Rethinking the History of Muslim Jewish Relations: Jewish Convert Hugo Marcus and Muslim Responses to Nazism in Germany, 1933–39

From 1923 to 1935, Hugo Marcus (1880-1966) was among the leading German Muslims in Berlin. Marcus, the son of a Jewish industrialist, studied at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Berlin in the first decade of the twentieth century. To support his family after financial reverses caused by World War I, Marcus tutored foreign Muslim doctoral students in German. He converted to Islam, adopted the name Hamid, and for a dozen years was the most important German in Berlin’s new mosque community, despite not ending his membership in the Jewish community. The Nazis incarcerated Marcus in Sachsenhausen concentration camp as a Jew in 1938, and, as he claimed, he remained there until a delegation led by his imam, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah (1898-1956), gained his release. Abdullah obtained Marcus a visa to travel to British India, where a sinecure at a Muslim organization awaited him. Just before the outbreak of World War II, using travel documents secured by the imam, Marcus was able to escape to Switzerland instead, where he intended to establish an Islamic cultural center.

These facts alone challenge many deeply engrained preconceptions about Muslim attitudes to Jews. Who were these tolerant Muslims who created an intellectual and spiritual home for Marcus and allowed him to rise to be the representative of their community? Why did they risk the standing of their community in Nazi Germany to save his life? Hugo Marcus and Muhammad Abdullah do not figure in academic and popular narratives of Muslims during World War II. Why is their extraordinary story of Jewish-Muslim interaction practically unknown? What are its implications for the history of Muslims of Europe? In answering these questions, this paper sheds new light on the interconnected histories of Jews and Muslims in modern European history.