Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg (1947-1934) was born into a Prussian Junker family whose ethos of military discipline, monarchism, and social hierarchy shaped his worldview from childhood. His father, an officer who belonged to the old-landed elite, and his mother, the granddaughter of a philosopher associated with the Königsberg intellectual milieu, provided a home in which loyalty to crown and army was paramount. Hindenburg entered the cadet corps at the age of twelve, beginning a life that would be defined by regularity, duty, and the hierarchical assumptions of Prussian military culture, and he first saw combat in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and again during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, where he fought at Königgrätz and later at Sedan, participating in the final acts that led to German unification. After the war, he continued a slow and steady military career, noted for reliability rather than brilliance, and he eventually retired in 1911 as a respected but not especially celebrated general.
With the outbreak of the First World War, however, Hindenburg was recalled to service at age sixty-six and his life changed quickly in August 1914 with the victory at Tannenberg, a battle whose fame far exceeded its military scope but whose symbolism, particularly as a supposed avenging of a medieval defeat by Slavic forces, catapulted Hindenburg and his chief of staff, Erich Ludendorff, to broad national renown. He became a living symbol, tall, stoic, mustachioed, unemotional and, in the eyes of millions of Germans, the embodiment of Old Prussian martial virtue, as he rose to become Field Marshal and, with Ludendorff, to effectively serve as co-ruler of Germany during the last two years of The Great War. Although his public reputation remained untarnished to many Germans, the military reality of 1918 was a German collapse, and his role in endorsing the “stab-in-the-back” legend, claiming that Germany’s army had not been defeated in the field but undermined by internal enemies, would haunt German politics long after the war.
Following Germany’s defeat and the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hindenburg re-entered private life briefly, but his symbolic importance to the German Right soon pulled him back into public affairs. Running for the presidency of the Weimar Republic in 1925, he was elected as a conservative figure who many Germans saw as a living link to the old empire and as a guarantor of order at a time of great political turbulence. His tenure from 1925 to 1934 straddled the most fragile years of the Weimar Republic, and although his constitutional authority was limited, his symbolic standing was enormous: for a broad spectrum of the German population – including many Jews – he represented stability and legality amidst radicalism, economic crises, and increasingly violent politics.
To understand Hindenburg’s relationship with Jews, one must evaluate several layers: his personal attitudes, his political actions as president, his response to rising antisemitism, how Jews perceived him, and how posterity should assess those perceptions considering tragic subsequent events.
Personally, Hindenburg came from a milieu in which certain casual prejudices common in late nineteenth-century Germany were widespread, but there is no evidence of ideological antisemitism on his part. His military career included working with several Jewish officers, and there are no known statements by him endorsing antisemitic conspiracy theories or the racial antisemitism that was becoming increasingly prominent in the Wilhelmine and Weimar eras. Indeed, during World War One, when the German army conducted an infamous “Jewish census” in 1916 meant to test the loyalty of Jewish soldiers – a humiliating and demoralizing act widely condemned in the Jewish community – the order came from civilian and administrative circles and Hindenburg had no documented role in initiating or promoting it. While it is true that his name was sometimes invoked during wartime antisemitic agitation, there is no reliable record of him personally endorsing those views.
During the Weimar presidency, Hindenburg’s relationship with Germany’s Jews became particularly visible. Despite being the preferred candidate of the nationalist Right, his conduct in office surprised many by its constitutional restraint; he swore an oath to the republican constitution, honored it, and strove to keep the government and the country within legal bounds even as extremist parties grew. Jews in Germany, who generally identified deeply with German culture and the values of the pre-1914 empire, found in him a familiar figure whose sense of order gave them some reassurance. Jewish newspapers of the late 1920s generally reflect cautious respect for the president, even as Jewish civic leaders remained aware of the dangers posed by the growing right-wing movements that were invoking his name.
The seminal aspect of Hindenburg’s presidency was its overlap with the rise of Hitler. For years, he resisted demands from conservative-nationalist parties to appoint the future Fuhrer as chancellor; he repeatedly stated that he held little respect for Hitler’s background, manners, or claims to leadership; and his well-known comment that he viewed the future Nazi tyrant as a “Bohemian corporal” reflected both class disdain and political skepticism. To be clear, his resistance was not undertaken on behalf of Jews specifically but, rather, reflected a broader concern: Hitler and the Nazi Party, in his view, destabilized parliamentary governance and threatened the constitutional framework to which he felt bound.
What is most relevant for Jewish history is that Hindenburg’s presidency, even when conducted through a series of emergency decrees, did not implement antisemitic policies and Jewish civil rights remained intact from 1925 to January 1933. Even when economic and political turmoil worsened, and even when his constitutional authority grew through the extensive use of Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution (1919), he did not use this authority to discriminate against Jews; indeed, in the months after Hitler seized the chancellorship on January 30, 1933, Hindenburg’s presence remained for Jews one of the last visible symbols of legality.
Article 48 was an emergency powers clause that allowed the President of Germany to take extraordinary measures without the prior consent of the Reichstag, including the suspension of civil liberties, the issuance of emergency decrees, and the use of the army to restore public order and security. President Hindenburg frequently used this statute during crises – although never against Jews – and, after 1930, his government increasingly ruled by presidential decree rather than by parliamentary majority. This erosion of normal parliamentary democracy created the conditions that Hitler exploited in 1933, when he used Article 48 to suspend rights following the Reichstag fire and consolidate dictatorial power.
The first early antisemitic measures of the Nazi government were undertaken while Hindenburg was still alive, but his influence, albeit limited, occasionally constrained the radicalism of the new regime. In August 1932, for example, he responded (via his Secretary of State) to a petition from the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, condemning attacks on Jewish rights and expressing disapproval of efforts to limit Jewish political and religious freedoms. Another well-documented case occurred during the 1933 boycott of Jewish businesses, when he insisted that war veterans of Jewish descent, those who had fought for the Kaiser and had bled for Germany, be exempt from certain early anti-Jewish regulations.
The April 1, 1933 German nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses was the first major, centrally orchestrated anti-Jewish action of the Nazi government. Although disingenuously presented by Goebbels as a “defensive” response to alleged foreign press criticism, it was in fact a demonstration of the regime’s power and a warning of what was to come. Units of the SA (short for Sturmabteilung, meaning “Storm Detachment” or “Assault Division,” the Nazi Party’s original paramilitary organization often called “the Brownshirts”) were posted outside Jewish-owned shops, offices, and medical practices; they painted Stars of David on windows, held signs demanding Germans not buy from Jews, and in many places intimidated customers. While the boycott formally lasted only a single day, it marked an unmistakable break with the legal equality German Jews had enjoyed since the 19th century and set the stage for the flood of discriminatory legislation that followed in quick succession.
It was in this early phase, as the Nazis moved almost immediately to purge Jews from the civil service, the legal profession, and cultural institutions, that Hindenburg intervened in a limited but telling way. When the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service – legislation that would remove Jews from government posts – was being drafted, Hindenburg insisted on an exemption for Jewish veterans of the First World War, including those who had fought under his own supreme command, arguing that men who had “bled for Germany” could not simply be cast out. In practice, the exemption applied only narrowly and was often undermined locally, but its inclusion in the law (Section 3) was the direct result of Hindenburg’s insistence.
However, it is important to note that his intervention reflected an older, pre-Nazi sense of military honor and a personal loyalty to war veterans rather than a principled defense of Jewish equality. Thus, he did not object to the boycott itself, nor to the broader aim of reducing Jews’ role in German public life, but only to the inclusion of decorated soldiers in these early purges.
Placed in the context of Hindenburg’s overall treatment of Jews, this episode illustrates both the limits of his power and the limits of his sympathy. Before 1933, he had not been an outspoken antisemite, but he was comfortable with the völkisch right and accepted many of its assumptions about Polish Jews, Eastern “Ostjuden,” and the need to maintain Germany’s ethnic character. He occasionally condemned violent antisemitism, yet he also tolerated antisemitic rhetoric within conservative circles and appointed men with firmly anti-Jewish views to high office. Critically, his decisions in 1932-33 when, among other things, he appointed Hitler as chancellor – foolishly believing that Hitler could be controlled by conservative ministers – showed no meaningful regard for the safety of Germany’s Jews. Once Hitler was in office, Hindenburg signed nearly every major piece of early anti-Jewish legislation that reached his desk, and this one sustained intervention on behalf of Jewish veterans was an isolated gesture grounded in military loyalty, not a defense of Jewish civil rights and, after the boycott and civil-service purge, he made no further substantial efforts to check the growing legal and social marginalization of Jews in the Reich. Thus, while he occasionally moderated Nazi measures at the margins, he ultimately presided over, and legitimated, the dismantling of Jewish equality in Germany.
Hindenburg never visited Eretz Yisrael, nor did he express particular interest in Zionism. Like many traditional conservatives of his era, he saw Jews primarily as German citizens whose loyalty was proved through their patriotism in war and civic life; viewing Zionism as foreign and extraterritorial, he never endorsed it nor commented on its goals in a meaningful public way. At the same time, there is also no evidence that he was hostile to Zionist aspirations; it simply lay far outside his field of concern, as his worldview was shaped by Germany’s past, not by the national movements of other peoples. Within German Zionist writings of the 1920s and early 1930s, Hindenburg appears occasionally as a neutral or distant figure, neither an enemy nor a patron.
The perception of Hindenburg by Jews in Germany and abroad must be understood in the context of the Weimar era’s instability. Many Jews hoped for a conservative but constitutional authority who could contain radicalism, and Hindenburg fit this hope almost perfectly: he was dignified, elderly, committed to legality, and uninterested in demagoguery. In Jewish newspapers from Berlin to Frankfurt, from Hamburg to Breslau, editorials in 1925 and again in 1932 expressed cautious optimism that his presidency would maintain civil equality. Even among Jews who did not share his conservative ethos, there was a widespread acknowledgment that he had acted above factional politics, and international Jewish publications likewise tended to view him as a stabilizing force. In American Jewish journals of the period, one sees several commentaries suggesting that while Hindenburg was not a liberal, he was a man of integrity whose sense of honor could impede the most dangerous anti-Jewish elements within Germany.
This perception is essential for understanding the extraordinary document I exhibit here, a mourning notice issued by the Jewish communities of Germany on August 3, 1934, one day after Hindenburg’s death. The notice and related messages capture a historical moment with remarkable clarity, and they reveal that Jews in Germany, already suffering from intensifying discrimination under Hitler, still believed in what Hindenburg symbolized for them. The language of the document is sincere, formal, and steeped in the civic patriotism that German Jews had long embraced, and its importance cannot be overstated, for it testifies to the degree to which Hindenburg was respected and even revered by the Jewish community of his time. The mourning notice reads:
In the early morning hours of August 2, the first soldier of the World War, Reich President Field Marshal von Hindenburg, passed away. A figure of historic stature and great historical significance has been taken from the German people by his death. Together with all segments of the German people, we, the Jews of Germany, mourn this great and irreplaceable loss. Reich President von Hindenburg served the German homeland in fateful times, in war and in peace. His life was one of personal devotion to his people and his country; his historic achievements will remain forever unforgettable. In reverent sorrow, in deep humility, the German people, together with the world, stand by the bedside of the Reich President and Field Marshal. We, too, the Jews of Germany, join the circle of those deeply shaken by grief.
The Jewish Community Leadership.
The central section continues under the heading “We hereby publish the condolence message of the Reich Representation of German Jews and the letters of condolence sent by the leadership of the Jewish Community of Berlin,” and the document announces that three memorial ceremonies will be held in Berlin on August 12 and presents the telegram sent by the Reich Representation:
In order to express the deep sentiments of the Jews of Germany, the Reich Representation sent the following telegram to the office of the Reich President: “In deep and profound sorrow over the passing of the Reich President, esteemed by the Jews of Germany . . . Hindenburg stood before the world as a man whose personality gave reality to the concept of courageous duty, as a great man with accumulated life experience, as a man who always saw the common good, who always kept his gaze upon the homeland that encompassed all, as an historic figure. His image will remain with the Jews forever.”
Reich Representation of German Jews. Berlin, August 3, 1934.
To this is added a letter by Heinrich Stahl, President of the Berlin Jewish Community under Nazi rule, a man whose own fate reflected the grim future awaiting German Jewry:
The death of the Reich President, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, has cast the Berlin Jewish Community into deep mourning. The Reich President, now resting in paradise, stood unwaveringly at the head of the Reich, after having defended it against overwhelming enemy forces in the greatest war of all time. In him, fervent patriotism was combined with integrity and purity of purpose, and with the will to ensure the well-being of all citizens of the Reich. For the entire German people, he embodied the unity and strength of the Reich. The deep loyalty shown by Field Marshal von Hindenburg to the German people was repaid by the entire nation with love and devotion. The death of the Reich President, von Hindenburg, is a grievous loss that affects the entire German people and every individual within it. On behalf of the Berlin Jewish Community, we extend our sincere condolences to you, esteemed Colonel, and to your family.
Berlin, August 3, 1934.
Born in Rudow near Berlin, Stahl (1868-1942) rose from a successful business career, most notably as a director at the Victoria insurance company, to become one of the most important Jewish communal leaders in Germany during the early years of Nazi rule. Long active in the affairs of Berlin’s Jewish community, he served in its representative assembly and directed its welfare institutions, and just months after Hitler seized power in June 1933, he was elected chairman of the Jüdische Gemeinde zu Berlin (the Berlin Jewish Community), making him the principal representative of the largest Jewish population center in Germany. His leadership commenced at the very moment Jews were being pushed out of economic and professional life, and he quickly became one of the key figures attempting to organize a coherent response to the escalating discrimination.
Under Stahl’s direction, the community expanded its welfare programs, including the creation of a Jewish Winter Relief fund to support those who suddenly found themselves impoverished by the anti-Jewish measures. He also played a significant role in establishing the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland, the umbrella body meant to coordinate Jewish communal activity and advocacy across the country. He signed its founding proclamation and worked to maintain unity among its diverse factions, even when Nazi pressure forced the reorganization of its leadership and diminished the representation of the liberal bloc with which he was associated. He sought not only to preserve aid and educational institutions but also to retain some measure of communal autonomy as long as that remained possible – which it didn’t for very long.
Hindenburg’s presidency intersected with Stahl’s community leadership only briefly, since Hindenburg died two months after Stahl took office, and there was no relationship between the two men. Under Hitler, Stahl confronted an increasingly impossible situation and, by 1940, internal tensions within the Reichsvertretung, particularly between Stahl and Rabbi Leo Baeck, the body’s most prominent spiritual authority, led to Stahl’s removal as chairman of the Berlin community’s board. That same year he attempted to emigrate to Brussels, where several of his children lived, but the Gestapo refused him permission, designating him a “hostage” whose continued presence in Germany served their purposes.
In June 1942, Heinrich Stahl and his wife Jenny were deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt where, although elderly and in weakened health, he was appointed deputy chairman of the camp’s Jewish Council under Jakob Edelstein shortly after arrival. The harsh conditions of the ghetto quickly took their toll, and Stahl died there on November 4, 1942, reportedly of pneumonia and heart failure. Although he was not executed, his death was a direct consequence of the deportation and the deprivation that characterized life in Theresienstadt and, like thousands of his fellow Jews who died there, he is rightly regarded as a victim of the Holocaust. After the war, the Berlin Jewish community established the Heinrich Stahl Prize in his honor, commemorating his integrity, compassion, and the nearly impossible burden of leadership he carried during some of the darkest years in German Jewish history.
Our Hindenburg mourning notice, like many such texts issued publicly during pre-Holocaust years, was issued under conditions of increasing persecution and by leaders who themselves would later be deported and murdered. It testifies to an astonishing and historically important reality: many Jews viewed Hindenburg, with all his faults and limited assistance to the Jews of Germany, as the last remaining protective figure within the collapsing German constitutional order. Their praise of him was not a naïve misunderstanding of his limitations but, rather, a reflection of the political landscape as it existed before total Nazification of Germany. Though antisemitism was rising in society and in politics, the state under Hindenburg did not enact discriminatory laws, and his presence was widely interpreted as a barrier against radicalism.
Our Jewish mourning notice is historically consistent with contemporary Jewish newspapers, private letters, and memoirs that describe Hindenburg with respect, and they also align with reports from Jewish leaders abroad, including in Britain and the United States, who regarded him as a stabilizing elder statesman. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency ran several dispatches in the week after Hindenburg’s death noting the impact on German Jewry. In one early August 1934, under a headline reading “Jews Placed Trust in Von Hindenburg,” the JTA observed that “many German Jews had seen him as the last high-level figure who had shown some semblance of friendship toward them.” It also published a piece under the headline “Jews Hard Hit by the Death of Hindenburg,” which compiled reactions from Jewish leaders across the Reich who mourned the loss of a man they believed had offered limited protection to Jews, while at the same time expressing fear about what his passing meant for the future.
Hindenburg’s death was thus a turning point not only for Germany but also for its Jews. One day later, Hitler combined the offices of President and Chancellor into the singular role of Führer, completing the destruction of constitutional government. The Jewish mourning notice understood the implications with painful clarity, and its grief was national and civic but also personal: the last constitutional protector was gone, and with him the hope that the Nazi regime might be constrained by institutional limits.