Dear editors, dear colleagues,

When I was asked to contribute an article to Ab Imperio I was delighted and felt very much honored. In consequence of the intensive cooperation with Aleksandr Kaplunovskij who translated my article I also gained an exceedingly good impression of this journal’s working methods. I was very surprised, though, when I discovered the term host culture in the abstract of my article. To be sure, I am aware of the fact that it is sometimes being used in sociological and historical literature, but would never have thought of using it myself (especially in the context of Jewish – non-Jewish relations).
The presence of Jews along the Rhine since the 4th century A.D. is an established fact. Thus they lived there already at a time when the German culture into which they were to acculturate did not even exist yet. Therefore, the Jews of the 18th through 20th centuries, the time period my article deals with, were no guests in Germany but were just as indigenous as the non-Jews who were not their “hosts.” There existed several cultures side by side, and during the process of acculturation the Jews absorbed certain elements of the dominant (majority) culture and then blended them with their own (minority) culture. A similar situation prevailed in the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in which Jews were living since the 13th century and where the coexistence of various ethnic groups and cultures was even more strongly pronounced. For this reason the term “host culture” does not apply to the train of thought of my article.
In addition the term host (just as the German term Wirt) is at the same time a biological term. One talks of a parasite and its host. In just this sense anti-Semites talked about “Jewish parasites” and the “Germans” (by which they meant of course non-Jews as the host nation). Such terminology does not belong into the abstract of an article which appears under my name.
I therefore ask you to bring this letter to the attention of your readers.

Sincerely yours,

Trude Maurer

Professor,
Seminar on Medieval and Modern History,
University of Göttingen, Germany.
tmaurer1@gwdg.de