Chapter 5 Altneuland’s Entanglement in German Racial and Colonial Discourses

The previous chapter focused on the intended readership of Altneuland and the different ways in which German colonialism was mediated both for a Jewish and non-Jewish public. These discursive interventions aimed to promote involvement in colonial enterprises among Jews and make Zionist colonization palatable for non-Jews by integrating it into a broader German colonial movement. This chapter deals with other forms of discursive interventions meant to purge antisemitism, though not necessarily racism, out of the racial and colonial discourses. The aim was to strengthen liberal conceptions of imperialism and increase acceptance and social prestige for German Jewry. To this end, Altneuland fostered strong ties to liberal imperialists who demanded a careful approach to indigenous populations and connected colonial expansions with social and political reform of the motherland.2 These ties outlived the First World War, resulting in the establishment of Pro-Palästina – Deutsches Komitee zur Förderung der jüdischen Palästinasiedlung [Pro-Palestine – German Committee for Promoting Jewish Settlement in Palestine] founded in 1918 to lobby for Zionism. Essays by Altneuland contributors such as Otto Eberhard, Max Blanckenhorn and Davis Trietsch were predominant in the publications of the short-lived Pro-PalästinaKomitee.3 The utter dissonance between colonial fantasies and colonial reality cannot be emphasized enough.While Altneuland was being published, German colonial