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Franz Rosenzweig, who actually served in the Balkans, wrote to his parents “I was never aware before the outbreak of the war, how completely I do not feel at all like a German.” That sentiment was clearly the exception. German Jewish draft evaders and army deserters were also the exceptions. Uniformed soldiers, organized relief workers, and home-front volunteers were the rule. Most German Jews were eager to fight for the Fatherland as a way of registering their love for a country whose virtue and cause they never doubted.
Franz Rosenzweig was born in Kassel on December 25, 1886. He studied philosphy and history at the universities of Berlin and Freiburg and received his doctorate in 1917. Although he contemplated conversion to Christianity for some time, he finally rejected this course and returned to Judaism with increasing commitment. After his army service in World War I he started writing his seminal work Der Stern der Erlösung [The Star of Redemption] which his sent home from the field on postcards. After the war Rosenzweig founded the Freie Jüdische Lehrhaus in Frankfurt, designed to bring assimilated German Jews back to the teachings of Judaism. Rosenzweig was the author of several philosophical works and the co-author of a new translation of the Hebrew Bible together with Max Buber. Rosenzweig died in Frankfurt on December 10, 1929, after a long and debilitating illness.
Handwritten manuscript of an essay, Die Sachverständigen [The Experts] written by Franz Rosenzweig while serving in Macedonia, 1917. This essay belongs to a series of letters on philosophical and contemporary issues that Rosenzweig wrote in letter form and sent to his home address in Kassel to be published after the war.
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