Exploring the transnational translation of ideas: German social work education in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the transnational exchange of knowledge of ideas in social work in the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing upon the notion of transnational translation of knowledge, the study presented here sheds light on the interaction between the knowledge and ideas brought to Palestine in the early 1930s by German social worker refugees, and the dominant perceptions, values, and conditions of the Jewish community in that country. The case study follows the efforts to introduce a German model of social work education into Palestine and, particularly, the struggle of leading German-Jewish social worker Siddy Wronsky and others to legitimize the approach of social work developed in Weimar Germany in the 1920s. While a system of local social work institutions did eventually emerge during the period studied, the effort to effectively introduce the German social work approach into Palestine was less successful. The failure to gain legitimacy of the German approach to social work in a social context where the labor movement dominated with a contrasting notion of social welfare was the reason that the translation of knowledge to Palestine was only partially successful.