No detailed history of the Bavarian regional branch of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith (C.V.) has yet been written. The principle intention of this article was to attempt to close this historiographical gap. But it became clear during the research that this article can only begin to reconstruct the origin, work, and dissolution of the C.V.’s regional branch in Bavaria. This article focuses on this organization during the period of the Weimar Republic and the first years of the Nazi regime.

Despite its official break with the Zionistische Vereinigung für Deutschland and the Zionist movement in 1919, the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (C.V.) maintained conditional neutrality toward certain Zionist organizations and projects during the Weimar Republic. This article examines the C.V.’s methods of fighting the Zionist movement in its lectures and publications during the Weimar Republic. In doing so, it argues that these measures reflected its larger determination to defend Jewish rootedness in Germany and was not based on a rejection of Zionist theory itself.