The wandering Jew

The 19th century saw the development of a well-oiled German Jewish charitable system that took care of locals and foreigners.

By ALEXANDER ZVIELLI
Schnorrers: Wandering Jews in Germany 1850-1914 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Schnorrers: Wandering Jews in Germany 1850-1914
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Dr. Roni Aaron Bornstein, a graduate in European history from Tel Aviv University, spent two years at the Free University of Berlin researching the unusual topic of wandering Jews, or Wanderarmen, meaning “the wandering poor,” who moved from one established German community to another in search of income and protection, and who were often entirely dependent on the support of the local Jewish population and Jewish organizations. They depended on charity and good identification papers.
Bornstein’s Schnorrers presents us with a little-known and less-remembered Jewish world of yesterday in which a well-organized charitable foundation played an important role. This is the story of thousands of Jewish beggars, poor migrants – men and women, some with children – who lived in or wandered across Germany, a few of them on their way to a better world, about a century ago.
Nicknamed “schnorrers,” many were German- born, while others came from neighboring countries. They wandered from one place to another, depending on charity, and their presence, wherever and for how long, was tolerated by local benefactors and local authorities. Today the word schnorrer refers to someone who acquires benefits without contributing anything.
Many of these wandering beggars acquired their condition in the countries of their birth as the result of war, revolution and persecution. Others became debtors, stole and fled their homelands, pursued by the authorities. Abandoned widows, bankrupt businessmen and unemployed elderly craftsmen ended their lives in the permanent pursuit of daily meals and a roof over their heads. Russian Jews who suffered economic hardships, political persecution and the fear of enforced conscription for a life-long military service in the Czarist army sought and found a safe haven in Germany.
However bitter their fate they saw in Germany a prosperous nation and were convinced that their more opulent Jewish brothers would not let them perish. And indeed, German Jews saw to it that the beggars and professional wanderers were never hungry. They were provided with a roof and protection from persecution by the frequently difficult German authorities; and were taught trades and professions.
This evident truth deserves to be recalled and remembered.
WHILE MUCH documentation relating to such wanderers’ history and fate was lost, some community archives survived and provided Bornstein with the necessary information. The 19th-century industrialization of Germany, along with high unemployment triggered by severe economic recession, saw the many Jews who sought refuge there and who were still able to work winding up destitute, having to approach the established Jewish communities for shelter, material support, food, medical care and sometimes guidance on how and where to seek protection from the police and other German authorities.
In the 1870s, the sheer number of such migrants became a serious problem, and any assistance provided by well-established German Jewry soon became a burden; and a source of frequent friction between unfortunate migrants and the local Jewish community.
It was in order to deal with this problem that the Deutsch-Israelitischer Gemeindebund (the German-Jewish Community Federation) was founded in Berlin on June 29, 1869. The organization offered financial support to transients, local and non-German migrants, loaned money in times of need and set up a housing project, employment agency, emergency health clinic and training center. The surviving documents, which outlined detailed accounts of such communal activities, assisted the author in his present study and allowed him to reach his demographic conclusions.
The Federation assisted Jews who crossed through Germany, on their way to the West, in search for a better existence.
Many schnorrers and wanderers established their own routes and advised each other when and where to move. At the end of the 19th century, more regional organizations were founded in order to centralize local efforts to deal with beggars and wanderarmen. A demographic study of wanderer occupations found that many of them were good tailors, shoemakers, butchers and other skilled tradesmen who could start a productive life under proper conditions.
The well-established German-Jewish communities had thus found in the federation the most efficient way to handle the problems presented by individual beggars and wanderers, which could no longer be solved on an individual basis. The wanderarmen from different countries differed in their aims and attitudes, but the organization held them together. Thus the German-Jewish organizations not only fulfilled their local responsibilities, but often helped emigrants to become efficient and prosperous at their destinations.
THE FEDERATION established Jewish workers’ colonies and set up hostels for the homeless. It provided the necessary papers for individual wanderers and intervened with the authorities. It also took particular care of the elderly and sick.
Later, similar organizations were created for beggars and wanderers throughout Eastern Europe. Many poor wanderers assisted by the Jewish organizations reached the New World through Hamburg and other German ports and started a more productive life there.
The story of this book reminds us of our own social responsibilities. There are, no doubt, quite a number of such wanderers and beggars in Israel today, and it is up to us, to the government and to our national institutions to offer them our full and well-organized understanding and assistance.