Introduction

Of the 94 full professorships in mathematics at German universities and institutes of higher education at the end of the Weimar Republic, twenty were held by Jewish mathematicians. Indeed if we consider the entire period between 1914 and 1933, as many as twenty-eight of these chairs were at least temporarily occupied by scholars who were Jewish or of Jewish descent. And although the exact number of Extraordinariate — paid or unpaid professorships of lower rank — is difficult to determine and was subject to constant fluctuation, we can assume that the percentage of Jewish mathematicians among them was similar. If we add to this the number of scholars who as a result of anti-Semitism or other factors were not permitted to submit a habilitation thesis and thus qualify for professorship, and if we keep in mind, too, the many Jewish mathematicians at German-speaking universities in Zurich, Vienna, Prague and other cities, it becomes clear that mathematical life in pre-1933 Germany and neighboring German-speaking countries was to a considerable extent a German-Jewish mathematical life.