Did Joseph Goebbels have Jewish Ancestry?

Joseph Goebbels - the Minister for Propaganda and Enlightenment of the Third Reich - needs little introduction, but it isn't so well-known that since the days of his success as the legendary and ruthless Gauleiter of Berlin. There have been various claims that he was of jewish ancestry swirling around him.

The most prominent these accusations came from Otto Strasser who authored an article weirdly arguing that signs of physical disability were the result of race-mixing (the unstated sub-text being: 'with jews') which had the implication that someone who had such a disability (like Goebbels' club foot) could not be truly German. (1)

This is obviously a ludicrous claim to make as physical disability can occur from accidents, illness (polio for example) and genetic conditions but not as far as we know from miscegenation. That said these claims of Goebbels' supposed jewish ancestry have continued to swirl around the more credulous corners of the internet.

Before we deal with the accusations made there lets recap on what we know of Goebbels' familial origins:

His German father Friedrich ('Fritz') Goebbels was the son of a textile salesman named Conrad Goebbels and a farmer's daughter named Gertrud. (2) There is no suggestion any where in the records that either Conrad or Gertrud were anything other than ordinary working class Germans scratching what living they could in a world in economic flux. (3) Indeed their son Fritz's extreme devotion to - and constancy in his support for - Catholicism (4) suggests that is indeed the faith that he was brought up in.

His Dutch mother Katherina Maria Odenhausen was the daughter of Johann Michael Odenhausen, a blacksmith, and Johanna Maria Coervers. (5) Katherina was by all accounts an uncomplicated woman born of simple parents (6) who lived primarily for her husband, her children and her Catholic faith. (7)

The surnames that we know - Goebbels, Odenhausen and Coervers - have no known jewish connections and do not appear in the standard dictionaries listing common jewish surnames. I also cannot find (via searching on Google) any jews extant with any of these surnames.

Thus we can see that there is no genealogical basis for the claim of Goebbels' jewishness according to the biographical literature up to the present time. On this basis then we have to conclude that Goebbels had no jewish ancestry whatsoever.

However lets take a peek at the case presented by those individuals who believe Goebbels did have jewish ancestry.

We read that:

'Reportedly, Joseph Goebbels had Jewish origins and was gay.' (8)

Notice the 'reportedly' since the author of this claim doesn't actually have a source for Goebbels' supposed jewish ancestry: he says that 'reportedly' this was so as if his opinion was itself hard evidence!

Another individual claims that:

'Reportedly, Joseph Goebbels had Jewish origins and was gay. Joseph Goebbels' first girlfriend was Jewish. Goebbels' family came from Holland; he was nicknamed "rabbi" in school.' (9)

The first sentence is obviously a repeat of the previous claimant (who this individual cites): the second is simply wrong. Goebbels first girlfriend was Lene Krage: who he was infatuated with for three years. (10) The individual concerned here is thinking of several girlfriends later in the person of Else Janke who was half-jewish. (11) The third sentence is partly true as Goebbels' maternal family was - as we have seen - Dutch, but how this makes them jewish is anyone's guess unless one wishes to argue that all Dutch people are partly or wholly jewish. The fourth - that he was nicknamed 'rabbi' in school - is simply made-up as there is no record in the biographical literature of this and the individual claiming this (predictably) doesn't give us an originating source.

Another piece of 'evidence' is found in Goebbels having a celebratory coin minted in 1935 to honour co-operation between jewish Zionists and the Third Reich in expediting their resettlement outside of Germany. (12) Bringing up this sort of nonsensical claim (in relation to the argument made) is a typical tactic of those without evidence to suggest something that isn't there by seeking to engage the emotions of the reader to believe first and ask awkward questions much later.

The point is simply this: how does Goebbels having a coin minted (and remember the only source I can find on this so far is an internet claim but it does make some sense) in honour of Zionist and National Socialist co-operation to peacefully solve the jewish question (when remember that it is universally accept that it was Third Reich policy to use emigration at this point regardless of what side of the 'Holocaust' debate you are on) in any way, shape or form suggest let alone provide evidence for the contention that Goebbels had some jewish ancestry?

Simply put: it doesn't.

Scratch two attempts to demonstrate that Goebbels was of jewish ancestry.

The third attempt to claim this asserts:

'Joseph Goebbels, whose first girlfriend was Jewish and who only appreciated Jewish professors (Grigori Klimov, "The Protocols of the Soviet Elders", Krasnodar, 1995, pp. 328-329). Goebbels' Jewish ancestry has also been demonstrated by the historian David Irving. His family came from Holland; he was nicknamed "rabbi" in school.' (13)

Once against we see the first charge is a repeat of the 'first girlfriend was jewish' myth - which I have incidentally commented on in detail elsewhere - (14) while we see repeats of the nonsensical idea that because his maternal family came from the Netherlands they must have been jewish and the myth that he was called 'rabbi' while he was at school.

Unlike the other two attempts to claim this: we actually have a source for this claim in Grigori Klimov's 'The Protocols of the Soviet Elders', which unfortunately I have not read nor have access to a copy of. That said Klimov is not an expert or a biographer of Goebbels as far as I know and if he claims the view that Goebbels' first girlfriend was jewish then he probably hasn't read a biography of Goebbels in his life (as I have discussed above).

His assertion that Goebbels only 'appreciated jewish professors' is also problematic, because Goebbels took numerous classes at university: most of which were not given by jews. What Klimov is likely thinking of however incorrectly is Goebbels' choice of doctoral supervisor which was initially Friedrich Gundolf (nee Gundolfinger) of the university of Heidelberg who was indeed jewish. (15) Goebbels' choice of Gundolf had nothing to do with his jewishness or non-jewishness however: he hoped to study for his doctorate under him purely because of Gundolf eminence as a teacher having published what was considered the definitive biography of Goethe at the time. (16)

However since Gundolf had just been done the honour of freeing him from the obligation to teach classes and mentor doctoral students by the university of Heidelberg (as a reward for turning down a chair at the university of Berlin): (17) he referred Goebbels to fellow jew Max von Waldberg who then supervised Goebbels' doctoral dissertation. (18) It should also be noted that Goebbels resented Waldberg and referred to him negatively in his letters and diary. (19)

From this we can see how Klimov has gotten to the idea that Goebbels only 'appreciated jewish professors', because he chose a jewish academic to supervise his doctoral dissertation and was then referred to another who subsequently supervised Goebbels’ successful thesis (i.e., he chose a jew to supervise his doctoral thesis therefore he must have esteemed jews more than gentiles, but what this leaves out is that - as I have pointed out - Goebbels had other less sensational and more academic reasons for wanting Gundolf to supervise his thesis).

Klimov is simply not correct since; as we has been shown above, Goebbels had different motives other than jewishness and non-jewishness in seeking Gudolf out as his doctoral supervisor.

We should also remark once again that whether Goebbels preferred - or didn't prefer - jewish professors is immaterial to whether he was jewish or not. The claimant in this case is once again throwing irrelevant claims into the mix in an attempt to buttress their case given that they cannot tell us who in Goebbels' family - or even on what side of the family - was of jewish ancestry. Some evidence to support their claims would also be nice as well.

The last of these claims is that David Irving - the (unjustly) controversial British historian - has 'demonstrated' that Goebbels had jewish ancestry. No link or citation to Irving's work is given and his 1996 biography of Goebbels includes no such passage. The claimant might be thinking of a 2001 Reuters news article reproduced by Irving on this website that discusses the fact that Goebbels sent his wife Madga's jewish step-father (not her father as is sometimes claimed) Richard Friedlander to a concentration camp where he died. (20)

Irving does not however support the idea that Goebbels had any jewish ancestry in his commentary on said article or in his biography of Goebbels: thus we can see that this yet another false statement made in a pitiful attempt to gather up some claimed evidence for the ludicrous charge that Goebbels had jewish ancestry.

References

(1) David Irving, 1996, 'Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich', 1st Edition, Focal Point Publications: London, p. 57

(2) Ibid., p. xvii

(3) On this please see Peter Pulzer, 1988, 'The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany & Austria', 2nd Edition, Peter Halban: London, pp. 42-45

(4) Roger Manvell, Heinrich Fraenkel, 2006, [1960], 'Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death', 1st Edition, Greenhill: London, p. 2

(5) Ralf Georg Reuth, 1993, 'Goebbels: The Life of Joseph Goebbels', 1st Edition, Constable: London, p. 6

(6) Toby Thacker, 2009, 'Joseph Goebbels: Life and Death', 1st Edition, Palgrave MacMillan: Basingstoke, p. 10

(7) Manvell, Fraenkel, Op. Cit., p. 2

(8) https://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2013/01/goebbels-family-rich-and-jewish.html?m=1

(9) http://www.whale.to/b/goebbels_h.html

(10) Irving, Op. Cit., pp. 4-5

(11) Ibid., p. 38

(12) http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-Jews/+Doc-Jews-IntimateRelationToNazis/ThePactBetweenHitler&TheZionists.htm

(13) https://just-another-inside-job.blogspot.com/2004/03/adolph-hitler-jew.html

(14) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/joseph-goebbels-and-the-jewishness

(15) Reuth, Op. Cit., p. 37

(16) Irving, Op. Cit., p. 15

(17) Reuth, Op. Cit., p. 37

(18) Ibid.; Irving, Op. Cit., p. 15

(19) Thacker, Op. Cit., p. 18

(20) https://www.fpp.co.uk/bookchapters/JG/Friedlaender/Fate.html