravia were of course famous as the backdrop for entertaining high-­placed friends at expensive shooting parties. Wahrmann’s point, however, was that Hirsch’s unparalleled philanthropy, culminating in the Jewish Colonization Association, unequivocally countered antisemitic assertions about Jewish predatory capitalism. Rather, he maintained, “Jewish philanthropy  .  .  . will forever remain as an eternal, living protest against oppression and persecution.”10 The Jewish people, the Romanian scholar explained, “the nation of suffering, has become the nation of compassion [Barmherzigkeit]. Only this nation, which has always experienced the meaning of hatred and inhumanity, could truly value the importance of the love of humanity. . . . Only Israel could have produced a Baron Hirsch.”11 Not only would humanitarianism, then, be at the core of modern Jewish identity, but the patrician, paternalistic philanthropy of Baron Hirsch and his peers, Wahrmann believed, was also the best defense against antisemitic populism. The response to Baron Hirsch’s death in many non-­Jewish newspapers, notably those in the Habsburg Empire, made clear that Wahrmann’s expectations were more wishful thinking than reality. Whereas dailies committed to liberalism, like the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna and the Pester Lloyd in Budapest, celebrated Baron Hirsch’s philanthropic work,12 both antisemitic and socialist papers offered a very different appraisal. Thus, the antisemitic Wiener Neueste Nachrichten, the “independent newspaper for the political, economic, and social interests of the Christian nation in Austria,” sarcastically began its coverage by noting the death of “one of the main ornaments on the firmament of the Jewish press.” For the Viennese paper, the Ottoman railroad project, which had made Hirsch one of the wealthiest men in Europe, represented “an ugly case of Jewish financial artistry, but also of

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the liberalism that unfortunately held the reins of power in Austria back in those years.” The paper gleefully seized on the problems that had emerged in Hirsch’s agricultural colonies in Argentina to claim that their disappointing performance did nothing but confirm the truth of the antisemitic belief that Jews were simply incapable of earning an honest living through farming and manual labor.13 On the left, the official organ of the Austrian Social-­Democratic Party, the Viennese Arbeiter-­Zeitung, was no less hostile. As far as the “fat cats” of the mainstream bourgeois press were concerned, it asserted, “a great benefactor had died.” In reality, however, “the Turkish state and the many buyers of [Hirsch’s] Turkish bonds in Austria and France have lost hundreds of millions.” “While [Hirsch] ruined the lives of innumerable people and drove them from their land,” the Arbeiter-­Zeitung maintained, “he took pity on the Russian Jews and used huge sums of money in order to create Jewish colonies in Argentina. There, however, the Jewish refugees and migrants were treated worse than slaves.” For the socialist paper, with Baron Hirsch “a type of modern conquistador,” “a freebooter who sets out without any moral sentiment in order to destroy the existence of hundreds of thousands in order to still his hunger for gold,” had died.14 Adolf Wahrmann’s eulogy at Bottuschan proved to be overly optimistic in one other regard. “The kind of charity that Moses Hirsch has practiced saves from death, from being forgotten. Individuals like him leave the stage of this earth, but they ascend to a higher stage, the stage of world history, where they will stand strong for all times.”15 In retrospect, historical memory has been less generous, and Baron Hirsch’s name today at best registers on the margins of modern Jewish history. For many of Wahrmann’s contemporaries, in fact, Hirsch was the symbol of a bygone era. When learning of the baron’s death, Theodor Herzl noted in his diary: “A curious day. Hirsch dies, and I establish contact with princes,” anticipating his upcoming visit with the grand duke of Baden: “A new book in Jewish affairs begins.”16 (The following day, Herzl confidently declared: “The Jews have lost Hirsch, but they have me.”)17 With Baron Hirsch’s passing, the gilded age of Jewish philanthropy was coming to an end. The power of the philanthropic elite that had dominated Jewish politics for the better part of the nineteenth century was waning, and a new era—­one of mass politics, including a turn to socialism

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and Zionism—­was emerging on the horizon, promising radically new answers to the “Jewish question.” A “new book in Jewish affairs” was indeed about to begin.

The same year that Baron Hirsch created the JCA, an article appeared in the Ladino newspaper El Tiempo, published in Constantinople, under the headline “Jewish Colonizers and European Colonizers.” This was an abbreviated version of a piece that had previously appeared in Ha-­Tsfira of Warsaw, an impassioned denunciation of European colonialism in Africa. England, Germany, and Italy (the list, curiously, omitted France) had invaded the African continent “to spread Enlightenment ‘with blood, fire, and pillars of smoke.’ ”18 Westerners were talking about delivering Africans from their state of backwardness, but in truth they only brought destruction and unimaginable cruelties. Believing that the “civilized” nations had a higher right to despoil “ignorant peoples who lack defense,”19 European statesmen insisted that colonization would help alleviate the problem of “overpopulation” in the metropole. The lands of the African continent became fair game for subjugation, exploitation, and settlement. Not so, Ha-­Tsfira and El Tiempo declared, Jewish colonization: “We run and they [the Europeans] run, we are undertaking colonization and they are too, but we are weak and powerless, and they are strong and powerful.” The Jewish colonists “do not bring with them their Krupp canons,” but modesty and perseverance: they come to settle, not to rule.20 Jews learned in the course of the nineteenth century to mobilize philanthropy for the sake of collective political action. They deployed the power of philanthropy in the service of a “civilizing mission” directed inward to remake Jewish society, and the politics of empathy and humanitarianism directed outward, to improve the conditions of the Jews in the Jewish “Orient,” from the Ottoman Empire to Habsburg Galicia. The goal of organizations like the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris and philanthropists like Baron Maurice de Hirsch was to embark on a massive project of social engineering. Emulating the importance of schooling in the making of the modern European state, Jewish philanthropy invested heavily in the politics of education, betting that schools would turn a new generation of Jews into

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properly civilized and respectable Europeans.21 By the turn of the century, however, Jewish leaders in the West faced a new challenge, mass emigration from the Russian Empire, which they feared would imperil the hard-­won acceptance of emancipated Jewries in western and central Europe. The remedy, they came to believe, lay in colonization overseas. In the political economy of the modern Jewish world, then, philanthropy came to play a role that mimicked that of the European state, though, importantly, without its coercive powers.22 The emphasis of Jewish philanthropy on its civilizing mission, on the one hand, and colonization overseas, on the other hand, further point to the fact that the Jewish encounter with modern Europe was shaped by the world of empire.23 That does not mean that nationalism and the nation-­state, which dominate most historical accounts of Jewish Europe in the age of emancipation, were not important.24 But Jewish political responses to modernity—­of which philanthropy was the most important vehicle—­become legible only in the context of imperialism. This is not to suggest that Jewish politics in the nineteenth century were, in the words of Daniel Boyarin (speaking of Zionism), a “masquerade of colonialism.”25 Rather, it is to say that it was the habits of thought wrought by empire that produced the particular rationality of modern Jewish philanthropy.26 Its civilizing mission and overseas colonization were designed, after all, not to reform one’s own, local or national community, but to transform Jewish communities on the edge, the margins, of “civilized” Europe. The result was not, as Boyarin would have it, “colonial mimicry” erasing Jewish difference, 27 but a political response to the predicament of modern Jewish existence conditioned by contemporary ideas and practices of empire. The doyen of modern Jewish scholarship in the United States, Salo Baron, observed that “it was capitalism, operating from its inception in the direction of political emancipation and cultural assimilation, that began to threaten the very survival of the Jewish people even more menacingly than had the antagonism and large-­scale exclusion of the previous feudal system.”28 Baron thus turned the tired question of the Jewish “contribution” to the rise of capitalism—­an approach associated with the German sociologist Werner Sombart’s The Jews and Modern Capitalism (1911)—­on its head, insisting instead on the transformative impact of capitalism on modern Jewish society.29 But capitalism, which Baron saw as leading to the gradual dissolution of

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Jewish peoplehood, also created opportunities for a new Jewish politics, led by the capitalist entrepreneurs of the age of globalization. Nobody embodied this transition better than Baron Hirsch, who overcame the limitations of the old regime that still hobbled his grandfather, the Bavarian court Jew, to emerge as one of the most important railroad magnates of the century, and a philanthropist operating on a scale never seen before. The capitalist aristocracy, the cosmopolitan class of which the Hirschs were prominent members, combined economic resources and aristocratic sociability to forge new patterns of patronage, and eventually built a veritable empire of philanthropy that transformed the Jewish world forever. Baron Hirsch’s JCA was not a precursor of Herzlian Zionism. It was, rather, the most emblematic expression of Jewish philanthropic politics in the late nineteenth century. As such, it forged a particular kind of rationality—­ patterns of thought, an internal logic—­that would provide the foundation for the subsequent emergence of an organized Jewish national movement. Like the philanthropists of the nineteenth century, the twentieth-­century Zionists believed that the “Jewish question” was something that could be addressed through technocratic management and social engineering. But where philanthropy played a role mimicking the modern state, political Zionism eventually embraced the idea of actually creating a state. The nineteenth century forged a world of overlapping networks of commerce, culture, politics, and migration of global reach, with “vast differentials of power inhered in them.”30 The life of Baron Hirsch, the builder of Ottoman railroads and celebrity philanthropist, demonstrates how Jews, simultaneously inhabiting the center and the periphery of an ascendant West, were entwined in these global dimensions of the nineteenth century. Where nationalism and the rise of the nation-­state gave rise to the modern “Jewish question” (and to modern antisemitism), the world shaped by European expansion and capitalism offered the conceptual and political tools for a Jewish response. There was both a convergence and a divergence of European and Jewish politics at the turn of the century. The language of empire provided the vocabulary for Baron Hirsch and other philanthropists as they embarked on their civilizing mission in the Jewish Orient—­the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, in particular—­and embraced agricultural colonization overseas to channel Jewish mass migration into a project of social and

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economic “regeneration.” Only in the nineteenth century could mass colonization even be imagined, much less pursued, as a way to overcome the predicament of the Jews. At the same time, the continued juxtaposition of “them” and “us,” “Europeans” and “Jews,” offered a stark reminder that Jews remained, a century after the French Revolution, very much on the margins of Europe.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

When I arrived in Brussels to explore a trove of private papers belonging to Maurice and Clara de Hirsch’s granddaughter Lucienne, in late November 2015, the city was in a lockdown. Following the devastating terrorist attacks in Paris that had left 130 people dead just ten days earlier, the widespread fear of another attack had led authorities to shut down much of the city. The Brussels metro was closed, as were most businesses—­and, as I soon learned, so were the national archives. I am very grateful to Joachim Derwael at the Archives Générales du Royaume who went out of his way to accommodate me and ensured that my visit was not in vain. Along the way, this book has benefited from the help and advice of many other archivists and librarians, in New York City, Beverley and Plymouth in the United Kingdom, Paris and Roubaix in France, and in Vienna. In Israel, I am particularly indebted to Hadassah Assouline and Yochai Ben-­Ghedalia at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, and in Argentina, to Anita Weinstein and Gabriel Feldman at the Centro Marc Turkow of the AMIA in Buenos Aires, and Ilana (Hilda) Zamori of the Museo Histórico Comunal de la Colonización Judía in Moisés Ville. As I was wrapping up my research in the spring and summer of 2020, another, larger, lockdown loomed, this time due to the global Covid-­19 pandemic. Unable to make a pending research trip to Turkey, I was incredibly fortunate to count on the assistance of Akın Aksoy, who tirelessly identified documents related to Baron Hirsch and his railway business in the Ottoman state archives in Istanbul, obtained digitized copies, and diligently prepared transcriptions of Ottoman documents into Latin characters, and translations into modern Turkish and English. Research and writing of this book were possible thanks to sabbatical leaves from the University of California, Irvine, and a Fulbright Foundation research fellowship, that allowed me to spend a quarter at Tel Aviv University’s S. Daniel Abraham Center for International and Regional Studies, where Raanan Rein was a wonderful and generous host. The serenity of leafy Ramat Aviv (which also happens to be the location of a short, inconspicuous 293

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street named after Baron Hirsch) turned out to be very conducive to making serious headway with this project. I also benefited greatly from discussing aspects of my book in invited lectures at the CSIC in Madrid; Oxford University; the University of Michigan; California State University, Long Beach; the University of Pennsylvania; the University of Toronto; the University of Chicago; and the University of Cologne. The many interlocutors, conversations with whom have shaped my understanding of Jewish history and my approach to this project, include Yaron Ben-­Naeh, Francesca Bregoli, Michael Brenner, Javier Castaño, Julia Philipps Cohen, John Efron, Shmuel Feiner, Harvey Goldberg, Jonathan Gribetz, Simcha Gross, Yaron Harel, Uffa Jensen, Tamir Karkason, Jeffrey Kopstein, Devi Mays, Devin Naar, Aron Rodrigue, Mónica Szurmuk, Jeffrey Veidlinger, and Steven Weitzman. I have learned a great deal from all of them. Three friends and fellow historians have been particularly generous with their time and sage advice and have read and commented extensively on an earlier version of my book manuscript: Jessica Marglin, Adriana Brodsky, and Robert Moeller. Their feedback, and the valuable comments that I received early on from my agent, Don Fehr, has made this a much better book. I am equally obliged to the two anonymous readers who reviewed the manuscript for Stanford University Press, and I’d like to thank Sarah Abrevaya Stein and David Biale, editors of the Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture series, for their invaluable support. At Stanford, I could not have asked for a more dedicated editor than Margo Irvin. She and the entire editorial team have been simply wonderful to work with. As is customary in such acknowledgments, I have left the most important ones for the end: I can never sufficiently express my gratitude to my parents, Ute and Reinhard Lehmann, for their unfailing support and love. And, finally, I thank my wife, Miriam, for enduring countless conversations revolving around Baron Hirsch over the past few years, who was the first to read and critique the earliest drafts of every single chapter in this book, and who makes me look forward to each new day.

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NOTES

AGR

ABBREVIATIONS Archives Générales du Royaume, Brussels, Belgium Séquestre Balser

AIU

Archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, Paris, France Série France Série Turquie

AJHS

American Jewish Historical Society, New York Kohler Papers

ANMT

Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail, Roubaix, France Ottoman Imperial Bank

BOA

Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Istanbul, Turkey HR.İD HR.MKT HR.SYS HR.TH HR.TO İ.DH MV Y.A.HUS Y.EE Y.PRK.AZJ Y.A.RES Y.PRK.TKM 295

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ND THE

296

NOTES TO Currencies and Place-­N ames and the Introduction

CAHJP

Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem, Israel JCA/Ar JCA/Lon F/AIU

ERA

East Riding Archives, Beverley, Yorkshire, UK Papers of Lady Jessica Sykes

HHStA

Haus-­, Hof-­, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna, Austria Gesandtschaftsarchiv Konstantinopel

LBI

Leo Baeck Institute Archives, New York AR 2110 Hirsch auf Gereuth Family Collection

OeStA AVA

Austrian State Archives, Allgemeines Verwaltungsarchiv, Vienna, Austria IX C 38a Orientalische Eisenbahn

PWDRO

Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, Plymouth, UK The Jewish Colonisation Association

YIVO

YIVO Archives, New York RG 318 Löwenthal Papers

A NOTE ON CURRENCIES AND PL ACE-­N AMES 1. Historical currency conversion according to historicalstatistics.org, which is maintained by Rodney Edvinsson at Stockholm University. 2. The latter according to in2013dollars.com, which uses the UK’s Office for National Statistics composite price index for the calculation. INTRODUCTION 1. Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth,” North American Review 148:391 (1889), 653–­664; Maurice de Hirsch, “My Views on Philanthropy,” North American Review 153:416 (1891), 1–­4 . On Carnegie and his “gospel of wealth,” see David Nasaw, Andrew Carnegie (London: Penguin, 2006), esp. 343–­354. 2. This formulation is in Carnegie’s follow-­up essay, “The Best Fields for Philanthropy,” North American Review 149:397 (1889), 682–­698, at 684. 3. The “largest charitable organization in the world,” according to Richard Evans, The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815–­1914 (New York: Penguin, 2016), 475. The JCA’s initial endowment of 50 million francs (£2 million) exceeded the 40 million francs that the Rothschilds disbursed in Palestine over an almost twenty-­year period, from 1881 to 1900: Haim Avni, “Territorialism, Territorialist Settlement and Zionist Settlement” (Hebr.), Yahadut zmanenu 1 (1983–­1984), 69–­87, at 81. 4. Hirsch, “My Views on Philanthropy,” 1–­2 . 5. Carnegie, “Wealth,” 656. 6. The description of antisemitism as the “socialism of fools” is often attributed to the

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German social democractic leader August Bebel, though it probably originated with the Austrian politician Ferdinand Kronawetter: see Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-­ Semitism in Germany and Austria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 262. 7. Stephen Sheehi, The Arab Imago: A Social History of Portrait Photography, 1860–­1910 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), and the literature cited there. 8. Maurice de Hirsch in Constantinople, 1888. AGR Séquestre Balser 304. 9. While the Ottoman railroads were Hirsch’s most important business venture, he also invested in railroad construction elsewhere—­for example, in Brazil. See Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 18 June 1892, CAHJP JCA/Ar 8599. 10. See Sheehi, The Arab Imago, 1–­26. The photos can be seen at https://www.loc.gov/ collections/abdul-hamid-ii/about-this-collection/ (last accessed 9 Jan. 2022); a similar collection is in the British Library. 11. The cartes de visites of the Abdullah Frères studio (and their competitors—­for example, the Sébah) represent Ottomans—­from the sultan on down to schoolchildren—­as emblems of Ottoman modernity, or they are portraits of ethnographic “types,” in traditional dress, sold as souvenirs to European tourists. There is another portrait of a “European tourist” by Abdullah Frères, like Hirsch dressed in “Oriental” fashion and reclining on a divan (https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/european-tourist-abdullah-fr%C3%A8res/ AQFEvXVDzV1miA; last accessed 9 Jan. 2022). Both images are evocative of the Orientalist gaze of European photographers active in the Ottoman Empire rather than the work of indigenous photographers like the Abdullah Frères. See Ayshe Erdogdu, “Picturing Alterity: Representational Strategies in Victorian Type Photographs of Ottoman Men,” in Colonialist Photography: Imag(in)ing Race and Place, ed. Eleanor Hight and Gary Sampson (London: Routledge, 2005), 107–­125. The use of the turban in Hirsch’s portrait is particularly incongruous in a period when the fez was the official Ottoman headgear, associated with the modernization of the empire: it plays on the exoticism of the Ottoman “Orient” rather than displaying an alignment with the Ottoman project of modernity, of which Hirsch’s railroad was, of course, a major feature. On Ottoman headdress, see Klaus Kreiser, “Turban and türban: ‘Divider Between Belief and Unbelief ’: A Political History of Modern Turkish Costume,” European Review 13:3 (2005), 447–­458. 12. “Der Schiedsspruch gegen Baron Hirsch,” Deutsches Volksblatt, 27 Feb. 1889; “Oesterreich und die Orientbahnen,” Neuigkeits Welt-­Blatt, 24 Apr. 1896. 13. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann (New York: Harper, 1949), 13. 14. Maurice de Hirsch, “Note concernant le projet de l’émigration russe et de création d’une banque agraire dans la Turquie d’Asie,” 29 July 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 379/2. 15. “The Persecution of the Jews,” Times, 27 May 1891. 16. Maurice de Hirsch, “Conférence de Londres: Exposé,” n.d. [October 1891], CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 17. This number is cited by Carl Solberg in Immigration and Nationalism: Argentina and Chile, 1890–­1914 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), 39. According to Sandra McGee

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Deutsch, Crossing Borders, Claiming a Nation: A History of Argentine Jewish Women, 1880–­ 1955 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 250, the colonies reached a population of just over thirty-­three thousand at the peak in 1925. 18. In a letter to Hirsch, as cited by Herzl in his diary: Theodor Herzl, Tagebücher, 1985–­ 1904 (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1922), vol. 1, 130. 19. Theodor Herzl, “A Solution to the Jewish Question,” Jewish Chronicle, 17 Jan. 1896. Herzl’s programmatic book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish state, 1896) likewise contained a chapter entitled “Palestine or Argentina?” Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1920), 24–­25. 20. There are two English-­language biographies of Baron Hirsch, both by now outdated and neither written on the basis of archival research: Kurt Grunwald, Türkenhirsch: A Study of Baron Maurice de Hirsch, Entrepreneur and Philanthropist (Jerusalem: Israel Program for Scientific Translations, 1966); and Samuel J. Lee, Moses of the New World: The Work of Baron de Hirsch (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1970). Two more recent biographies are Dominique Frischer, Le Moïse des Amériques (Paris: Grasset, 2002), which uses some archival materials but none of the JCA’s own records and which is not always reliable in terms of its historical research, and Serge-­A llain Rozenblum, Le baron de Hirsch: Un financier au service de l’ humanité (Paris: Punctum, 2006), based mostly on the archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle and thus offering a somewhat narrow perspective. For a discussion of the “biographical turn” in recent historiography and its contribution of a new perspective on modern imperialism and colonialism, see Malte Rolf, “Einführung: Imperiale Biographien; Lebenswege imperialer Akteure in Groß-­und Kolonialreichen (1850–­1918),” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 40:1 (2014), 5–­21. 21. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (New York: Viking, 1943), 410. 22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient_Express#/media/File:Aff_ciwl_orient_ex​press​ 4​_ jw.jpg (last accessed 9 Jan 2022). 23. See the two now classic essay collections: Pierre Birnbaum and Ira Katznelson, eds., Paths of Emancipation: Jews, States, and Citizenship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); and Jonathan Frankel and Steven Zipperstein, eds., Assimilation and Community: The Jews in Nineteenth-­Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). More recently on emancipation, see David Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation: A History across Five Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019); and Abigail Green and Simon Levis Sullman, eds., Jews, Liberalism, Antisemitism: A Global History (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2020). After the Austrian-­Hungarian “compromise” that reorganized the Habsburg Empire into the dual monarchy of Austria-­Hungary in 1867, Jews in the Hungarian half of the empire underwent Magyarization and adopted Hungarian patriotism. In the Austrian half, a Jewish “tripartite” identity (loyalty to the Austrian state, identification with the culture of one or another people among whom they lived, and Jewish ethnicity) persisted through the end of World War I. See Marsha Rozenblit, Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg Austria during World War I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 24. See Heinrich Heine, “A Ticket of Admission to European Culture,” in Paul Mendes-­

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Flohr and Jehuda Reinarz, The Jew in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 258–­259. 25. Treitschke, cited in Paul Mendes-­Flohr and Jehuda Reinarz, The Jew in the Modern World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 321; Marr, cited in Richard Levy, ed., Antisemitism in the Modern World (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1991), 81. 26. Herzl, “A Solution to the Jewish Question,” Jewish Chronicle, 17 Jan. 1896. 27. See Shaye Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 1–­10. It was arguably the experience of the Iberian conversos, inhabiting a gray area between Jewishness and Christianity, that anticipated the modern differentiation of ethnic and religious notions of Jewish identity. See, for example, Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997); Yirmiyahu Yovel, The Other Within: The Marranos. Split Identity and Emerging Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). 28. Hirsch, “My Views on Philanthropy,” 2, 4. 29. On the modern “re-­invention” of Judaism as a religion, see Leora Batnitzky, How Judaism Became a Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). 30. “The Jews Must Disappear,” New York Herald, 12 Jan. 1889. 31. Abigail Green, Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2010). 32. See Thomas Adam, ed., Philanthropy, Patronage, and Civil Society: Experiences from Germany, Great Britain, and North America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); Thomas Adam, Philanthropy, Civil Society, and the State in German History, 1815–­ 1989 (Rochester: Camden House, 2016); Thomas Adam, Transnational Philanthropy: The Mond Family’s Support for Public Institutions in Western Europe from 1890 to 1938 (London: Palgrave, 2016); Abigail Green, “Remembering the Plutocrat and the Diplomat,” Jewish Review of Books (Winter 2020), 41–­4 4; Pauline Prévost-­Marcilhacy, ed., Les Rothschild: Une dynastie de mécènes en France, 1873–­2016 (Paris: Louvre Éditions, 2018). 33. Rainer Liedtke, Jewish Welfare in Hamburg and Manchester, c. 1850–­1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Dina Danon, The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020); Brian Horowitz, Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-­Tsarist Russia (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009). 34. See Lila Corwin Berman, The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The Historical Formation of a Multi-­billion Dollar Institution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). 35. See also Jonathan Frankel, “Modern Jewish Politics East and West (1840–­1939): Utopia, Myth, Reality,” in The Quest for Utopia: Jewish Political Ideas and Institutions through the Ages, ed. Zvi Gitelman (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1992), 81–­103, whose distinction between “emancipationist” and “auto-­emancipationist” forms of Jewish politics is too schematic to explain the politics of modern Jewish philanthropy, such as Hirsch’s. For a critique of the identification of “politics” with the “state,” and thus the neglect of Jewish

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political history, see Eli Lederhendler, The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 36. According to Anthony Allfrey, Edward VII and His Jewish Court (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991), 136, 297, who reports that this information was corroborated to him by Count John de Bendern, the son of Hirsch’s adoptive son, Arnold de Forest Count de Bendern. 37. On biographical writing, see the instructive essay by Simone Lässig, “Introduction: Biography in Modern History—­Modern Historiography in Biography,” in Biography Between Structure and Agency: Central European Lives in International Historiography, ed. Volker Berghahn and Simone Lässig (New York: Berghahn, 2008), 1–­26. CHAPTER 1: FROM MUNICH TO BRUSSELS 1. The following according to the description by Lucien de Hirsch in a letter to Jessica Sykes, 22 Aug. [1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 2. In 1895, a social-­democratic newspaper in Brussels reported that King Leopold had tried since 1878 to get Baron Hirsch to provide financial backing for his colonial schemes in West Africa. According to the newspaper, Hirsch, who considered those plans “stupid,” tried to extricate himself from the affair without offending the monarch. “Ausland,” Neue Freie Presse, 9 Mar. 1895. 3. Oscar Straus, “Memo of Conversations Touching Personal History with Baroness de Hirsch de Gereuth Widow of Late Baron M. de Hirsch,” Pau, France, 13–­15 Feb. 1897, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. The first anecdote seems to have been so familiar that Straus simply referred to it as “the cattle story,” without elaborating in his notes. An article in Harper’s Weekly, 25 Oct. 1890, 826, associated the famous story with Maurice’s father, Joseph, who, of course, had not started out as a cattle merchant. 4. See J. Friedrich Battenberg, “Väter und Söhne, Aufsteiger und Nachfolger: Wandel in der Generationenfolge,” in Hofjuden—­Ökonomie und Interkulturalität, ed. Rotraud Ries and J. Friedrich Battenberg (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 2002), 231–­239. 5. Patent of nobility for Jacob Hirsch: AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 6. 6. The initiative to be elevated to noble status, as a rule, came from the individual seeking the title, not the crown or the government. See Kai Drewes, Jüdischer Adel: Nobilitierungen von Juden im Europa des 19. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt: Campus, 2013), 15; on the Hirsch family, 183. See also Jonathan Karp, The Politics of Jewish Commerce: Economic Thought and Emancipation in Europe, 1638–­1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 170–­200. 7. Joseph Prys, Die Familie von Hirsch auf Gereuth (Munich: self-­published by author, 1931), 24. 8. Prys, Die Familie von Hirsch, 44. 9. Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation, 112–­114. 10. Prys, Die Familie Hirsch, 83.

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11. Prys, Die Familie Hirsch, 48–­50. 12. Cited in Prys, Die Familie Hirsch, 53–­55. 13. Prys, Die Familie Hirsch, 59. 14. Cited in Prys, Die Familie Hirsch, 77. 15. Paul Barrelet to Oscar Straus, 6 Mar. 1900, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. 16. Prys, Die Familie Hirsch, 79. 17. Prys, Die Familie Hirsch, 29, 40. 18. Prys, Die Familie Hirsch, 35–­38. 19. Cited in Prys, Die Familie Hirsch, 94. 20. Though his birth name was Moritz, and that is how, for example, his wife Clara continued to address him later, Baron Hirsch was most commonly known as “Maurice” and, for the sake of consistency, I will use his Gallicized name throughout. 21. There are conflicting accounts about the number of siblings Maurice had. The number cited here is in agreement with Frischer, Le Moïse des Amériques, 23; and Grunwald, Türkenhirsch, 9. 22. Straus, “Memo of Conversations.” 23. Sorkin, Jewish Emancipation, 182. 24. Youssef Cassis, Capitals of Capital: A History of International Financial Centres, 1870–­2005 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 33–­34. 25. Straus, “Memo of Conversations.” 26. Straus, “Memo of Conversations.” 27. Paul Barrelet to Oscar Straus, 6 Mar. 1900, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. 28. Grunwald, Türkenhirsch, 12. 29. Straus, “Memo of Conversations.” 30. Allfrey, Edward VII, 74. 31. Straus, “Memo of Conversations.” 32. Paul Barrelet to Oscar Straus, 6 Mar. 1900, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. 33. See Orlando Figes, The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture (New York: Metropolitan, 2019), 39–­47. 34. Ludwig Bamberger, Erinnerungen (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1899), 364–­365. 35. Émile Zola, Money, trans. Ernest Vizatelly (London: Chatto, 1894); first published in French in serialized form in 1890–­1891, and as a book in 1891. In another echo of our story, Zola’s Aristide Saccard invests in a scheme to reclaim the Middle East for Christendom, involving the building of railroads and other public works in the Ottoman Empire. 36. The most detailed account of Langrand-­Dumonceau’s career is Guillaume Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau: Promoteur d’une puissance financière catholique (5 vols., Brussels: Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1960). Grunwald gives an overview of Hirsch’s involvement with Langrand in Türkenhirsch, 20–­25. 37. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 3, 449–­450. 38. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 1, 141. 39. On the role of culture and ideology in economic decision-­making, see, for example,

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Simone Lässig, “Zwischen Markt und Kultur?,” in Geschichte und Geschichtsvermittlung, ed. Olaf Hartung and Katja Köhr (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2008), 104–­124; also Hartmut Berghoff and Jakob Vogel, eds., Wirtschaftsgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte: Dimensionen eines Perspektivenwechsels (Frankfurt: Campus, 2004); David Throsby, Economics and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 40. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 1, 233. 41. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 1, 221–­222. 42. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 1, 270. 43. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 1, 269. 44. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 1, 280. 45. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 1, 240. 46. Grunwald, Türkenhirsch, 24. 47. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 1, 241. 48. See Emiel Lamberts, The Struggle with Leviathan: Social Responses to the Omnipotence of the State, 1815–­1965 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2016), 162. 49. Lamberts, Struggle with Leviathan, 162–­163. 50. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 4, 123–­193. 51. “Die Langrand’schen Aktiengesellschaften,” Fremden-­Blatt, 31 Jan. 1868. 52. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 5, 57–­58. Hirsch’s letter to Langrand, dated 8 February 1869, cited there. 53. “Telegraphische Depeschen,” Fremden-­Blatt, 16 Feb. 1868. 54. A summary of the ill-­fated Kaschau-­Oderberg concession, “Eine Eisenbahn-­ Comödie: In acht Acten,” Neue Freie Presse, 29 Jan. 1869. 55. “Ein Capitel österreich-­ungarischer Eisenbahn-­Politik,” Neue Freie Presse, 21 Oct. 1868. 56. Jacquemyns, Langrand-­Dumonceau, vol. 5, 61–­62. 57. “Freiherr v. Becke und die türkischen Bahnen,” Neue Freie Presse, 17 Feb. 1869. 58. Lamberts, Struggle with Leviathan, 164. 59. See La question des chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe devant l’opinion publique (Constantinople: Typographie et Litographie Centrales, 1875), 2. 60. Allfrey cites estimates of Baron Hirsch’s fortune ranging from £15 million to £30 million; by comparison, the first Duke of Westminster, the richest man in England, was believed to be worth £14 million in the mid-­1890s: Allfrey, Edward VII, 94. Allfrey does not provide the source for these estimates, however. A newspaper in Czernowitz claimed that Hirsch’s wealth in 1888 was a staggering 1.2 billion francs, behind the French Rothschild but ahead of Jay Gould and J. W. Mackay in the United States and the English Rothschild. “Die reichsten Leute,” Bukowinaer Rundschau, 29 May 1888. The problem here is that the Rundschau cited an article in Revue des Deux Mondes as its source, but the article in question lists the other fortunes cited, but not that of Hirsch: “Les grandes fortunes aux États-­Unis,” Revue des Deux Mondes 87:1 (1888), 143–­176, esp. 162. 61. The phrase is coined by Walter Benjamin, in “Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth

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Century,” in Benjamin, The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire, ed. Michael Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2006), 30–­45. 62. On the court Jews of central Europe and their role in Jewish and European history, see the classical study by Selma Stern, The Court Jew: A Contribution to the Period of Absolutism in Central Europe (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1950), and the German version of her book, Der Hofjude im Zeitalter des Absolutismus, ed. Marina Sassenberg (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001); see also Mordechai Breuer, “Tradition and Enlightenment, 1600–­1780,” in German-­Jewish History in Modern Times, ed. Michael Meyer (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), vol. 1, 104–­126; Rotraud Ries and J. Friedrich Battenberg, eds., Hofjuden—­Ökonomie und Interkulturalität: Die jüdische Wirtschaftselite im 18. Jahrhundert (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 2002). There were parallels to the central European court Jews elsewhere; see, for example, Yaron Tzur, Notables and Other Jews in the Ottoman Middle East 1750–­1830 (Hebr.) (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2016); Daniel Schroeter, The Sultan’s Jew: Morocco and the Sephardi World (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002). On premodern antecedents of the phenomenon of court Jews, see Yosef Kaplan, “Court Jews before the Hofjuden,” in From Court Jews to the Rothschilds: Art, Patronage, and Power, ed. Vivan Mann, Richard Cohen, and F. Backhaus (New York: Prestel, 1996), 11–­26. 63. Breuer, “Tradition and Enlightenment, 1600–­1780,” 105. 64. Shmuel Feiner, The Jewish Eighteenth Century: A European Biography, 1700–­1750 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020), 82. Some historians have argued, to be sure, that there were other “social types” in early modern Europe that can be seen as foreshadowing Jewish modernity—­for example, the “port Jews,” or Jews residing in centers of maritime trade such as Livorno, Trieste, or Amsterdam. See Lois Dubin, The Port Jews of Habsburg Trieste: Absolutist Politics and Enlightenment Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); David Sorkin, “The Port Jew: Notes Toward a Social Type,” Journal of Jewish Studies 50:1 (1999), 87–­97. 65. The most notorious example is the fate of Joseph Süß (“Jud Süß”) Oppenheimer, in the service of the Duke of Württemberg in Stuttgart and, after falling from grace, executed in 1738. See Yair Mintzker, The Many Deaths of Jew Süss: The Notorious Trial and Execution of an Eighteenth-­Century Court Jew (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017). A late example is the execution of several prominent Jewish bankers and community leaders in Constantinople in 1826 who had served as the financiers for the Janissary corps, which was violently annihilated at the behest of Sultan Mahmud II that year. See Julia Phillips Cohen, Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 6–­8. CHAPTER 2: THE NEW ARISTOCR ACY 1. On the central synagogue on Rue Victoire as an expression of the French-­Jewish project of patrie et religion (country and religion), see Richard Cohen, “Urban Visibility and Biblical Visions,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken, 2002), 731–­796, at 747–­750.

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2. “Le premier de l’an israélite,” Le Gaulois, 17 Sept. 1879. It should be pointed out, of course, that there were plenty of non-­Jewish philanthropic organizations at work as well: in the 1890s, according to a contemporary survey, there were some three thousand charitable institutions in and around Paris. Office central des oeuvres de bienfaisance, Paris charitable et prévoyant (Paris, 1897), cited in Lee Shai Weissbach, “The Nature of Philanthropy in Nineteenth-­Century France and the mentalité of the Jewish Elite,” Jewish History 8:1–­2 (1994), 191–­204, at 192. 3. On the Jewish elite of Paris in the years of the Third Republic, see Cyril Grange, Une élite parisienne: Les familles de la grande bourgeoisie juive (1870–­1939) (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2016). 4. “Der Vertrag mit Deutschland,” Neue Freie Presse, 3 July 1872. 5. “Le premier de l’an israélite,” Le Gaulois, 17 Sept. 1879. 6. ChaeRan Freeze makes a similar point about Moscow’s Poliakovs, though for them, it was philanthropy for Russian imperial causes, rather than Jewish philanthropy, that served to cement their position. ChaeRan Freeze, A Jewish Woman of Distinction: The Life and Diaries of Zinaida Poliakova (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 2019), 6. 7. Christopher Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1870–­1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 7. 8. On the intersection of the rising bourgeoisie and the old aristocratic classes, and the pursuit of noble titles among European Jewish elites, see Drewes, Jüdischer Adel; also, George Mosse, The German-­Jewish Economic Elite, 1820–­1935: A Socio-­Cultural Profile (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989); Boris Barth, “Weder Bürgertum noch Adel—­Zwischen Nationalität und kosmopolitischem Geschäft: Zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte der deutsch-­jüdischen Hochfinanz vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 25:1 (1999), 94–­122. 9. David Priestland, The Red Flag: A History of Communism (New York: Grove, 2009), 37. 10. For the following, see Patrice Higonnet, Paris: Capital of the World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), esp. 177–­204. 11. See Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968); Ronald Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–­1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Maurice Samuels, The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016); Paula Hyman, The Emancipation of the Jews of Alsace: Acculturation and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). On Jews in nineteenth-­ century France more generally, see Michael Graetz, The Jews in Nineteenth-­Century France: From the French Revolution to the Alliance Israélite Universelle (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996). For a comparative perspective on Muslims and French citizenship, see Ian Coller, Muslims and Citizens: Islam, Politics, and the French Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020). 12. Cited in Lisa Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-­Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 3.

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13. “Le premier de l’an israélite,” Le Gaulois, 17 Sept. 1879. 14. Cited in Paula Hyman, The Jews of Modern France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 59. On Jewish immigration to France, see, for example, Nancy Green, The Pletzl of Paris: Jewish Immigrant Workers in the Belle-­Epoque (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1986). 15. Hyman, Jews of Modern France, 116. 16. Gary Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-­State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 17. Joshua Schreier, Arabs of the Jewish Faith: The Civilizing Mission in Colonial Algeria (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010); Joshua Schreier, The Merchants of Oran: A Jewish Port at the Dawn of Empire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017); Sarah A. Stein, Saharan Jews and the Fate of French Algeria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014). 18. Jonathan Frankel, The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder,” Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Green, Moses Montefiore, 133–­157. 19. See David Kertzer, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara (New York: Vintage Books, 1997). 20. Cited in Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity, 161. 21. See Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity. On the Alliance’s schools see Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); Aron Rodrigue, Jews and Muslims: Images of Sephardi and Eastern Jewries in Modern Times (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003); and Michael Laskier, The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Jewish Communities of Morocco, 1862–­1962 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983). 22. Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity, 164. 23. “Besitzwechsel,” Neue Freie Presse, 5 Dec. 1878. From letters written in 1874, we know that they had lived at 82, Boulevard Haussmann in earlier years. See AIU France V A 34.09. 24. “Une soirée d’inauguration,” Le Gaulois, 15 Mar. 1884. 25. Monographie du Palais des feu le Baron & la Baronne de Hirsch: Décorations intérieures & extérieures (Paris, [1906]), introduction. 26. “Une grande fête,” Le Gaulois, 17 May 1884. 27. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 13 Oct. 1884, ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 28. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 21 Feb. 1887, ERA DDST 1/2/1/17. 29. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 24 Feb. 1887, ERA DDST 1/2/1/17. 30. “Une grande exposition,” Le Gaulois, 3 Jan. 1887. 31. Paul Barrelet to Oscar Straus, 6 Mar. 1900, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. 32. Paul Barrelet to Oscar Straus, 6 Mar. 1900, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. 33. “Échos mondains,” Le Gaulois, 27 Jan. 1884. 34. “Le monde et la ville,” Le Gaulois, 8 Mar. 1884. 35. “Le monde et la ville,” Le Gaulois, 22 Mar. 1880. 36. “Carnet mondain,” Le Gaulois, 16 Apr. 1885.

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37. “Une première, au grand théâtre de l’avenue Gabriel,” Le Gaulois, 31 May 1884. 38. “Carnet mondain,” Le Gaulois, 16 May 1885. 39. Monographie du Palais des feu le Baron & la Baronne de Hirsch, introduction. 40. “Une soirée d’inauguration,” Le Gaulois, 15 Mar. 1884. 41. Norbert Elias, The Court Society (Oxford, 1974), 64. 42. “Un mariage de millions,” Le Gaulois, 14 Aug. 1882. 43. “Un mariage de millions,” Le Gaulois, 14 Aug. 1882. 44. There is a rich literature on the Dreyfus Affair; see, for example, Ruth Harris, Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion and the Scandal of the Century (New York: Picador,, 2010). On other causes célèbres in nineteenth-­century France, bringing to the fore anti-­Jewish attitudes and suspicions, and which revolved around the role of Jews in the economic modernization of the century, see, for example, Jean Bouvier, Les deux scandales de Panama (Paris: Julliard, 1972) and Bouvier, Le krach de l’Union générale (1878–­1885) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1960); Julie Kalman, Rethinking Antisemitism in Nineteenth-­Century France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 45. On Drumont, see Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), 293–­300. 46. “Cri d’alarme,” Le Gaulois, 6 Nov. 1886. 47. Édouard Drumont, La France juive (Paris: C. Marpon et E. Flammarion, 1886), vol. 2, 85–­86. 48. Drumont, La France juive, vol. 2, 86–­87. 49. Cited in Pierre Birnbaum,: A Political History of State Jews in France from Gambetta to Vichy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 137. 50. Samuels, Right to Difference, 95–­116; Harris, Dreyfus. 51. See Green and Sullam, Jews, Liberalism, Antisemitism. 52. Hirsch was not alone, to be sure, in defying the association of nineteenth-­century Jewish elites and liberalism: consider the generous contributions of Lazar Poliakov to the editors of archconservative and antisemitic newspapers in Russia. See Freeze, Jewish Woman of Distinction, 63–­64. 53. Cited in Birnbaum, Jews of the Republic, 139. 54. Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left: Fascist Ideology in France (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). See also William Irvine, The Boulanger Affair Reconsidered: Royalism, Boulangism, and the Radical Right in France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 55. Marquis de Breteuil, Journal secret, 1886–­1889, ed. Dominique Paoli (Paris: Mercure de France, 2007), 217. 56. Breteuil, Journal secret, 236–­237. 57. Breteuil, Journal secret, 287–­288. 58. Austrian embassy, Paris to Gustav von Kálnoky, Vienna, 8 Nov. 1888, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 59. Austrian embassy, Paris to Gustav von Kálnoky, Vienna, 8 Nov. 1888 (confidential letter), LBI AR 2110 box 9.

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60. Breteuil, Journal secret, 315. 61. Austrian embassy, Paris to Gustav von Kálnoky, Vienna, 26 Nov. 1890, LBI AR 2110 box 9. The Parisian papers continued to debate the mystery of Boulanger’s financial backers, and echoes of the rumors, denials, and conjectures appeared abroad as well—­for example, in Vienna’s Neue Freie Presse, which noted that “nobody believes” that the Count of Paris himself had given money to Boulanger’s campaign. “Politische Uebersicht,” Neue Freie Presse, 2 Mar. 1895. 62. Austrian embassy, Paris to Gustav von Kálnoky, Vienna, 7 Oct. 1890, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 63. “Le Baron Hirsch,” Le Figaro, 22 Apr. 1896; “Der Kampf des Baron Hirsch,” Bukowinaer Rundschau, 18 Jan. 1891; “Échos de Paris,” Le Gaulois, 14 Jan. 1891. 64. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 20 Sept. [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/17. 65. “Death of Baron de Hirsch,” Jewish Chronicle, 24 Apr. 1896. 66. “Death of Baron de Hirsch,” Jewish Chronicle, 24 Apr. 1896. 67. Brigitte Hamann, Kronprinz Rudolf: Ein Leben (Munich: Piper, 2006), 196–­204. 68. On the history of the Jewish country house, see Abigail Green and Juliet Carey, “Beyond the Pale: The Country Houses of the Jewish Élite,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 18:4 (2019), 393–­398; Liora Auslander, “The Modern Country House as a Jewish Form: A Proposition,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 18:4 (2019), 466–­488; and the other contributions in that issue. 69. “Society,” Bow Bells 18:232, 10 June 1892. 70. “Mittheilungen aus dem Publicum,” Neue Freie Presse, 18 Aug. 1879. 71. “Telegramme der ‘Neuen Freien Presse’,” Neue Freie Presse, 28 Sept. 1881. 72. Maurice de Hirsch to Ministerium, Vienna, 15 June 1877, AIU France V A 34.01; Magistrat der k. k. Reichshaupt-­u. Residenzstadt Wien to Maurice de Hirsch, 22 Oct. 1877, AIU France V A 34.01. There was no Habsburg citizenship, and one was a citizen of either Austria or Hungary: see Ulrike von Hirschhausen, “From Imperial Inclusion to National Exclusion: Citizenship in the Habsburg Monarchy and in Austria 1867–­1923,” European Review of History 16:4 (2009), 551–­573. 73. See confirmation from Consulat Général d’Autriche-­Hongrie, Paris to Clara de Hirsch, 19 Apr. 1894, AIU France V A 34.01. 74. “Das Kaiserpaar in Cap Martin,” Neue Freie Presse, 8 Mar. 1896. 75. “Society,” Bow Bells 22:277, 21 Apr. 1893. 76. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 16 Sept. [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/17. 77. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 30 Oct. 1884, ERA DDST 1/2/1/6. 78. “Le monde et la ville,” Le Gaulois, 17 Feb. 1881. 79. Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (New York: Viking, 2018), 95. 80. The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill (New York: The Century, 1909), 284. 81. “Échos de l’étranger,” Le Gaulois, 15 Nov. 1889. 82. “Society,” Bow Bells 12:147, 24 Oct. 1890. 83. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 16 Sept. [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/17. 84. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 23 Aug. [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/17.

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85. Hirsch, “My Views on Philanthropy,” 1. 86. “Brand,” Neue Freie Presse, 12 Sept. 1879. 87. See Frank Lorenz Müller, Die Thronfolger: Macht und Zukunft der Monarchie im 19. Jahrhundert (Munich: Siedler, 2019), 80–­102. 88. See Berta Szeps, My Life and History (London: Cassell, 1938), diary entry dated 5 Oct. 1886, discussing Baron Hirsch’s subsidy for her father’s newspaper at the recommendation of Crown Prince Rudolf. 89. The dates according to Grunwald, Türkenhirsch, 92. 90. Drumont, La France juive, vol. 2, 86. 91. The Diaries of Edward Henry Stanley, 15th Early of Derby (1826–­93), Between 1878 and 1893, ed. John Vincent (Oxford: Leopard’s Head Press, 2003), entry dated 11 Oct. 1891, 867. 92. See John Cooper, The Unexpected Story of Nathaniel Rothschild (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 56; Hamann, Kronprinz Rudolf, 331. 93. BOA Y.A.HUS 229/85 (17 Oct. 1889); BOA HR.TO 83/91 (19 Oct. 1889). 94. Jane Ridley, Bertie: A Life of Edward VII (London: Vintage, 2013), 270. 95. Hamann, Kronprinz Rudolf, 393. 96. Hamann, Kronprinz Rudolf, 449. 97. “Court News,” Times, 3 Apr. 1890. 98. “Fürstliche Gäste in Wien,” Neue Freie Presse, 7 Oct. 1890. 99. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 12 Feb. [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 100. Charlotte Knollys [Lady of the Bedchamber and Princess Alexandra’s private secretary] to Maurice de Hirsch, 1 Apr. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 100/1. 101. “Our Van,” Baily’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes 54 (1890), 129–­132. 102. “Death of Baron Hirsch,” Times, 22 Apr. 1896. Allfrey, Edward VII, 102, cites a significantly lower number, £24,700, as the prize money brought in by La Flèche, over her career. 103. See David Higgs, Nobles in Nineteenth-­Century France: The Practice of Inegalitarianism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); Elizabeth MacKnight, Aristocratic Families in Republican France, 1870–­1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 104. “London,” Vogue, 26 Mar. 1896. 105. For the question of what makes a cultural practice “Jewish,” see Leora Auslander, “The Boundaries of Jewishness, or When is a Cultural Practice Jewish?,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 8:1 (2009), 47–­64. 106. George Mosse makes a similar argument in Jews in the German Economy: The German-­Jewish Economic Elite, 1820–­1935 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 355. CHAPTER 3: A JEWISH FAMILY 1. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 9 Oct. [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/17. 2. Paul Barrelet to Oscar Straus, 30 Jan. 1900, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. According to the reminiscences of one G. Selikowitch, published in 1920, he was a student at the rabbinical seminary in Paris in the early 1880s when the seminary’s vice president,

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Michel Erlanger, received a letter from Baron Hirsch, asking for one of the students to “officiate at the Seder ceremonies in my house during the two Passover evenings,” since the Hirschs were expecting “a few frum guests” visiting from Germany. Selikowitch, as cited in Lee, Moses of the New World, 181–­186. Selikowitch’s account cannot be taken at face value as it conflates events in Hirsch’s life that were several years apart. 3. Paul Barrelet to Oscar Straus, 30 Jan. 1900, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. 4. Paul Barrelet to Oscar Straus, 30 Jan. 1900, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. 5. Eliyahu Stern, Jewish Materialism: The Intellectual Revolution of the 1870s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 7. 6. T. R., “Notice nécrologique sur L. J. M. de Hirsch de Gereuth,” Revue Numismatique (second trimester, 1887). 7. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 1 May 1875, AGR Séquestre Balser 314; Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 9 Nov. [1875], AGR Séquestre Balser 315. 8. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 15 Feb. [1875], AGR Séquestre Balser 314. 9. On Prokesch see T. R., “Notice nécrologique,” 4; Fischer as Lucien’s tutor, see Frischer, Le Moïse des Amériques, 145. 10. In later years, Fischer—­by then a professor at Marburg University—­maintained a lively correspondence with Lucien’s daughter Lucienne. AGR Séquestre Balser 268, 269, 270, 271, 274, 277, 278, 285. 11. The “Mediterranean region” (rather than the Mediterranean as a body of water) is “a conception the world owes to [Theobald] Fischer,” according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (12th ed., London, 1922), vol. 31, 75. 12. Lucien de Hirsch to Maurice de Hirsch, 17 Apr. [1875], AGR Séquestre Balser 314. 13. Paul Barrelet to Oscar Straus, 6 Mar. 1900, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. 14. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 5 Apr. 1875, AGR Séquestre Balser 314. 15. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 15 Feb. [1875], AGR Séquestre Balser 314. 16. Henriette Goldschmidt to Clara de Hirsch, 30 May 1875, AGR Séquestre Balser 501. 17. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 19 Jan. [1875]; 22 Jan. [1875]; 1 Mar. 1875, AGR Séquestre Balser 314. 18. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 19 Mar. [1875], AGR Séquestre Balser 314. 19. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 19 Mar. [1875]; 28 Apr. 1875; 12 May [1875], AGR Séquestre Balser 314. 20. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 26 May [1875], AGR Séquestre Balser 314. 21. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 12 May [1875], AGR Séquestre Balser 314. 22. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 28 Apr. 1875, AGR Séquestre Balser 314. 23. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 20 June [1875], AGR Séquestre Balser 315. 24. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 20 Mar. [1876], AGR Séquestre Balser 315. 25. See James Buzard, The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to “Culture,” 1880–­1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993); John Pemble, The Mediterranean Passion: Victorians and Edwardians in the South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Rudy Koshar, German Travel Cultures: Leisure, Consumption, and Culture (London: Berg, 2000).

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26. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 20 Mar. [1876], AGR Séquestre Balser 315. 27. Lucien de Hirsch to Maurice de Hirsch, 5 Mar. [1876], AGR Séquestre Balser 315. 28. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 9 Apr. [1876], AGR Séquestre Balser 315. 29. Paul Barrelet to Oscar Straus, 6 Mar. 1900, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. 30. François de Callataÿ, “Lucien de Hirsch numismate, et le fonds séquestre Edouard Balser (Archives générales du Royaume),” In Monte Artium 6 (2013), 7–­40, at 7. 31. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 6 Mar. [1880], AGR Séquestre Balser 318. 32. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 7 Mar. 1880, AGR Séquestre Balser 318. 33. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 21 Mar. 1880, AGR Séquestre Balser 318. 34. Herzl, Tagebücher, vol. 1, 21. 35. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 8 Apr. 1880, AGR Séquestre Balser 318. 36. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 21 Mar. [1880], AGR Séquestre Balser 318. 37. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 30 Mar. 1880, AGR Séquestre Balser 318. 38. “Un mariage de millions,” Le Gaulois, 14 Aug. 1882; also reported in [untitled news item], Jewish Chronicle, 25 Aug. 1882 and “Kleine Chronik,” Prager Tagblatt, 11 Aug. 1882. Marienbad was a popular destination for Jewish families in the nineteenth century: see Mirjam Zadoff, Next Year in Marienbad: The Lost World of Jewish Spa Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). 39. “Novedades israelitas,” La Epoca, 27 Oct. 1882. 40. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 23 Dec. 1884, ERA DDST 1/2/1/6. 41. Margot Asquith, The Autobiography of Margot Asquith (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1920), 96. 42. Cited in Hamann, Kronprinz Rudolf, 204. 43. Lucien de Hirsch to Clara de Hirsch, 13 Dec. [n. y.], AGR Séquestre Balser 318. 44. Christopher Simon Sykes, The Big House: The Story of a Country House and its Family (London: Harper Collins, 2004), 155. 45. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 21 Oct. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 46. Sykes, Big House, 152–­153. 47. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 4 Aug. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 48. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 14 Aug. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 49. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 17 Sept. [1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 50. Ridley, Bertie: A Life of Edward VII, 183. 51. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 21 Oct. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 52. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, [Aug. 1885 (?)], ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. In something of a pre-­#MeToo moment, someone has scribbled “This cannot be quite true” on the margins of Jessie’s letter, today in the archives at Beverley in Yorkshire. 53. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 23 Oct. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 54. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 7 Nov. 1885; 15 Nov. 1885; 25 Nov. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 55. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 2 Dec. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. On Ripon, see Niall Ferguson, Empire (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 165–­170.

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56. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 8 Dec. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 57. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 2 Dec. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 58. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 24 Dec. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 59. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 27 Nov. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 60. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 2 Dec. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 61. On the sea voyage from Italy to Suez, Jessie met a couple of newlyweds who spoke German and whom she “rather [thought] of oriental [i.e., Jewish] lineage.” Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 10 Nov. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 62. See Lucien’s letters to Jessica Sykes from late 1885 and early 1886 in ERA DDST 1/2/1/6. 63. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 16 Aug. 1886, ERA DDST 1/2/1/15. 64. See, for example, Edith Stern, The Glorious Victory of Truth: The Tiszaeszlar Blood Libel Trial (Hebr.) (Jerusalem: Reuben Mas, 1998). On the long history of anti-­Jewish ritual murder accusations, see most recently Magda Teter, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020). 65. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 19 Aug. [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/17. 66. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 23 Aug. [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/15. 67. For example, Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 13 Dec. [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/17. 68. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 16 Nov. [1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 69. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, [Nov. 1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 70. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 23 Dec. [1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 71. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 30 Dec. [1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 72. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 19 Nov. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 73. A good way to think about Jessie’s perception of Lucien, and of Lucien’s self-­ positioning, is with the concept of “situational ethnicity”: see Till van Rahden, “Weder Milieu noch Konfession: Die situative Ethnizität der deutschen Juden im Kaiserreich in vergleichender Perspektive,” in Religion im Kaiserreich: Milieus, Mentalitäten, Krisen, ed. Olaf Blaschke and Frank-­Michael Kuhlemann (Gütersloh: Chr. Kaiser, 1996), relying on the ideas developed by Jonathan Okamura, “Situational Ethnicity,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 4:4 (1981), 452–­465. 74. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 26 Sept. [1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 75. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 24 Oct. [1885 (?)], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 76. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 12 Jan. [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 77. Lucien de Hirsch to Maurice de Hirsch, no date [spring 1886], AGR Séquestre Balser 318; Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 14 Dec. 1885, ERA DDST 1/2/1/12. 78. Lucien de Hirsch to Maurice de Hirsch, no date [spring 1886], AGR Séquestre Balser 318. 79. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, no date [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/17. 80. Lucien de Hirsch to Maurice de Hirsch, no date [spring 1886], AGR Séquestre Balser 318. 81. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 11 Jan. [1887], ERA DDST 1/2/1/17.

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82. Sykes, Big House, 203. 83. Jessica Sykes to Lucien de Hirsch, 6 Apr. 1887, ERA DDST 1/2/1/20. On Jessica Sykes’s subsequent life—­she never quite recovered from losing Lucien—­see Sykes, Big House, 204–­210. 84. “La mort de M. le baron Lucien de Hirsch,” Le Gaulois, 7 Apr. 1887. 85. “Les obsèques du baron Lucien de Hirsch,” Le Gaulois, 9 Apr. 1887; “Échos de Paris,” Le Gaulois, 20 Feb. 1888. 86. Clara de Hirsch to Hortense Bischoffsheim, 13 July 1887, AGR Séquestre Balser 495. 87. Clipping from Italian newspaper (no title or date provided) [June 1889], in AGR Séquestre Balser 497. 88. S. Vanier to Maurice de Hirsch, 21 Aug. 1887, AGR Séquestre Balser 393. 89. S. Vanier to Maurice de Hirsch, 21 Aug. 1887, AGR Séquestre Balser 393. 90. S. Vanier to Maurice de Hirsch, 21 Aug. 1887, AGR Séquestre Balser 393. 91. Copy of adoption contract, dated 24 Sept. 1887, AGR Séquestre Balser 306. 92. Clara de Hirsch to Hortense Bischoffsheim, end of July 1887, AGR Séquestre Balser 495. 93. Clara de Hirsch to Hortense Bischoffsheim, 27 Sept. 1887, AGR Séquestre Balser 495. 94. Clara de Hirsch to Henriette Goldschmidt, 13 June 1889, AGR Séquestre Balser 497. 95. Irène Premelić to Maurice de Hirsch, 23 Aug. 1891, AGR Séquestre Balser 384. 96. Maurice de Hirsch to Irène Premelić, 18 Apr. 1895, AGR Séquestre Balser 384. 97. Maurice de Hirsch to Irène Premelić, 18 Apr. 1895, AGR Séquestre Balser 384. 98. Maurice de Hirsch to Irène Premelić, 25 July 1895, AGR Séquestre Balser 384. 99. Irène Premelić to Maurice de Hirsch, 12 Mar. 1894, AGR Séquestre Balser 384. 100. Irène Premelić to Maurice de Hirsch, 24 Feb. 1893, AGR Séquestre Balser 384. 101. Maurice de Hirsch to Irène Premelić, 18 Apr. 1895, AGR Séquestre Balser 384. 102. Irène Premelić to Maurice de Hirsch, 20 Apr. 1895, AGR Séquestre Balser 384. 103. Maurice de Hirsch to Irène Premelić, 25 July 1895, AGR Séquestre Balser 384. 104. See Clara de Hirsch to Hortense Bischoffsheim, 17 Dec. 1887, AGR Séquestre Balser 384. 105. Clara de Hirsch to Hortense Bischoffsheim, 20 Apr. 1888, AGR Séquestre Balser 497. 106. Grunwald, Türkenhirsch, 106, simply states this as a fact, but without providing any source for his conjecture; his assertion has been repeated by others—­for example, Lee, Moses of the New World, 197. 107. Frischer, Le Moïse des Amériques, 247–­2 48. 108. Frischer, Le Moïse des Amériques, 246. 109. S. Vanier to Maurice de Hirsch, 26 Apr. 1887, AGR Séquestre Balser 393. 110. Paul Barrelet to Oscar Straus, 6 Mar. 1900, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 6. 111. Regina Bischoffsheim to Hortense Bischoffsheim, 27 July 1890, AGR Séquestre Balser 395.

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112. Maurice de Hirsch to Georges Montefiore-­Levi, 13 Aug. 1893, AGR Séquestre Balser 394. 113. Maurice de Hirsch to Georges Montefiore-­Levi, 8 Jan. 1894, AGR Séquestre Balser 394. 114. Maurice de Hirsch to Georges Montefiore-­Levi, 28 Jan. 1894; 6 February [1894], AGR Séquestre Balser 394. 115. Maurice de Hirsch to Georges Montefiore-­Levi, 28 Jan. 1894, AGR Séquestre Balser 394. 116. Georges Montefiore-­Levi to Maurice de Hirsch, 2 Dec. 1894, AGR Séquestre Balser 394. 117. Clara de Hirsch to Hortense Bischoffsheim, 6 Feb. 1896, AGR Séquestre Balser 396. 118. Clara de Hirsch to Hortense Bischoffsheim, 5 Jan. [1897 (?)], AGR Séquestre Balser 499. 119. Maurice de Hirsch to Georges Montefiore-­Levi, 6 Feb. [1894], AGR Séquestre Balser 394. 120. Maurice de Hirsch to Georges Montefiore-­Levi, 6 Feb. [1894], AGR Séquestre Balser 394. 121. Curé d’Esneux to Hortense Bischoffsheim, 29 Feb. 1896, AGR Séquestre Balser 510. 122. Clara de Hirsch to Hortense Bischoffsheim, [no date, 1896 (?)], AGR Séquestre Balser 498. Details about Lucienne’s subsequent life are sparse. She married the German banker Edouard Balser, a Protestant, who had immigrated to Belgium, in 1904. After World War I, the Belgian state sequestered and then liquidated their belongings, as the Balsers were considered enemy aliens, and the Balsers moved to Germany. (See Kristof Carrein and Thijs Lambrecht, Inventaris van het archief van de commanditaire vennootschap Balser & Cie (1844–­1912), Edouard Balser en Lucienne de Hirsch (1830–­1931) en Georges Montefiore Levy (1862–­1931) (Brussels: Archives Générales du Royaume, n.d.), “Inleiding,” 18–­22.) We know that, when Edouard Balser died in 1942, the two were living in Schaftlach, Bavaria, and had two sons: Henry Balser, living in London, and Georg Balser, in Nyon, Switzerland. (Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv, Bern, Switzerland, E4110A#1000/1827#665.) Lucienne was still alive in 1947, and living in the same Bavarian town, when she declared to the US Army Finance Division that she did not own any assets outside Germany: National Archives, Washington, DC, M1922: Records of the External Assets Investigation Section of the Property Division, OMGUS. 123. See Figes, Europeans, on the formation of a “European culture” of ideas and works of art in the nineteenth century. 124. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 30 Oct. 1884, ERA DDST 1/2/1/6. 125. Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: The World’s Banker, 1849–­1999 (New York: Penguin, 2000), 100.

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CHAPTER 4: “A PHAR AONIC PL AN” 1. “Die Eröffnung der türkischen Bahnen,” Neue Freie Presse, 14 Jan. 1871. 2. See M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 72–­108. 3. See Orlando Figes, The Crimean War (New York: Metropolitan, 2010). 4. Butrus Abu-­Manneh, “The Islamic Roots of the Gülhane Rescript,” Die Welt des Islams 34:2 (1994), 173–­203. 5. On the Tanzimat period, see, for example, Hanioğlu, Brief History; Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–­1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Kemal Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Carter Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–­1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980); Selim Deringil, The Well-­Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–­1909 (London: Tauris, 2011); Paul Dumont, “La période des Tanzîmât (1839–­1878),” in Histoire de l’Empire ottoman, ed. Robert Mantran (Paris: Fayard, 1989), 459–­522; on the impact of the Tanzimat on Ottoman Jewry, see, for example, Cohen, Becoming Ottomans; Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, The Jews of the Balkans: The Judeo-­Spanish Community, 15th to 20th Centuries (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 65–­158. 6. See Deniz Kılınçoğlu, Economics and Capitalism in the Ottoman Empire (London: Routledge, 2015), 18. 7. “The Commercial Decline of Constantinople,” Levant Herald, 1 May 1886, cited in Kılınçoğlu, Economics and Capitalism, 20. 8. Ali Pasha, according to Ahmed Cevdet Pasha (d. 1895), another of the most prominent figures in the Tanzimat: Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, Ma’rûzât (Istanbul: Çağrı Yayınları, 1980) 203; my thanks to Akın Aksoy for his translation. 9. Bülent Bilmez, “European Investments in the Ottoman Railways, 1850–­1914,” in Across the Borders: Financing the World’s Railways in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Ralf Roth and Günter Dinhobl (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2008), 183–­206, at 184: citing Ali Pasha’s speech to the Ottoman Council of Ministers in 1869. 10. Yaqub Karkar, Railway Development in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–­1914 (New York: Vintage, 1972), 65–­66. 11. For the terms of the concession, see Compagnie des Chemins du Sud de l’Autriche et de la Haute-­Italie, Exploitation des chemins de fer ottomans: Conventions relatives à cette exploitation (Paris: A. Chaix et Co., 1869), copy at OeStA AVA IX C 38a; see BOA HR.MKT 675/15 (26 Jan. 1870); BOA HR.MKT 687/41 (13 July 1870). 12. Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2009), 119, 122; on the Ottoman Empire, see Avner Wishnitzer, Reading Clocks, Alla Turca: Time and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). See also Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–­1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).

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13. See Clarence Davis and Kenneth Wilburn, eds., Railway Imperialism (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991); Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: Norton, 2011); Steven Marks, Road to Power: The Trans-­ Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850–­1917 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991); Ian Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj, 1850–­1900 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Robert Lee, “Railways, Space and Imperialism,” Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, special volume 7: “Eisenbahn/Kultur,” ed. Günter Dinhobl (2004), 91–­106. 14. “Das türkische Bahnnetz,” Neue Freie Presse, 14 Jan. 1870. 15. “Das türkische Bahnnetz,” Neue Freie Presse, 14 Jan. 1870. The Austrian prime minister, Beust, echoed this expectation when speaking of the Ottoman railroad link as “le chemin des Indes” the following year in his opening remarks at a conference about the connecting lines between the Ottoman and the Austro-­Hungarian railroads in Vienna, 16 July 1871: LBI AR 2110 box 9. On Beust’s foreign policy in general, see F. R. Bridge, The Habsburg Monarchy among the Great Powers, 1815–­1918 (London: Bloomsburg, 1990), 85–­103. 16. “Railways of the Balkan Peninsula,” Times, 8 Nov. 1883. 17. Figes, Europeans, 236. 18. “Railways of the Balkan Peninsula,” Times, 8 Nov. 1883. On Austria’s “economic backwardness,” see Alexander Gerschenkron, An Economic Spurt That Failed: Four Lectures in Austrian History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). 19. Christopher Clay, Gold for the Sultan: Western Bankers and Ottoman Finance, 1856–­ 1881 (London: Tauris, 2000), 1–­13. 20. Șevket Pamuk, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 1820–­1913 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 12. 21. “A Turkish Appeal to England and France,” Times, 17 June 1876. 22. Charles Morawitz, Die Türkei im Spiegel ihrer Finanzen (Berlin: Carl Heymanns Verlag, 1903), 22. Clay, Gold for the Sultan, 7, likewise claims that only about 10 percent of the Ottoman debt had been “invested in any tangible form.” 23. Morawitz, Die Türkei im Spiegel ihrer Finanzen, 56. 24. “Die Südbahn und das türkische Project,” Neue Freie Presse, 27 July 1869. 25. Grunwald, Türkenhirsch, 34; on the Rothschilds and the Südbahn, see Ferguson, House of Rothschild, 86–­88, 298. 26. Anton Bednarics, an official at the Südbahn’s rival, the Staatsbahn, came to that conclusion in a report dated July 1872, in which he explained that Trieste was poised to remain the principal port of call for traffic sailing through the Suez Canal, given its closer proximity to Vienna and Budapest. “Relation de Mr. Bednarits [sic] sur le voyage de Salonique le long de la ligne des Chemins de fer turcs jusqu’à la frontière de Servie,” dated 28 July 1872, OeStA AVA IX C 38a. 27. Hirsch, “An die Redaction der Kölnischen Zeitung,” Kölnische Zeitung, 15 Apr. 1882; the newspaper’s correspondent dismissed this version as hardly credible: “Die Pforte und Baron Hirsch II,” Kölnische Zeitung, 6 May 1882.

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28. A. du Velay, Essai sur l’ histoire financière de la Turquie (Paris: Arthur Rousseau, 1903), 251–­255. 29. Du Velay, Essai, 255. 30. Ferguson, House of Rothschild, 292, 306. 31. Clay, Gold for the Sultan, 199. 32. “Türkische Lose,” Neue Freie Presse, 4 May 1870. 33. As reported in La Turquie, cited in Radoslave Dimtschoff, Das Eisenbahnwesen auf der Balkan-­Halbinsel (Bamberg: C. C. Buchner, 1894), 31. 34. Clay, Gold for the Sultan, 200. 35. “Des Türkenschwindels Ende,” Neue Freie Presse, 2 Dec. 1869; “Türkische Bahnen,” Neue Freie Presse, 29 Jan. 1870; “Das türkische Eisenbahn-­Geschäft,” Neue Freie Presse, 11 Mar. 1870. 36. Friedrich von Beust to Richard Klemens von Metternich, 25 Jan. 1870, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 37. Friedrich von Beust to Richard Klemens von Metternich, 25 Jan. 1870, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 38. Friedrich von Beust to Richard Klemens von Metternich, 25 Jan. 1870, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 39. Friedrich von Beust to Richard Klemens von Metternich, 2 Feb. 1870, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 40. Friedrich von Beust to Richard Klemens von Metternich, 2 Feb. 1870, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 41. Friedrich von Beust to Richard Klemens von Metternich, 2 Feb. 1870, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 42. Friedrich von Beust to Richard Klemens von Metternich, 2 Feb. 1870, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 43. Hannah Davies, Transatlantic Speculations: Globalization and the Panics of 1873 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 16–­17. The one exception, in the case of Germany and Austria, that Davies notes is the case of Bethel Henry Strousberg, whose name became notorious in the aftermath of the spectacular failure of his Romanian railroad business. “Strousberg’s public persona resembled that of the notorious American railroad entrepreneurs,” Davies notes. “His exploits and lifestyle were subject to a great deal of attention in the pages of the daily press, and his business methods seemed dubious to many” (Davies, Transatlantic Speculations, 17–­18). On Strousberg, see Joachim Borchart, Der europäische Eisenbahnkönig Bethel Henry Strousberg (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1991); Fritz Stern, Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire (New York: Knopf, 1977), chapter 14. 44. Friedrich von Beust to Richard Klemens von Metternich, 25 Jan. 1870, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 45. Davies, Transatlantic Speculations, 1–­5, 19–­20. 46. Die Corruption in Oesterreich: Ein Beitrag zur Charakteristik der österreichischen

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Verhältnisse (Leipzig: Luckhardt’sche Verlagshandlung, 1872). This particular pamphlet, incidentally, never mentioned Baron Hirsch or his Turkish lottery bonds. 47. On the era of liberalism in Habsburg politics, see Pieter Judson, The Habsburg Empire: A New History (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2016), 218–­268. 48. Heinrich Wuttke, Die deutschen Zeitschriften und die Entstehung der öffentlichen Meinung (2nd ed., Leipzig: Joh. Wilh. Krüger, 1875), 375–­376, citing a report in Oesterreichische Finanzielle Revue. 49. “Der Türkenschwindel,” Neue Freie Presse, 25 Nov. 1869. 50. “Der Türkenschwindel,” Neue Freie Presse, 25 Nov. 1869. 51. Dimtschoff—­not always reliable—­claims, with some hyperbole, that “the raising of the capital was left to Vienna and Berlin,” whereas another author suggests that the Turkish lottery bonds “enjoyed great favour amongst small investors on the Continent, especially in France and Germany.” Dimtschoff, Eisenbahnwesen, 44; Paul Emden, Money Powers of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: S. Low, Marston & Co., 1937), 322. 52. Gyula Andrássy to Rudolf von Apponyi, 11 May 1872, LBI AR 2110 box 9. Baron Hirsch also claimed that the French government had been set to allow the bonds when the war began: “Türkische Bahnen,” Neue Freie Presse, 27 Jan. 1871. 53. “Türkische Bahnen,” Neue Freie Presse, 27 Jan. 1871. 54. Isaac Pereire and his brother, Émile, descendants of a Sephardic family in Bordeaux, had created the joint stock investment bank Crédit Mobilier in Paris in 1852, which by 1867 had invested some 60 billion francs in various enterprises—­in particular, railways, banking, and urban development in countries from France and Spain to Russia, including a leading role in the Ottoman Imperial Bank created in 1856 in Galata, Constantinople. On the Pereire brothers, see Helen Davies, “Socialists, Bankers, and Sephardic Jews: The Pereire Brothers and the Crédit Mobilier,” in The Economy in Jewish History: New Perspectives on the Interrelationship between Ethnicity and Economic Life, ed. Gideon Reuveni (New York: Berghahn, 2011), 94–­114; Davies, Emile and Isaac Pereire: Bankers, Socialists and Sephardic Jews in Nineteenth-­Century France (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). 55. Bresson to Pereire, 6 July 1869, OeStA AVA IX C 38a. 56. Bresson to Pereire, 6 July 1869, OeStA AVA IX C 38a. Regarding the Hungarian government’s conditioning its approval on the Ottoman authorization of a line through Serbia, see also Minister des Äußeren to Plener, Handelsministerium, 2 June 1869, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 57. Bosnia and Hercegovina had seen rebellions in the 1830s, and the government had reestablished full military control by 1851. Another uprising shook the region beginning in 1875. See Barbara Jelavich, History of the Balkans: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), vol. 1, 348–­352. 58. “The Austro-­Turkish Railway Convention,” Times 11 Oct. 1875. 59. Chedomille Mijatovich, Memoirs of a Balkan Diplomatist (London: Cassell, 1917), 19–­20.

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60. “Procès-­verbal de la Conférence internationale réunie à Vienne,” 16–­18 July 1871, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 61. “Die serbisch-­türkischen Anschlüsse,” Neue Freie Presse, 26 July 1871. 62. “Procès-­verbal de la Conférence internationale réunie à Vienne,” LBI AR 2110 box 9. 63. Cited in Dimtschoff, Eisenbahnwesen, 20. 64. “Railways of the Balkan Peninsula,” Times, 8 Nov. 1883. 65. “Procès-­verbal de la Conférence internationale réunie à Vienne,” LBI AR 2110 box 9. 66. Hanioğlu, Brief History, 84. 67. “Telegramme des Correspondenz-­Bureau,” Neue Freie Presse, 29 Nov. 1871: “The imperial [Ottoman] government by no means has the intention to joggle those concessions.” 68. “Türkische Bahnen,” Neue Freie Presse, 2 Feb. 1872. 69. See Karkar, Railway Development, 67. 70. Text of the 1872 convention in Actes de la concession des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe (Constantinople: Typographie et Lithographie Centrales, 1874), 5–­13. 71. See the contract signed by Baron Hirsch and Mahmud Pasha on 18 May 1870: BOA Y.EE 24/97. 72. “Proceß gegen Mahmud Pascha,” Neue Freie Presse, 17 July 1873. 73. Actes de la concession des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 5–­13; the contract with the operating company, 43–­54. 74. “Oesterreich und die türkischen Bahnanschlüsse,” Neue Freie Presse, 11 Nov. 1874. 75. Morawitz, Die Türkei im Spiegel, 417. 76. “Austria and Turkey,” Times, 29 Mar. 1875. 77. “Abgeordnetenhaus,” Neue Freie Presse, 24 Jan. 1879. 78. Friedrich Engels to Eduard Bernstein, 21 Apr. 1882, in Die Briefe von Friedrich Engels an Eduard Bernstein (Berlin: J. H. W. Dietz, 1925), 68–­69. 79. “Ein diplomatischer Erfolg Oesterreich-­Ungarns,” Neue Freie Presse, 24 Mar. 1875. 80. “Der Stand der türkischen Eisenbahnfrage,” Neue Freie Presse, 13 Apr. 1875. 81. Published in the 1890s, Dimtschoff’s doctoral dissertation on the Balkan railroads repeated the accusation that the incentive for changing the conventions in 1872 “was Turkish carelessness, secretly supported by Russian and English intrigues. But as far as Central Europe is concerned, which provided Baron Hirsch the money with the condition to build the railroads, Hirsch alone is guilty.” Dimtschoff, Eisenbahnwesen, 33–­34. 82. Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, cited in Dimtschoff, Eisenbahnwesen, 36. An Ottoman government publication in 1875 claimed that the initiative to void the original concessions had come from the baron himself, even though the text of the contract explicitly stated the contrary: “The Imperial Ottoman Government having expressed its desire to have the concession awarded to Baron Hirsch returned to it . . . and the Société Impériale having agreed to this wish” (Actes de la concession des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 5). Now the government claimed that the inclusion of this phrase had been “an alteration of the truth,” the expression of a “cleverly rehearsed” strategy by a deceitful concessionary. La question des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe devant l’opinion publique (Constantinople: Typograhie et Lithographie Centrales, 1875), 29–­30.

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83. “Die Pforte und Baron Hirsch,” Kölnische Zeitung, 4 Apr. 1882. 84. “Die Pforte und Baron Hirsch II,” Kölnische Zeitung, 6 May 1882. 85. “Die Pforte und Baron Hirsch II (Schluß),” Kölnische Zeitung, 8 May 1882. 86. Ahmed Cevdet Paşa, Ma’rûzât, 203. 87. BOA Y.PRK.AZJ 11/22 (n.d. [1885]). 88. La question des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 13. 89. In fact, when the Austrian Südbahn was considering taking on operating the new railroad in 1869, a report to shareholders argued that it would take a 25 percent increase over the revenue expected from domestic traffic in the first years after the completion of the network for it to become profitable, a goal that was expected to be met once the railroad emerged as an important axis of international trade. “Die Südbahn und das türkische Project,” Neue Freie Presse, 27 July 1869. 90. On the Austrian involvement in modern imperialism, namely in Africa, see Walter Sauer, ed., K. u. K. Kolonial: Habsburgermonarchie und europäische Herrschaft in Afrika (Vienna: Böhlau, 2002). 91. Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 231. 92. For a comparative perspective on Ottomanism and European imperialism, see Dina Rizk Khoury and Dane Kennedy, “Comparing Empires: The Ottoman Domains and the British Raj in the Long Nineteenth Century,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27:2 (2007), 233–­2 44. CHAPTER 5: BUILDING THE OT TOMAN R AILROAD 1. “Türkische Eisenbahnfahrten: Eröffnung der Bahnlinie Konstantinopel–­ Adrianopel,” Neue Freie Presse, 29 June 1873. 2. For public festivities as displays of Ottomanism, see Sibel Zandi-­Sayek, “Orchestrating Difference, Performing Identity: Urban Space and Public Rituals in Nineteenth Century Izmir,” in Hybrid Urbanism: On the Identity Discourse and the Built Environment, ed. Nezar AlSayyad (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 42–­66; among the empire’s Jews, see Cohen, Becoming Ottomans, 45–­73. 3. “Türkische Eisenbahnfahrten,” Neue Freie Presse, 29 June 1873. 4. “Türkische Eisenbahnfahrten,” Neue Freie Presse, 29 June 1873. On the occasion, Maurice de Hirsch was being represented by his brother. See “Die Eröffnung der Eisenbahn: Konstantinopel–­Adrianopel–­Philippopel–­Bellova,” Fremden-­Blatt, 29 June 1873. 5. Grunwald, Türkenhirsch, 40. 6. “Oesterreich und die türkischen Bahnanschlüsse,” Neue Freie Presse, 11 Nov. 1874. 7. “An die Redaction der Kölnischen Zeitung,” Kölnische Zeitung, 15 Apr. 1882. 8. La question des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 71–­77; “Die Pforte und die rumelischen Bahnen,” Neue Freie Presse, 17 Sept. 1874. 9. BOA İ.DH 664/46250 (4 Mar. 1873). The point about the wooden structures may not have been an altogether fair objection: according to one newspaper report, it had been agreed from the outset that bridges and other structures would at first be built from locally sourced wood and subsequently replaced by masonry or iron structures, when the completed

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railroad would make it easier to move those materials from the ports to where they were needed. “Das türkische Bahnnetz,” Neue Freie Presse, 14 Jan. 1870. 10. La question des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 71–­77; “Die Pforte und die rumelischen Bahnen,” Neue Freie Presse, 17 Sept. 1874. 11. “Abschrift eines Schreibens des Grafen Ludolf,” Constantinople, 26 Nov. 1873, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 12. Actes de la concession des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 10. 13. Theodore Bent, “Baron Hirsch’s Railway,” Fortnightly Review 44 (new series), 1 July–­1 Dec. 1888. 14. “Türkische Bahnen,” Neue Freie Presse, 31 Dec. 1874. 15. See the text of the report by Freiherr von Weber, dated Constantinople, 1 Nov. 1874 in LBI AR 2110 box 9. 16. Weber, 1 Nov. 1874, in LBI AR 2110 box 9. 17. La question des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 79–­80. 18. Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–­1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 119, 124. 19. Weber, 1 Nov. 1874, in LBI AR 2110 box 9. 20. La question des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe devant l’opinion publique, 81–­ 82. On inner-­Ottoman Orientalism, see Thomas Kühn, “Shaping and Reshaping Colonial Ottomanism: Contesting Boundaries of Difference and Integration in Ottoman Yemen, 1872–­1919,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27:2 (2007), 315–­331. 21. La question des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 17. 22. La question des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 92. 23. “Verein für Eisenbahnkunde zu Berlin,” Deutsche Bauzeitung 9 (1875), 47. 24. La question des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 92. 25. On the impact of the crash of 1873 and the “great depression” between 1873 and 1896, see Șevket Pamuk, “The Ottoman Empire in the ‘Great Depression’ of 1873–­1896,” Journal of Economic History 44:1 (1984), 107–­118. 26. Du Velay, Essai sur l’ histoire financière de la Turquie, 255–­256. 27. Șevket Pamuk, Ottoman Empire, 55–­81; Clay, Gold for the Sultan. 28. Morawitz, Die Türkei im Spiegel ihrer Finanzen, 245–­380. 29. Kılınçoğlu, Economics and Capitalism, 33. 30. Morawitz, Die Türkei im Spiegel ihrer Finanzen, 272–­288. 31. M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Brief History, 110–­123. 32. Eric Weitz, “From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations, and Civilizing Missions,” American Historical Review 113:5 (2008), 1313–­1343. 33. The North Bosnia line east of Sarajevo included no less than ninety-­nine tunnels and thirty iron bridges: Martyn Rady, The Habsburg Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 95.

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34. See Karpat, Politicization of Islam; Eyal Ginio, The Ottoman Culture of Defeat: The Balkan Wars and Their Aftermath (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 35. “Der Congreß,” Neue Freie Presse, 28 June 1878. 36. Imanuel Geiss, ed., Der Berliner Kongreß 1878: Protokolle und Materialien (Boppard: Boldt, 1978), 71–­72. Text of the final treaty, 369–­407. 37. On the position of Austro-­Hungarian diplomacy in the Balkans during this period, see Bridge, Habsburg Monarchy, 104–­149. 38. Clay, Gold for the Sultan, 4–­5, who calls the Ottoman Imperial Bank a “curious hybrid.” For the history of the bank, see also André Autheman, La banque impériale ottomane (Paris: Ministère de l’économie et des finances, Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1996). 39. “Note sur la question des Chemins de fer Turcs,” n.d. [1882], ANMT 207 AQ 328 F11. The assessment claims that, at the moment, the railroad produced an income of about 9,000 francs per kilometer; after expenses of 5,000 francs per kilometer, net receipts were only 4,000 francs per kilometer. It would therefore be ruinous if it had to pay an annual rent of 8,000 francs per kilometer. 40. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 23 Dec. [1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 41. Mehmed Saïd Pasha served as grand vizier from Oct. 1879 to June 1880, Sept. 1880 to May 1882, July 1882 to Nov. 1882, and again Dec. 1882 to Sept. 1885. 42. Caporal to Berger, 27 Nov. 1883 and Caporal to [N.N.], 24 Oct. 1883, ANMT 207 AQ 328 F11. 43. See La question des Chemins de fer de la Turquie d’Europe, published in 1875, cited earlier. 44. Article from Levant Herald, reprinted in “Roumelian Railways,” Railway Times, 15 May 1875. 45. Kılınçoğlu, Economics and Capitalism, 47; on Abdülhamid II’s views, 147–­148. 46. For a detailed study of these capitulations in the eighteenth century, see Maurits H. van den Boogert, The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System: Qadis, Consuls and Beratlıs in the 18th Century (Leiden: Brill, 2005). 47. Otto von Kühlmann to [Maurice de Hirsch], 23 Oct. 1883, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 48. “Wien, 14 Juli,” Neue Freie Presse, 15 July 1881. 49. Otto von Kühlmann to [Maurice de Hirsch], 23 Oct. 1883, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 50. Morawitz, Die Türkei im Spiegel ihrer Finanzen, 419; Dimtschoff, Das Eisenbahnwesen, 56–­60. 51. Otto von Kühlmann to Heinrich von Calice, 10 Oct. 1884, HHStA Gesandtschaftsarchiv Konstantinopel blau 170. 52. Landsée to [N.N.], 30 Oct. 1883, ANMT 207 AQ 328 F11. 53. Caporal to [N.N.], 17 Nov. 1883, ANMT 207 AQ 328 F11. 54. Dimtschoff, Eisenbahnwesen, 50. 55. Maurice de Hirsch to Grand Vizier, 10 Apr. 1883, HHStA Gesandtschaftsarchiv Konstantinopel blau 170.

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56. See, for example, Gustav von Kálnoky to Heinrich von Calice, 23 Nov. 1883, reporting on a conversation with Baron Hirsch in Vienna, HHStA Gesandtschaftsarchiv Konstantinopel blau 170. 57. Hirsch himself believed that the grand vizier, Saïd Pasha, in particular, continued to be opposed to the connecting lines and that it was only under Austrian pressure that he was beginning to waver: Maurice de Hirsch to Wiener Comité, 18 Jan. 1885, HHStA Gesandtschaftsarchiv Konstantinopel blau 170. 58. See the note from Foreign Ministry in Vienna to Rudolf von Apponyi, Austrian ambassador in Paris, 16 July 1875, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 59. See BOA İ.DH 1295–­4/102185 (26 Nov. 1882). 60. Emil Arnold Budde (1842–­1921) was a German mathematician and physicist. In 1872, he became a journalist, reporting for Kölnische Zeitung from Paris, Rome, and Constantinople. In 1887, he returned to Germany, where he began editing a scientific journal in physics. He later started working as a physicist for Siemens, where he ascended to the company’s board of directors. See obituary in Polytechnisches Journal 336 (1921), 291–­292, available at http://dingler.culture.hu-berlin.de/article/pj336/ar336040 (last accessed 11 Jan. 2022). 61. “Die Pforte und Baron Hirsch,” Kölnische Zeitung, 4 Apr. 1882. 62. “An die Redaction der Kölnischen Zeitung,” Kölnische Zeitung, 15 Apr. 1882. 63. Otto von Kühlmann to Heinrich von Calice, 23 Oct. 1884, HHStA Gesandtschaftsarchiv Konstantinopel blau 170. 64. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 30 Oct. 1884, ERA DDST 1/2/1/6. 65. Gustav Siegmund von Kálnoky (1832–­1898) served as Austria-­Hungary’s foreign minister from 1881 to 1895. 66. Heinrich von Calice (1831–­1912) served as Austria-­Hungary’s ambassador to Constantinople from 1880 to 1906. 67. Gustav von Kálnoky to Heinrich von Calice, 23 Nov. 1883, HHStA Gesandtschaftsberichte Konstantinopel blau 170. 68. Gustav von Kálnoky to Heinrich von Calice, 23 Nov. 1883, HHStA Gesandtschaftsberichte Konstantinopel blau 170. 69. Gustav von Kálnoky to Ladislaus Hoyos, 25 Jan. 1884, HHStA Gesandtschaftsberichte Konstantinopel blau 170. 70. Gustav von Kálnoky to Heinrich von Calice, 26 Aug. 1884, HHStA Gesandtschaftsberichte Konstantinopel blau 170. 71. Lueger in a speech in the Austrian parliament in 1891: “Abgeordnetenhaus,” Neue Freie Presse, 15 Dec. 1891. Lueger was elected mayor of Vienna in 1895, when his antisemitic Christian-­Social Party won two-­thirds of the seats in the city council; Emperor Franz Josef refused to confirm his appointment until 1897. On Lueger, see Carl Schorske, Fin-­de-­Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture (New York: Vintage, 1981), 133–­146. 72. “Bases d’arrangement remises à S. E. Hassan Féhmi Pasha,” 17 Jan. 1885, HHStA Gesandtschaftsarchiv Konstantinopel blau 170. 73. “Die Vollendung der Orientbahn-­A nschlüsse,” Archiv für Eisenbahnwesen 8 (1885),

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334–­335; Dimtschoff, Eisenbahnwesen, 137–­138. By 1886, the Ottoman government, too, had come around to the view that the outstanding conflicts with Hirsch needed to be resolved sooner rather than later, and that the junction lines needed to be completed lest the treasury continue to bleed money. See BOA MV 12/45 (22 Mar. 1886). 74. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 7 Jan. [1886], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 75. See Jelavich, History of the Balkans, vol. 1, 366–­373. 76. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 9 Nov. [1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. Lucien complained that certain “Viennese colleagues of my father” had a “very fateful influence on him.” These “horrid people,” Lucien explained to Jessie, “who never had any risk and entered the business when all difficulties were over, are in such a fear of getting a little less money out of it than they expected.” Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 28 Oct. [1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 77. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, 13 Dec. [1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 78. Lucien de Hirsch to Jessica Sykes, no date [Nov. 1885], ERA DDST 1/2/1/13. 79. Morawitz, Die Türkei im Spiegel ihrer Finanzen, 421; Grunwald, Türkenhirsch, 58. 80. See Douglass North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 3–­10; Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller, “Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History,” in Purchasing Power: The Economics of Modern Jewish History, ed. Rebecca Kobrin and Adam Teller (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 2–­2 4, esp. 15–­17; Hartmut Berghoff and Jakob Vogel, “Wirtschaftsgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte: Ansätze zur Bergung transdisziplinärer Synergiepotentiale,” in Wirtschaftsgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte: Dimensionen eines Perspektivwandels, ed. Hartmut Berghoff and Jakob Vogel (Frankfurt: Campus, 2004). For a critical evaluation of rational choice theory, see Lina Eriksson, Rational Choice Theory: Potential and Limits (London: Palgrave, 2011). CHAPTER 6: IMPERIALISM, R AILROADS, ANTISEMITISM 1. “Telegramme der ‘Neuen Freien Presse,’ ” Neue Freie Presse, 31 Dec. 1882. 2. “Die Interpellation Istoczy’s in Betreff des Grafen Wimpffen,” Neue Freie Presse, 11 Jan. 1883. 3. On Istoczy and Hungarian antisemitism, see Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, 230–­2 42. 4. “Tisza’s Antwort auf die Interpellation, betreffend den Selbstmord des Grafen Wimpffen,” Neue Freie Presse, 17 Jan. 1883. See also “Die Niedertracht des ungarischen Antisemitismus,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 30 Jan. 1883; “Wimpffen und Hirsch,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 20 Feb. 1883. 5. “Ein Gedenktag,” Deutsches Volksblatt, 24 Dec. 1890. 6. “Ein Gedenktag,” Deutsches Volksblatt, 24 Dec. 1890. 7. “Nochmals Baron Hirsch und Graf Wimpffen,” Deutsches Volksblatt, 5 Jan. 1891. 8. Gregor Schöllgen and Friedrich Kiessling, Das Zeitalter des Imperialismus (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009), 8–­9, 19; E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, 1875–­1914 (London: Abacus, 1994), 34–­46.

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9. See Carl Schorske, Fin-­de-­Siècle Vienna, 116–­180; for the parallel development in Germany, see Hans Rosenberg, Große Depression und Bismarckzeit (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967), 62–­78, 88–­117. 10. “Oesterreich-­Ungarns handelspolitische Lage in Europa,” Deutsches Volksblatt, 10 Jan. 1890. 11. “Baron Hirsch und Graf Wimpffen,” Kikeriki, 30 Apr. 1896. 12. See, for example, BOA HR.SYS 2939/30. 13. Like other European powers, Austria used, of course, its muscle to advocate on behalf of its citizens and their business interests in the Ottoman Empire, including on occasion to the benefit of Baron Hirsch. But the underlying logic here, too, was to assert the country’s interests, not rendering personal favors. It should also not be assumed that the Ottoman authorities necessarily were fast to give in to such pressures. In 1885, for instance, Baron Hirsch and the Ottoman government were entangled in a legal quarrel over a £1 million loan that the Porte had received in 1874 from a consortium of Parisian bankers, first and foremost Baron Hirsch. The Austrian embassy protested against the case being tried in the Tribunal de Commerce in Constantinople and alleged procedural mistakes. The Ottoman minister of the exterior responded curtly that his ministry “cannot interpose itself in the conflict without undermining the independence of the judiciary.” Austrian embassy, Constantinople to Imperial Ministry of the Exterior, 18 Feb. 1885; Imperial Ministry of the Exterior to Austrian embassy, 18 Apr. 1885, BOA HR.İD 1180/10. On the background of this legal conflict, see BOA HR.İD 1180/21. 14. Heinrich von Calice to Gustav von Kálnoky, 28 Feb. 1888, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 15. Heinrich von Calice to Gustav von Kálnoky, 28 Feb. 1888, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 16. Foreign Ministry to Ladislaus Hoyos, 30 Jan. 1886, LBI AR 2110 box 9. 17. According to Geoff Eley, Paul Dehn (1848–­1938) was at the core of “an influential radical antisemitic group” of the nationalist-­imperialist Pan-­German League in Berlin. Dehn would later join the board of directors of the league in 1919, which was directed at the time by Heinrich Claß. The Pan-­German League stood for an agenda of nationalism, imperialism, and colonial expansion, and openly embraced antisemitic and racist ideas. Claß would become famous for his pamphlet If I Were Emperor (1912) and later joined the Nazi Party. Regarding Dehn, see Geoff Eley, “What Are the Contexts of German Antisemitism? Some Thoughts on the Origins of Nazism, 1800–­1945,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry, vol. 13: The Fate of European Jews, 1939–­1945, ed. Jonathan Frankel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 100–­132, at 122; Reiner Hering, “ ‘Dem besten Steuermann Deutschlands’: Der Politiker Otto von Bismarck und seine Deutung im radikalen Nationalismus zwischen Kaiserreich und ‘Drittem Reich,’ ” in Otto von Bismarck und das “Lange 19. Jahrhundert,” ed. Ulrich Lappenküper (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2017), 582–­615, at 599. 18. Paul Dehn, Deutschland und die Orientbahnen (Munich: G. Franz’sche h. b. Hof-­ Buch-­ und Kunst-­Handlung, 1883), 12. 19. Dehn, Deutschland und die Orientbahnen, 43–­4 4. 20. Dehn, Deutschland und die Orientbahnen, 46.

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21. Dehn, Deutschland und die Orientbahnen, 49. 22. Dehn, Deutschland und die Orientbahnen, 14. 23. Dehn, Deutschland und die Orientbahnen, 5. 24. In many of the details, as in his conclusions about the significance of the Ottoman railroads for Germany and the need to remove Hirsch from the business, Dehn echoed Budde’s series of articles that had appeared in the Kölnische Zeitung the previous year. 25. Dehn, Deutschland und die Orientbahnen, 34. 26. Dehn, Deutschland und die Orientbahnen, 31. 27. Dehn, Deutschland und die Orientbahnen, 29. 28. Dehn, Deutschland und die Orientbahnen, 48. 29. Dehn, Deutschland und die Orientbahnen, 45–­51. 30. See Jeannine Verdès-­Leroux, Scandale financier et antisémitisme catholique: le krach de l’Union Générale (Paris: Centurion, 1969). 31. Auguste Chirac, L’agiotage sous la troisième république (Paris: Nouvelle librairie parisienne, 1888), vol. 1, 62. 32. Chirac, L’agiotage, vol. 1, 63. 33. Chirac, L’agiotage, vol. 1, 223–­224. 34. Chirac, L’agiotage, vol. 1, 227. In the second volume of his book, Chirac also included, for good measure, the conspiracy theory about Count Wimpffen’s suicide and his alleged confession: Chirac, L’agiotage, vol. 2, 50–­51. 35. Shulamit Volkov, “Antisemitismus als kultureller Code,” in Volkov, Jüdisches Leben und Antisemitismus im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1990), 13–­36. On Glagau, see Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction, 249–­250. 36. There were, in fact, many variations on the theme of Baron Hirsch’s central role in an international Jewish conspiracy. N. Nicolaides, editor of the magazine L’orient: Journal politique, financier, économique & littéraire, published in Paris, offered his “confidential” assessment to the Ottoman government: “Of all the contemporary Jewish haute banque, Baron Hirsch is the only one who seems to be endowed with truly superior energy and intelligence, and he can be considered as the pivot of the Triple Alliance, which is as much a financial as a political conspiracy against France, and above all against Russia.” Hirsch’s modus operandum, Nicolaides explained, was to make “the crowned heads” of Europe, or those next in line to ascend to the throne, dependent on him by extending large loans. He named the oft-­cited example of the Prince of Wales, but also an elaborate story involving Victor Emmanuel, king of Italy. N. Nicolaïdes, 28 Sept. 1891, “Notes secrètes,” BOA Y.PRK. TKM 23/24. 37. On the sultan’s summons of Hirsch, see BOA HR.İD 2009/91 (19 Oct. 1887). Baron Hirsch had already come to Constantinople in the summer of 1887, when his visit received an echo as far away as in Cairo, where the newspaper Al-­Qahira reported on the “great honor” with which Sultan Abdülhamid II had received the baron. Al-­Qahira, 22 Aug. 1887, cited in Shaul Sehayik, “The Image of Jews as Reflected in Arabic Journals between the Years 1858–­1908,” unpublished PhD dissertation (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1991), 187.

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38. Oscar Straus, Under Four Administrations, from Cleveland to Taft (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), 92–­93. 39. Maurice de Hirsch to Jules Dietz, 24 Dec. 1887, ANMT 207 AQ 328 F11. 40. “Die Pforte und Baron Hirsch,” Neue Freie Presse, 8 Feb. 1888; “Die Pforte und Baron Hirsch,” 14 Feb. 1888. In December 1888, the grand vizier declared that the 15 million francs offered by Hirsch were not unreasonable, “but if we want a higher amount, Hirsch will accept that too.” BOA HR.İD 2010/40 (11 Dec. 1888). 41. “The Eastern Railways,” The Times, 13 Aug. 1888; “Der Großvezier über die Orientbahn,” Neue Freie Presse, 19 Aug. 1888. 42. See BOA Y.A.HUS 215/28 (29 Feb. 1888). 43. “The Eastern Railways,” Times, 13 Aug. 1888. 44. “Der Großvezier und die Orientbahn,” Neue Freie Presse, 19 Aug. 1888. 45. On the trip taking seven or eight days, see Dimtschoff, Das Eisenbahnwesen, 40. 46. “Der Orientzug nach Konstantinopel,” Neue Freie Presse, 29 Aug. 1888. The Orient Express, which would travel on the tracks laid by Hirsch’s company, was operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-­Lits et des Grands-­Express Européens (founded by the Belgian engineer Georges Nagelmackers), since 1883. Before 1888, the Orient Express was running from Vienna to Varna, on the Black Sea coast, from where passengers took a steamer to Constantinople. The first journey from Vienna to Constantinople, in 1883, had taken more than eighty-­one hours, fifteen of which steaming on the Black Sea: Charles King, Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul (New York: Norton, 2014), 24. 47. Charles Morawitz, Die Türkei im Spiegel ihrer Finanzen, 423–­424. 48. Pamuk, Ottoman Empire, 71. On the economic impact of Ottoman railroads, see also Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert, eds., An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, vol. 2: 1600–­1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 811–­815. 49. BOA HR.İD 2010/5 (22 Mar. 1888). 50. BOA Y.PRK.TKM 12/20. 51. BOA Y.A.RES 45/35 (2 Dec. 1888); assent for Gneist’s appointment received from German chancellor Bismarck: BOA HR.İD 2010/43 (1 Jan. 1889). 52. BOA HR.İD 2010/56 (25 Feb. 1889); BOA Y.A.HUS 222/58 (26 Feb. 1889); “Der Schiedsspruch in dem Streite zwischen der Pforte und Baron Hirsch,” Neue Freie Presse, 26 Feb. 1889 (which cites a lower sum, of 25 million francs); Morawitz, Die Türkei im Spiegel ihrer Finanzen, 421 (citing 27 million francs). The complete text of Gneist’s analysis and verdict in AHJS Kohler Papers, P7, box 8, folder 9. 53. The Mecidiye order was awarded to foreign nationals for outstanding services to the Ottoman state. BOA HR.TO 34/9 (20 July 1889). 54. BOA HR.İD 2010/62 (14 Mar. 1889). 55. BOA Y.A.HUS 227/84 (27 June 1889); BOA MV 45/46 (29 Oct. 1888). 56. Clara de Hirsch to Oscar Straus, 31 Mar. 1889, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 9. 57. Rudolf von Gneist to Maurice de Hirsch, 7 Mar. 1889, AHJS Kohler Papers, P7, box 8, folder 9.

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58. “Der Schiedsspruch gegen Baron Hirsch,” Deutsches Volksblatt, 27 Feb. 1889. 59. See, for example, BOA Y.A.HUS 235/1 (21 Apr. 1890). 60. Whereas there is little published research on Baron Hirsch’s Oriental railroads, there is a rich and growing literature on the Baghdad Railroad (as well as other ventures, for example the Hejaz Railway). See, for example, Dietrich Eichholtz, Die Baghdadbahn, Mesopo­tamien und die deutsche Ölpolitik bis 1918 (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2007); Boris Barth, Die deutsche Hochfinanz und die Imperialismen: Banken und Außenpolitik vor 1914 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995); Karkar, Railway Development; Shereen Khairallah, Railways in the Middle East, 1856–­1948 (Beirut: Librarie du Liban, 1991); Jonathan McMurray, Distant Ties: Germany, the Ottoman Empire, and the Construction of the Baghdad Railway (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001); William Ochsenwald, The Hijaz Railroad (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1980); Murat Özyüksel, The Hejaz Railway and the Ottoman Empire (London: Tauris, 2014); Manfred Pohl, Von Stambul nach Bagdad: Die Geschichte einer berühmten Eisenbahn (Munich: Piper, 1999). 61. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Schocken, 2004), 181–­ 182. See also George Hallgarten, Imperialismus vor 1914: Die soziologischen Grundlagen der Außenpolitik europäischer Großmächte vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1963), vol. 1, 245. Hallgarten’s treatment of Baron Hirsch’s Ottoman railroad is driven by, for a Marxist historian, a surprisingly individualized narrative that often evokes the accusations that were leveled against Hirsch by contemporaries in the 1880s and 1890s. Hallgarten’s emphasis on the role of “private bankers as promoters of imperialism” finds an echo in P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkin’s interpretation of the role of “gentlemanly capitalists” as a driving force behind British imperialism: P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688–­1914 (London: Longman, 1993); for a critique see David Cannadine, “The Empire Strikes Back,” Past and Present 147 (1995), 180–­194. 62. Simone Lässig, “Zwischen Markt und Kultur? ‘Weiche’ Faktoren in der Wirtschafts-­ und Sozialgeschichte am Beispiel von Privatbanken und Privatbankiers,” in Geschichte und Geschichtsvermittlung, ed. Olaf Hartung and Katja Köhr (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2008), 104–­124, at 110. 63. Stern, Gold and Iron, chapter 15; Niall Ferguson, House of Rothschild, chapter 11; John Cooper, The Unexpected Story of Nathaniel Rothschild (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 59–­97; regarding Baron Hirsch and King Leopold II, and the latter’s plans in Africa, see “Ausland,” Neue Freie Presse, 9 Mar. 1895. 64. Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism, 150–­151. CHAPTER 7: PHIL ANTHROPY IN THE OT TOMAN EMPIRE 1. Emmanuel Veneziani to Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU), 23 Jan. 1878, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 2. On the impact of the war in the Ottoman Empire, see Karpat, Politicization of Islam, esp. 136–­154; Ginio, Ottoman Culture of Defeat. For a general overview of the politics of nationalism and displacement in the Balkans see Mark Mazower, The Balkans (New York: Modern Library, 2000), esp. 77–­111. On the significance of 1878 for east central Europe and

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the emergence of ethnonationalism, see John Connelly, From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 210–­2 40. For the afterlife of empire in the formerly Ottoman Balkans, see Maria Todorova, “The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans,” in Imperial Legacy: The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East, ed. L. Carl Brown (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 45–­77. On the politics of humanitarianism, see Gary Bass, Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (New York: Knopf, 2008), esp. 239–­304; Caroline Fink, Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–­1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3–­38. 3. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 25 Oct. 1877, AIU France VIII A 63.01; “Der Krieg,” Neue Freie Presse, 4 Nov. 1877. Hirsch and Veneziani were subsequently awarded the Order of the Mecidiye, first and second class respectively, for this effort: BOA Y.PRK.AZJ 2/26 (20 Oct. 1878). 4. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 27 Nov. 1877, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 5. “Town and Table Talk,” Jewish Chronicle, 23 Nov. 1877. 6. “Shumla,” Jewish Chronicle, 28 Dec. 1877. 7. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 27 Nov. 1877, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 8. Minutes of a meeting convened by Emmanuel Veneziani in Constantinople, 3 Feb. 1878, CAHJP F/AIU 194. 9. “Réception par le sultan,” Stamboul, 7 May 1878; [no title], Turquie, 7 May 1878, in AIU France VIII A 63.01. 10. “Baron de Hirsch,” Jewish Chronicle, 26 May 1878. 11. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 23 Jan. 1878, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 12. Meeting convened by Emmanuel Veneziani in Constantinople, 3 Feb. 1878, CAHJP F/AIU 194. 13. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, continuation of letter dated 23 Jan. 1878, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 14. Abraham Spire in his “Beschreibung von der Veränderung, oder Aufruhr in Frankreich, was man nennt Revolution,” cited in Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, 183. 15. Chief Rabbi Moshe Halevi, addressing meeting convened by Veneziani in Constantinople, 3 Feb. 1878, CAHJP F/AIU 194. 16. “Crónica,” El Tiempo, 22 Mar. 1878. 17. Report by the correspondent of the Kölnische Zeitung in Constantinople, dated 13 Jan. [1878], reprinted in “Die Gräuel des Krieges,” Neue Freie Presse, 30 Jan. 1878. 18. See Nadir Özbek, “Philanthropic Activity, Ottoman Patriotism and the Hamidian Regime, 1876–­1909,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (2005), 59–81; for an example of premodern Ottoman imperial philanthropy, see Amy Singer, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002). 19. On Veneziani, see “M. E. F. Veneziani,” Jewish Chronicle, 8 Feb. 1889. 20. “Bulgaria,” Times, 31 Oct. 1877.

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21. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 3 May 1878, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 22. Cited in Bass, Freedom’s Battle, 301. 23. On the movement of Ottoman Muslim migrants (muhacir) in the last decades of the empire’s existence, including the relocation of those to provinces in the Middle East, see Kemal Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830–­1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); and Kemal Karpat, “The Hijra from Russia and the Balkans: The Process of Self-­Definition in the Late Ottoman State,” in Karpat, Studies on Ottoman Social and Political History (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 689–­711; see also Kemal Karpat, “Jewish Population Movements in the Ottoman Empire, 1862–­1914,” in Karpat, Studies, 146–­168. 24. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 12 Apr. 1878, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 25. On Jews in Bulgaria, see Guy Haskell, From Sofia to Jaffa: The Jews of Bulgaria and Israel (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 77–­84 (for the Ottoman period) and 85–­106 (for the period after 1878). 26. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 5 Mar. 1878, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 27. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 13 Mar. 1878, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 28. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 20 Mar. 1878, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 29. Emmanuel Veneziani to Stoyan Tchomakoff, 29 Aug. 1878, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 30. Emmanuel Veneziani to Anthimos I, 17 Apr. 1879, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 31. “Turkey,” Jewish Chronicle, 27 June 1879. 32. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 29 July 1879, AIU France VIII A 63.01. 33. On such manifestations of Jewish “patriotic cosmopolitanism,” see Derek Penslar, Jews and the Military: A History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), esp. chapter 4. 34. Omer Bartov and Eric Weitz, eds., Shatterzone of Empires (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013). 35. See Karpat, Politicization of Islam; on the implications of Ottomanism on the Jews of the empire, see Cohen, Becoming Ottomans. 36. On Ottoman war refugees, see Isa Blumi, Ottoman Refugees, 1878–­1939 (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). 37. “La conferencia de los jidiós en París,” La Epoca, 1 Jan. 1877; see N. M. Gelber, “The Intervention of German Jews at the Berlin Congress 1878,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 5 (1960), 221–­2 48, at 226–­227. 38. Lloyd Gartner, “Roumania, America, and World Jewry: Consul Peixotto in Bucharest, 1870–­1876,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 58 (1968), 24–­56 and 59–­117, at 54. 39. “Frankreich,”Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 2 July 1878. 40. Stern, Gold and Iron, 377. 41. Naținuena Română, 24 Aug. 1867, cited in Green, Moses Montefiore, 351. 42. Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, 13. 43. Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, 7. 44. Geiss, Der Berliner Kongreß 1878, 252.

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45. Geiss, Der Berliner Kongreß, 399; Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, 29. For a comparison of diplomatic intervention in defense of Jewish rights in Romania and Morocco, at the Berlin Conference of 1878 and the Madrid Conference of 1880, see Abigail Green, “The Limits of Intervention: Coercive Diplomacy and the Jewish Question in the Nineteenth Century,” International History Review 36:3 (2014), 473–­492. 46. See François Guesnet, “The Politics of Precariousness: Josel of Rosheim and Jewish Intercession in the Holy Roman Empire in the 16th Century,” Jewish Culture and History 19:1 (2018), 8–­22; Selma Stern, Der Hofjude im Zeitalter des Absolutismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), chapter 7. 47. Green, Moses Montefiore, 133–­157, 300–­319. On the relationship between shtadlanut and nineteenth-­century philanthropy, see Yochai Ben-­Ghedalia, “Empowerment: Tzedakah, Philanthropy, and Inner-­Jewish Shtadlanut,” Jewish Culture and History 19:1 (2018), 71–­78. 48. Fink, Defending the Rights of Others, 32, 34. 49. Stern, Gold and Iron, 380, 382. 50. On Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Romanian railroads, see Stern, Gold and Iron, 351–­393; Borchart, Der europäische Eisenbahnkönig Bethel Henry Strousberg, 144–­164. 51. Wilhelm Marr, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum (Bern: Rudolph Costenoble, 1879), 31. 52. See Abigail Green, “The British Empire and the Jews: An Imperialism of Human Rights?,” Past and Present 199 (2008), 175–­205; and more generally on the intersection of imperialism and humanitarianism, see, for example, Peter Stamatov, The Origins of Global Humanitarianism: Religion, Empires, and Advocacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 53. Judah Nehama, Discurso del reverendo h”r Ye’uda Nehama (Salonika, 1896), 12–­ 13. On Nehama, see Julia Cohen and Sarah Stein, “Sephardic Scholarly Worlds: Toward a Novel Geography of Modern Jewish History,” Jewish Quarterly Review 100:3 (2010), 349–­ 384; Tamir Karkason, “The Ottoman-­Jewish Haskalah, 1838–­1908: A Transformation in the Jewish Communities of Western Anatolia, the Southern Balkans and Jerusalem” (Hebr.), unpublished PhD dissertation (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2018). 54. Maurice de Hirsch to Oscar Straus, 11 Mar. 1888, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 8. 55. Emmanuel Veneziani to Clara de Hirsch, 15 Jan. 1874, AIU France VIII A 63.06. 56. Maurice de Hirsch to president of AIU, 9 Dec. 1873, AIU France III N 07.06. 57. On changing notions of poverty and poor relief in the nineteenth-­century Ottoman Empire, see Danon, Jews of Ottoman Izmir, esp. 61–­90; on vocational training under the auspices of the Alliance in Ottoman cities, see Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue, “L’artisanat juif en Turquie à la fin du XIXe siècle: L’Alliance Israélite Universelle et ses oeuvres d’apprentissage,” Turcica 17 (1985), 113–­126; on vocational orphanages created by the Ottoman government, see Nazan Maksudyan, “Orphans, Cities, and the State: Vocational Orphanages (ıslahhanes) and Reform in the Late Ottoman Urban Space,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43:3 (2011), 493–­511; on state-­g uided philanthropy in

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the making of the modern Ottoman political order, see Nadir Özbek, “The Politics of Poor Relief in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1876–­1914,” New Perspectives on Turkey 21 (1999), 1–­33. 58. See Eli Bar-­Chen, Weder Asiaten noch Orientalen: Internationale jüdische Organisationen und die Europäisierung “rückständiger” Juden (Würzburg: Ergon, 2005); Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews, esp. 1–­2 4. The work of the Alliance Israélite Universelle needs to be understood, of course, in the broader context of the French mission civilisatrice. See, for example, Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity; Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–­1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997); Wilder, French Imperial Nation-­State. On the “Orientalization” of Sephardic Jews in the modern era, see Daniel Schroeter, “Orientalism and the Jews of the Mediterranean,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 4:2 (1994), 183–­196. For a broader discussion of the “beneficent imperialism” of which the Alliance was part, see Carol Chin, “Beneficent Imperialists: American Women Missionaries in China at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” Diplomatic History 27:3 (2003), 327–­352. 59. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 20 Oct. 1873, AIU France VIII A 63.06. 60. Meeting of AIU committee, Constantinople, 13 Jan. 1874, AIU France VIII A 63.06. 61. Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews, 62: “The model of a clash between ‘traditionalists’ and ‘modernists’ is inadequate to explain the history of the organization [that is, the Alliance] in Turkey.” 62. Meeting of AIU committee, Constantinople, 6 Jan. 1874, AIU France VIII A 63.06. 63. Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews, 90–­95; the numbers for 1879 and 1898 cited according to the table at 91. 64. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 7 July 1885; Veneziani to AIU, 8 July 1885; Moïse Covo to Emmanuel Veneziani, 6 July 1885, AIU France VIII A 63.05. 65. “Discours prononcé . . . à la séance qui eut lieu dans la salle de l’Ecole Israélite de Philippopoli le 25 Janvier 1881,” AIU France VIII A 63.07. 66. “La obra de oficios en Salonico,” La Epoca, 22 Dec. 1882. Under this program, a modest number of twenty-­five apprentices were learning trades in Constantinople in September 1881; by the following month, an additional six had been signed up. “The Jews of Constantinople,” Jewish Chronicle, 2 Sept. 1881; “The Jews of Constantinople,” Jewish Chronicle, 21 Oct. 1881. 67. Maurice de Hirsch to AIU, 28 Jan. 1888, AIU France V A 34.11. This idea was echoed by local Ottoman Jewish leaders—­for example, Gabriel Arié in Izmir, who declared in 1895 that “from both a humanitarian and a practical point of view, in the Orient our apprenticeship programs are more useful than our schools.” Cited in Danon, Jews of Ottoman Izmir, 83. On ideas of “productivization” in nineteenth-­century French philanthropy, of which the Alliance and Baron Hirsch both were prominent representatives, see Weissbach, “Nature of Philanthropy,” 191–­204; Weissbach, “Oeuvre Industrielle, Oeuvre Morale: The Sociétés de Patronage of Nineteenth-­Century France,” French Historical Studies 15:1 (1987), 99–­120; Weissbach, “The Jewish Elite and the Children of the Poor: Jewish Apprenticeship Programs in Nineteenth-­Century France,” AJS Review 12:1 (1987), 123–­142. 68. Emmanuel Veneziani to Isidore Loeb, 6 May 1887, AIU France VIII A 63.03.

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69. “Das Judenthum in Gegenwart und Zukunft,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 23 Dec. 1884. 70. “Frankreich,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 6 Apr. 1884. 71. Emmanuel Veneziani to AIU, 6 Feb. 1887, AIU France VIII A 63.03. 72. AIU to Maurice de Hirsch, 12 Feb. 1889, AIU France V A 34.12. 73. See, for example, Mordechai Rozin, The Rich and the Poor: Jewish Philanthropy and Social Control in Nineteenth-­Century London (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1999); Francie Ostrower, Why the Wealthy Give: The Culture of Elite Philanthropy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); for a critique of the functionalist interpretation of nineteenth-­century Jewish philanthropy, see Abigail Green, “Rethinking Sir Moses Montefiore: Religion, Nationhood, and International Philanthropy in the Nineteenth Century,” American Historical Review 110:3 (2005), 631–­658, esp. 647–­648. 74. James Jasper, Michael Young, and Elke Zuern, Public Characters: The Politics of Reputation and Blame (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 2. 75. On the rise of modern humanitarianism in Ottoman border lands in the context of imperialism, see Keith Watenpaugh, Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015). 76. James Loeffler, Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), xi. CHAPTER 8: CIVILIZING MISSIONS IN EASTERN EUROPE 1. “Address of Hon. Oscar S. Straus,” American Hebrew, 15 May 1896, 41. 2. “Eine interconfesionelle Stiftung,” Neue Freie Presse, 28 Dec. 1880. 3. BOA HR.TO 107/52 (29 Apr. 1871). 4. “Matinée beim Grafen Beust,” Neue Freie Presse, 23 Dec. 1881. 5. On the role of the new Jewish press in the nineteenth century, see Frankel, Damascus Affair; Israel Bartal, “The Jewish Press as a Conduit for Modernization” (Hebr.), Cathedra 71 (1994), 156–­164; Sarah A. Stein, Making Jews Modern: The Yiddish and Ladino Press in the Russian and Ottoman Empires (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004); Derek Penslar, “Introduction: The Press and the Jewish Public Sphere,” Jewish History 14:1 (2000), 3–­8, and the other articles in that volume. 6. AIU France V A 34.09. 7. Hirsch’s memorandum quoted in “Die Millionen-­Stiftung des Baron Hirsch,” Neue Freie Presse, 4 Dec. 1888. 8. The history of Jewish peddling in Europe is still a desideratum. See, however, Hasia Diner, Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migrations to the New World and the Peddlers Who Forged the Way (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015). 9. “Die Millionen-­Stiftung des Baron Hirsch,” Neue Freie Presse, 1 Dec. 1888. 10. “Wo ist die Katz?,” Bukowinaer Rundschau, 4 Dec. 1890. 11. Larry Wolff, The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 6.

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12. Joshua Shanes, Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 18. 13. Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, (Oxford: Littman, 2010), vol. 2, 116. 14. Helmut Braun, ed., Czernowitz: Die Geschichte einer untergegangenen Kulturmetropole (2nd ed., Berlin: Ch. Links, 2006), 10. 15. Quoted in Wolff, Idea of Galicia, 242. More generally on the Orientalization of the Ostjuden in the eyes of their German and western European counterparts, see Steven Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–­1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982); Jack Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 16. On Vienna’s Israelitische Allianz, see Björn Siegel, Österreichisches Judentum zwischen Ost und West: Die Israelitische Allianz zu Wien, 1873–­1938 (Frankfurt: Campus, 2010). 17. “Die Millionen-­Stiftung des Baron Hirsch,” Neue Freie Presse, 4 Dec. 1888. 18. Maurice de Hirsch to Alfred Jellinek, 24 Feb. 1888, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 7. 19. Maurice de Hirsch to Alfred Jellinek, 2 Feb. 1890, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 9. 20. “Die Stiftung des Baron Hirsch,” Bukowinaer Rundschau, 14 July 1889. 21. See the critique of Gazeta Polska’s position in “Humanität und Vorurtheil,” Bukowinaer Nachrichten, 10 Jan. 1889. 22. Quoted from the German translation of the article that appeared in “Die Millionen-­ Stiftung des Baron Hirsch,” Die Neuzeit, 1 Feb. 1889; see also “Kleine Chronik,” Die Neuzeit, 18 Jan 1889. 23. “Eine Tendenzlüge,” Neue Freie Presse, 17 Apr. 1892. 24. “Die Millionen-­Stiftung des Baron Hirsch,” Die Neuzeit, 1 Feb. 1889. 25. Cited in Wolff, Idea of Galicia, 215. 26. “Oesterreich-­Ungarn,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, 28 Mar. 1890. 27. “Die Angelegenheit der Baron Hirsch’schen Stiftung,” Bukowinaer Rundschau, 25 Nov. 1890. 28. “Eine neue Stiftung des Baron Hirsch,” Bukowinaer Rundschau, 15 Apr. 1890. 29. See Judson, Habsburg Empire, 313–­316. 30. Wiener Bankverein, directorate [signature illegible] to Maurice de Hirsch, 11 Feb. 1890, CAHJP F/AIU 200. 31. Rob Reich, Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 4–­7. In testimony to Congress, Reverend John Haynes Holmes, chair of the ACLU, declared that “this foundation, the very character, must be repugnant to the whole idea of a democratic society” (5). 32. “Die Baron-­Hirsch-­Stiftung,” Neue Freie Presse, 4 Jan. 1891.

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33. “Hirsch-­Schulstiftung,” Neue Freie Presse, 6 July 1893. 34. “Wieder übersehen,” Bukowinaer Rundschau, 15 Jan. 1891. 35. “Die Organisation der Baron Hirsch’schen Stiftung,” Bukowinaer Rundschau, 14 July 1892. 36. “Wieder übersehen,” Bukowinaer Rundschau, 15 Jan. 1891; “Zerstörter Segen,” Bukowinaer Rundschau, 14 May 1891; “Die Baron Hirsch’sche Stiftung,” Bukowinaer Rundschau, 10 Nov. 1891. 37. P. Berthold (Bertha Pappenheim), Zur Judenfrage in Galizien (Frankfurt: Gebr. Knauer, 1900), 3–­6. 38. Pappenheim, Zur Judenfrage in Galizien, 17. 39. Pappenheim, Zur Judenfrage in Galizien, 8. 40. According to Moriz Friedländer, secretary of the Baron Hirsch foundation, cited in Siegel, Österreichisches Judentum zwischen Ost und West, 155–­156. 41. “Hinter den Culissen der galizischen Baron Hirsch-­Stiftung,” Der Israelit, 24 Nov. 1892. 42. Alexander Schorr, Ein offenes Wort zur Präsidenten-­Krisis im Curatorium der Baron-­Hirsch-­Stiftung (Vienna (self-­published), 1892), 4. Hirsch was aware, of course, that “certain individuals see in the Foundation only a means to achieving their personal goals and for political, partisan purposes.” Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 29 Mar. 1893, CAHJP JCA/Lon 198/1. 43. Schorr, Ein offenes Wort, 5; “Hinter den Culissen der galizischen Baron Hirsch-­ Stiftung,” Der Israelit, 24 Nov. 1892. 44. “Der Nothstand unter den Juden in Galizien,” Die Neuzeit, 10 May 1895. 45. The visitation and investigation of the poor was, by the second half of the nineteenth century, the established practice of charitable organizations in England and on the continent, as well as municipal poor relief following the “Elberfeld system” in nineteenth-­century Germany. The “Elberfeld system” was widely invoked as a model for welfare reform across and beyond Germany, including in Moscow in 1891: see Adele Lindenmeyr, Poverty Is Not a Vice: Charity, Society, and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), esp. 147–­152; see also Wolfgang Köllman, “Das ‘Elberfelder System’: Hundert Jahre ‘Hilfe von Mensch zu Mensch,’ ” Soziale Welt 5:1 (1954), 66–­71. Hirsch’s projects differed in that he insisted on centralized oversight. 46. Maurice de Hirsch, “Note über die Reform meiner Wohlthätigkeit-­Bureaux in Oesterreich-­Ungarn,” June 1895, CAHJP JCA/Lon 380/2. 47. Maurice de Hirsch, “Note über die Reform meiner Wohlthätigkeit-­Bureaux in Oesterreich-­Ungarn,” June 1895, CAHJP JCA/Lon 380/2. 48. Annica Benveniste, Flore Bermann, Emma Engländer and Arthur Kuranda (secretary) to Maurice de Hirsch, 5 July 1895, CAHJP JCA/Lon 380/2. 49. Annica Benveniste, Flore Bermann, Emma Engländer and Arthur Kuranda (secretary) to Maurice de Hirsch, 5 July 1895, CAHJP JCA/Lon 380/2. 50. Annica Benveniste to Maurice de Hirsch, 9 July 1895, CAHJP JCA/Lon 380/2.

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51. Maurice de Hirsch to Vienna Damencomité, 19 July 1895, CAHJP JCA/Lon 380/2. Hirsch echoed here the discourse of contemporary reformers of poor relief, for instance in the United States, who considered that “alms are like drugs, and are as dangerous” (Frederic Almy in 1894), and that true philanthropy “must be treated as a business scheme” (Reverend S. H. Gurteen in 1880): cited in Robert Bremner, “Scientific Philanthropy,” Social Service Review 30:2 (1956), 168–­173, at 170, 171. 52. “Wohlthätigkeits-­Bureau,” Neue Freie Presse, 27 Sept. 1895. 53. Maurice de Hirsch to Wohlthätigkeits-­Bureau Krakau, 18 Sept. 1895, CAHJP JCA/ Lon 380/2. 54. Hirsch, “My Views on Philanthropy,” 1. 55. See the report in “Oesterr. Ungar. Monarchie,” Der Israelit, 8 Dec. 1890. Mischler (d. 1912) was appointed to a professorship at the University of Czernowitz in 1888 and at the German university at Prague in 1891. Rainer Liedtke makes a similar point in Jewish Welfare in Hamburg and Manchester, 232. 56. See, for example, Brent Ruswick, Almost Worthy: The Poor, Paupers, and the Science of Charity in America, 1877–­1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013); Jeremy Beer, The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), esp. 59–­83. 57. “Baron de Hirsch’s Gift,” Jewish Chronicle, 30 Dec. 1887. 58. “Statuts de la Fondation du Baron Maurice de Hirsch pour l’Education de la Jeunesse Israélite en Russie,” enclosure to letter from Maurice de Hirsch to Count Delianoff, Russian minister of public education, 1 June 1888, YIVO RG 318. 59. Maurice de Hirsch to Léonce Lehmann and Marquis d’Alzac, 18 Dec. 1888, YIVO RG 318. 60. Maurice de Hirsch to Konstantin Pobedonostsev, procurator of the Holy Synod [n.d.] 1889, YIVO RG 318. 61. Maurice de Hirsch to Count Delianoff, Russian minister of public education, 28 Jan. 1889, YIVO RG 318. 62. “The Jews Must Disappear,” New York Herald, 12 Jan. 1889. 63. “The Jews Must Disappear,” New York Herald, 12 Jan. 1889. The term “amalgamation” was translated as “fusion” in the French version of the interview, a term that Hirsch used elsewhere in his correspondence. This may be seen as the equivalent of the Russian term used at the time, “sliianie” (fusion or merging). It was used interchangeably with “sblizheniie” (drawing near or rapprochement), which invokes of course a somewhat different image, and this ambiguity can also be observed in Hirsch’s own thinking on Jewish assimilation, and the ways that his ideas were received. On the Russian terms, see Benjamin Nathans, Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 74. 64. “The Jews Must Disappear,” New York Herald, 12 Jan. 1889. 65. Maurice de Hirsch to Myer Isaacs, 6 July 1889, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 8.

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66. “Shall Israel Be Absorbed?,” New York Herald, 13 Jan. 1889. 67. “No, Good Baron, Israel Will Not Die,” “A Jewish Editor’s Thoughts,” “More Sensational than Wise,” “Boston Hebrews Divided,” “Judaism Grows Now as Ever,” “No Jewish Support,” “The Hebrew Race Would Vanish,” New York Herald, 14 Jan. 1889; “The Messiah Not Yet,” “What the Race has Yet to Do,” “Reaching Toward Judaism,” New York Herald, 15 Jan. 1889; “Amalgamation, not Annihilation,” New York Herald, 16 Jan. 1889; “Plain Words, but Fair, for Baron Hirsch,” “Assimilation a Good Way Off,” “Annihilation was Not Meant,” “Judaism is Liberal,” New York Herald, 17 Jan. 1889; “A Self-­Appointed Seer,” New York Herald, 18 Jan. 1889. 68. “Letters Breathing American Patriotism and Liberal to the Limit, but Stopping Short of Agreeing to the Suicide of Judaism,” New York Herald, 17 Jan. 1889. 69. “No, Good Baron, Israel Will Not Die,” New York Herald, 14 Jan. 1889. 70. “No, Good Baron, Israel Will Not Die,” New York Herald, 14 Jan. 1889. 71. “No, Good Baron, Israel Will Not Die,” New York Herald, 14 Jan. 1889. 72. “What the Race has Yet to Do,” New York Herald, 15 Jan. 1889. 73. See W. E. B. Du Bois on Alexander Crummell in The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, 1903), 215–­227. 74. “No, Good Baron, Israel Will Not Die,” New York Herald, 14 Jan. 1889. 75. “The Messiah Not Yet,” New York Herald, 15 Jan. 1889. The true story about Crémieux was more complicated, of course. His wife, Louise Amélie Silny, was Jewish but converted, in 1845, to Catholicism, together with their two children. As a result, Crémieux resigned from his position as president of the Consistoire, the central representative body of French Jewy. See Simone Mrejen-­O’Hana, “Isaac-­Jacob Adolphe Crémieux, avocat, homme politique, président du Consistoire central et de l’Alliance israélite universelle,” Archives Juives 36:2 (2003), 139–­146. 76. Paula Hyman, Gender and Assimilation in Modern Jewish History: The Roles and Representation of Women (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 48. 77. David Myers, Jewish History: A Very Brief Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), xxiv–­x xv; on Gerson Cohen’s essay and its impact on Jewish scholarship, see David Myers, “On Gerson Cohen’s ‘Blessing of Assimilation’ a Half Century Later,” Jewish Quarterly Review 106:4 (2016), 429–­432; and David Ruderman, “The Blessing of Gerson D. Cohen,” Jewish Quarterly Review 106:4 (2016), 459–­464, and the other articles in the same issue. Amos Funkenstein, in turn, has observed the dialectical nature of assimilation and self-­assertion, noting that “even the self-­assertion of Jewish cultures as distinct and different is articulated [historically] in the language of the surrounding culture.” Amos Funkenstein, “The Dialectics of Assimilation,” Jewish Social Studies 1:2 (1995), 1–­14. 78. See, for example, the discussion in Michael Stanislawski, Zionism and the Fin de Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 1–­18. The term “cosmopolitanism,” preferred by Stanislawski, is of course hardly less problematic than “assimilation” or “assimilationism.” 79. “Une solution de la question sémitique,” L’Indépendence Belge, 19 Jan. 1889.

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80. As reported in”Journalistisches,” Neue Freie Presse, 16 Oct. 1884. 81. “Vorsicht!,” Der Israelit, 28 Jan. 1889. 82. Dov Gordon had succeeded his father, David Gordon, as editor of Ha-­Magid after the elder Gordon’s death in 1886. 83. “Hitbolelut,” Ha-­Magid, 28 Feb. 1889. 84. “Hitbolelut,” Ha-­Magid, 28 Feb. 1889. 85. On radical assimilation in modern Jewish history, see Todd Endelman, Radical Assimilation in English Jewish History, 1656–­1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990); and Endelman, Leaving the Jewish Fold: Conversion and Radical Assimilation in Jewish History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). 86. Alexander Valdman, “Jewish Acculturation in Late Nineteenth-­Century Russia: The Case of Yonah Berkhin,” East European Jewish Affairs 47:1 (2017), 28–­4 4, at 33. 87. On Zangwill, see Adam Sutcliffe, What Are Jews For? History, Peoplehood, Purpose (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 215–­218. On the Jewish Territorialist Organization (ITO), established in 1903, see Gur Alroey, Zionism without Zion: The Jewish Territorialist Organization and Its Conflict with the Zionist Organization (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2016); and Adam Rovner, In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands before Israel (New York: New York University Press, 2014). 88. Herzl raised the idea of Jewish mass conversion with his editor at the Neue Freie Presse, Moriz Benedikt, in 1892, and again with Baron Friedrich Leitenberger, head of the Vienna Defense Association Against Antisemitism: Derek Penslar, Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 61–­63; see also Jacques Kornberg, Theodor Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 118–­124. 89. Dmitry Shumsky, Beyond the Nation-­State: The Zionist Political Imagination from Pinsker to Ben-­Gurion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018), 57. 90. Maurice de Hirsch, “Refuge for Russian Jews,” Forum (Aug. 1891), 632. 91. On Enlightenment attitudes toward Jews and Judaism, see David Nirenberg, Anti-­ Judaism: The Western Tradition (New York: Norton, 2013), chapter 12; Adam Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Hertzberg, French Enlightenment. Despite his willingness to see Judaism “disappear,” Hirsch should not be seen as an example of modern “Jewish self-­hatred”: see Sander Gilman, Jewish Self-­Hatred: Anti-­Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). Rather, Jewish philanthropy’s internalization of Enlightenment anti-­Judaism is perhaps better understood in terms of what Homi Bhabha has called “colonial mimicry”; see Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 121–­131. CHAPTER 9: THE RUSSIAN EXODUS 1. “Anglo-­Jewish Association,” Times, 30 June 1890; on Pobedonostsev, see Hans Rogger, Jewish Policies and Right-­Wing Politics in Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 66.

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2. John Klier, Russians, Jews and the Pogroms of 1881–­1882 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 207–­233. While the May Laws were often misconstrued as banning Jews from all villages, they in fact applied only to new Jewish settlement in the countryside: Michael Stanislawski, s.v. “Russia: Russian Empire,” The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, ed. Gershon Hundert (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), vol. 2, 1610. 3. “Persecution of the Jews in Russia,” Times, 30 July 1890. 4. “Persecution of the Jews in Russia,” Times, 30 July 1890. 5. Rogger, Jewish Policies, 69–­74; Hans Rogger, “Government, Jews, Peasants, and Land in Post-­emancipation Russia: Two Specters; Peasant Violence and Jewish Exploitation,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 17:2 (1976), 171–­211, at 189. For a challenge to Rogger’s notion that the Jewish policies of Pleve and other czarist officials were primarily a function of ideology (and antisemitism), see Daniel Gutwein, “Russian ‘Official Antisemitism’ Reconsidered: Socio-­economic Aspects of Tsarist Jewish Policy, 1881–­1905,” International Review of Social History 39:2 (1994), 197–­221. 6. Oscar Straus to Maurice de Hirsch, 8 Aug. 1890, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 10. 7. Maurice de Hirsch to Oscar Straus, 22 Aug. 1890, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 10. 8. Meyer Isaacs to Salomon Goldschmidt, 6 Aug. 1890, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 10. 9. Moriz Friedländer, Fünf Wochen in Brody unter jüdisch-­russischen Emigranten (Vienna: M. Waizner, 1882); Klier, Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–­1882, 267, 380–­ 381; see also Börries Kuzmany, “Center and Periphery at the Austrian-­Russian Border: The Galician Town of Brody in the Long Nineteenth Century,” Austrian History Yearbook 42 (2011), 67–­88. 10. Klier, Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–­1882, 29–­30. 11. John Klier, “Emigration Mania in Late-­Imperial Russia: Legend and Reality,” in Patterns of Migration, 1850–­1914, ed. Aubrey Newman and Stephen Massil (London: Jewish Historical Society of England, 1996), 21–­29; Gur Alroey, The Quiet Revolution: Jewish Emigration from the Russian Empire, 1875–­1924 (Hebr.) (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 2007), 49–­53. 12. See Alroey, Quiet Revolution, 41–­42, and on the importance of modern steam ships, 42–­46. 13. See ChaeRan Freeze, Jewish Woman of Distinction, 64–­65. 14. “Die Judenaustreibung aus Moskau,” Der Israelit, 28 May 1891. 15. Freeze, Jewish Woman of Distinction, 23–­25. 16. “Judenaustreibungen aus Moskau,” Der Israelit, 15 Feb. 1892. As a result of the expulsions from Moscow, the city’s Jewish population declined by 80 percent, with about eight thousand Jews remaining according to the 1897 census. Eugene Avrutin, Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 101. 17. Harold Frederic, The New Exodus: A Study of Israel in Russia (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1892).

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18. Cited in “Zur Lage der Juden in Rußland,” Der Israelit, 1 June 1891. 19. “Unwillkommene Gäste,” Deutsches Volksblatt, 19 June 1891. 20. “The Russian Jews,” Times, 30 Apr. 1891. 21. Rogger, Jewish Policies, 74. 22. On the importance of moments of “crisis” for nineteenth-­century Jewish history, see Jonathan Frankel, Damascus Affair, introduction; and Jonathan Frankel, “The Crisis of 1881–­82 as a Turning Point in Modern Jewish History,” The Legacy of Jewish Migration: 1881 and Its Impact, ed. David Berger (New York: Brooklyn College Press, 1983), 9–­22. 23. “The Persecution of the Jews,” Times, 27 May 1891. 24. Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 155; Eli Lederhendler, American Jewry: A New History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 64–­65. 25. John Efron et al., The Jews: A History (3rd ed., New York: Routledge, 2019), 371. 26. Michael Heilprin to Oscar Straus, 18 Jan. 1888, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 8. 27. Michael Heilprin to Oscar Straus, 18 Jan. 1888, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 8. 28. Maurice de Hirsch to Oscar Straus, 11 Mar. 1888, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 8. 29. See Sarah Imhoff, Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Bloomington, 2017). 30. Isidore Loeb to Meyer Isaacs, 15 Apr. 1889, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 8. 31. Meyer Isaacs to Isidore Loeb, 23 May 1889, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 8. 32. Moses Dropsie to Isidore Loeb, 6 June 1889, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 8. 33. Moses Dropsie to Isidore Loeb, 6 June 1889, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 8. 34. “Ein ernstes Wort zur Emigration nach Nordamerika,” Der Israelit, 4 Oct. 1892. 35. “Die russischen Juden,” Der Israelit, 8 Aug. 1892. Considering his position in 1892, it is perhaps surprising that Rülf would later become a strong supporter of Herzlian Zionism, which shared many of its assumptions with Baron Hirsch’s colonization enterprise in Argentina. 36. Bulletin of the Russell Sage Foundation Library 65 (June 1923), “American Foundations,” 15. 37. Ellen Eisenberg, Jewish Agricultural Colonies in New Jersey, 1882–­1920 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 127–­132. In September 1892, Hirsch’s right-­hand man in Paris, Sigismund Sonnenfeld, informed him that “the enclosed newspaper reports about the Woodbine colony prove once again that colonization in North America cannot become, at least for the moment, a project on a large scale.” Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 19 Sept. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 408/2. 38. Meyer Isaacs to Maurice de Hirsch, 11 Nov. 1889, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 8. 39. “Die Delegirten-­Versammlung zur Berathung der Hilfsaction für die Russischen Juden,” Der Israelit, 9 Nov. 1891.

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40. “Die Delegirten-­Versammlung zur Berathung der Hilfsaction für die Russischen Juden,” Der Israelit, 5 Nov. 1891. 41. John L. Kaye to Maurice de Hirsch, 30 July 1890, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 9, folder 10. 42. On the JCA in Canada, see Theodore Norman, An Outstretched Arm: A History of the Jewish Colonization Association (London: Routledge, 1985), 99–­105. For another proposal for colonization in Canada, see Wm. Hespeler to Imperial Trusts Co. of Canada in Toronto, Winnipeg, 18 Jan. 1890, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 9, who claimed (mistakenly) to have been informed of Baron Hirsch’s “gigantic Jewish emigration move from Austria, Poland, and Rumania to the Canadian North West”; Imperial Trusts Co. of Canada to Baron Hirsch, London, 18 Feb. 1890, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 9. Another proposal came from Herman Landau, representative of the Canadian Pacific Railway in London: Rozenblum, Le baron de Hirsch, 209–­210. 43. Maurice de Hirsch, “Conférence de Londres: exposé,” n.d. [1891], CAHJP JCA/ Lon 302/2. 44. See Derek Penslar, Shylock’s Children: Economics and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), esp. 107–­123. See also Jonathan Karp, “Economic History and Jewish Modernity—­Ideological versus Structural Change,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 6 (2007), 249–­266. 45. Arno Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), esp. chapter 1. 46. Isidore Loeb to Maurice de Hirsch, 24 Jan. 1890, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 8. Löwenthal had submitted his proposal, dated 12 Dec. 1889, to Zadoc Kahn, chief rabbi of France. For the text of his memorandum see Haim Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land (Hebr.) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1973), 321–­325. 47. Maurice de Hirsch to Isidore Loeb, 29 Jan. 1890, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 9. 48. Shemtob Pariente and David Cazès, the first directors of the Alliance school in Izmir, were among the first graduates of the Alliance’s teacher-­training seminar in Paris. In a curious turn of events, Cazès would go on, a few years later, to become a codirector of Baron Hirsch’s colonization enterprise in Argentina. On the Alliance at Izmir, see Henri Nahum, Juifs de Smyrne: Xixe-­xxe siècle (Paris: Aubier, 1997), 91–­127. 49. Maurice de Hirsch to Isidore Loeb, 29 Jan. 1890, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 9. 50. Maurice de Hirsch, “Note concernant le projet de l’émigration russe et de création d’une banque agraire dans la Turquie d’Asie,” 29 July 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 379/2. 51. “The Russian Jews,” Times, 6 Aug. 1891. 52. On Alkalai, see Norman Stillman, Sephardi Religious Responses to Modernity (Luxembourg: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995), 49–­64; Gideon Shimoni, The Zionist Ideology (Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1995), 71–­82; on Kalischer, see Jody Myers, Seeking Zion: Modernity and Messianic Activism in the Writings of Tsevi Hirsch Kalischer (Oxford:

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Littman, 2003); on Orthodoxy and early Jewish nationalism, see Jess Olson, Nathan Birnbaum and Jewish Modernity: Architect of Zionism, Yiddishism, and Orthodoxy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013); Ehud Luz, Parallels Meet: Religion and Nationalism in the Early Zionist Movement (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988). 53. On the Hovevei Zion movement, see Shimoni, Zionist Ideology, 29–­51; David Vital, The Origins of Zionism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), 109–­186. 54. See, for example, Israel Bartal, “Farming the Land on Three Continents: Bilu, Am Oylom, and Yefe-­Nahar,” Jewish History 21:3–­4 (2007), 249–­261. 55. Derek Penslar, Zionism and Technocracy: The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870–­1918 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 19. 56. This argument has been made forcefully by Shumsky, Beyond the Nation-­State. See also Dimitry Shumsky, “Leon Pinsker and ‘Autoemancipation!’: A Reevaluation,” Jewish Social Studies 18:1 (2011), 33–­62. On Herzl’s ideas more generally, see most recently Penslar, Theodor Herzl. Through the years of World War I, many Jewish leaders in Ottoman Palestine saw the future of the Yishuv as an integral part of the empire, and at times fervently embraced Ottoman patriotism. See Michelle Campos, Ottoman Brethren: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-­Century Palestine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 197–­223. Consider, for example, Eliezer Ben-­Yehuda’s famous call, in support of Ottomanization, published as “Yehudim, heyu otomanim!” in Ha-­Tsvi, 12 Jan. 1909. 57. “The Jewish Colonies in Palestine,” Jewish Chronicle, 27 July 1883. 58. “The Roumanian Colonists in Palestine,” Jewish Chronicle, 24 Aug. 1883. 59. Maurice de Hirsch to Goldberger (German Central Committee for the Russian Jews), 7 Sept. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 215/7. 60. “Die Delegirten-­Versammlung zur Berathung der Hilfsaction für die Russischen Juden,” Der Israelit, 19 Nov. 1891. 61. “Das deutsche Central-­Comité,” Der Israelit, 21 Dec. 1891. 62. “Die Delegirten-­Versammlung zur Berathung der Hilfsaction für die Russischen Juden,” Der Israelit, 19 Nov. 1891. 63. “The Persecution of the Jews,” Times, 27 May 1891. 64. Gustav Held to Max Kohler, 15 Mar. 1910 and 2 Apr. 1911, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 8, folder 19. The deed of the gift, dated 26 Aug. 1892, which lists the shares, securities, stocks, and bonds included in the donation, can be found at PWDRO 1637/5. 65. “Draft Memorandum and Articles of Association of the Jewish Colonization Association,” 20 May 1891, PWDRO 1637/9 and 1637/10. 66. Both the Jewish Chronicle and the Times reported on Hirsch’s plans, but in the end, nothing came of his idea for an international Jewish notables’ conference in London. “Baron de Hirsch and the Russian Jews,” Jewish Chronicle, 6 Nov. 1891; “Baron de Hirsch and the Russian Jews,” Times, 6 Nov. 1891. 67. Maurice de Hirsch, “Conférence de Londres: Exposé,” n.d. [October 1891], CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. Some historians have made rather too much of Hirsch’s rumination about “purchasing an entire country,” seeing his colonization effort as a precursor to political

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­ ionism and territorialism. Hirsch never followed through, though, on the idea of Jewish Z political autonomy that was implied in this document. Historians who have claimed Hirsch as a proto-­territorialist include Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land, 65–­67, 307–­308, and Avni, “Territorialism,” 69–­87; Gur Alroey, “Aliya to America? A Comparative Look at Jewish Mass Migration, 1881–­1914,” Modern Judaism 28:2 (2008), 109–­133, and Alroey, Quiet Revolution, 198. The image of the JCA colonies as a proto-­nationalist experiment with Jewish “autonomy” still inflects the popular image of Baron Hirsch’s project: see, for example, “This Is All that Remains of the Dream to Establish a Jewish Autonomy in the Argentine Pampas,” Haaretz, 11 Oct. 2018, reporting from Moisés Ville. On the relation between territorialism and European imperialism, see David Glover, “Imperial Zion: Israel Zangwill and the English Origins of Territorialism” and Meri-­Jane Rochelson, “Zionism, Territorialism, Race, and Nation in the Thought and Politics of Israel Zangwill,” in “The Jew” in Late-­ Victorian and Edwardian Culture: Between the East End and East Africa, ed. Eitan Bar-­Yosef and Nadia Valman (London: Palgrave, 2009), 131–­143 and 144–­160. 68. “Baron de Hirsch’s Great Emigration Scheme,” Jewish Chronicle, 18 Sept. 1891. 69. Cited in “Canaan in Africa,” Jewish Chronicle, 8 May 1891. 70. Zahra, Great Departure, 70; Donna Gabaccia, Dirk Hoerden and Adam Walazek, “Emigraton and Nation Building during the Mass Migration from Europe,” in Citizenship and Those Who Leave: The Politics of Emigration and Expatriation, ed. Nancy Green and François Weil (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 63–­90. 71. Banque de Paris et des Pays-­Bas to Hirsch, 17 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 379/2. 72. See the files in CAHJP JCA/Lon 379/2. Two other proposals spoke of Texas and Tennessee as possible areas of colonization. 73. “Die Juden-­Colonie in Madian,” Neue Freie Presse, 27 Feb. 1892. 74. Central Committee of Baron de Hirsch Fund to Hirsch, 23 June 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 379/1. 75. Mathias Romero to A. S. Solomons, Baron de Hirsch Fund, 20 June 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 379/1. 76. Ernest Cassel to Maurice de Hirsch, 12 Sept. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 379/1. 77. Jacob Schiff to Maurice de Hirsch, 15 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 379/1. 78. Maurice de Hirsch to Jacob Schiff, 26 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 379/1. 79. Arnold White, “Baron Hirsch,” English Illustrated Magazine 153 (June 1896), 191–­ 192. On White, see Sam Johnson, “ ‘A Veritable Janus at the Gates of Jewry’: British Jews and Mr Arnold White,” Patterns of Prejudice 47:1 (2013), 41–­68; Moshe Perlmann, “Arnold White, Baron Hirsch’s Emissary,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 46–­47 (1979–­1980), 473–­489. 80. Arnold White, The Modern Jew (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1899), ix–­xii. 81. Maurice de Hirsch to Konstantin Pobedonostsev 7 May 1891, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 5. 82. Eric Lohr, Russian Citizenship: From Empire to Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 89.

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83. Lohr, Russian Citizenship., 87. 84. Lohr, Russian Citizenship, 91–­92. 85. Maurice de Hirsch to Arnold White, 9 June 1891, YIVO RG 318. 86. Maurice de Hirsch to Arnold White, 9 June 1891, YIVO RG 318. 87. Arnold White to Maurice de Hirsch, 26 May 1891, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 5. 88. Arnold White to Maurice de Hirsch, 20 May 1891, YIVO AG 318. 89. Arnold White to Maurice de Hirsch, 29 Oct. 1891, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 5. 90. Arnold White to Maurice de Hirsch, 6 July 1891, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 5. 91. Arnold White to Maurice de Hirsch, 6 July 1891, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 5. 92. Arnold White to Maurice Hirsch, 2 June 1891, YIVO AG 318. 93. Arnold White to Maurice Hirsch, 14 Oct. 1891, AJHS Kohler Papers, P7, box 7, folder 5. 94. M. Grodensky, “Die ‘Jewish Colonization Association’ (Baron Moriz von Hirsch) und die Auswanderung der Juden aus Rußland” (1892), LBI AR 2596. 95. “Die Delegirten-­Versammlung zur Berathung der Hilfsaction für die Russischen Juden,” Der Israelit, 10 Nov. 1891. 96. Grodensky, “Die ‘Jewish Colonization Association.’ ” 97. Beer, Philanthropic Revolution, 8. 98. On premodern Jewish charity and beneficence, in contrast, see Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld, Poverty and Welfare among the Portuguese Jews in Early Modern Amsterdam (Oxford: Littman, 2012); Matthias Lehmann, Emissaries from the Holy Land: The Sephardic Diaspora and the Practice of Pan-­Judaism in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014); Adam Teller, Rescue the Surviving Souls: The Great Jewish Refugee Crisis of the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020); Debra Kaplan, The Patrons and Their Poor: Jewish Community and Public Charity in Early Modern Germany (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020). CHAPTER 10: THE DISCOVERY OF ARGENTINA 1. Juan A. Alsina, Memoria del Departamento General de Inmigración correspondiente al año 1891 (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Palo E. Coni, 1892), 28. 2. Alsina, Memoria del Departamento General de Inmigración correspondiente al año 1891, 10, 19. 3. This number according to Fernando Devoto, Historia de la inmigración en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2003), 247. From the mid-­1850s to 1914, according to Devoto, Argentina attracted 4.2 million immigrants, compared with 27 million who went to the United States, 4 million to Canada, and 3.3 million to Brazil. In 1895, immigrants composed 25.5 percent of the Argentine population, compared with 14.7 percent of the

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United States’ (Devoto, Historia, 49). Across a longer time span—­from 1820 to 1932—­the same general picture arises: 32.56 million European immigrants in the United States, 6.5 million in Argentina, 5 million in Canada, and 4.36 million in Brazil: Jose Moya, Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–­1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 46. 4. See Gur Alroey, Quiet Revolution, 77–­78. For the entire period between 1881 and 1930, the estimate of Jewish migration is 2.88 million to the United States, 210,000 to Great Britain, 180,000 to Argentina, 125,000 to Canada, and 120,000 to Palestine. Mendes-­Flohr and Reinharz, Jew in the Modern World, 883. On Jewish migration from eastern Europe to Argentina in the twentieth century, see, for example, Mariusz Kalczewiak, Polacos in Argentina: Polish Jews, Interwar Migration, and the Emergence of Transatlantic Jewish Culture (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2019); Avni, Argentina and the Jews: A History of Jewish Immigration (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1991); Victor Mirelman, En búsqueda de una identidad: Los inmigrantes judíos en Buenos Aires, 1890–­1930 (Buenos Aires: Milá, 1988); Mollie Nouwen, Oy, My Buenos Aires: Jewish Immigrants and the Creation of Argentine National Identity (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013). 5. Articles 20 and 25; see Devoto, Historia de la inmigración, 31–­33. 6. Cited in Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 49. On Alberdi, see Hernán Brienza, La Argentina imaginada: Una biografía del pensamiento nacional (Buenos Aires: Aguilar, 2019), 78–­90. 7. See Devoto, Historia de la inmigración, 236. “Desert,” to be sure, was certainly a misnomer, considering the fertile soils of the pampas. Rather than describing the land, the term invoked Sarmiento’s famous distinction between “civilization” and “barbarism.” The dichotomy is, of course, a common feature of narratives produced in settler-­colonial contexts—­for example, the American myth of the frontier. On “wilderness” versus “civilization” in the Zionist imagining of Palestine, see Yael Zerubavel, Desert in the Promised Land (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018). 8. “260.909 inmigrantes,” La Nación, 7 Jan. 1890. 9. “Inmigración oficial,” La Nación, 22 Jan. 1890. 10. Devoto, Historia de la inmigración, 79–­88, 250–­253; Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 50–­51. 11. Alsina, Memoria del Departamento General de Inmigración correspondiente al año 1891, 17. 12. Wilhelm Löwenthal, “Notes pour le Grand Rabbin Zadok Kahn concernant la colonization de juifs polonais dans la République Argentine,” YIVO RG 318. Similar imagery was frequently invoked by Zionist writers as well. See Todd Presner, Muscular Judaism: The Jewish Body and the Politics of Regeneration (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 13. Noe Cociovitch, Genesis de Moisés Ville (Buenos Aires: Milá, 1987), 38. 14. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Sigismund Simmel, 8 Sept. 1889, YIVO RG 318. 15. Mordecai Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio (Yidd.) (Buenos Aires: Kuperschmid, 1922), 23.

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16. Adriana Brodsky, Sephardi, Jewish, Argentine: Community and National Identity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 17. 17. “Un casamiento israelita,” La Nación, 29 Aug. 1894; see also “Yom-­K ippur: La gran fiesta israelita,” La Nación, 9 Oct. 1894, when the Sephardic congregation was led by Rabbi Salomón Ben Muyal (Benmoyal). 18. See Avni, Argentina and the Jews, 31–­32. 19. See the report on Moisés Ville in “The Russian Jews in the Argentine,” Jewish Chronicle, 2 Jan. 1891. 20. See Iván Cherjovsky, Recuerdos de Moisés Ville: La colonización agrícola en la memoria colectiva judeo-­argentina (1910–­2010) (Buenos Aires: Universidad Abierta Interamericana, 2017), 41–­42. 21. Carlos Steigleder (Sunchales, Santa Fe) to Wilhelm Löwenthal, 16 Feb. 1890, YIVO RG 318. 22. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Isidore Loeb, 16 Dec. 1890, PWDRO 1637–­67. 23. Carlos Steigleder (Sunchales, Santa Fe) to Wilhelm Löwenthal, 16 Feb. 1890, YIVO RG 318; see Ezequiel Gallo, La pampa gringa: La colonización agrícola en Santa Fe (1870–­ 1895) (Buenos Aires: Edhasa, 2004), 57–­58. 24. See Roy Hora, Historia económica de la Argentina en el siglo XIX (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno, 2010), 165–­208; the export numbers from Gallo, La pampa gringa, 182. 25. Gallo, La pampa gringa, 201, 205. Many economists have devoted themselves to study Argentina’s presumed failure to industrialize. For a contrarian view, see Fernando Rocchi, Chimneys in the Desert: Industrialization in Argentina during the Export Boom Years, 1870–­1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), who shows that the growth of industrial output was two and a half times that of Argentina’s overall GDP growth between 1890 and 1930. See also Yovanna Pineda, Industrial Development in a Frontier Society: The Industrialization of Argentina, 1890–­1930 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). 26. Between 1881 and 1914, about 2 million from Italy, 1.4 million from Spain, 170,000 from France, and 160,000 from Russia. Devoto, Historia de la inmigración, 247; on numbers from Santa Fe, Gallo, La pampa gringa, 205. 27. Dirk Hoerder, “Migrations and Belonging,” in A World Connecting, 1870–­1945, ed. Emily Rosenberg (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2012), 435–­589. On migration from eastern Europe across the Atlantic, see Zahra, Great Departure. 28. Osterhammel, Transformation of the World, 155. 29. Juan A. Alsina, Memoria del Departamento General de Inmigración correspondiente al año 1895 (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Pablo E. Coni, 1896), 317–­338. 30. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 13–­43. The demographic expansion in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century was indeed remarkable: even though some 40 million people left the continent, Europe’s population grew between 1850 and 1900 from 140 million to 429 million (Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 14). By comparison, the Jewish population in Europe increased about twofold in the same period, from 4.127 million to 8.69 million; the

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number of Jews living in the Americas, however, grew dramatically from just 65,000 in 1850 to 1.175 million in 1900. Mendes-­Flohr and Reinharz, Jew in the Modern World, 882. 31. On the importance of understanding the Jewish immigrant experience in Argentina (and elsewhere) in its national context, see Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein, “New Approaches to Ethnicity and Diaspora in Twentieth-­Century Latin America,” in Rethinking Jewish-­Latin Americans, ed. Jeffrey Lesser and Raanan Rein (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 23–­40, esp. 30. 32. See Sandra McGee Deutsch, “Insecure Whiteness: Jews Between Civilization and Barbarism, 1880s-­1940s,” in Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina, ed. Paulina Alberto and Eduardo Elena (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 25–­52. 33. Sigismund Sonnenfeld in Paris disputed this number in a letter to Hirsch, clarifying that the JCA had sent 3,150, not 2,890, individuals to Argentina: Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 17 June 1895, CAHJP JCA/Lon 298/2. 34. Juan A. Alsina, Memoria del Departamento General de Inmigración correspondiente al año 1894 (Buenos Aires: Imprenta de Pablo E. Coni, 1895), 69, 71. 35. Klier, “Emigration Mania,” 21–­29; Simon Kuznets, “Immigration of Russian Jews to the United States: Background and Structure,” Perspectives in American History 9 (1975), 35–­161; see also Steven Zipperstein, Imagining Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999). 36. Martel’s novel was published in serialized form in La Nación, beginning in August 1891. 37. “260.909 inmigrantes,” La Nación, 7 Jan. 1890. 38. Devoto, Historia de la inmigración, 73. 39. Gallo, La pampa gringa, 237. 40. Lohr, Russian Citizenship, 91–­92. 41. Jonathan Sarna, “The Myth of No Return: Jewish Return Migration to Eastern Europe, 1881–­1914,” American Jewish History 71:2 (1981), 256–­268; Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 154. Diner, Roads Taken, 22, speaking of Jewish migration across the Atlantic more broadly, claims that “such small numbers of Jews returned to their lands of origin as to render the phenomenon analytically insignificant.” 42. For challenges to the linear model of Jewish migration, emphasizing instead the formation of transnational diasporic networks, see, for example, Rebecca Kobrin, Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010). Sephardic migrants from Ottoman lands often found themselves going back and forth between the eastern Mediterranean, Europe, and the Americas: see Devi Mays, Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020). See also the contributions in Tobias Brinkmann, ed., Points of Passage: Jewish Transmigrants from Eastern Europe in Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain, 1880–­1914 (New York: Berghahn, 2013). 43. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, [?] May 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 407/2.

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44. “Portugal,” Der Israelit, 2 Feb. 1893. 45. “Report on Baron Hirsch’s Jewish Colonisation Scheme, presented to both Houses of Parliament,” 1894, CAHJP P77–­8. When learning about the British assessment, which also had been reported in the Jewish Chronicle and Vienna’s Neue Freie Presse, Baron Hirsch was dismissive. Inevitably a report filed by a consulate in a foreign country was going to be formally submitted to Parliament and the public, so there was “nothing remarkable” and “absolutely nothing out of the ordinary” about the text which, at any rate, was written “in journalistic style rather than business language.” Maurice de Hirsch to Sigismund Sonnenfeld, 16 Mar. 1894. 46. On his arrival in Argentina, see Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, chapters 1–­5. 47. Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land , 88–­89. See also Lucien Gerbel, “Die Kolonien des Baron Hirsch,” Der Israelit, 10 July 1893. 48. See, for example, Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 1 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 49. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 2 June 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 50. José Luis Scarsi, Tmeiim: Los judíos impuros; Historia de la Zwi Migdal (Ituzaingó: Maipue, 2018), 84–­87. See also Mir Yarfitz, Impure Migration: Jews and Sex Work in Golden Age Argentina (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019). 51. Segundo censo de la República Argentina, Mayo 10 de 1895, vol 2: Población (Buenos Aires: Taller tipográfico de la penitenciaria nacional, 1898), clxxix; “Yom-­K ippur: La gran fiesta israelita,” La Nación, 9 Oct. 1894. 52. Sholem Aleichem’s story dates from 1909; an English translation is in Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman and the Railroad Stories, trans. Hillel Halkin (New York: Schocken, 1987), 166–­177. Another example is Sholem Ash’s novel Motke the Thief (1916). 53. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 20. 54. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 20. 55. “Die Kolonien des Baron Hirsch,” Der Israelit, 10 July 1893. 56. Next to the Great Plains of North America and the Ukrainian black earth steppes. Moya, Cousins and Strangers, 45. 57. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 25–­26. 58. Alsina, Memoria del Departamento General de Inmigración correspondiente al año 1891, 18. 59. “Die Kolonien des Baron Hirsch,” Der Israelit, 27 July 1893; 31 July 1893. 60. “Die Kolonien des Baron Hirsch,” Der Israelit, 31 July 1893; Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 31–­42. Gerbel and Alpersohn—­despite their antagonism, which is apparent in Alpersohn’s memoir—­agree on the basics, though Gerbel speaks of three groups of colonists arriving one after another, whereas Alpersohn combines their stories into one. 61. “Die Kolonien des Baron Hirsch,” Der Israelit, 31 July 1893. 62. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 34. 63. “Die Kolonien des Baron Hirsch,” Der Israelit, 27 July 1893. 64. Gallo, La pampa gringa, 241.

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65. Javier Sinay, Los crímenes de Moisés Ville: Una historia de gauchos y judíos (Buenos Aires: Tusquets, 2013), 131–­157. 66. Mónica Szurmuk, La vocación desmesurada: Una biografía de Alberto Gerchunoff (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2018), 43. 67. “Die Kolonien des Baron Hirsch,” Der Israelit, 9 Oct. 1893. 68. Alperson, Colonia Mauricio, 225–­231. Some colonists who were subsequently repatriated declared, upon their arrival in Hamburg, that they had left the colonies at the insistence of their wives, “who were anxious on account of the Spanish workers,” referring to the gauchos, and that “the latter had been hostile to the new colonists and had been guilty of assaults against them.” Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Albert Goldsmid, 5 Aug. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Ar 8599. 69. Devoto, Historia de la inmigración, 38; Judith Noemí Freidenberg, The Invention of the Jewish Gaucho: Villa Clara and the Construction of Argentine Identity (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009), 7–­10. 70. Szurmuk, La vocación desmesurada, 103–­116; Freidenberg, Invention of the Jewish Gaucho, 10–­12; Ariana Huberman, Gauchos and Foreigners: Glossing Culture and Identity in the Argentine Countryside (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2011); see also Edna Aizenberg, “Sephardim and Neo-­Sephardism in Latin American Literature,” in Sephardism: Spanish Jewish History and the Modern Literary Imagination, ed. Yael Halevi-­Wise (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 129–­142, esp. 132–­134. 71. Freidenberg, Invention of the Jewish Gaucho, 11. 72. This is not the place to evaluate the ultimate success of Jewish participation in the Argentine national project. José Luis Borges, for one, was skeptical: Ilan Stavans, The Seventh Heaven: Travels through Jewish Latin America (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), 48. See Edna Aizenberg, “Jewish Gauchos and Jewish ‘Others,’ or Culture and Bombs in Buenos Aires,” Discourse 19:1 (1996), 15–­28; on antisemitism in twentieth century Argentina, see Federico Finchelstein, The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 13–­32. 73. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 1 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 74. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 19 Oct. 1891; 15 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/ Lon 302/2. 75. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, letter dated 1 Oct. 1891; see also 2 Oct. 1891; CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 76. Zahra, Great Departure, 23–­63. 77. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, report dated 1 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/ Lon 302/2. 78. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 7 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 79. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 5 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 80. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 7 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 81. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 7 Oct. 1891; 21 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/ Lon 302/2.

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82. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 15 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 83. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 15 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. Only six weeks later, though, Löwenthal had changed his tune. “You appear to believe that one has to treat the Russian Jews with severity to turn them into agriculturalists,” he wrote to Hirsch. “I, however, am convinced that . . . one needs to treat them with a sense of strict justice, coming from a compassionate heart.” Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 30 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 84. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 69–­72. 85. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 63. 86. “Korot ha-­yishuv be-­A rgentina,” Ha-­Melits, 9 Oct. 1892 [according to Russian calendar]; 21 Oct. 1892; 23 Oct. 1892; 28 Oct.; 29 Oct.; 2 Nov.; 4 Nov.; 11 Nov. 87. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 58–­59. 88. In Santa Fe, 4.7 percent of all colonies were created with the participation of the provincial or national government, and just 26.8 percent by colonization companies; a modest 8.9 percent were funded with foreign capital. The vast majority of colonies—­74.5 percent—­ were created by private entrepreneurs like Wilhelm Lehmann, a Swiss immigrant. Gallo, La pampa gringa, 120–­121. 89. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 15 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 90. Wilhelm Löwenthal, “Notes pour le Grand Rabbin Zadok Kahn concernant la colonisation de juifs polonais dans la République Argentine,” YIVO RG 318. 91. Maurice de Hirsch to Wilhelm Löwenthal, 17 Aug. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 308/1. 92. Maurice de Hirsch to Wilhelm Löwenthal, 23 Sept. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 308/1. 93. Maurice de Hirsch, “Conférence de Londres: Exposé,” n.d. [October 1891], CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 94. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 3 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 95. Jacob Schiff to Maurice de Hirsch, 23 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 379/1. 96. The text of the contract is reproduced in Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land, 332–­335. The exact location of the lands to be purchased was supposed to be determined later. 97. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 20 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 98. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 3 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 99. Newspaper clippings enclosed with Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 3 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 100. Maurice de Hirsch to Wilhelm Löwenthal, 1 Dec. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 308/1. 101. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 22 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 102. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 18 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 103. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 29 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 104. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 4 Dec. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 105. Maurice de Hirsch to JCA Buenos Aires, 28 July 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 100/1. 106. Revista del Río de la Plata, 13 Aug. 1892, cited in Gallo, La pampa gringa, 79. 107. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 29 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2.

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108. Enrique Dickmann, Recuerdos de un militante socialista (Buenos Aires: La Vanguardia, 1949), 37–­39. 109. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 29 Nov. 1891; 30 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 110. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 30 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 111. Maurice de Hirsch to Wilhelm Löwenthal, 1 Dec. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 308/1. 112. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 4 Dec. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 113. Maurice de Hirsch to Wilhelm Löwenthal, 4 Dec. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 308/1. Löwenthal countered by insisting that his contract had been terminated before its expiration, and that he was entitled to the payment of 80,000 francs: Wilhelm Löwenthal to Sigismund Sonnenfeld, 16 Mar. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. Löwenthal died, at the age of just forty-­four, in Berlin in 1894, before the lawsuit about his compensation had been adjudicated. 114. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 4 Dec. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 115. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 104. 116. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 4 Aug. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 407/2. 117. Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land, 120. 118. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 2 May 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 119. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 2 May 1892; 5 May 1892; 2 June 1892; 6 June 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 120. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 13 June 1892; 7 July 1892, CAHJP JCA/ Lon 303/1. 121. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 103–­104. In the summer of 1892, Hirsch dispatched Alexandre Charlamb to investigate the JCA contracts and accounts in Buenos Aires. Charlamb, whose mission continued until early 1893, found numerous suspicious business dealings by Roth, who was dismissed in May 1892, though Charlamb’s reports were deemed insufficient to press legal charges against the former director. Charlamb’s letters: CAHJP JCA/Lon 304/2. To make things more complicated, Charlamb’s own reputation was impugned by certain confidential reports that Hirsch received, and about which he warned Goldsmid: Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 12 Oct. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 407/1. 122. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 17 May 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 407/1. 123. It was thus not unreasonable when the European Jewish press, for example Germany’s Der Israelit, urged Hirsch to set up executive and oversight boards in Paris, with individuals known for their expertise in colonization, administration, or agriculture, rather than deciding everything top-­down, in a patriarchal fashion, on his own, or by relying on local collaborators with questionable credentials. “Das Argentinische Hilfswerk,” Der Israelit, 8 June 1892. Löwenthal’s successor, Goldsmid, agreed with the former’s complaint about micro-­managing from Paris: “Really my dear Baron it is quite impossible for a Direction in Paris to work out the details of a scheme to be carried out here. If a Board of Directors be necessary, this should be its Headquarters, not Paris.” Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 22 July 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1.

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CHAPTER 11: THE YEAR OF ALBERT GOLDSMID 1. Young Israel 1:10 (1897), 285–­287, at 286. 2. On Goldsmid’s biography, see Emil Lehman, The Tents of Michael: The Life and Times of Colonel Albert Williamson Goldsmid (Lanham: University Press of America, 1996); Penslar, Jews and the Military, 87. 3. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 154, 156. 4. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 153. 5. “Los israelitas de Moisesville,” La Prensa, 29 Mar. 1892. 6. Ein ernst vort iber di emigratsie (Warsaw: Schlossberg, 1892), 105. 7. Zahra, Great Departure, 73–­74. 8. Ein ernst vort, 4–­5. 9. Ein ernst vort, 65. 10. Ein ernst vort, 39–­4 1. 11. Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land, 107–­109. 12. Ein ernst vort, 5. 13. Ein ernst vort, 20–­21. For a broader discussion of the destitute and poor in Jewish eastern Europe, denounced here as the “refuse” swept along with the stream of migration, see Natan Meir, Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800–­1939 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2020). 14. Ein ernst vort, 27. 15. Ein ernst vort, 4, 29–­30. 16. Ein ernst vort, 96–­99. 17. Aharon Eliezer ben Yeshayah Arieh Klenetzki, Ha-­hayim ha-­hadashim (Warsaw: Boymritter, 1893), 16. 18. Klinitzki, Ha-­hayim ha-­hadashim, 69. 19. The model of physiocratic regeneration through agricultural colonization found its imitators across the Jewish world, not only in Palestine or Argentina. In 1893, for instance, the owner of a flour mill in Edessa, one Salomon ben Judah, wrote to Baron Hirsch about a small agricultural colony he had set up with a number of Jewish families from Salonika, anticipating the creation of further such colonies in Macedonia and requesting the baron’s support for the building of a small synagogue and the purchase of a Torah scroll for the settlers: Salomon ben Judah to Maurice de Hirsch, 28 Mar. 1893, CAHJP JCA/Lon 297/2. 20. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 7 Oct. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2. 21. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 10 July 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1; 12 Oct. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2. 22. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 5 May 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 23. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 2 June 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 24. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 7 Nov. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2. 25. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 19 May 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 26. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 7 Nov. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2. In the end, Moisés Ville was not abandoned, but Hirsch was losing his patience: the price to

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sustain the colony was “extravagant” and in March 1893, he announced that he would give “one last time” £6,000 for the colonists there. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 11 Mar. 1893, CAHJP JCA/Lon 407/1. 27. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 5 May 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 28. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 13 June 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 29. Goldsmid also speaks of the “grave errors made by Terracini”: Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 26 Sept. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2; see Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land, 161. 30. Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 17 July 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 297/2. 31. Wilhelm Löwenthal, “Notes pour le Grand Rabbin Zadok Kahn concernant la colonisation de juifs polonais dans la République Argentine,” YIVO RG 318. 32. Alsina, Memoria del Departamento General de Inmigración correspondiente al año 1895, 317–­338. 33. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 4 July 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 407/2. 34. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 4 Aug. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 35. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 13 Sept. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2. In fact, a Buenos Aires–­based Jew, a certain Mr. Son—­a watchmaker by profession who claimed to be a former colonel in the Russian army—­was accusing the JCA of seeking to “establish a slave colony with the Jewish colonists” in Moisés Ville, as reported by an Argentine government official, Frederic Wagner, to Nicasio Oroño, head of the Oficina de Tierras y Colonias. See Frederic Wagner to Nicasio Oroño, 3 June 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 100/3; Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 2 July 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 36. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 15 Sept. 1892, 11 Oct. 1892, CAHJP JCA/ Ar 8600. 37. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 115, 174. 38. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 1 Apr. 1893, CAHJP JCA/Lon 407/1. 39. See, for example, Robert M. Schwartz, “Rail Transport, Agrarian Crisis, and the Restructuring of Agriculture: France and Great Britain Confront Globalization, 1860–­1900,” Social Science History 34:2 (2010), 229–­255. 40. Wechsler, who had studied at the University of Berlin and had worked as a ship’s doctor, was hired in early 1894; see Sigismund Sonnenfeld to David Cazès and Samuel Hirsch, 10 Feb. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Ar 9310. 41. Maurice de Hirsch to JCA Buenos Aires, 20 Feb. 1895, CAHJP JCA/Lon 100/1. 42. Wilhelm Löwenthal, “An die russisch-­jüdischen Einwanderer in Argentinien,” 13 Nov. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 43. “Only last Friday,” Goldsmid reported on one occasion, “the office was stormed by a noisy crowd from Mosesville twice during the day, in the morning the office was cleared by the police and the ringleaders taken into custody, they were promptly bailed out by local Jews.” Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 19 June 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 44. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 4 Aug. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 407/2. The Pester Lloyd, in fact, had already reported in April 1892 that “the Jewish colonies established

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the previous year by the Jewish Colonization Association are in a process of dissolution. The most important of the three colonies, called Mauricio, apparently has been the scene of serious riots. . . . Baron Hirsch is said to have lost confidence in the practicality of his plans. His current representative, the English colonel Goldsmid, has been instructed to close down the Jewish colonies and to send all settlers, altogether some 2,000 individuals, to a port in the United States of North America.” “Die Kolonien des Baron Hirsch,” Pester Lloyd, 25 Apr. 1892. 45. Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 25 Mar. 1893, CAHJP JCA/Lon 297/2. 46. “Die Judencolonien in Argentinien,” Deutsches Volksblatt, 26 July 1892. 47. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 22 July 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 48. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 2 June 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 49. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 19 Aug. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Ar 8599. 50. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 19 June 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1. 51. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 18 June 1892, CAHJP JCA/Ar 8599. 52. Comité für die Russischen Juden Hamburg to JCA Paris, 4 Dec. 1893, CAHJP JCA/Ar 9308. 53. Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury Transmitting a Report of the Commissioners of Immigration upon the Causes Which Incite Immigration to the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1892), 306. Schulteis, who called Baron Hirsch’s operation “the most gigantic emigration scheme ever known in history,” did not mince words in his assessment of the JCA: “Although the Hirsch organization is at once a bank, a loan and trust company, a public carrier, a land syndicate, and a nationality, yet it is the most exclusive of all artificial bodies. None but Hebrews need apply. Every well-­organized scheme of immigration has numerous agents, and in the case under consideration these agents are educating the Jewish masses in the beneficial features of the plan. The steamship companies meanwhile are placing themselves within reach of the toppling avalanche; an army of paupers are, so to speak, to be drilled to invade this country, which is expected to absorb the weakness of other lands, and to decrease in greatness and in general welfare in inverse ratio to our increase in population and plutocracy.” Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, 274. 54. Richard Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years (New York, new ed.: Penguin, 2005), 285–­402; see also Meir, Stepchildren of the Shtetl, 100; Peter Baldwin, Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830–­1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 123–­2 43. 55. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 3 Sept. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Ar 8600. 56. Maurice de Hirsch to JCA Buenos Aires, 19 Dec. 1893, CAHJP JCA/Ar 9308. 57. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 158, 167–­168. Alpersohn writes that, while he was considered as “kosher,” many good colonists found themselves swept up and expelled from Mauricio. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 325. 58. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 2 Sept. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2. 59. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 10 July 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/1.

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60. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 17 Nov. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Ar 8600. 61. “Programme et instructions pour les délégués de groupes ayant a partir pour la République Argentine,” [Nov. 1892], CAHJP JCA/Ar 8600. 62. David Feinberg to Maurice de Hirsch, 25 Oct. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Ar 8600. 63. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 4 Dec. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2. 64. For the letters of the commission to Baron Hirsch, see CAHJP JCA/Lon 304/4. The commission led by Kogan, in turn, criticized many of the conclusions that had been drawn by Alexandre Charlamb, who had been sent by Hirsch in the wake of Roth’s dismissal. See, for example, Maxim Kogan to Maurice de Hirsch, 17 Nov. 1892, CAHJP JCA/ Lon 304/4. On the work of the Kogan commission and its clash with Goldsmid, see Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land, 126–­135. 65. Maxim Kogan to Maurice de Hirsch, 19 Nov. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 304/4. 66. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 4 Dec. 1892, 12 Dec. 1892, 18 Dec. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2. 67. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 4 Dec. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2. 68. Maxim Kogan and Abraham Birkenheim, 5 Dec. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 304/4. 69. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 18 Dec. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2. 70. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 203. CHAPTER 12: SEEING LIKE A PHIL ANTHROPIST 1. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 4 Dec. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Lon 303/2. Kogan was not the only one among Hirsch’s close collaborators who was, from the outset, critical about the colonization project’s premise itself. David Feinberg, for instance, Baron Hirsch’s delegate in Russia who was in charge of selecting the groups of potential colonists writes in his memoir: “[Hirsch] wanted to use the money to encourage emigration from Russia. I opposed it .” Leo Shpall, “David Feinberg’s Historical Survey of the Colonization of the Russian Jews in Argentina: Translated from the Russian with an Introduction,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 43:1 (1953), 37–­69, at 42. The fact is, of course, that Hirsch himself had originally intended his 50 million francs for an educational fund in Russia, only to be rebuffed by the czarist government. 2. On the administration of Cazès and Hirsch, see Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land, 139–­144. 3. On Hirsch and Cazès and the reorganization of the JCA’s work in Argentina following the death of Baron Hirsch in 1896, see Yehuda Julio Levin, Las primeras poblaciones agrícolas judías en la Argentina (1896–­1914) (Buenos Aires: Universidad Abierta Interamericana, 2017). 4. “Rapport du conseil d’administration aux actionnaires de la Jewish Colonization Association,” Dec. 1893, CAHJP JCA/Ar 9309. 5. Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 25 Oct. 1893, CAHJP JCA/Lon 408/1; Maurice de Hirsch to Samuel Hirsch and David Cazès, 1 Dec. 1893, CAHJP JCA/Ar 9308. 6. A similar conflict had already emerged in Mauricio, during Goldsmid’s administra-

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tion. In May 1892, some colonists “overawed the two schochets,” or ritual slaughterers, and tried to force a kosher meat boycott unless the “village system” was substituted for settlement in smaller groups. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 5 May 1892, CAHJP JCA/ Lon 303/1. 7. Roth had first settled colonists in San Antonio on units of just twenty-­five hectares, leaving twenty-­five in reserve; in Moisés Ville, the lots were of fifty hectares, but subsequently, the size of units in the colonies Entre Ríos was determined to be seventy-­five hectares: Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land, 225. In Santa Fe, according to the Italian consul, the average size of individual chacras was of one hundred hectares, many of sixty-­six, but very few smaller than that: La pampa gringa, 172. 8. Maurice de Hirsch, “Note. Système Villages—­Système Fermes,” 25 Dec. 1893, CAHJP JCA/Ar 9308. 9. Maurice de Hirsch to Samuel Hirsch and David Cazès, 17 Jan. 1894, CAHJP JCA/ Ar 9309. 10. Maurice de Hirsch to Samuel Hirsch and David Cazès, 13 Feb. 1894, CAHJP JCA/ Ar 9310. 11. Baron Gunzburg to Maurice de Hirsch, 3 Feb. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Ar 9311. 12. Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land, 214–­215. 13. Wilhelm Löwenthal to Maurice de Hirsch, 22 Oct. 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 302/2. 14. Maurice de Hirsch to Albert Goldsmid, 18 Nov. 1892, CAHJP JCA/Ar 8600. 15. Maurice de Hirsch to Sigismund Sonnenfeld, 16 June 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/2. 16. “Beim Baron Hirsch,” Der Israelit, 19 July 1894. 17. Maurice de Hirsch to Samuel Hirsch and David Cazès, 29 May 1894, CAHJP JCA/ Lon 100/1. 18. David Cazès to Maurice de Hirsch, 1 Aug. 1894, AIU France V A 34.13. 19. David Cazès to A. Ribbi, 12 May 1894; A. Ribbi to David Cazès, 29 June 1894, AIU France V A 34.13. 20. Maurice de Hirsch to David Cazès, 31 Aug. 1894, AIU France V A 34.13. 21. Maurice de Hirsch to Sigismund Sonnenfeld, 25 Aug. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/2; Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 26 Oct. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/3. 22. Maurice de Hirsch to David Cazès, 31 Aug. 1894, AIU France V A 34.13. 23. Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 10 Sept. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/2. 24. Maurice de Hirsch to Sigismund Sonnenfeld, 13 Sept. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/3. 25. Sigismund Sonnenfeld to directors of AIU schools in Constantinople, Salonika, and Smyrna, 20 Sept. 1894, AIU France V A 34.13. Echoing Hirsch’s sentiments, Sonnenfeld and Held argued that “one of the worst cancerous damages of the [Rothschild] colonies in Palestine has been the pompous schools with their certificates for the students, and all the

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colonists insisting that their children should join the ‘intelligentsia.’ ” Sigismund Sonnenfeld and Gustav Held to Maurice de Hirsch, 3 Dec. 1894, JCA/Lon 409/3. 26. Gustav Held and Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 17 Oct. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/3. 27. Maurice de Hirsch to David Cazès and Samuel Hirsch, 20 Nov. 1894, AIU France V A 34.13. 28. Josep Sabah to Jacques Bigart, 28 Feb. 1895, in Josep Sabah, Entre lenguas y mundos, ed. and trans. Mónica Szurmuk (Paraná: Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos, 2019), 16. 29. Josep Sabah to Jacques Bigart, 12 Apr. 1895, in Sabah, Entre lenguas y mundos, 35. 30. Josep Sabah to Jacques Bigart, 12 Apr. 1895, in Sabah, Entre lenguas y mundos, 31, 33. 31. Alsina, Memoria del Departamento General de Inmigración correspondiente al año 1895, 226. 32. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 275–­276. Alpersohn says this happened in mid-­1894 (rather than 1895), but that seems to be a mistake. 33. Gustav Held and Sigismund Sonnenfeld presented an estimate to Hirsch, according to which the colonists would pay their debts to the JCA over twelve years at 5 percent interest, or about 612.05 pesos each year. With an average harvest per fifty hectares, the colonists might earn about 1,250 pesos, so that they would have some 640 pesos left after paying their quota. Gustav Held and Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 13 Oct. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/03. If one wanted to charge the colonists for schools, medical care, and so forth, the cost would become prohibitive for them: for a physician, pharmacy, and hospital, they calculated 75 pesos per family; for the school, 35 pesos per family; plus, administrative costs of 30 pesos per family. The resulting 140 pesos, “given the limited revenue from the harvest, would be unsustainable for the colonists.” Sigismund Sonnenfeld and Gustav Held to Maurice de Hirsch, 29 Nov. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/3. 34. Josep Sabah to Jacques Bigart, 8 Aug. 1895, in Sabah, Entre lenguas y mundos, 46. 35. The full text of the contract in Alsina, Memoria del Departamento General de Inmigración correspondiente al año 1895, 227–­233. 36. On the crisis of the contracts, see Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land, 239–­2 48. 37. Alsina, Memoria del Departamento General de Inmigración correspondiente al año 1895, 227–­233. 38. Théophile Wechsler, Mémoire sur les colonies agricoles israélites de la Jewish Colonization Association dans la République Argentine (Berlin: self-­published, n.d. [1897], 38, 49. Wechsler refers to them as “Turkish” because of their affiliation with the Alliance Israélite and its schools in the Middle East and North Africa, but only Haym actually hailed from the Ottoman Empire. 39. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 204. 40. David Haym to Narcisse Leven, 1 Aug. 1892, AIU France V A 34.13. 41. Maurice de Hirsch to Sigismund Sonnenfeld, 19–­20 June 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/2. 42. Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 21 June 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/2.

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43. Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 3 July 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/2. 44. “Zu Besuch beim Baron Hirsch,” Pester Lloyd, 28 Apr. 1894. 45. Maurice de Hirsch to Sigismund Sonnenfeld, 2 Dec. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/3. 46. Sigismund Sonnenfeld to Maurice de Hirsch, 3 Dec. 1894, CAHJP JCA/Lon 409/3. 47. Polonsky, Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 2, 16; Rogger, Jewish Policies, 40–­55; Steven Zipperstein, Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History (New York: Liveright, 2019); Robert Weinberg, Blood Libel in Late Imperial Russia: The Ritual Murder Trial of Mendel Beilis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014). 48. Albert Goldsmid to Maurice de Hirsch, 8 Oct. 1892; 25 Oct. 1892, CAHJP JCA/ Lon 303/2. 49. Gallo, La pampa gringa, 242–­2 43. 50. Josep Sabah to Jacques Bigart, 8 Mar. 1895, in Sabah, Entre lenguas y mundos, 20. 51. Maurice de Hirsch to David Cazès and Samuel Hirsch, 18 Apr. 1895, CAHJP JCA/ Lon 100/1. 52. Maurice de Hirsch to David Cazès and Samuel Hirsch, 26 Apr. 1895, CAHJP JCA/ Lon 100/1. 53. Santa Fe was shaken by a farmer’s uprising in Humboldt in February 1893, followed by the armed rebellions led by the Radical Party in July and September 1893. A large number of colonists participated in these rebellions, including many foreigners, in particular Swiss and German immigrants. It appears that other groups—­for example, Italian colonists—­ remained largely on the margins, and there seems to be no indication of the Jewish colonists of Moisés Ville playing a role in the rebellions. On the events of 1893, see Ezequiel Gallo, Farmers in Revolt: The Revolutions of 1893 in the Province of Santa Fe, Argentina (London: Athlone Press, 1976). On the slump of the 1890s, see Gallo, La pampa gringa, 247. 54. Wechsler, Mémoire, 10. 55. Wechsler, Mémoire, 5. 56. Wechsler, Mémoire, 8, 13. 57. Wechsler, Mémoire, 19. 58. Wechsler, Mémoire, 15. 59. Wechsler, Mémoire, 8–­9. 60. Josep Sabah to Jacques Bigart, 17 Apr. 1896, in Sabah, Entre lenguas y mundos, 60. 61. Avni, Argentina: The Promised Land, 285. 62. “Baron Hirsch’s Great Emigration Scheme,” Jewish Chronicle, 18 Sept. 1891. 63. James Scott, Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 310, 352. 64. Wechsler, Mémoire, 10. This was also the opinion of Ha-­Melits, a Hebrew newspaper published in St. Petersburg, which commented in 1896 that instead of a “sound of joy [kol sason]” arising out of the Jewish colonies in Argentina, there ever only was the “sound of disaster [kol ason].” Hirsch, the newspaper argued, “did not really know his unfortunate brethren. He did not understand them because of the great distance, both the physical distance and that of his own situation. He did not understand what would make his poor and miserable brethren contented, and which house to build for them, so they should

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be contented—­not according to his ideas, but according to their own.” “Ha-­baron Hirsch eineno,” Ha-­Melits, 23 Apr. 1896. 65. Herzl, Tagebücher, vol. 1, 24–­25. 66. Theodor Herzl to Maurice de Hirsch, 24 May 1895, in Herzl, Tagebücher, vol. 1, 18. 67. Herzl, Tagebücher, vol. 1, 28. Zionist historiography has long maintained that it was the rejection by the Jewish “plutocrats”—­namely, Hirsch and Rothschild—­that pushed Herzl toward embracing mass politics. This view has been challenged by Daniel Gutwein, according to whom Herzl never saw the “plutocrats” as a monolithic force whose rejection led him to embrace a “democratic” form of Zionism. See Gutwein, “Herzl and the Struggle within the Jewish Plutocracy: The Rothschilds, Baron de Hirsch, and Samuel Montagu” (Hebr.), Zion 62 (1997), 47–­74. In fact, Hirsch never quite “rejected” Herzl; the simple matter of fact is that Hirsch passed away before Herzl could engage him further. It is also worth remembering that even when Hirsch voiced his critique of the Hovevei Zion in 1891 and sought to discourage its adherents from pursuing colonization in Palestine, he also indicated that, his opposition notwithstanding, he was nonetheless willing to assist them in negotiations with the Porte. See Maurice de Hirsch, “Note concernant le projet de l’émigration russe et de création d’une Banque agraire dans la Turquie d’Asie,” 29 July 1891, CAHJP JCA/Lon 379/2. There is a distinction, in other words, between Hirsch’s nonnationalist vision of the Jewish future, his skepticism about Palestine as a refuge, and his noncommittal response to Herzl at their first (and only) meeting, on the one hand, and the ideological “anti-­Zionism” that most of western Europe’s Jewish religious leaders shared at the time, on the other hand. 68. For a biographical sketch of Herbert Lousada, see “Foreign News,” The Reform Advocate, 6 July 1918, 526–­527. 69. See above, chapter 9; deed of gift at PWDRO 1637/5. 70. Maurice de Hirsch to Herbert Lousada, 12 Jan. 1896, YIVO RG 318. 71. Maurice de Hirsch to Herbert Lousada, 15 Feb. 1896, YIVO RG 318. 72. “Declaration and Deed of Covenant,” 26 Aug. 1892, PWDRO 1637/5, art. 3. 73. PWDRO 1637/14. 74. “Freiherr Moriz v. Hirsch,” Neue Freie Presse, 21 Apr. 1896; “Baron Moriz Hirsch,” Pester Lloyd, 22 Apr. 1896; “Baron Hirsch gestorben,” Prager Tagblatt, 22 Apr. 1896; “Maurice de Hirsch,” New York Tribune, 22 Apr 1896; “Baron Moritz Hirsch,” Die Neuzeit, 24 Apr. 1896. The news had been so unexpected that there were even rumors about Baron Hirsch having been poisoned, rather than dying of natural causes: see, for example, “Iz Baron Hirsch vergiftet geworen?,” Der Teglikher Herald (New York), 22 Apr. 1896. 75. “Les obsèques du baron de Hirsch,” Le Gaulois, 28 Apr. 1896; “Le prince de Bulgarie,” Le Figaro, 28 Apr. 1896. 76. “Discours de M. Zadoc Kahn,” Bulletin de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle, second series, 21 (1896), 12. 77. “Services for Baron de Hirsch,” New York Tribune, 1 May 1896; “Rinah u-­tefilah le-­ zikhron nishmat ha-­baron Hirsch,” Ha-­Tsfira, 22 May 1896.

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359

78. AIU France V A 34.08 and France V A 34.10. 79. Gustav Held [1899], AJHS Kohler Papers P7, box 8, folder 15. 80. Gustav Held [1899], AJHS Kohler Papers P7, box 8, folder 15. 81. Sara Straus, “Baroness de Hirsch-­Gereuth” [1899], AJHS Kohler Papers P7, box 8, folder 15. 82. Oscar Straus to Clara de Hirsch, 24 June 1896, AHJP Kohler Papers P7, box 9, folder 12. 83. Sara Straus, “Baroness de Hirsch-­Gereuth” [1899], AJHS Kohler Papers P7, box 8, folder 15. 84. See Gustav Held [1899], AJHS Kohler Papers P7, box 8, folder 15; “Service funèbre célébré à Salonique le 13 Avril 1899 à la mémoire de Mme La Baronne de Hirsch Gereuth” (Salonika, 1899); “Liste des dons faits par Madame la Baronne de Hirsch-­Gereuth, à divers établissements et institutions de bienfaisance, Etats-­Unis et Amérique de Nord,” AJHS Kohler Papers P7, box 8, folder 1. 85. A. Ribbi to Narcisse Leven, 12 May 1899, AIU Maroc LVII E 935c; “Baronin Clara Hirsch,” Die Neuzeit, 7 Apr. 1899. 86. Alpersohn, Colonia Mauricio, 374. 87. Other board members were Herbert Lousada and Alfred Louis Cohen, both of London. Subsequently, a few additional members were appointed to the JCA’s board: Claude Goldsmid Montefiore of the Anglo-­Jewish Association; Rabbi Zadoc Kahn; Julius Plotke, of the Jewish community in Frankfurt; Franz Philippson, a Brussels banker; and Edmond Lachman, representing the community of Berlin. See Levin, Las primeras poblaciones agrícolas judías, 46–­47. 88. See Levin, Las primeras poblaciones agrícolas judías, 57–­72. 89. Levin, Las primeras poblaciones agrícolas judías, 34. 90. Levin, Las primeras poblaciones agrícolas judías, 41. 91. Levin, Las primeras poblaciones agrícolas judías, 43–­4 4, 52–­54. In Moisés Ville, for instance, the surface planted with wheat went from 4,138 hectares in 1896 to 2,848 hectares in 1912, whereas that designated to growing alfalfa rose from 721 in 1896 to 36,066 in 1912. In all the JCA colonies, the surface growing wheat was 25,092 in 1896 and 90,683 by 1912; that for alfalfa, 721 in 1896 (in just one of the colonies, in Moisés Ville), and 68,628 in 1912. See Atlas des colonies et domaines de la Jewish Colonization Association en République Argentine et au Brésil (Paris: Jewish Colonization Association, 1914), figs. 4, 5. 92. Norman, An Outstretched Arm, 42–­52. 93. Penslar, Zionism and Technocracy, 26–­33; see Yaacov Goldstein and Bat-­Sheva Stern, “The Organization and Purpose of PICA” (Hebr.), Cathedra 59 (1991), 103–­125. On the history of private Jewish agricultural colonies in Palestine, first established in the 1880s and 1890s, and the ways they served as “sites of memory” for what Zionist and Israeli historiography called the “First Aliyah,” see Liora Halperin, The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021).

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CONCLUSION 1. “A la mémoire du baron de Hirsch,” Dépêche Tunisienne, 28 Apr. 1896 (newspaper clipping in AIU France V A 34.10). 2. See Matthias Lehmann, “ ‘A New Book in Jewish Affairs Begins’: Maurice de Hirsch and the Waning Power of Jewish Philanthropy at the Fin-­de-­Siècle,” Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 17:4 (2018), 472–­486. 3. “Discours de M. Zadoc Kahn,” Bulletin de l’Alliance Israélite Universelle, second series, 21 (1896), 16. 4. “Evel gadol la-­yehudim,” El Tiempo, April 23, 1896. 5. On the “centrality of philanthropy as a source of collective Jewish identity” being “a hallmark of modernity,” see Penslar, Shylock’s Children, esp. 90–­123, at 96. See also Ben-­ Ghedalia, “Empowerment,” 71–­78, who describes philanthropy as “the main manifestation of Jewish power and politics in [the] mid-­nineteenth century” (75). 6. Adolf Wahrmann, “Trauerrede,” in Drei Trauerreden. Zum Andenken des edlen Menschenfreundes Moritz Baron von Hirsch (Bottuschan [Botoșani]: M. Seidmann, n.d. [1896]), 5. 7. Wahrmann, “Trauerrede,” 18. 8. Wahrmann, “Trauerrede,” 18. 9. Wahrmann, “Trauerrede,” 19. 10. Wahrmann, “Trauerrede,” 21. 11. Wahrmann, “Trauerrede,” 14–­15. 12. For example, “Freiherr Moritz von Hirsch,” Neue Freie Presse, 22 April 1896; “Baron Moriz Hirsch,” Pester Lloyd, 22 April 1896. 13. “Von der Woche,” Wiener Neueste Nachrichten, 27 April 1896. 14. “Tagesneuigkeiten,” Arbeiter-­Zeitung, April 22, 1896. It should be noted that the association of Jewish capitalists with capitalism in general persisted in socialist parties—­Karl Marx himself, after all, had equated “Judaism” and “capitalism” in his essay “On the Jewish Question,” in 1844—­in particular among Austrian Social Democrats who faced intense political competition from the antisemitic movement and Lueger’s Christian Socialists. The leader of the Austrian Social Democrats, in fact, obstructed the passage of a resolution denouncing antisemitism at the Second Internationale in Brussels in 1891. See Avraham Barkai, “Jewish Religion and Capitalism,” in Mediating Modernity: Challenges and Trends in the Jewish Encounter with the Modern World, ed. Lauren Strauss and Michael Brenner (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 168–­181, at 170. 15. Wahrmann, “Trauerrede,” 23–­2 4. 16. Herzl, Tagebücher, vol. 1, 369: 21 April 1896. 17. Herzl, Tagebücher, vol. 1, 369: 22 April 1896. 18. Joel 3:3; a well-­k nown phrase used in the Passover Haggadah. 19. Ha-­Tsfira attributes these words to the French historian François Guizot and cites them, in French: “La civilisation a le privilège de piller les peuples ignorantes sans défense.” In reality, the phrase appeared in a French translation of a biography of George Washington

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361

by the American historian Jared Sparks, edited and published with a preface by Guizot: Washington: Fondation de la République des États-­Unis d’Amérique; Vie de Washington, traduite de l’anglais de M. Jared Sparks . . . et précédée d’une Introduction sur le caractère de Washington et son influence dans la Révolution des États-­Unis d’Amérique par M. Guizot (Brussels: Meline, Cans et Co., 1851), vol. 1, 135. 20. “Al ha-­mitspeh,” Ha-­Tsfira, 15 Mar. 1891; “Colonizadores judiós y colonizadores europeos,” El Tiempo, 13 Apr. 1891. Interestingly, whereas Ha-­Tsfira insisted that the contrast between European and Jewish settlement was a vindication for the fledgling Jewish colonization effort in Palestine, El Tiempo—­opposed to Zionism—­spoke vaguely of Jewish migration “to America, Africa, Australia, and Asia.” It is also interesting to note how the newspapers translated European notions of race undergirding colonialism into an idiom intelligible to their readers. Ha-­Tsfira spoke of “the sons of Japhet and the sons of Shem,” using biblical terms, whereas El Tiempo translated this as “the Arians (the Christian peoples)” and “the Semites (Jews, sons of Shem).” The phrase “We run and they run . . .” invokes a passage traditionally recited by Jews upon completion of studying a tractate of the Talmud: “We rise early and they [the gentiles] rise early: we rise early to pursue matters of Torah and they rise early to pursue frivolous matters. . . . We run and they run: we run to the life of the world-­to-­ come, and they run to the pit of destruction.” 21. Emulating the role of schools in the process of making “peasants into Frenchmen,” in Eugen Weber’s phrase: Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–­1914 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976), esp. 303–­338. Hirsch, of course, dreamed of turning Jews into peasants first, then into civilized Austrians, Russians, or Argentines. 22. Jewish philanthropy and humanitarianism playing the role of “a private, non-­ territorial, diaspora social welfare state” continued in the twentieth century, led, in the wake of World War I, by American-­Jewish organizations like the Joint: Jaclyn Granick, International Jewish Humanitarianism in the Age of the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 22. 23. On the recent “imperial turn” in modern Jewish historical scholarship, see Ethan Katz, Lisa Leff, and Maud Mandel, eds., Colonialism and the Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017). For the intersection of modern humanitarianism and empire, see also Watenpaugh, Bread from Stones. 24. Compare the point made by Tyler Stovall about the place of the “nation” in transnational and global history: Stovall, “Civil Rights Meets Decolonization: Transnational Visions of the Struggle for Racial Equality in France and America,” World History Bulletin 26:1 (2010), 26–­31. 25. Daniel Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 309. For a critical evaluation of the relation between Zionism and colonialism, see Derek Penslar, Israel in History: The Jewish State in Comparative Perspective (London: Routledge, 2007), 90–­111. See also Yehouda Shenhav, ed., Zionism and Empires (Hebr.) (Tel Aviv: Van Leer, 2015).

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26. I use the term “philanthropic rationality” here in a way that evokes what Foucault calls “political rationality,” defined as “neither institutions nor ideas, but ‘conditions which make [practices] acceptable at any moment’ insofar as they possess ‘their own specific regularities, logic, strategy, self-­evidence, and reason.’ ” See Wilder, French Imperial Nation-­ State, 44. 27. See Boyarin, Unheroic Conduct, xvii-­x viii; see Naomi Seidman’s critique of Boyarin in Seidman, The Marriage Plot: Or, How Jews Fell in Love with Love, and with Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 66. 28. Salo Baron, “Modern Capitalism and Jewish Fate,” cited in Ira Katznelson, “Two Exceptionalisms: Points of Departure for Studies of Capitalism and Jews in the United States,” in Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism, ed. Rebecca Kobrin (New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press 2012), 12–­31, at 25. 29. See Jerry Muller, Capitalism and the Jews (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); see also Todd Endelman, “Secularization and the Origins of Jewish Modernity: On the Impact of Urbanization and Social Transformation,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 6 (2007), 155–­168. A somewhat neo-­Sombartian narrative is offered by Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004). 30. Bayly, Birth of the Modern World, 476.

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INDEX

Abdülaziz, Sultan, 93, 111, 118 Abdülhamid II, Sultan, 2, 118, 119, 123, 144, 147, 325n37; authoritarianism of, 166; Hirsch’s aid to Ottoman war victims and, 153; pan-­Islamic agenda of, 159 Abdullah Frères, 2, 4, 297n11 Abdülmecid I, Sultan, 90 Abraham Spire of Metz, 154 acculturation, 40, 85 Adrianople (Edirne), 91, 111, 112, 113; Alliance Israélite Universelle schools in, 167; Muslims expelled from, 157; rail line through, 152 Africa, colonization efforts in, 212–­13, 231 Agiotage sous la troisième république, L’ (Chirac, 1888), 141 agriculture, 11, 21, 35, 180, 280; colonial expansion and, 140; Jewish emancipation and, 206–­7; Ottoman railroads and, 145; project of “regeneration” and, 290–­91; Russian Jewish emigres and, 216, 228, 237, 257, 272–­73, 349n83; seen as key to improving moral standing of Jews, 273 Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, 108

Alberdi, Juan Bautista, 224, 225, 235 Aleichem, Sholem, 232, 347n52 Alexander, prince of Bulgaria, 129 Alexander II, Czar, 156, 195, 197 Alexander III, Czar, 273 Alexandra, Princess, 58 Algeria, Jews of, 41 Ali Pasha, Mehmed Emin, 89, 90, 91, 104, 118 Alkalai, Rabbi Yehuda, 209 Allatini family, 155 Alliance Israélite Universelle, 11, 37, 176, 190, 280, 285, 298n20; archives of, 13, 174; Berlin Treaty and, 120, 160; Central Committee of, 151, 155; charity for war refugees, 151–­52; “civilizing mission” and, 168, 288; colonization schemes and, 209; creation of (1860), 41; Gallo-­centric model of, 167; Hirsch family support of, 14–­15, 42; JCA work in Argentina and, 263; mission of, 41–­ 42; Russian Jewish refugees and, 197, 219; schools in Argentine colonies, 267, 268; schools in Ottoman Empire, 208, 340n48; Talmud Torah schools and, 363

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 363

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364

Index

Alliance Israélite Universelle (cont.) 167; vocational training sponsored by, 165–­70, 331n67 Alpersohn, Mordecai, 231, 232–­33, 235, 347n60; on death of Baron Hirsch, 280; on Goldsmid, 247–­48, 258, 262; on Hirsch versus Löwenthal, 245; on problems in Colonia Mauricio, 238–­39 Alroey, Gur, 197 Alsina, Juan, 223, 225, 229, 230, 233; contracts crisis and, 270; on contracts for colonists, 269; doubts about Jewish assimilation, 236 Alzac, Marquis d,’ 185 amalgamation. See assimilation, of Jews Am Oylon movement, 209 anarchism, 2 Andrássy, Gyula, 101, 103, 120, 162 Anglo-­Austrian Bank (Vienna), 33, 95, 100 Anglo-­Jewish Association, 11, 277, 280 Anker, Der (life insurance company), 31 Anthim I, 158 antisemitism, 5, 46, 106, 125, 199; as “anachronism,” 193; Arendt’s analysis of, 148; in Argentina, 230; in Austria, 237; Boulangism and, 49; Congress of Berlin and, 164; conspiracy theories and, 14, 47–­48, 134, 178; evolution of religious prejudice into, 23, 48, 60; Hirsch’s lifelong battle against, 52, 84, 285; Hirsch’s railroad business as target of, 4, 131, 133–­38; internalized by Jewish philanthropists, 262, 275; Jewish capitalism denounced by, 285, 286; Jews as “Orientals” or “Asiatics,” 10, 38; Jews associated with commerce and finance, 206; of Langrand-­Dumonceau, 30; nationalism and, 290; populist politics and, 100, 129, 135, 322n71; rise of, 8; in Russia, 195; as “socialism of fools,” 2, 296–­97n6; socialist parties and, 360n14

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 364

Arbeiter-­Zeitung (Austrian socialist newspaper), 287 Archives Générales du Royaume (Brussels), 13 Archives Israélites (newspaper), 48 Archives Nationales du Monde du Travail (Roubaix, France), 13 Arendt, Hannah, 147, 148 Argent, L’ [Money] (Zola, 1891), 29, 48, 301n35 Argentina, Jewish colonization in, 5, 12–­13, 138, 232, 284; agricultural labor and, 203; Baron Hirsch as father figure, 239; context of global migration and Argentine nation building, 229–­31, 237, 345n30; contracts crisis, 269–­72, 356n33; debate over village system vs. farm system, 264–­66, 354–­55n6; gauchos’ interactions with colonists, 234–­35; Goldsmid’s tenure in, 251–­62; Herzl’s critique of, 276–­77; Hirsch’s management style and, 260; Hotel de Inmigrantes accommodations, 226, 227, 232; industrialization and, 228, 345n25; Jewish congregation in Buenos Aires, 226; Löwenthal’s proposal for, 207–­8, 214, 225–­28, 340n46; mourning for Baron Hirsch in, 280; nettoyage (cleansing) of unfit colonists, 256–­ 60, 281; from optimism to specter of failure, 272–­77; overall population of immigrants in Argentina, 223, 228, 343–­4 4n3; plan to buy large tracts of land, 240–­42, 249; railroads and, 264; Russian Jews’ arrival in, 223–­2 4, 231–­ 32, 244, 260; schools and, 267–­69; as second most important destination for Jewish migrants, 7; socialist criticism of, 287; troubles and setbacks, 236–­40, 273–­75. See also Colonia Mauricio; Entre Ríos colonies [Clara and San

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Index

Antonio]; Moisés Ville/Kiryat Moshe colony Arié, Gabriel, 331n67 aristocracy, 32, 39, 45; British, 68; decline of, 25; Jewish intermarriage with, 48. See also “Tout-­Paris” (Parisian high society) Armenians, 2, 33, 112 Arnold, Juliette, 80 Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), 13 Asquith, Henry, 68 assimilation, of Jews, 5, 59–­60, 289, 336n77; as aim of Baron Hirsch, 175; antisemitism and, 48; binary with particularism, 86; cultural and linguistic, 192; education and Russian Jews, 185; into French society/culture, 40; intermarriage and, 68, 187, 190, 192; Jewish resistance to Hirsch’s ideas on, 186–­92; Jewish solidarity and, 84; as plausible prospect, 20; in Russia, 205 Association Générale d’Assurances, 30 Athénée Royal school (Brussels), 62 Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung (newspaper), 64, 107 Australia, 244 Austria, 4, 15, 99. See also Habsburg Empire Austrian State Archives (Vienna), 13 Austro-­Hungarian Colonial Society, 213 Auto-­Emanzipation (Pinsker, 1882), 12, 210 Badeni, Casimir, 179 Baischt, Chaim, 236–­37 Balkans, 5, 8; Austrian “commercial monopoly” in, 135; Eastern Question and, 142; Habsburg railway imperialism and, 92; as “la Turqie d’Europe,” 84; nationalist movements in, 209; Ottoman loss of territory in, 147; railroads in, 33, 89, 90, 105; refugees from Russo-­ Ottoman War, 15, 156. See also Bosnia

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365

and Hercegovina; Bulgaria; Ottoman Empire; Serbia Balser, Edouard, 313n122 Bamberger, Ludwig, 29 banking, 27, 34, 45; Camondo family and, 38; Jewish families as “new aristocracy,” 46; Langrand-­Dumonceau plan for Catholic banking system, 14, 29, 32 Banque de Crédit et de Dépôt des Pays-­Bas, 27–­28, 95 Banque de Crédit Foncier et Industriel, 33 Baron, Salo, 289 Baron de Hirsch Fund (New York), 13, 15, 204, 214 Baron de Hirsch Trade School (New York), 204 “Baron Hirsch and Count Wimpffen” (satirical poem in Kikeriki, 1896), 136–­38 Barrelet, Paul, 27, 44, 61, 62, 66 Bartov, Omer, 159 Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (Istanbul), 13 Bath House (Picadilly, London), 286 Bavaria, 21–­25, 141, 166 Bayly, C. A., 38, 110 Bebel, August, 297n6 Beer, Jeremy, 219 Beilis trial (1911), 273 Belgium, 25–­26, 28, 135 Bellova (Bulgaria), Baron Hirsch’s forest at, 105, 152 Benedikt, Moriz, 57, 337n88 Benveniste, Annica, 182, 183 Ben-­Yehuda, Eliezer, 341n56 Berlin, Congress and Treaty of (1878), 120, 121, 123–­2 4, 129, 140; Alliance Israélite Universelle and, 156; antisemitic ideas about, 142; contract for Ottoman railroad and, 145; “dominated” by Baron Hirsch, 142; “European Jewish concert” at, 219; Jewish civil rights in southeastern Europe and, 160, 162, 163, 164

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366

Index

Berlin Conference (1884–­1885), 147 Berlin conference (1891), 204, 205 Bernstein, Eduard, 107 Beust, Friedrich von, 96–­97, 98, 99, 103, 108, 134 Bhabha, Homi, 337n91 Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno (Buenos Aires), 13 Bigart, Jacques, 268, 269 Bikur Holim society, 279 Birkenheim, Abraham, 260 Bischoffsheim, Clara. See Hirsch, Clara de (wife of the Baron) Bischoffsheim, Henriette Goldschmidt (mother of Clara de Hirsch), 80 Bischoffsheim, Henry, 58 Bischoffsheim, Jonathan Raphael (father of Clara de Hirsch), 25, 26 Bischoffsheim & Goldschmidt banking house, 27 Bischoffsheim & Hirsch, 28 Bischoffsheim family, 26, 32, 45 Bischoffsheim school (Paris), 37 Bismarck, Otto von, 28–­29, 47, 93, 119, 138; Berlin Treaty and, 160; Bleichröder as personal banker of, 142, 160, 163; German nationalism and, 141; rights of Romanian Jews used as bargaining tool, 162–­64 Blaine, James, 197 Bleichröder, Gerson von, 53, 120, 142, 148, 163; Berlin Congress and, 162, 164; Jewish civil rights and, 160 “Blessings of Assimilation in Jewish History, The” (Cohen), 190 blood libel (ritual murder), 41, 72–­73, 273 Bolsa, La (Martel), 230 Bontoux, Paul Eugène, 141 Bosnia and Hercegovina, 97, 103, 209, 317n57; Habsburg occupation of, 123; proposed rail line through, 104, 106,

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 366

109; “strategic line” railway through, 112; tunnels and bridges, 320n33; uprising in, 119, 159. See also Balkans Boulanger, General Georges, and Boulangism, 48–­52, 59, 85, 307n61 bourgeoisie, 38, 63; connections with aristocratic elites, 20, 59; haute bourgeoisie, 59, 60 Boyarin, Daniel, 289 Brazil, Polish colonists in, 248–­49 Brestel, Rudolf, 96 Breuer, Josef, 180 Britain, 119, 163, 207, 247; colonial expansion of, 135; as imperial nation-­ state, 148; Jewish migration to, 224, 344n4; “Jewish question” in, 215; Russo-­Ottoman War and, 152. See also England Brussels, 14, 28, 34 Budde, Emil Arnold, 126, 322n60, 325n24 Buenos Aires, city of, 237, 242, 251; demand for immigrant labor in, 228; JCA head office in, 256, 259, 264; Jewish communities in, 226; Office of Immigration, 253; opposition to Jewish immigrants in, 233; pimps and prostitutes in, 232–­ 33. See also Argentina, Jewish colonization in Bukovina, Habsburg province of, 174, 175 Bukowinaer Rundschau (newspaper), 177 Bulgaria, 111, 118, 120–­21; Conférence à Quatre and, 124; Congress of Berlin and, 142; Jewish rights and, 157–­58; uprising of (1876), 152, 159; war with Serbia (1885), 129 Bülow, Bernhard von, 160 Calice, Heinrich von, 127, 128, 138–­39 Cambaceres, Eugenio, 230 Camondo banking family, 38, 45, 155 Canada, 206, 207, 344n4

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Index

Canetti, Aaron, 157 capitalism, 9, 20, 131, 285; antisemitic ideas about, 141, 285, 286; Dehn’s nationalist critique of, 140; European Jewish society reshaped by, 109; feudal order eroded by, 23; Jews associated with, 285, 286, 360n14; new Jewish politics and, 289–­90; Ottoman Empire and, 93; populist politics and, 100; rise of, 21 Caporal, A., 124–­25 Carnegie, Andrew, 1–­2 , 10–­11, 184 Caspar, Mizzi, 56 Cassel, Ernst, 214 Catholicism/Catholic Church, 9, 32, 41; banking and, 29, 30, 32, 141; Jewish conversion to, 61; plans for Lucienne’s upbringing and, 83–­84; ultramontane, 52 Cavendish-­Bentinck, Jessica. See Sykes, Lady Jessica Cazès, David, 263, 264, 265, 340n48; Argentine colonies stabilized under, 275; contracts crisis and, 270, 271; land purchases and, 273; schools in Argentine colonies and, 267 Celman, Juárez, 224 Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (Jerusalem), 13 Centro Mark Turkow (Buenos Aires), 13 charity. See philanthropy Charlamb, Alexandre, 350n121, 354n64 Charles V, Emperor, 162 Charles VI, Emperor, 25 Chartered Company of South Africa, 212 Chartres, Duke of, 54, 55 Chekhov, Anton, 5 Chernitz, Dovid, 235 Chirac, Auguste, 141–­42, 325n34 Christianity, conversion to, 40, 191, 336n75 Christians: Jewish assimilation and, 187, 189–­91, 192; in Ottoman Empire, 90, 97, 142

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 367

367

Christian-­Social Party (Austria), 128, 322n71, 360n14 Churchill, Lady Jennie, 54 Churchill, Winston, 54 Cicatrice, La (Massa), 44 Circassians, 112, 116 citizenship, 84; Austrian, 53, 74, 85, 307n72; Bavarian, 53; Belgian, 84; charity and, 154; French, 41; Jewish emancipation and, 9; Ottoman, 97, 120; Romanian, 162; Russian, 216, 218, 230; universal, 40 Citroën, André, 63 civilization, 117, 166, 196; barbarism versus, 235; “wilderness” versus, 344n7 “civilizing mission”: of Alliance Israélite Universelle, 168; in the Balkans, 109, 130; of France, 41, 42; in Galicia and Bukovina, 180; of Jewish philanthropy, 288, 289, 290; of secular Jewish education, 154 Clara colony (Argentina). See Entre Ríos colonies [Clara and San Antonio] Clara de Hirsch Home for Working Girls (New York), 280 Clémentine of Orléans, Princess, 56 Cohen, Alfred Louis, 352n87 Cohen, Gerson, 190 colonialism, 92, 361n20; European, 212, 288, 361n20; German, 148; Habsburg Empire and, 109; Zionism as masquerade of, 289 Colonia Mauricio (Argentina), 231–­40, 243, 252–­55, 264, 348n68; colonists deemed unfit removed from, 257, 353n57; revolt against contract in, 269–­70; unrest in, 353n44 Compagnie Générale pour l’Exploitation des Chemins de Fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 95, 106, 121 Comptoir d’Escompte (Paris), 128 Conférence à Quatre (1882), 124

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368

Index

Congo, Belgian, 19 Congregación Israelita (Buenos Aires), 226 Constantinople, 2, 15, 62, 106, 131; Alliance Israélite Universelle schools in, 268, 331n66; Baron Hirsch’s philanthropy in, 174; Galata district, 93, 155; Jewish elites in, 166–­67; as Orient Express terminus, 8; political chaos in, 139; rail lines and, 33, 34, 89, 91, 97, 102; School of Medicine, 174; war refugee crisis in, 151–­55 conversos, Iberian, 299n27 Corruption in Austria (anonymous, 1872), 100 “cosmopolitanism,” 159 court Jews, 21, 25, 34, 35, 109; acculturation of, 62; anti-­Jewish prejudice and, 60 Cracow, welfare committee in, 182, 184 Crédit Mobilier, 317n54 Crémieux, Adolphe, 41, 160, 162, 165, 336n75; as an Alliance Israélite Universelle founder, 285; assimilation favored by, 190 Crimean War (1853–­1856), 90, 93, 97, 135; Romania and, 160; Russian population politics and, 216 Crummell, Alexander, 189 Cullen, Charles, 249 Cyprus, 120, 142 Czas (Polish nationalist newspaper), 178 Czech language, 179 Czernowitz, 175–­77, 180 Damascus blood libel (1840), 41, 162 Damencomité (Ladies’ Committee), Viennese, 182–­83 Davies, Hannah, 99, 316n43 Davud Pasha, 33–­34, 91, 100–­101, 107–­8, 134 Deforest, Arnold, 80, 81, 82, 300n36 Deforest, Edward, 80 Deforest, Raymond, 80, 81, 82

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 368

Dehn, Paul, 139–­42, 147, 324n17, 325n24 department stores, 40 Deutsche Bank, 147 Deutsches Tagblatt (newspaper), 133–­34 Deutsches Volksblatt (antisemitic newspaper), 134–­36, 146, 199, 257 Deutschland und die Orientbahnen (Dehn, 1883), 139–­4 1 Devonshire, Countess of, 54 Diaz, Porfirio, 214 Dietz, Jules, 103, 143 Disraeli, Benjamin, 93, 162 Dolgorukov, Prince Vladimir, 198 Dreyfus, Captain Alfred, 45, 48 Dreyfus Affair, 46, 51, 148 Dropsie, Moses, 201, 202, 203, 204 Drumont, Edouard, 45, 56, 60, 230 Dziennik Polski (newspaper), 177 Earle, Ralph, 103 Eastern Question, 119, 142 East India Company, 212, 213 Eichhorn (Hirsch estate in Habsburg Austria), 53, 54 Eisenmenger, Johann, 162 Eley, Geoff, 324n17 Elfenbein, Benjamin, 238 Elias, Norbert, 45 emancipation, Jewish, 8–­9, 35, 60, 161; agriculture and, 206–­7; France as first country of, 40; mass exodus of Russian Jews and, 289; modern nationalism and, 41; philanthropy and, 12 Engels, Friedrich, 107 England, 9, 41, 54, 58, 65. See also Britain English language, 13, 73 En la sangre (Cambaceres, 1887), 230 Enlightenment, European, 9, 42, 193, 207, 284, 337n91 Entre Ríos colonies [Clara and San Antonio] (Argentina), 245–­46, 252, 254, 259,

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Index

269; declining number of colonists in, 281; JCA-­owned land in, 264; revolt against contract in, 269–­70; schools in, 269; size of land lots in, 355n7 Ephrussi, Michel, 43, 45 Epoca, La (Ladino-­language newspaper), 169 Erlanger family, 45 Ernst vort iber di emigratsie, Ein [An earnest word about emigration] (anonymous), 248–­50 eugenics, 184 Eugénie, Empress, 42, 44 Ezra Society (Berlin), 211 Falk, Max, 57 Falkenhayn, Julius von, 179 Feinberg, David, 260, 264, 354n1 Ferdinand I, king of Bulgaria, 278 Ferguson, Niall, 84 Fischer, Theobald, 63, 309nn10–­11 Foucault, Michel, 362n26 Fould banking family, 37, 45 France, 9, 15, 119; Alliance Israélite Universelle and, 168; “civilizing mission” of, 41; colonial expansion of, 135; as imperial nation-­state, 148; Jewish emancipation in, 40; Judaism in, 189; Ottoman Empire and, 90; Ottoman railroad enterprise and, 97; Russo-­Ottoman War and, 152; Second Empire, 39; Third Republic, 39, 45, 49, 50, 59 France juive, La (Drumont), 45–­46, 230 Franck, J. B., 226 Franco-­Prussian War (1870–­1871), 38, 39, 45, 101, 163, 242 Franz Josef I, emperor of Austria, 32, 57, 92, 174–­75, 177, 322n71 Franzos, Karl Emil, 57, 176, 211, 218 Frederic, Harold, 198 French language, 13, 73, 116, 169, 283

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 369

369

French Revolution, 8, 40, 42, 51, 154, 285, 291 Freud, Sigmund, 180 Friedmann, Paul, 213 Friedrich, German crown prince, 57 Frischauer, Berthold, 57 Funkenstein, Amos, 336n77 Galicia, Habsburg province of, 12, 138, 154, 169; educational foundation in, 15; exploratory mission to, 156; as “Half-­ Asia,” 176; Hirsch’s schooling project in, 15, 176–­77, 180, 184, 191, 284; history and ethnic groups in, 175–­76; as Jewish “Orient,” 288; “regeneration” of Jewish communities in, 165; vocational schools in, 174–­75 Galliffet, General Gaston de, 51 Gallo, Ezequiel, 230 Gambetta, Léon, 47 Garnier, Charles, 45 Gaucho Martín Fierro, El (Hernández), 235 Gauchos judíos, Los (Gerchunoff), 235, 236, 269 Gaulois, Le (newspaper), 37, 38, 43, 45, 46–­47, 67 Gazeta Polska (newspaper), 177, 178 Gerbel, Lucien, 234, 235, 238–­39, 347n60 Gerchunoff, Alberto, 234, 235–­36, 269 Gereuth castle (Bavaria), 24 German language, 13, 38, 116, 175 German National-­Liberal Party, 146 German Orient Society, 11 Germany, 11, 15, 213; Alliance Israélite Universelle in, 42; antisemitism in, 148; colonial expansion of, 135, 140; Russian Jewish refugees in, 198–­99; Russo-­ Ottoman War and, 152; unification (1871), 25 Gladstone, William, 71 Glagau, Otto, 142

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Index

globalization, 290 Gneist, Rudolf von, 146 Goldman, Julius, 214, 339n37 Goldschmidt, Henriette. See Bischoffsheim, Henriette Goldschmidt Goldschmidt, Salomon, 26, 280 Goldsmid, Albert E., 232, 245–­48, 267, 281, 350n23; as charismatic figure, 263; connections with Argentine government, 251–­52; disagreements with Hirsch, 253–­ 62, 268; on locusts in Argentine colony, 274; as “Nationalist Jew,” 247; nettoyage (cleansing) of unfit colonists and, 256–­ 60; Zionist commitment of, 247 Gorchakow, Alexander, 161, 162 Gordon, Dov, 191 Gottheil, Rabbi Gustav, 188–­89, 190 Gould, Jay, 99, 302n60 Grand Synagogue (Warsaw), 279 Greece, 66–­67, 84 Güdemann, Chief Rabbi Moritz, 280 Gülhane (“Rose Chamber”) Edict (1839), 90 Gunzburg, Baron, 266 Gunzburg family, 38, 45 Gutwein, Daniel, 358n67 Habsburg Empire, 9, 32, 52, 112, 213, 298n23; antisemitism in, 148; Austro-­ Hungarian Ausgleich (1867), 179; Hirsch estates in, 53–­56; Hirsch’s Ottoman railroad enterprise and, 97, 109; as multinational empire, 85; railway imperialism and, 92, 147, 315n15; Russian Jewish refugees in, 197. See also Galicia Halevi, Chief Rabbi Moshe, 154–­55 Ha-­Magid (maskilic newspaper), 191–­92 Hamburg, city of, 12 Ha-­Melits (Hebrew-­language newspaper), 239, 357n64 Hansemann, David, 163, 164

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 370

Hasidism, 181 Haskalah, 191, 251 Ha-­Tsfira (newspaper), 288, 360n19, 361n20 Haussmann, Georges, 40 Haym, David, 271 Hebrew language, 13, 38, 166, 267; newspapers in, 191–­92; taught in Alliance schools, 168 Heilprin, Michael, 200, 201 Heine, Heinrich, 10 Heine family, 45 Held, Gustav, 211, 272, 279, 355n25, 356n33 Helpérine, Elie, 283 Hernández, José, 235 Herzl, Theodor, 7, 10, 66; on death of Hirsch, 287; Hirsch’s relationship with, 276–­77, 358n67; Jewish “nation-­state” idea and, 210, 213; pre-­Zionist attitude toward assimilation, 193, 337n88 Hibbat Zion movement, 205, 208, 209, 211; Goldsmid as head of, 247; Hirsch’s skepticism about, 277 Hildesheimer, Hirsch, 211 Hirsch, Caroline Wertheimer (mother of the Baron), 25 Hirsch, Clara de (wife of the Baron), 7, 13, 15, 143–­4 4, 165; aristocratic sociability and, 59; attitude toward religion, 61; Austrian citizenship acquired by, 53; as chief secretary for Maurice, 28; cultural tastes of, 44, 66; death of (1899), 280; Deforest boys adopted by, 80–­81, 82; farewell letter of Crown Prince Rudolf to, 57; as hostess, 54; on marriage of Lucienne’s mother, 77–­78; marriage to Maurice, 25, 26; Parisian press reporting on, 38; philanthropy and, 166, 174, 279–­ 80; portraits of, 27 Hirsch, Jacob von (grandfather of the Baron), 21–­22, 23 Hirsch, Joel Jacob, 23–­2 4

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Index

Hirsch, Joseph von (father of the Baron), 21, 22, 24, 26, 300n3 Hirsch, Lucien de (son of the Baron), 7, 38, 190–­91; art and antiquities as interest of, 43–­4 4; birth of daughter Lucienne out of wedlock, 14, 76–­80; in Brussels, 19–­20; in Constantinople, 63; education, 62–­64; hunting parties criticized by, 55; illness and death (1887) of, 76, 138, 143, 173; indifference to Judaism, 85; marriage prospects of, 67–­69; on Ottoman railroad enterprise, 121–­22, 127, 129; relationship with Lady Jessica Sykes, 13–­14, 69–­73, 84; travels of, 65–­ 67; on Yom Kippur in Hirsch family, 61 Hirsch, Lucienne Premelić de (granddaughter of the Baron), 13, 309n10; adopted by Maurice and Clara, 77, 80; birth out of wedlock, 14, 76–­80; later life of, 313n122; possibility of second adoption by Montefiores, 81, 83 Hirsch, Baron Maurice de: aristocratic friends of, 53–­59; assimilation (“amalgamation”) favored by, 11, 68, 85, 185, 186–­ 92; attitude toward religion, 61–­62, 308–­9n2; Austrian citizenship acquired by, 53; Bavarian origins of, 14; biographies of, 298n20; birth name (Moritz), 25, 301n20; Boulangist movement and, 48–­52, 59; colonization scheme, 7, 12–­ 13; cultural tastes of, 44; death of (1896), 278–­80, 283–­84, 286–­87, 358n74; hunting/shooting activities of, 37–­38, 53, 54–­ 55, 61, 278; Leopold II and, 19; linked to heroes of Jewish history, 284; Lucienne adopted by Maurice and Clara, 77, 80, 81, 83–­84; marriage to Clara, 25, 26; Ottoman negotiations and conflicts with, 115, 122, 123, 125, 128–­29, 323n73, 324n13; as “plutocrat,” 358n67; public persona of, 13; Russophilia as accusation

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 371

371

against, 138; as symbol of liberalism and capitalism, 135; as target of antisemitic critics, 14, 47; value of fortune, 302n60 Hirsch, Baron Maurice de, business ventures of: banking, 27–­28; Boulangist movement and, 85; Langrand-­ Dumonceau collaborations, 29–­34, 85; railroads as cornerstone of, 28. See also Ottoman railroad enterprise Hirsch, Baron Maurice de, estates of: Eichhorn (Habsburg Austria), 53, 54; Planegg (outside Munich), 22–­23, 24, 55, 73; St. Johann (Habsburg Hungary), 53–­56. See also Hôtel Hirsch Hirsch, Baron Maurice de, philanthropic projects of, 4–­5, 20; Alliance schools and, 169–­70; “civilizing mission” and, 154; collective reputation of the Jews and, 170–­71; debate with Damencomité over reform, 182–­84, 335n51; Galician schools, 15, 176–­77, 180, 184, 191; Hirsch’s philanthropic views, 1–­2; microloans and, 184; noblesse oblige and, 55; nondenominational nature of, 152–­53, 158, 173–­74; patronage network and, 59; poverty elimination as goal, 165–­66; as rebuke to antisemitism, 285, 286; Russian Jews’ mass emigration and, 200–­219; schooling proposal in Russia, 185–­86, 195; as social engineering experiment, 219, 239, 288; state inaction and, 175. See also Argentina, Jewish colonization in; JCA Hirsch, Baron Maurice de, portraits of, 27; in Ottoman attire (carte de visite), 2, 3, 4, 297n11; in Weizmann childhood home (Pinsk), 4, 5, 6 Hirsch, Samuel, 263, 264, 265, 270; Argentine colonies stabilized under, 275; contracts crisis and, 271; land purchases and, 273; Russian-­Jewish culture little understood by, 272

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Index

Hirsch family, 10, 55, 85; Judaism and, 39, 61–­62, 74; origins of, 14, 20, 21–­25; in Paris, 34, 38 Hirsch Foundation, in Galicia, 177–­80, 184, 334n42 Hohenlohe, Count, 24 Hohenwart, Karl Sigmund von, 103 horse racing, 58–­59 Hôtel Hirsch (Rue de l’Elysée, Paris), 42–­ 48, 286; funerary procession for Lucien at, 76; grand staircase, 44, 45, 46, 47, 59 Hoyos, Count, 139 Hungary, 33 Ignatiev, Count Nicolai, 107, 195, 196 imperialism, 4, 14, 110; antisemitism and, 141, 148; British, 71; Habsburg Empire and, 109; “high imperialism,” 147; humanitarian intervention and, 164; railways and, 91, 92, 100, 131, 139, 171, 315n15 Indépendence Belge, L’ (liberal newspaper), 191 India, 71–­72, 91, 140 industrialization, 207 Iran, 166 Iraq, 157 Isaacs, Meyer S., 187, 197, 201–­2 , 204, 214 Israel, State of, 4 Israelit, Der (German-­Jewish Orthodox newspaper), 181, 191, 203, 350n23 Israelitische Allianz, 11, 176, 180 Istoczy, Victor, 134 Italy, 32, 65, 155, 163, 213 JCA (Jewish Colonization Association), 1, 8, 79, 242, 286; accused of making “slave colony” in Argentina, 254, 352n35; activities in Russia and Palestine, 281; archives of, 13; Argentine colonization and, 15, 231, 234, 238, 239, 241, 244–­46, 280–­81; in Canada, 206; colonists’ obli-

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 372

gations toward, 253; contracts crisis and, 270–­72; critics of, 261, 275, 276, 353n53; endowment of, 296n3; establishment of (1891), 5, 15, 211–­12, 288; evacuation plan for Russian Jews and, 218, 219; farm system favored by, 265–­66; Hirsch’s donation to, 277–­78; limited budget of, 272; number of immigrants in colonies of, 7, 297–­98n17; schools in Argentine colonies and, 267, 268; shareholders of, 264; Zionism and, 290 Jellinek, Adolf, 177 Jewish Chronicle (London newspaper), 7, 52, 153, 185, 212, 275, 341n66, 347n45 Jewish elites: aristocratic lifestyle cultivated by, 59; capitalist transformation and, 25; liberalism associated with, 306n52; noble titles and, 23, 38; “soft power” of philanthropy and, 35; “Tout-­Paris” and, 37; Westernizers in Ottoman Empire, 166 Jewishness, 10, 20, 38; as amorphous construct, 86; humanitarianism and, 42; limits to social integration and, 60 “Jewish question,” 2, 5, 48, 215; amalgamation as response to, 11, 192; American religious liberty and, 189; evacuation plan for Russian Jews and, 217; “fusion” as best response to, 83–­84; social question equated with, 142; Zionist response to, 290 Jewish State, The (Herzl, 1896), 210 Jews: Alsatian, 40, 46; aspiration to be Europeans, 9–­10; backlash against Jewish immigration, 10; East–­West binary and, 166; ethnic and religious notions of Jewish identity, 11, 299n27; of Galicia, 175–­76; imperialism and Jewish financiers, 147–­48; living under multinational empires, 85; “national question” and, 277; “new aristocracy”

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Index

of bankers/financiers, 34; noble titles available to, 25; in Ottoman Empire, 90; as “race,” 11; in southeastern Europe, 159–­64; stereotypes of, 66; survival of, 1, 11. See also Russian Jews, exodus of; Sephardic Jews Jews and Modern Capitalism, The (Sombart, 1911), 289 “Jews Must Disappear, The” (New York Herald interview with Hirsch), 186–­92, 335n63 joint-­stock companies, 147 Josel of Rosheim, 162 Joseph, Rabbi Henry, 226 Judaism, 9, 11, 69, 181; Enlightenment and, 284; “euthanasia” of, 193; of little importance to Hirsch family, 74, 84 Judenmatrikel (Bavarian quota for Jews), 22, 25 Judeo-­A rabic language, 283 Kahn, Rabbi Zadoc, 76, 160, 279, 284, 352n87 Kaiser-­Wilhelm research institutes, 11 Kalischer, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch, 209 Kálnoky, Gustav Siegmund von, 127, 128, 133, 134, 135 Kamil Pasha, Grand Vizier, 145 Kant, Immanuel, 193 Kaschau-­Oderberg Railroad (Hungary), 33 Kaufman, Leizer, 226 Kaye, John Lister, 206, 207 Kekulé, August, 63 Khalil Bey, 103 Kikeriki (Austrian biweekly), 136–­38 Kishinev pogrom (1903), 273 Klenetzki, Aharon Eliezer, 250–­51 Klier, John, 197–­98 Klöpfer, Johann, 278 Kogan, Maxim, 260, 261, 262, 354n64; lack of belief in Hirsch’s colonization

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 373

373

scheme, 263; village system opposed by, 265 Kohler, Max, 13 Kölnische Zeitung (newspaper), 107, 126, 155, 325n24 Könekamp, Friedrich, 238 Korkus, Emil, 260 Kramer, Simón, 226 Kraus, Friedrich, 57 Kreuz-­Zeitung (ultraconservative newspaper), 199 Kronawetter, Ferdinand, 297n6 Küçükçekmece train station (Constantinople), 89 Kühlmann, Otto von, 123, 124, 155 Lachmann, Edmond, 352n87 Ladino (Judeo-­Spanish) language, 13, 168, 169, 268 laïcité (republican secularism in France), 48 Landau, Herman, 340n42 Langrand-­Dumonceau, André, 14, 29–­34, 85, 91, 94–­95, 141 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 217 Latin America, colonization proposals for, 213–­14 Lazarus, Moritz, 211 Lehmann, Léonce, 185 Leitenberger, Baron Friedrich, 337n88 Lemberg (Lviv/Lwów), city of, 175, 176, 178, 181, 182, 184 Lenin, Vladimir, 110 Leo-­Baeck-­Institute Archives, 13 Leonard, Reverenc William A., 189 Leopold I, Emperor, 162 Leopold II, king of Belgium, 19, 57, 148 Levant Herald (newspaper), 122 Leven, Narcisse, 280 liberalism, 38, 48, 286, 306n52; English Gladstonian, 71; populist opposition to, 100; stock market crash (1873) and, 135

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374

Index

Loeb, Isidore, 201, 211 Loeffler, James, 171 London, 8, 10, 39, 46 Lónyay, Menyhért, 103 lottery bonds, Ottoman railroad, 95–­96, 99, 101, 118, 130, 317n51; collapse in value of, 146; sold in Austria, 139; Viennese stock market crash and, 117 Lousada, Herbert, 277, 352n87 Löwenthal, Wilhelm, 207–­8, 214, 225–­26, 227, 246, 252, 340n46; as charismatic figure, 263; Colonia Mauricio and, 231–­ 34, 236–­38, 239, 240; on disciplinary action in Argentine colony, 238, 349n83; Hirsch’s relationship with, 244–­45, 268, 350n113; lobbying efforts with Argentine government, 242; Russian Jews’ arrival in Argentina and, 231–­32, 244; schools in Argentine colonies and, 267; trafficking problem and, 236–­37 Ludolf, Count Emanuel von, 114 Ludwig I, king of Bavaria, 27 Lueger, Karl, 128, 322n71 Luria, Haim, 209 Luxemburg, Grand Duchy of, 28 Luzzatto, Samuel David, 165 Lycée Condorcet (Paris), 63 Macedonia, 120 Mac Mahon, Patrice de, 93 Mahmud II, Sultan, 303n65 Mahmud Nedim Pasha, 104, 105, 107, 112, 118, 134 Maimonides, Moses, 5, 251, 284 Manchester, city of, 12 Marienbad (Austrian spa town), 67, 310n38 Marr, Wilhelm, 10, 164 Martel, Julián, 230 Marx, Karl, 39, 217, 360n14 Massa, Philippe Marquis de, 44 Mauss, Marcel, 170

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 374

Maximilian Joseph, king of Bavaria, 21 Mecidiye order (Ottoman award), 146, 174, 326n53, 328n3 Mehmed Saïd Pasha, 122, 322n57 Mejía, Ramos, 230 Melting Pot, The (Zangwill, 1908), 193 Mendelssohn, Moses, 181, 251, 284 Mercier, Edouard, 29, 30 Metternich, Richard Klemens von, 97, 98, 99 Mexico, colonization proposal for, 214 Meyer, Martin, 242, 243 Meyer, Siegmund, 205 Midhat Pasha, 119 Mijatovich, Count, 103 Mischler, Ernst, 184, 335n55 modernity, 20, 62, 90 Modern Jew, The (White, 1899), 215 Moisés Ville/Kiryat Moshe colony (Argentina), 227, 228, 231, 233, 234–­35, 248, 264; crops grown in, 281, 359n91; Goldsmid in, 252; locust infestation in (1892), 274; reorganized administration of, 261; revolt against contract in, 269–­ 70; size of land lots in, 355n7; as “slave colony,” 352n35 Moldavia, 161 Moltke, General Helmuth von, 242, 243 Mond, Ludwig, 12 Montefiore, Claude Goldsmid, 352n87 Montefiore, Moses, 11, 41, 80, 162, 251, 284, 285 Montefiore family, assimilation and, 187 Montefiore-­Levi, Georges, 80 Montefiore-­Levi, Hortense Bischoffsheim (sister of Clara de Hirsch), 76, 78, 80, 83 Montenegro, 119 Montréal, city of, 5 Morawitz, Charles, 93, 106 Morocco, 11, 174, 280; Madrid Conference (1880) and, 156; Montefiore mission to,

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Index

162; Sephardic Jews in, 226, 267 Mortara, Edgardo, 41 Moya, Jose, 229 Mozambique, proposal for Jewish colonies in, 213 Multitudes argentinas, Las (Mejía, 1899), 230 Munich, city of, 21, 22, 23, 27, 34 Murad V, Sultan, 118 Muslims, 90, 152 Myers, David, 190 Nación, La (Buenos Aires newspaper), 224–­25, 226, 230 Nagelmackers, Georges, 326n46 Napoléon I, 22, 160 Napoléon III, 32, 39, 40, 42, 44, 97 Naquet, Alfred, 49 nationalism, 9, 21, 110, 290; Bulgarian, 157; “folk” peasant society and, 207; French, 141; German, 106, 139, 324n17; Italian, 213; Jewish, 9, 12, 209–­10; Polish, 15, 177; Romanian, 161 Nehama, Rabbi Judah, 165, 166 Netherlands, 135 Neue Freie Presse (Viennese liberal newspaper), 33, 64, 92, 286, 347n45; on aftermath of Russo-­Ottoman War, 123; on Boulangist movement, 307n61; coverage of Hirsch’s Ottoman railway project, 100–­101, 103, 106, 112 New Exodus, The: A Study of Israel in Russia (Frederic, 1892), 198 New York City, 5, 39, 100, 204, 279–­80 New York Herald, interview with Hirsch, 186–­92 Nicholas II, Czar, 273 North American Review, 1 “On the Jewish Question” (Marx, 1844), 360n14

Lehmann_The Baron_i-xiv_1-382.indd 375

375

Oppenheimer, Joseph Süß, 303n65 Orientalism, 4, 67, 72, 74, 297n11; cultural assumptions about Ottoman Empire, 115–­16, 130; Galicia seen in terms of, 176; “harem carriage” of Sultan’s train and, 111; stereotype of Oriental fatalism, 155 Orient Express, 8, 145, 326n46 Origins of Totalitarianism (Arendt), 147 Orthodox Christianity, 159 Orthodox Church, Russian, 185, 195 Orthodox Judaism, 15, 188–­89, 191, 192; in Galicia, 181; Hibbat Zion movement and, 205, 211 Osterhammel, Jürgen, 228–­29 Ottoman Empire, 2, 12, 52, 90, 162, 284; agriculture in, 208; bankruptcy (1875), 99, 101; Baron Hirsch’s philanthropy in, 174; in Crimean War, 90; demise of, 69–­70; execution of Jewish bankers in, 303n65; Jewish “Orient” in, 288; Jews and educational reforms in, 165–­70; Muharrem Decree (1881), 117–­18; as multinational empire, 85; “regeneration” of Jewish communities in, 165; Rumelia, 90, 116, 129; Russian Jews’ emigration to Palestine curbed by, 250; Sephardic Jewish migrants from, 230, 346n42; Tanzimat reform era, 90, 108, 118, 130, 147; Zionist colonization schemes and, 341n56 Ottoman Imperial Bank, 13, 96, 121, 124, 126, 128, 317n54 Ottomanism, ideology of, 2, 110, 111, 120, 130, 159 Ottoman Public Debt Administration, 117 Ottoman railroad enterprise, 2, 13, 20, 28, 63, 111–­17, 297n9; accusations against Hirsch concerning, 107–­8; aftermath of Russo-­Ottoman War and, 121–­25; antisemitic ideas about, 85, 131, 133–­43,

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376

Index

Ottoman railroad enterprise (cont.) 286–­87; Baron Hirsch’s retreat from, 143–­4 8, 173; connection to European railways, 91; diplomatic entanglements and, 102–­4 , 127–­2 8, 138; effects of economic and political turmoil on, 117–­21; European imperialism and, 14; financing of, 95–­9 6, 99, 317n51; first trains traveling on completed routes, 114, 144; Habsburg government and, 53, 127; Hirsch’s business strategy, 94–­ 95; Hirsch’s reputation and, 98–­99; Ignatiev as Hirsch’s nemesis and, 107, 195; imperialism and, 171; junctions, 107, 123–­2 8, 139, 145; Langrand-­ Dumonceau financial collapse and, 29; preliminary agreement with Baron de Hirsch, 91; press coverage of, 100–­101, 103, 106; renegotiation of concession, 104–­9, 318nn81–­82; rent demanded by Ottoman government, 121–­22, 130, 321n39; strategic interests of European powers and, 97–­99, 119–­21, 130, 147; Tanzimat regime and, 90–­92; threat of expropriation by Ottoman government, 126–­27, 144; wooden structures, 113, 319–­20n9; Yambol line, 125. See also lottery bonds Palacios, Pedro, 226, 227 Pale of Settlement, 7, 15, 195, 218; international labor market and, 228–­29; libraries created by philanthropy in, 12; pogroms in, 209. See also Russian Jews, exodus of Palestine, 7, 10, 156, 193; agricultural settlements in, 249; under British rule, 70; as destination for Russian Jewish migrants, 224; mass emigration of Jews from Russia and, 205–­6; Mikveh Yisrael agricultural school, 263, 281; “national

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question” and, 250; numbers of Jewish migrants to, 344n4; prospect of Russian control over, 208; Zionist colonization efforts in, 191, 208–­9 Pan-­German League, 139, 324n17 pan-­Islamism, 120, 159 Pappenheim, Bertha (aka “Anna O.”), 180–­81 Paraguay, 241 Pariente, M., 283 Pariente, Shemtob, 208, 340n48 Paris, 10, 34, 39; aristocratic society of, 14; as capital of revolution and capitalism, 40; Hôtel Hirsch on Rue de l’Elysée, 42–­48, 243, 278; stock market crash (1882), 141; synagogues, 37 Paris Commune, 39 particularism, Jewish, 171 patriotism, 40, 85, 111, 138 Peez, Alexander von, 106 Pellegrini, Carlos, 241–­42, 251 Penslar, Derek, 209 Pereire, Isaac, 102, 317n54 Pester Lloyd (liberal Budapest newspaper), 273, 286, 352–­53n44 Peyre, Émile, 45 philanthropy, 1, 283; as defining element of modern Jewish politics, 284, 360n5; “Elberfeld system” in Germany, 334n45; functionalist interpretation of, 170; gift exchange economy and, 170; gilded age of, 11–­12, 287; as Jewish self-­ emancipation, 12; as mimicry of state function, 219, 289, 361n22; prevention of poverty as focus, 184; Russian Jews’ mass exodus and, 5, 200, 205–­6; “soft power” of, 35; Zionist goals contrasted with, 290. See also Alliance Israélite Universelle; Hirsch, Baron Maurice de, philanthropic projects of Philippe and August of Saxe-­Coburg, 54

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Index

Philippe d’Orléans, Marquis of Breteuil, 49–­51 Philippopolis [Plovdiv] (Bulgaria), 91, 111, 113, 144; Alliance Israélite Universelle schools in, 168; Bikur Holim society in, 279; flooding in, 174; rail line through, 152; revolt in, 129 Philippson, Franz, 352n87 Pinsk (Belarus), 4 Pinsker, Leon, 12, 210 Planegg (Hirsch estate outside Munich), 22–­23, 24, 55, 73 Pleve, Vyacheslav, 196, 199 Plotke, Julius, 352n87 Pobedonostsev, Konstantin, 185, 195, 217–­18 Poliakov, Lazar, 198, 306n52 Polish language, 175, 181 populism, 49, 52, 100, 135, 286 “port Jews,” 303n64 Prazak, Alois von, 179 Premelić, Irène, 76–­80 Pressel, Wilhelm, 98 Problems of a Great City, The (White, 1886), 215 “productivization,” 166, 331n67 Prokesch-­Osten, Count Anton von, 63, 103 Protestantism, 9, 62; banking and, 29, 30, 32; plans for Lucienne’s upbringing and, 83 Proust, Marcel, 63 Prussia, 28–­29 Prussian-­Austrian War (1866), 24, 175, 242 railroads, 10, 24, 35, 45, 207; Argentine colonization and, 240; Chemin de Fer Liègois-­Limburgois, 31; cosmopolitan lifestyle and, 28; French Eastern Railroad, 28, 29; imperialist expansion projects and, 91; Jewish migration out of Russia by, 8, 198; Kaschau-­Oderberg Railroad (Hungary), 33; modernity and,

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377

40; news dissemination and, 174; in Ottoman Empire, 2, 297n9; urbanization and, 91; war refugees carried by, 120. See also Ottoman railroad enterprise rational choice theory, 130 Rechberg, Count, 22 Reform Judaism, 10, 188 Reinach, Salomon, 280 Rende, Baron Raffaele Siciliano di, 78, 79 Reşid Pasha, Mustafa, 90 Ripon, Lord, 71, 72 Rockefeller, John D., 179 Romania, 20, 119, 160, 225; independence from Ottoman rule, 160, 162; Jewish civil rights in, 160–­64 Romero, Mathias, 214 Roosevelt, Theodore, 279 Roth, Adolfo, 244–­45, 246, 354n64 Rothschild, Alfred de, 53 Rothschild, Alphonse de, 12, 49, 50 Rothschild, Baron Edmond de, 209, 210, 249; Palestine colonization and, 250, 251, 271; as “plutocrat,” 358n67 Rothschild, James de, 84 Rothschild, Nathaniel “Natty,” 13, 56 Rothschild family, 32, 57, 160, 296n3; assimilation and, 187; British empire and, 148; foreign public sector debts handled by, 95; Paris properties of, 45; Southern Austrian Railroad owned by, 94; as target of Drumont’s antisemitism, 47; value of fortunes, 302n60 Rudolf, Austrian crown prince, 52, 56, 57, 68, 187, 308n88 Rülf, Rabbi Isaac, 203, 339n35 Russian Empire, 8, 20, 52, 84, 281; Congress of Berlin and, 142; in Crimean War, 90, 216; emigration policy of, 215–­16; Hirsch’s schooling proposal for, 185–­86; illusion of liberal reform in, 273; Jews expelled from Moscow, 196, 338n16;

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378

Index

Russian Empire (cont.) May Laws (1882), 195–­96, 338n2; as multinational empire, 85; pan-­Slavism of, 92, 130; pogroms, 156, 195, 197, 209, 273; “regeneration” of Jewish communities in, 165; trans-­Siberian railroad, 91. See also Pale of Settlement Russian Jews, exodus of, 5, 195–­200, 263, 272, 278; American Jewish leaders’ response to, 201–­4; assassination of Czar Alexander II and, 156, 195, 197; Berlin conference (1891) and, 204, 205, 218; as challenge for Jewish leaders in Western world, 289; colonization schemes and, 206–­14; debates over fate of refugees, 204–­6; Hirsch and White’s negotiations with Russian government, 214–­19; Jewish philanthropists’ negative views of Russian Jews, 261–­62; United States as primary destination, 200–­201. See also Argentina, Jewish colonization in Russian language, 186, 269 Russo-­Ottoman War (1877–­1878), 4, 15, 99, 119, 139, 171, 173; aftermath of, 121–­ 25, 163; atrocities during, 152; Jewish rights in southeastern Europe and, 160; refugees from, 15, 120, 151; as “war of extermination,” 156–­57 Saadya Gaon, 284 Saavedra Lamas, Pedro, 226 Sabah, Joseph, 268–­69, 274, 275 Sabsovich, Hirsch Loeb, 204 Sáenz Peña, Luis, 251–­52 St. Johann (Hirsch estate in Habsburg Hungary), 53, 54, 55, 56 Salomon ben Judah, 351n19 Salonika, 2, 4, 89; agricultural colony of Jewish families from, 351n19; Alliance Israélite Universelle schools in, 268; Hirsch’s philanthropy in, 165, 169; as Ottoman city, 67; pre-­railroad caravans

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to Vienna, 116; rail lines and, 34, 91, 92, 94, 97; upgrades at port of, 106 Samarin (Zichron Yaakov) colony, 210 Santa Fe Land Co., 243 Sant Antonio (Argentina). See Entre Ríos colonies [Clara and San Antonio] Sarmiento, Domingo, 224, 235, 344n7 Sarna, Jonathan, 230 Sassoon family, 54, 59 Schiff, Jacob, 241 Schönborn, Friedrich, 179 Schönerer, Georg von, 52 Schorr, Alexander, 181 Schulteis, Herman, 258, 353n53 Schwarzfeld, 272 Scott, James, 276 secularism, 9 Seeing like a State (Scott), 276 Seligman, Jesse, 214 Sephardic Jews, 226, 230, 236, 267, 268, 346n42 Serbia, 97, 102–­3 , 106, 109; Conférence à Quatre and, 124; independence from Ottoman rule, 119, 120; Jews of, 161; national ambitions of, 110; war with Bulgaria (1885), 129 Sergei Alexandrovich, Grand Duke, 198 Sevastopol (Crimea), 84 shtadlanut (Jewish “intercessors”), 162 Shuwalow, Peter, 162 Silny, Louise Amélie, 336n75 Simon, James, 11–­12 Şirvanlı Mehmed Rüşdi Pasha, 112 Sitruk, Rabbi Mordecai, 283 “situational ethnicity,” 311n73 Sledmere (Sykes’ estate in Yorkshire, England), 69, 70 Smyrna, city of, 12, 268 social/cultural capital, 59 Social-­Democratic Party, Austrian, 287 socialism, 2, 9, 217, 287, 360n14 “social question,” 1, 142, 213, 285

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Index

Société de Crédit Foncier International, 33 Société Générale de Commerce et d’Industrie, 31, 95 Société Impériale des Chemins de Fer de la Turquie d’Europe, 94–­96, 105, 106, 111, 113 Société Impériale des Raccordements, 144–­45 Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia (OPE), 12 Soltykoff, Princess, 53–­54 Sombart, Werner, 289 Sonnenfeld, Sigismund, 252, 264, 339n37, 355n25; on colonists’ Spanish-­language skills, 268; contracts crisis and, 356n33; disagreements with Hirsch, 272 South America, republics of, 15 Spanish language, 13, 267, 268, 269 Staatsbahn (Austrian State Railways), 102, 139 Stanley, Edward Henry (Earl of Derby), 56 Stanley, Henry Stanley, 212 Steigleder, Carlos, 228 Stern, Elli, 62 Sternhell, Zeev, 49 stock market crash, Parisian (1882), 141 stock market crash, Viennese (1873), 99, 117, 135 Straus, Oscar, 26, 143, 146, 196–­97, 279–­80 Straus, Sara, 279 Strousberg, Bethel Henry, 163, 316n43 Sublime Porte, 33, 94, 104, 118, 125. See also Ottoman Empire Südbahn (Southern Austrian Railroad), 94, 95, 98, 102, 315n26, 319n89 Suez Canal, 4, 92, 99 Sussino, Menachem, 166–­67 Sykes, Lady Jessica, 14, 55, 69–­73, 121, 127; anti-­Jewish prejudice of, 72, 311n61; in Russia, 84; Tory political views of, 71–­ 72; views of Lucien’s Jewishness, 85 Sykes, Mark, 69

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379

Sykes, Sir Tatton, 69, 70, 72, 84 Sykes-­Picot Agreement (1916), 69–­70 synagogues, 188, 280; in Argentine colonies, 246, 265, 266, 267; eulogies in honor of Baron Hirsch in, 279, 284–­85 Szeps, Moriz, 52, 56, 57, 68, 187 Taaffe, Eduard von, 179 Tarnowski, Count, 178 Tatars, 116, 216 Tchomakoff, Stoyan, 158 telegraph, 174 Temple Emanu-­El (New York), 188, 279 Tennant, Margot, 68 Terracini, Augusto, 234, 238, 253 Thomas Cook tours, railways and, 92 Thurn & Taxis, 32 Tiempo, El (Ladino-­language newspaper), 284, 288, 361n20 Times of London (newspaper), 92, 102, 106, 208, 341n66; on Jews in Russian Empire, 5, 195–­96, 206; on mass migration of Jews out of Russia, 199, 200 Tisza, Kálmán, 134 Tisza, Lois, 103 Tiszaeszlár (Hungary) blood libel (1882), 72–­73 Todesco, Baron Eduard von, 67 “Tout-­Paris” (Parisian high society), 14, 38, 45; at funeral of Lucien, 76; place of Jews in, 37 Traubenberg, Bernhard, 203 Treitschke, Heinrich von, 10 Trieste, 94, 315n26 Türkenhirsch (the “Turkish Hirsch”), 2, 3, 4 Turkish Compassionate Fund, 151, 154, 155 Ukraine, 175, 225 Union Générale, 141 United States, 7, 196; Jewish establishment of, 201–­2; Jewish migration to,

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380

Index

United States (cont.) 41, 224, 344n4; nativist sentiment in, 204; as primary destination for Jewish migrants, 200–­201; racialized view of Jews in, 189; religious liberty and the “Jewish question” in, 189; “scientific charity” in, 184 universalism, ideology of, 171 usury, accusation of, 23 Uzès, Countess of, 50 Valensi, Raymond, 283 Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 54, 99 Van der Elst & Cie., 33, 34, 94 Vanier, S., 77, 78, 80–­81 Veneziani, Emmanuel, 151, 152–­58, 160, 164, 219; evacuation of Russian Jews and, 197; Jewish colonies in Palestine and, 210; Jewish solidarity and, 171; on modern Jewish education, 165, 167, 168, 169–­70 Vetsera, Baroness Mary, 57 Victoria, Queen, 56, 156 Victory of Jewry over Germandom, The (Marr, 1879), 164 Vienna, 13, 100, 101, 131, 182; direct train route to Constantinople, 145; Leopoldstadt district, 276; rail lines and, 92; Ringtheater fire (1881), 174; Stadttempel synagogue, 280; stock market crash (1873), 99, 117, 135; welfare committee in, 184, 271 Villaret, Marquis de, 236 Vindabona (mortgage insurance company), 30–­31 Volhynia, Russian province of, 197 Voltaire, 10 Waddington, William, 161, 162 Wahrmann, Adolf, 284–­85, 286, 287 Waisman family, 234

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Wales, Prince of (“Bertie,” future Edward VII), 54, 56–­59 Wechsler, Théophile, 271, 274–­75, 276 Weichselblatt, Mendel, 237 Weilen, Joseph, 57 Weitz, Eric, 120, 159 Weizmann, Chaim, 4 Werren, Herman, 249 Wertheimer, Caroline (mother of the Baron), 25 Wertheimer, Samson, 25, 162 White, Arnold, 214–­18, 230 Wiener Bankverein, 147 Wilhelm I, German emperor, 64, 163 Wimpffen, Count Felix von, suicide of, 133–­38, 325n34 Woodbine Colony (New Jersey), 204, 339n37 World War, First, 7, 13, 38, 85, 148, 223 Worms, Baron Henry and Fanny de, 67 Yafe (Yoffee), Joseph, 239, 252–­53 Yiddish language, 13, 175, 234, 236, 248 Yom Kippur holiday, Hirsch family and, 61 Young Men’s Hebrew Benevolent Society (Montréal), 15, 206 Zangwill, Israel, 193 Zapata, José V., 241 Zichy, Count, 133 Zionism, 4, 7, 192, 358n67; Argentine colonization scheme compared with, 12–­13, 248, 250, 339n35; as “colonial mimicry,” 289; colonization efforts in Palestine, 191; Hirsch’s criticism of, 208; historiography of, 12; secular, 10–­11. See also Herzl, Theodor; Hibbat Zion movement Zola, Émile, 29, 48 Zuckerkandl, Emil, 57 Zweig, Stefan, 8

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STANFORD STUDIES IN JEWISH HISTORY AND CULTURE David Biale and Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Editors This series features novel approaches to examining the Jewish past in the form of innovative work that brings the field into productive dialogue with the newest scholarly concepts and methods. Open to a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, from history to cultural studies, this series publishes exceptional scholarship balanced by an accessible tone, illustrating histories of difference and addressing issues of current urgency. Books in this list push the boundaries of Jewish Studies and speak compellingly to a wide audience of scholars and students. Liora R. Halperin, The Oldest Guard: Forging the Zionist Settler Past 2021 Samuel J. Spinner, Jewish Primitivism 2021 Sonia Beth Gollance, It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-­Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity 2021 Julia Elsky, Writing Occupation: Jewish Émigré Voices in Wartime France 2020 Golan Y. Moskowitz, Queer Jewish Sendak: A Wild Visionary in Context 2020 Alma Rachel Heckman, The Sultan’s Communists: Moroccan Jews and the Politics of Belonging 2020 Clémence Boulouque, Another Modernity: Elia Benamozegh’s Jewish Universalism 2020 Devi Mays, Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora 2020 Dalia Kandiyoti, The Converso’s Return: Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture 2020 Natan M. Meir, Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800-­1939 2020

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Marc Volovici, German as a Jewish Problem: The Language Politics of Jewish Nationalism 2020 Dina Danon, The Jews of Ottoman Izmir: A Modern History 2019 Omri Asscher, Reading Israel, Reading America: The Politics of Translation Between Jews 2019 Yael Zerubavel, Desert in the Promised Land 2018 Sunny S. Yudkoff, Tubercular Capital: Illness and the Conditions of Modern Jewish Writing 2018 Sarah Wobick-­Segev, Homes Away from Home: Jewish Belonging in Twentieth-­Century Paris, Berlin, and St. Petersburg 2018 Eddy Portnoy, Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press 2017 Jeffrey Shandler, Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age: Survivors’ Stories and New Media Practices 2017 Joshua Schreier, The Merchants of Oran: A Jewish Port at the Dawn of Empire 2017 Alan Mintz, Ancestral Tales: Reading the Buczacz Stories of S. Y. Agnon 2017 Ellie R. Schainker, Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817–­1906 2016 Devin E. Naar, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece 2016 For a complete listing of titles in this series, visit the Stanford University Press website, www.sup.org.

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