Movement Of Racial Anti Semitism example essay topic

Before the nineteenth century anti-Semitism was largely religious, based on the belief that the Jews were responsible for Jesus' crucifixion. It was expressed later in the Middle Ages by persecutions and expulsions, economic restrictions and personal restrictions. After Jewish emancipation during the enlightenment, or later, religious anti-Semitism was slowly replaced in the nineteenth century by racial prejudice, stemming from the idea of Jews as a distinct race. In Germany theories of Aryan racial superiority and charges of Jewish domination in the economy and politics in addition with other anti-Jewish propaganda led to the rise of anti-Semitism. This growth in anti-Semitic belief led to Adolf Hitler's rise to power and eventual extermination of nearly six million Jews in the holocaust of World War II.

Jewish emancipation in Germany dates from 1867 and became law in Prussia on July 3, 1869. Despite the fact the prominence which Jews had succeeded in gaining in trade, finance, politics, and literature during the earlier decades of the century, it is from the brief rise of liberalism that one can trace the rise of the Jews in German social life. For it is with the rise of liberalism which the Jews truly flourished. They contributed to its establishment, benefited from its institutions, and were under fire when it was attacked. Liberal society provides social mobility, which led to distaste among those who had acquired some place in a sort of a hierarchy. Although many were, not all anti-Semites were anti-liberal, but most anti-Semites opposed Liberalism's whole concept of human existence, which provides much equality.

One of the first writers to express the racial anti-Semitic view was Wilhelm Marr, who it is believed invented the word "anti-Semitism". He, like other Germans had grievance with the Jews on the basis that a universally successful Jew had pushed them out of getting a good job. Marr himself was fired from his job as a journalist at a paper owned by Jews. He wrote "Der Sieg des Judenthums user das Germane ntum". In other words Jew was not contrasted with Christian, religiously but with German, racially. In 1879 he founded The Antisemite n-Liga, its purpose was in short to bring together all non-Jewish Germans into a common union which strives to saving the Fatherland from the Jewish influence.

Marr was the first to appreciate the possibilities opened by propaganda on racial lines. Eugene During, one of Marr's followers also learnt how to use propaganda to appeal to the people. In 1881 he wrote Die Judenfrage als Race- Sitten- und Kultur frage. This announced that the Jewish question had to be discussed on a new level, that of race and morals. It was a question of "racial honor" to rid all public offices, business, and finance of this "incomparably inferior race". Although more anti-Semites started turning to racialism, there were still some that stuck to religious grounds.

One of them was Konstantin Frantz. Frantz was a nationalist as well as a Christian conservative. He said that since the authority of modern states rests on the acknowledgement of Christ, Jews must be excluded from citizenship, barred from public offices, and restricted to closed communities where they can maintain their own religion. Another Christian anti-Semite was Rudolf Meyer. Unlike Frantz, Meyer was a State Socialist who based his religious anti-Semitic views on economic order. He said the new social order must be Christian.

He also attacked the Bismarck system in 1877 with Politische Grunder und die Korruption in Deutschland, concluding that the responsibility for Germany's misfortunes is entirely Bismarck's, which is in the long run the Jewish Grunder's fault. Paul de Lagarde another anti-Semite was different than any of the others he didn't oppose the Jews on merely religious or economic ground and was not exactly a racialist. On the other hand he thought the dividing line between Germans and Jews was not biologically determined but was cultural. He was very anti the Bismarck state for it include all other backwards cultures which includes the Jews, which according to him are just a burden to the German State. He thought that expansion as Bismarck had preached is useless if the Jews are allowed to survive among the Germans.

He believed there had to be a final solution, which is according to him assimilation, but he sometimes indulged in genocidal fantasies as racialists did. Frantz, Meyer and Lagarde's influence only reached a small audience and their campaign to revoke emancipation would only reach law if their anti-Semitic propaganda would reach a broader public. With the decline of parliamentary Liberalism official Catholic anti-Semitism became a rarity. Despite attempts to make the public more aware of the Jewish problem, like Joachim Gehlsen did in the Deutsche Eisenbahnzeitung, or Otto Glogau did in his additions to the Grunderzeit, none would compare to that of one Adolf Stocker, who would make the biggest impact on the movement. Stocker was an extreme conservative and was for a Christian state that was aristocratic but still took the weaker classes under its wing. He was against the Social Democrats and wanted to save the capital (Berlin) from atheist Marxism.

He was appalled at the extent at which German society had become secularized. He thought that the only hope for the Conservatives was to go in the streets and get the support of the workers and fellow sufferers in the fight against Liberalism. So in January 1878 He spread posters around Berlin for people to attend a meeting with the purpose of forming a Christian Social Workers' Party which was to try to get social reform, thus becoming the first one to take social gospel to the masses. Although in the next elections the party didn't get as much votes away from the Liberals as they wanted to, with the anti-socialist bill being passed the Liberals suffered a blow they would never be able to recover from.

Still for the Party to flourish it would have to get more support than from just the workers. Stocker had to get the support of artisans, traders, shopkeepers who also had reason to be discontent with Liberalism and the important thing was that unlike the workers, they were susceptible to anti-Semitism. So when they stated to replace the workers at meetings, Stocker made his party an overtly anti-Semitic one. Although he didn't believe in the revocation of emancipation and respected the Jews as fellow citizens, he firmly held that no Jew could be a leader of the Christian workers in either a religious or economic way. He saw the Jewish question as neither merely racial nor merely religious, it was "soil-ethische". Stocker has made a new kind of anti-Semitism, one that is a combination of religious and racial anti-Semitism.

Ernst Henrici who said, "The religion of the Jews is a racial religion" opposed Stocker's solution of the conversion of Jews to Christianity. He followed in the footsteps of racial propagandist Marr and the Antsemiten-Liga. Henrici formed the Soziale Reichspartei in 1881. He argued that there was no need to give up what had been won since 1867 in Liberal institutions in order to stop the Jews from taking advantage of them. His program demanded a prohibition of Jewish immigration, the exclusion of Jews from all public office, and the resumption of a special census for Jews. He was insistent on the fact that the core of the Jewish question was racial.

While Stocker had based himself on religion and loyalism, Henrici appealed to the radical and nationalist traditions of Berlin. He and Stocker represented the German anti-Semitic movement's two wings: the "democratic" and the "conservative". This movement would be one of the biggest anti-Semitic movements that ever reached the masses before 1900. One other man who preached this racial anti-Semitism to the peasants and lower classes was Otto Bockel. He was officially against capitalism whether being Jewish or not. His campaign for anti-Semitism awakened all the dormant anti-Semitism in other parts of Germany.

He was driven to form a united national anti-Semitic party. He was not able to do it and the party remained split up. Then in 1892 Hermann Ahlwardt joined the anti-Semites. He too followed in the footsteps of Marr and wrote "Der Verzweiflungs-kampf der Volker mit dem Jude ntum", which spoke of the struggle between the Aryans and the Jews. He would go around from farm to farm telling the peasants that their misery was due to the Jews and Junkers. Despite their apparent success both Bockel an Ahlwardt failed in the long run not being able to hold on to their achievements.

The last success of the anti-Semites before the end of the century came in 1893 due to the Conservative Party. When Bismarck was dismissed the Conservatives were appalled when the new chancellor Caprivi made many new laws which were from "Jewish influence". So during the 1893 elections the Conservatives, in need of mass support to stop Caprivi, under lead of Stocker converted to anti-Semitism, being the first major party to go on the record as being anti-Semitic. By doing this the Conservatives took a significant step to winning the election. In the end the result was a joint Conservative / anti -Semitic victory. Despite their success now, the anti-Semites were due to failure.

Because of conflicts between the Christian-Social intellectuals and their leader's radical newspaper: Das Volk, there was a break up of the party with its leader Stocker. Thus within three or four years of grasping victory, anti-Semitism was once more forced into a role of usefulness. After 1900 the parties specifically devoted to anti-Semitism declined while those that merely adopted anti-Semitism as part of their general outlook flourished. After 1900 nationalism had become the driving force behind anti-Semitism.

The biggest nationalistic movement in the beginning of the 20th century was the All deutscher Verband, or Pan-German league. Although when the league was founded in 1893 its goals were mainly nationalist in nature, its second chairman Heinrich Class would bring anti-Semitism into it's midst. Class was a strong anti-Semite and when he was put in office in 1908 would from then onward make the league more and more anti-Semitic. Friedrich Lange started the Deutschland, the extreme end of the spectrum opposite to the more moderate Pan-German league.

According to Lange "The Jew cannot belong to the Deutschland, nor become eligible by baptism, because his circumcision harbors his nature. Rather, whoever belongs to the Deutschland testifies to his enthusiasm by all legally permissible vigilance against Jews". Still in extreme Pan-German organizations anti-Semitism was not always explicitly part of the program. Often anti-Semitism was simply presented as the logical attendant of patriotism. In 1914 anti-Semitic parties were split off into two different categories: "those which needed to reinforce their initial anti-Semitic appeal with an economic and social program and those whose economic and social program remained a bait for anti-Semitic recruitment". At the end of the pre-war period the anti-Semitic movement had gone far to accomplish little.

Fritsch said in his book Neue Wege "It is bitterly true: the anti-Semitic movement has lost a campaign". It would not be until after World War I that anti-Semitism would rise again, due to the great discontent with Germany's loss to the allies and the economic crisis the country was in. Many looked to the old ways of blaming the Jew for all their misery in and took comfort in anti-Semitism. Adolf Hitler saw the state Germany was in and using his very influential tactics of racial propaganda was able to start one of the biggest racial anti-Semitic movements in the 20th century: the Nazi Party. The arguments raised by racial anti-Semitism is that the Aryan race is in every way superior to the Semitic, which appealed to many people who were looking for answers to their problems. The movement of racial anti-Semitism was in the end more successful in one factor that religious anti-Semitism was never able to accomplish as well.

That is to be able to get the full support of the masses through mass propaganda, which appealed to people's discontent, something the religious movement never came close to.

Bibliography

Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany & Austria (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964), 5-8.
Ibid. p. 50 During, Die Judenfrage... p 18. As cited by Pulzer. Frantz, Ahasuerus, oder die Judenfrage, p 20, 35. As cited by Pulzer. Meyer, Was heist Konservativ sein? Reform oder Restauration? p. 17. As cited by Pulzer. Lagarde, Uber die Aufgaben der deutschen Politik, p 41. As cited by PulzerPulzer, p. 81 Ibid. p. 84 Ibid. p. 86 Ibid. p. 88 Stocker, An die Waller Berlins. p. 127. As cited by Pulzer Stocker. Speeches on May 27, 1881.