Stefanie Mahrer’s biographical study of Salman Schocken (1877–1959) is the latest addition to a small, but growing body of scholarly works on the department store magnate, cultural Zionist, bibliophile philanthropist, and publisher. The range of roles Schocken played in Germany, Palestine/Israel, and the US, coupled with his colorful life and personality, explains his attractiveness to scholars of various disciplines. The results of this interest include comprehensive histories of the Berlin-based Schocken Verlag by Volker Dahm and of the department store empire by Konrad Fuchs; a biography by Anthony David; and two edited volumes.1

Since Schocken’s life and work were shaped by three highly different cultural, geographical, and social contexts, Mahrer, a Swiss-based historian, calls her study “topographies of a life,” placing it in the framework of the “topographical turn,” a concept she distinguishes from the “spatial turn” (p. 24). Her larger aim is “a contribution to opening up the concept of space for biographical research” (pp. 24–25). She places her work into the conceptual context of the “life world,” as developed by sociologist Alfred Schuetz (p. 22). The study is based on the Schocken Archive in Jerusalem, the correspondence with important actors in the Schocken orbit, and the small archive of the New York-based publishing house Schocken Books (today an imprint of Penguin Random House).

Mahrer divides her study according to the major places where Schocken lived. She devotes some 150 pages to his life in Germany (1898–1933), where he migrated from his East European place of birth and upbringing; some 175 pages to Jerusalem (1933–1940); and some 70 pages to New York. She argues, however, that Schocken’s life and work had their place in the “in-between” spaces he inhabited through his migrations and social rise (p. 21).

Mahrer first details crucial aspects of Schocken’s business activities in Germany, out of which grew the “Schocken system:” Curiosity, an analytical mindset, tight control, and an educational impetus shaped not only the department store empire, but many of Schocken’s other activities over the course of his life (p. 51). Such factors also played a role in his (re-)turn to Judaism and his Zionism in the early 1910s, and especially when Schocken later took on important organizational roles in the Zionist movement in Germany (pp. 63–71). His publishing house in Germany can be seen as a confluence of his economic and cultural-religious interests. Books for him were vehicles to strengthen Jewish culture and identity in the diaspora. Drawing on sources from the Schocken Archive, Mahrer’s sketch of the Schocken Verlag (1931–38) confirms and illustrates earlier portraits, particularly the one by Dahm. She focuses on the role of books in social and cultural networks and in the context of Jewish spiritual resistance against the Nazi regime, but also on their aesthetics, an aspect central to Schocken’s fascination.

The focus and original contribution of the study are mostly in the “Jerusalem” part of the biography. It focuses on Schocken’s villa and library as centers of social and cultural networks of German-Jewish refugee and émigré intellectuals. Within this framework, Mahrer shows Schocken’s move to Palestine in 1933/34 as successful in outward terms, but otherwise deeply disruptive given his deep rootedness in Europe and its culture and lifestyle. She analyzes the functions of the Schocken Library for his circle in Jerusalem (pp. 258–62). Mahrer explores how Schocken as a transplanted European in Palestine contributed to the emerging cultural infrastructure of the Jewish community there, especially as the administrative head of the Hebrew University (1935–45). She argues that his considerable success in this function was largely obliterated by the fact that he spent the years from 1940 to 1945 in New York, which critics saw as abandoning the community at the most critical time (p. 303).

The “Jerusalem” section concludes with a chapter illustrating how Schocken from 1933 to 1940 in many ways lived “between two realities:” between Palestine and Europe, normalcy and persecution, success and failure (pp. 315–16). Schocken’s move to New York in 1940 reflects his sense of being uprooted from his home in the transnational space between Europe and Palestine (pp. 366–67). Mahrer concludes with the assessment that for Schocken the experience of expulsion and exile was so disruptive that his subsequent life in the in-between ultimately left him homeless (p. 438).

Mahrer is transparent when questions in her story remain unanswered, either because of a lack of records or due to Schocken’s personality, which contemporaries described as distant and solitary. Mahrer presents a balanced and multifaceted, un-hagiographic portrait of her fascinating subject. Nevertheless, Schocken remains elusive even in this long biography, which could have been trimmed significantly to cut repetitive segments and digressions into sub-topics.

While Mahrer handles an impressive number of primary sources, her lack of engagement with important English-language scholarly literature is problematic. She makes no reference to pertinent and current works on crucial questions of her study, among them the spatial turn, transnationalism, or migration history. Michael Brenner’s book on the Jewish cultural renaissance in interwar Germany is absent, as is the work of Marion Kaplan and David Sorkin on the embourgeoisement of Jews in imperial Germany.2 Relying on outdated sources, like an 1871 definition of culture (p. 214), is obviously questionable. One result of this limited engagement with relevant scholarship is the apparently un-reflected use of charged concepts such as “assimilation” (p. 65), and a limited exploration of the relevance of cultural Zionism as an ideology driving Schocken.

Mahrer summarily dismisses Anthony David’s Schocken biography, which due to its unreliability and mistakes “cannot be taken into consideration for the study at hand” (p. 26, p. 437). Undoubtedly, David’s work is deeply flawed by factual errors and unprovable assertions, yet it can be understood as capturing the spirit of Schocken’s life.

The short section on Schocken’s New York-centered life after 1940 is problematic for different reasons. Mahrer references little of the rich material the Schocken Archive holds about the American publishing house. Moreover, this section contains overly simplified depictions, such as the assertion that around 1945 “American Jewry had emancipated itself from European Jewry and looked to the future with self-confidence” (p. 396).

Beyond these concerns, the reading experience is less enjoyable than it could be due to many questionable terms (“Old Testament,” “German-Jewish symbiosis”), repetitions, and a pattern of burdening single sentences with up to two or three footnotes. A troubling number of names, from historical figures to contemporary scholars, Schocken authors and members of the family, are misspelled. The absence of a subject index complicates the practical use of the book.

Those problems notwithstanding, Mahrer’s study is a welcome contribution, adding a new perspective and important information on Salman Schocken. It will, one hopes, spur more scholarship on the diverse topics that Salman Schocken’s life and work touched.

Notes:
1 Volker Dahm, Das jüdische Buch im Dritten Reich II. Salman Schocken und sein Verlag, in: Archiv für Geschichte des Buchwesens XXII (1982), col. 301–916; Konrad Fuchs, Ein Konzern aus Sachsen. Das Kaufhaus Schocken als Spiegelbild deutscher Wirtschaft und Politik, 1901–1953, Stuttgart 1990; Anthony David, The Patron. A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877–1959, New York 2003; Saskia Schreuder / Claude Weber (eds.), Der Schocken Verlag/Berlin. Jüdische Selbstbehauptung in Berlin, 1931–1938, Berlin 1994; Antje Borrmann / Doreen Mölders / Sabine Wolfram (eds.), Konsum & Gestalt. Leben und Werk von Salman Schocken und Erich Mendelsohn vor 1933 und im Exil, Berlin 2016.
2 Michael Brenner, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, New Haven 1998; Marion Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class. Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany, New York 1991; David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1780–1840, Oxford 1987.