Bureau of Statistics of Jews

The Bureau for Statistics of the Jews [1] was a member of Berlin at the beginning of the 20. Association founded century, which aimed to promote the research of the social relations of the Jews of all countries with the means and methods of scientific statistics.^{[ 1]}

The later chairman Alfred Nossig founded an association in 1902 in Halensee after many years of preliminary work, which published the collection of Jewish statistics in 1903. After winning the large Jewish organizations and communities for the purposes of the association and pledged their financial support, the association founded on 1. October 1904 a permanent office in Berlin. Local groups of the Bureau were created in Frankfurt am Main, Munich and Berlin^{.[ 2]}

In particular, the directors Jacob Segall and Arthur Ruppin made important contributions to the history of German Jewry. From January 1905, the Bureau published the monthly journal for demographics and statistics of the Jews under Ruppin’s editorial staff,^[[3][4] ^[4]in which, in addition to statisticians, anthropologists such as Felix von Luschan, Maurice Fishberg , Arkadius Elkind ^[5]^[5] and Samuel Weissenberg were represented with treatises on the anthropology of the Jews.

Jewish count or war statistics

Right at the beginning of the war, the Bureau was affiliated with a committee for war statistics under the provisional management. Already on the 14. August 1914 called for a call from the Association of German Jews (founded in 1904 at the suggestion of the CV^[7]) in the General Newspaper of Judaism Jg. 78. No. 33, pp. 388–389, the readers to send the names of Jewish army members “who belong in any capacity of the army or navy” to the association, specifying the exact rank. The collection of materials on the services of war served the Central Association and the Defense Association and nine additional Jewish organizations of the same task “to refute [to be expected] accusations of unsightly behavior of the Jews during the war period”, since “after the war, a re-emergence of the anti-Semitic movement” was expected.^{[ 8]}^[9]

The work did not progress. As recently as the early 1920s, the association sent questionnaires to the rabbis in the congregations. This internal count is not to be confused with the Jewish count proposed by Erzberger and other parliamentarians in 1916.

In May 1921, Jacob Segall (scientific director) and Heinrich Silbergleit (chairman) issued a statistic ( ^[10]). The 84,352 Jewish war participants counted so far made up an estimated 17% of the Jewish population. In 1922, Segall published in Der Schild (1; Journal of the Reichsbund of Jewish Frontline Soldiers) “Some things about the methods of Jewish war statistics”. The fallen were published in the “shield” (1929).^{[ 11]}

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_f%C3%BCr_Statistik_der_Juden