THE CULTURAL FORCE OF THE GROUP - ELIAS,N ORBERT AS A PIONEERING THINKER OF THE ZIONIST YOUTH MOVEMENT - 2 PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN LETTERS FROM 1920 AND 1921

From 1918 to 1924 Norbert Elias was one of the predominant thinkers in the Blau-Weiss Zionist Youth Union. Elias not only performed importan t programmatic work for the Union, he was also one of its ''leaders,'' a role which he filled before the 1922 congress of the Zionist Organi zation of Germany in Kassel. Through the Blau-Weiss, Elias made the ac quaintance of Erich Fromm and Leo Lowenthal in 1921. In 1922, however, an ideological dispute flared up between the group centered around El ias and Bandmann and the group loyal to Fromm and Lowenthal. Controver sy arose over the questions of whether it was possible to create a new Jewish identity and what a Jewish ''renaissance'' should entail. Elia s and Bandmann, as pupils of the neo-Kantianist Honigswald, chose the Italian renaissance as their model, while Fromm and Lowenthal followed the neo-religious concept as preached by Martin Buber and Anton Nehem ia Nobel. In the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem, I discovered t he papers left behind by Martin Bandmann (1900-1986), friend of the yo ung Elias. In examining these documents, it became clear that Elias's work for the Blau-Weiss must be interpreted as having laid the groundw ork for his later achievements as a sociologist. All key topics and th e methods for dealing with sociological questions were developed early on within the circle of Jewish intellectuals gathered together in the Blau-Weiss organization.