The Jüdisch-liberale Zeitung (Jewish Liberal Newspaper) was the official organ of the Vereinigung für das liberale Judentum e.V. (Association for Liberal Judaism). Founded in Breslau in 1920 and based in Berlin as of April 1922, the paper gained serious recognition in the mid-1920s. Its circulation reached about 10,000, and Bruno Woyda served as editor-in-chief through March 1931. The Jüdisch-liberale Zeitung originally represented Liberal Jewry in a religious sense but later took a decidedly more political stance as the Nazi threat loomed. It was in fact one of the first German-Jewish periodicals to be destroyed by the Nazis, though it was reincarnated in November 1934 as the Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung and continued publication through September 1936.

A prolific feuilletonist, novelist, and editor, Doris Wittner (1880–1937) published in both mainstream and Jewish papers. She came from a family of Berlin journalists: her father, Isidor Levy, was an editor of the Berliner Zeitung, and her uncle, Max Albert Klausner, served as political editor of the Berliner Börsen-Courier and later contributed to the Jewish magazine Ost und West. Doris Wittner’s work appeared in major Berlin dailies (Vossische Zeitung and Berliner Tageblatt), literary magazines such as Die Weltbühne, and in periodicals aimed at Jewish readers including the Jüdisch-liberale Zeitung, C.V.-Zeitung, Israelitisches Familienblatt, and Die jüdische Frau. During a career that spanned nearly four decades, she helped shape the genre of the feuilleton by producing a wide range of cultural criticism. Much of her work emphasized the talents of prominent Jewish figures and aimed to advance an awareness of Jewish literature, history, and culture. In 1931, Wittner was also involved in founding and editing a short-lived Jewish journal, Freie jüdische Monatsschau. In this journal and in many of her other articles, Wittner championed Jewish women and their accomplishments. In addition, two of Wittner’s novels were published in serialized installments in the Weimar Jewish press (Der tote Jude in the Jüdisch-liberale Zeitung; and Das Auge Afrikas in the Jüdische Bibliothek supplement of the Israelitisches Familienblatt, both in 1926–27).

The subject of this feuilleton is Danish-Jewish critic Georg Brandes (1842–1927), who lived in Berlin for five years beginning in 1877. A number of his works were translated from Danish into German, and Wittner first wrote about Brandes on the occasion of his visit to Berlin in 1925. This article from December 1930 discusses the German translation of Henri Nathansen’s biography of Brandes, using it as a point of departure to address such broader concerns as antisemitism, Zionism, assimilation, and European Jewish identity.

Further Reading:

• Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).
• Margaret T. Edelheim-Muehsam, “The Jewish Press in Germany,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 1 (1956): 163-76.
• Herbert Freeden, The Jewish Press in the Third Reich, trans. William Templar (Providence: Berg Publishers, Inc., 1993).
• Henri Nathansen, Jude oder Europäer. Porträt von Georg Brandes (Frankfurt am Main: Rütten and Leoning, 1931).
• Kerry Wallach, “Front-Page Jews: Doris Wittner’s (1880–1937) Berlin Feuilletons,” in Discovering Women’s History: German-Speaking Journalists (1900–1950), ed. Christa Spreizer (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014), 123–45.