This social history describes the problems encountered by East European Jews following their emigration to Germany at the end of the 19th century. It examines their treatment at the hands of both German Jews and Gentiles and explores the effects and consequences of such a hostile reception.

When East European Jews migrated westward in ever larger numbers between 1870 and 1914, both German government officials and the leaders of German Jewry were confronted by a series of new challenges. What policies did government leaders devise to cope with the seemingly unending tide of Jews flooding across Germany's borders? What was the actual, as opposed to the perceived, character of these Jewish migrants? How did native Jews respond to the arrival of coreligionists from the East? Drawing on archival research conducted in East and West Germany, Israel, and the United States, Unwelcome Strangers probes into these questions, touching on some of the most troubling issues in modern German and Jewish history--the behavior of Germans toward strangers in their midst, the status and self-perception of emancipated Jews in pre-Nazi Germany, and the responses of "privileged" Jews to needy, but alien, coreligionists.

With arresting scholarship, Wertheimer has written a first-class analysis of the German and German-Jewish reception of East European Jews immigrating to Germany, 1871-1914...Replete with much new historical data, this compelling work is social history at its best; it is the best book on the subject. Essential for historians and students of history.