With this new study, Anthony D. Kauders provides an insightful and controversial overview of Jewish life in western Germany and West Berlin since 1945. Though covering the entire period since the Second World War, Unmögliche Heimat is not a strictly linear survey. Rather, Kauders explores six interconnected themes central to Jewish life in post-Holocaust Germany: guilt, money, Israel, issues of democracy, community and cultural life, and the future after reunification.

The Jewish community in West Germany, which numbered 20,000 to 40,000, existed despite historical circumstances and the wishes of its presumptive allies. While Jews who lived in Germany before 1933 were generally at home there, most Jews residing in West Germany after 1945/1949 were eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors or their children. Germany was not their natural home. Its culture was alien, if not hostile to them. They felt little connection to their neighbors. At the same time, Jewish groups abroad actively discouraged them from remaining in Germany.

Kauders asserts that guilt was the primary factor in shaping the Jews' attitudes and responses to external events—German guilt over the Holocaust, Jewish guilt for settling in the land of the perpetrators. While German intellectuals debated culpability for the Holocaust, politicians exploited voters' discontent with reminders of guilt and their resentment of Jewish displaced persons, many of whom were active in the shadow economy. Somewhat awkwardly appended to this elucidation of German discussions of guilt is an examination of the guilt experienced by Jews who chose to remain in Germany, even when boycotted by foreign Jewish groups. Many of them internalized the criticism of their foreign coreligionists and became vigorous advocates for Israel.

The issue of Jewish economic life in the Federal Republic is an intriguing and complicated one. According to Kauders, many Jews aimed to achieve material success so that they could leave Germany at any time on their own terms. For them, money equaled freedom. To maximize freedom, so-called import-export businesses were preferred to civil service positions or professions whose qualifications were specific to Germany. While most Jews in Germany had solidly middle-class occupations by the 1960s, not a few were successful real estate speculators and developers. They facilitated the transformation (or destruction) of Frankfurt's bourgeois, residential Westend, which allegedly showed their distance from non-Jewish, German society. Their clashes with leftist, anti-capitalist activists were marked by anti-Semitic insinuations or invective. The payment of reparations was another issue of vital importance to the Jews, but one that separated them from their non-Jewish neighbors. It seems that many Jews remained in Germany because of reparations payments. Some even left underdeveloped Israel for West Germany. But qualifying for reparations payments could be excruciatingly diffcult and entail great bureaucratic obstacles, and non-Jewish Germans opposed the reparations agreements with Israel and foreign Jewish groups.

To compensate for their presence in the land of the Jews' former tormenters, exaggerated and even uncritical support for Israel became de rigeur in the Jewish community of West Germany. Fundraising for the Jewish state became a competition, with stingy donors shamed into giving more. It was quite common for community members to maintain familial and recreational ties to Israel, and they saw themselves as a bridge between West Germany and Israel. Jews of the so-called second generation, though raised in Germany, often located their self-understanding between Germany and Israel. By the 1980s and the era of the Lebanon War, however, many young Jews adopted a more nuanced or even highly critical view of Israel. At the same time, they were more self-confident about their identity as Jews in Germany with a role to play in local civil society and culture.

The community's offcial leaders, namely in the Central Council of Jews in Germany, saw their function as guardians of West German democracy and living reminders of Germany's recent past. Moreover, Kauders argues that in exchange for giving West Germany their imprimatur and arguing against the collective guilt thesis, the state acknowledged their role as political actors. On the other hand, they struggled to achieve recognition from Israeli and international Jewish organizations, which ignored or boycotted them. Over time, even German Zionists developed largely into defenders of Jewry in the Federal Republic and defenders of the Federal Republic itself. Their participation in Jewish assemblies helped to legitimate West Germany in Israel and throughout the Jewish world, but their close association with German political elites also drew accusations of opportunism and sycophancy.

Communal life initially flourished as Jewish institutions provided a home setting for those who had lost their homes and homelands in the Holocaust, but the seeds of demise were sown. Eastern European survivors—often the majority of local Jewish communities—tended to live relatively isolated lives, socializing among themselves and sending their children to Israel for vacation or studies. While Jews of German origin engaged more with society, there was still little attempt made to forge a new, dynamic German-Jewish identity for the next generation. Culturally and religiously, the communities began to stagnate by the late 1950s as indifferent youths and empty synagogues vexed communal leaders. With the turbulence of the late 1960s, voices of criticism emerged as children reproached their parents for failing to transmit a meaningful Jewish identity, for neglecting cultural issues in favor of politics, and for repressing any pluralism in the ossified communities. Kauders depicts a Central Council that was behind the times and reluctant to address the changes in the world or in German Jewry. Young Jews felt alienated and disengaged from their communities. By the end of the 1980s, affliated Jewry in Germany was rapidly getting smaller and older.

In the 1990s the arrival of Jews from the former Soviet Union changed the landscape. With an average age in their 40s, often possessing non-transferable university credentials, knowing little about Judaism as a religion, and not sharing the cultural heritage or Holocaust memory of their German-born core-ligionists, they were exceedingly diffcult to integrate socially and economically. At the same time, the community underwent a process of diversification and pluralization, partially a reaction to the different Jewish experiences and non-Orthodox religious views of the Russians. This took place against a backdrop of renewed societal interest in Jewish life and culture within the context of a multicultural Germany, with both positive and problematic implications.

This book rests upon a large, often specialized, and growing literature on Jews in Germany since 1945. While neither the master narrative that the field will ultimately require nor an exhaustive study of the topic, Unmögliche Heimat deftly synthesizes earlier studies and effectively probes heretofore unavailable sources. Kauders has set the tone for future debate and examination of this community.