Meno Burg

Meno Burg (9 October 1789 – 26 August 1853), known as the Judenmajor (Jew major), was a Prussian Army officer. Burg reached the highest rank ever attained by a Jew in the Prussian army during the 19th century. However, his military career was marred by constant antisemitism.

Education and civilian career

Meno Burg was born into a Jewish family of poor circumstances in Berlin, Margraviate of Brandenburg. After visiting Jewish schools, Burg entered in December 1802 the Berlin Municipal School (German: ), a secondary school later known as . He left the school in 1804 to become an apprentice to his cousin Salomo Sachs, a royal building inspector. He visited the Berlin Building Academy (German: ), where he finished in 1807 the exam as field-surveyor (German: ). Like his cousin who was the first Jew who had entered the Prussian civil service under Frederick William II, Burg became a civil servant under Frederick William III. In doing so, Burg had entered into a field which was outside of the professions Jews were allowed to enter in Prussia according to the prevailing regulations of the 'Revised General Concession and Regulation' (German: ) dated 17 April 1750. It appears that due to the political circumstances, the regulations governing the Jews in Prussia were not strictly followed. According to the legal situation at the time, Burg could have been denied to enter his chosen profession. Burg was already a government employee, when the new Prussian civil rights legislation for Jews (German: ) was enacted on 11 March 1812. This law naturalised Jewish inhabitants of Prussia as Prussian citizens, a franchise established in 1810 when doing away with the prior estates (nobility, serfs, burghers, Huguenots, etc.), but the admission to government positions was not called for and was reserved for future legislation.

Enlistment in the Prussian Army during the War of Liberation

Burg was awaiting his final exam at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, when he volunteered on 14 February 1813 for the military service to fight for 'Prussia's freedom and rebirth', as he put it. The troop of his choice was the Guard Infantry Battalion (German: ) in Breslau, an elite unit of the infantry. After only a few days, he was discharged from this unit on the grounds that Jews were "under the existing laws and the prevailing circumstances" not allowed to serve in the Guard. The rejection of Jewish soldiers in the Guard appears to have been a matter of course for the established circles. State Chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg, usually a supporter of equal rights for the Jews, left Burg's two requests for re-enlistment in the Guard unanswered. Hereupon, Burg decided to apply for the artillery, a branch of the service which was considered less prestigious by the Prussian nobility and more suitable for the middle-classes. To avoid risking another discharge, Burg applied to the service chief of the artillery (German: ), Prince August of Prussia, who secured for him an admission. Since Burg's accomplishments were widely recognized, the lieutenants of his unit recommended him after just nine months of service to become an officer. However, the promotion was vetoed by the base commander (German: Platzkommandant) Captain Karl Moritz Ferdinand von Bardeleben, stating that "as long as (he) had something to say, no Jew shall be officer in the artillery". Consequently officer cadets, who had been trained by Burg, were promoted before him. Even his transfer to a combat unit did not help him to get promoted earlier. Only a mention of bravery could have accelerated his promotion, but his unit was not deployed to the front.

Burg was not the first Prussian officer of Jewish faith. Other Prussian Jews had already become officers at the beginning of the war. They were soldiers in combat units who had been promoted during combat, or they belonged to the militia, the Free Corps (German: ) or the Landwehr (National Guard).#tag:ref|These formations had different rules for advancement than in the regular army. Then he was invited to be baptized, to make the promotion possible, what Burg ultimately rejected. Burg requested the baptism once in 1824, but then he postponed his request "because of family relationships" on 16 November 1824.

On 6 December 1830 Burg had to learn, that the King did not even want to appoint him to the rank of a captain of the army, because he had not attained "the salvation of the Christian faith". Burg's accomplishments in the service and the fact that he was a well-known book author and a respected military educator were not taken into consideration. Since it simply came down to discrimination based on his belief, Burg considered quitting the army. Completely unforeseen, he was finally promoted to the rank of a captain of the artillery, on time and according to his seniority. He could not, however, wear the uniform of the artillery, but only the uniform of an armory captain (German: ), a special branch in the Prussian army that ranked at the bottom.

Officer in the Pre-March Era

In the Pre-March Era it needed a new chief of the artillery, Prince Adalbert of Prussia, and a new king Frederick William IV to remove the injustice of the discriminatory (German for: "corps [or troop-function] color"). Through a cabinet order of 16 April 1844, Burg was allowed to replace the black epaulettes of the armory with the red epaulettes of the artillery.

That was not the end of the discrimination. As the rank and quarter lists of the Prussian Army show, Burg was passed over by others who had entered the service after him. On 27 March 1847, Burg was granted the "character of a Major in the artillery" (German: ). That was actually not a real promotion. His uniform showed to the outside that he was a major, but in reality he did not serve on an established post of a major. He did not receive the salary of a major and he was not "in line" for another promotion.#tag:ref|Rieger is the only author who clearly identified this final discrimination.

Burg had to endure similar experiences when it came to the award of military medals. Although he had been recommended since 1838 by the commander of the United Artillery and Engineer School for the Order of the Red Eagle (German: ) Class IV, it took more than three years until the medal was finally awarded to him by king Frederick William IV. The value of the medal can be explained with the fact that in the Artillery Brigade, which Burg belonged to until his promotion to captain, had been – at the moment of the award of the medal to Burg – under eighteen captains only one who had the medal and among the eight captains at his school, where he worked as an instructor, Burg was the only one. It appears that the Prussian kings did not hesitate as much when it came to awarding civilian medals to Jews. Burg repeatedly received high civilian awards.#tag:ref|On 28 Jan 1845 Burg was awarded the "Golden Medal of Science".

Burg tried to strictly separate between his government service and his religion. This proved to be nearly impossible, because both his government, which described itself as "Christian", as well as his congregation, who considered itself "orthodox", did not adhere to a strict separation between church and state. As a soldier, Burg was not able to strictly follow the Jewish ceremonial laws. That means that he had to disengage himself from a strict orthodoxy. In this respect, he is an example for a neo-orthodox, who felt that government service does not preclude the ceremonial law.

Loyal monarchist Prussian

Burg described himself in his memoirs as a Prussian loyal to the crown and devoted to the king. Religiously he was rooted in Judaism. One did not exclude the other. He shared his political views and his patriotism with many in the educated German Jewish community, with whom he socially interacted, who wanted to assimilate into German society and who felt increasingly accepted.

During the years 1847 to 1849 Burg was engaged in writing his autobiography, which was published in 1854 in Berlin under the title ("history of my life in service").

In the March Revolution of 1848, Wolfgang Straßmann and eight further revolutionaries sought refuge in Burg's house at Berlin's Poststrasse when their barricades were attacked by Prussian troops on 18 March 1848. Except of Straßmann, who hid in the bed of one of Burg's servant girls, all of them were executed on the spot.

On 26 August 1853, Burg died as one of the first victims of the cholera epidemic. The funeral, which was conducted on 29 August with military honors, was a big event for the city of Berlin. The police estimated that about 60,000 people had gathered.

Publications