Jewish-Muslim Friendship Networks: A Study of Intergenerational Boundary Work in Postwar Germany

Abstract

This article presents a little-known story of Jewish-Muslim coexistence in Germany after World War Two. Using an ethnographic case study of Frankfurt am Main’s train-station district (Bahnhofsviertel), the analysis investigates long-term and partially forgotten Jewish-Muslim narratives, relations, and neighborhood encounters, paying particular attention to the changing political, spatial, and temporal dimensions that have blurred or closed symbolic boundaries between Jews and Muslims since the late 1960s. Bringing together the scholarship on symbolic boundaries and urban diversity, the theoretical discussion contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the variegated processes of Jewish-Muslim boundary-making and un-making over time, as well as the macro- and micro-level influences which shape these negotiations and outcomes. Studying Jewish-Muslim relations at the neighborhood level by adopting a boundary-related approach brings out more clearly the tensions over groupism and fluidity in theoretical debates and removes the current exceptionalism around Jewish-Muslim themes, making them more easily compared with other boundary processes within everyday life.