One of the most momentous duties of a Mecklenburg man was undoubtedly military service and -- when circumstances were not in the conscript's favor -- participation in wars. Numerous Jewish Mecklenburgers also served, first in the grand ducal units, later in the units of the German Empire, and participated in nearly all modern German wars.
The Napoleonic Wars of Liberation following the French occupation provide the first evidence of Jewish soldiers from Mecklenburg. During Napoleon's campaigns of conquest in Europe, Mecklenburg too was occupied by his troops in 1806. After the flight of the Mecklenburg dukes, the land was placed under a French governor, and a hard time began for Mecklenburg. Whereas no genuine military obligation had previously existed in Mecklenburg, this changed in the subsequent period. After the return of the dukes and with the enforced entry of both Mecklenburgs into the Confederation of the Rhine in 1807, which was under Napoleon's protectorate, from 1810 onwards all Mecklenburgers including the Jews became subject to military duty in Napoleon's Grande Armee. Whether Mecklenburg Jews were among the men conscripted during the occupation period is not documented, but is not unlikely: as has been recorded, the Mecklenburg duchies had great difficulty raising the troop contingent demanded by Napoleon. As was customary in such cases, those of lower status or without means were presumably the first to be called upon.
In March 1813, the dukes of both Mecklenburgs renounced Napoleon and entered the war against Napoleon on the side of Russia and Prussia. Connected with this was the dukes' call for the formation of volunteer units against Napoleon. Of approximately 300,000 Mecklenburgers, about 1,200 participated as volunteers in the Wars of Liberation. Like their Christian neighbors, the Mecklenburg Jews also answered this call. Most of them enlisted -- now again voluntarily -- for purely patriotic reasons to liberate their homeland or because they had suffered under the occupation. One or another may also have hoped to win the sovereign's favor through his service and thereby obtain a trading privilege in Mecklenburg that he would otherwise never have received.
The first demonstrable military trial for the Mecklenburg Jews after their resettlement was thus the Napoleonic Wars of Liberation from 1813 to 1815. To prove their patriotism, the Mecklenburg Jews in particular strove to make their military contribution to the liberation of the homeland. Thus the Alt-Strelitz Jews drafted a petition to the state government in 1813, requesting that they be allowed to participate in the defense of the fatherland. The Neukalen Jews even formed in their hometown the 10th squad of the second-class militia, in which, besides day laborers, Jews primarily comprised the ranks. The total number of Jewish participants in these wars has not been established to this day, but as Guestrow Rabbi Dr. Donath stated in his "Geschichte der Juden in Mecklenburg von den aeltesten Zeiten (1266) bis auf die Gegenwart (1874)", a memorial tablet was unveiled at the Sedan celebration on 2 September 1873 in the synagogue in Schwerin, listing a total of 27 names (possibly also only 26 or 28) of Jewish participants in the Napoleonic Wars of Liberation from a total of 14 towns. Already Donath assumed that there must have been far more, and research in the town of Bruel alone has already shown that quite a few Jewish freedom fighters must have gone unmentioned in the list. While their number was small overall, the proportional share of Jews among the freedom fighters against Napoleon was higher than that of the Christian participants from Mecklenburg. Some received Mecklenburg medals of honor for their bravery. Named as participants in the Wars of Liberation are the volunteer rifleman Loeser Cohen from Guestrow, the volunteer hussar Heimann Potzernheim from Fuerstenberg, Jacob Salomon from Penzlin, the trumpeter of the third squadron of the mounted rifle regiment Ferdinand Loewenhelm and Simon Liepmann Lichtenstein from Hagenow, Ferdinand Block (Blond Salomon) from Buetzow, a Wolf from Rossow, and the volunteer mounted rifleman Hirsch Mueller and a man named Bernhard, both from Ribnitz.
Thanks to the account of volunteer rifleman Loeser Cohen, a Jewish sculptor from Guestrow, it is still possible today to gain insight into the life of a fighting soldier at that time.
Napoleon's campaigns of conquest had made the importance of a modern army vividly clear to European rulers. To be capable of attack and defense, conscription drives for the military were therefore increasingly carried out after this period, initially voluntarily, later through general military obligation. The men eligible for military service were then recorded in so-called conscription lists, from which the regiments' requirements were met. The conscription lists in many Mecklenburg town archives still attest today that Jewish residents were also called upon.
A further watershed moment for the Mecklenburgers was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71. Evidence of Mecklenburg Jewish participation likewise exists in numerous Mecklenburg town archives (representative examples: Sternberg and Bruel) and in the "Memorial Book of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 for the German Israelites". How patriotically the Mecklenburg Jews also celebrated the victory is attested by a surviving circular from the State Rabbi of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Dr. Salomon Cohn, who called upon all Jewish communities of Mecklenburg to hold a celebration to duly commemorate -- as he expressed it -- the reversal of the "two-hundred-year robbery" of Alsace and Lorraine.[Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem: Sternberg S 289/5, Various submissions to the community 1871.]
With the equality of Jews from about 1869, military service had also become routine for them in Mecklenburg. Most male descendants of the Mecklenburg Jews, like their Christian comrades, always noted in their curriculum vitae the "Einjaehriger", the one-year military service in the Mecklenburg units.
Only a few decades later, the nations plunged with waving flags into the madness of the First World War. Mothers lost their sons, siblings their brothers, wives their husbands, and children their fathers. Several generations of men were decimated and those who returned were marked for life by wounds or traumatized. Like most regions of the warring nations, Mecklenburg too paid a heavy toll of blood in the First World War. The casualty lists published in the Army Gazette during the First World War also include numerous Jewish participants who originated from Mecklenburg and who either fell, among them for example Emil Loewi from Neukalen, Arthur and Benno Bock, Walter Heine, Martin Keibel, Hermann Muellerheim and Ernst Robert from Neubrandenburg, Max Bonheim from Schwerin, Robert Jacob, Victor and Leopold Lichtenstein from Grabow, Max and Julius Ascher, Hermann Lichtenstein from Neustadt-Glewe and a total of ten from Rostock, including Richard and Franz Josephy, or were only wounded. That the aforementioned casualty lists do not give a complete picture of all participants from Sternberg in general and its Jewish soldiers in particular is proven by accounts and letters from surviving Jewish families. Thus Ernst Rosenbaum, the last-born Jew of Sternberg, witnessed in Hamburg the much-described war enthusiasm immediately before its outbreak. In a letter to his parents on 27 July 1914, at a time when the fateful diplomatic switches for the Great War were being set worldwide, he wrote:
"[...] Now that today the storm clouds on the political horizon have cleared somewhat [...] you too will be somewhat calmer, for I assume that these days have not passed you by without agitation either. I have wen[...] never experienced such general war enthusiasm [...] as here on [...] evening, when people behaved as if mad. The whole city was on its feet, in the cafes one heard only patriotic songs and national anthems, which were always sung standing by the audience; speeches were held, in short everyone was beside themselves. Now I believe, however, the worst danger has passed, even if much may yet change. [...]"
Like many others, he was to be wrong in his assessment, though he survived the First World War as a German soldier. But his fatherland did not repay his service: numerous family members later became victims of the Holocaust or had, like him, to flee their homeland to survive.
Due to the preceding emigrations of the 19th century, the First World War not infrequently had an additional tragic dimension: it could well happen that sons, grandsons, or great-grandsons of common ancestors, who had previously maintained close family ties across national borders and regularly visited one another, had to fight against each other.
As is well known, the First World War as the original catastrophe of the 20th century was to be followed only a few decades later, through failed reconciliation and German warmongering, by another world war that surpassed even its predecessor. Although current research on this is still insufficient, further descendants of assimilated Mecklenburg Jewish families are likely to have participated in the Second World War, insofar as they did not fall under the repressions of the Nuremberg racial laws. For German Jews and their closer Jewish descendants and those whom the Nazis regarded as such, this period was solely about saving their lives.