ANTI-SEMITISM tives. He found himself in strong sympathy with Prince Bismarck’s new economic policy, which, although also of Lassallian origin (Kohut, Ferdinand Lassalle, pp. 144 et seq.), was claimed by its author as being essentially Christian (Busch, p. 483). Under his auspices the years 1880-81 became a period of bitter and scandalous conflict with the Jews. The Conservatives supported him, partly to satisfy their old grudges against the Liberal bourgeoisie and partly because Christian Socialism, with its anti-Semitic appeal to ignorant prejudice, was likely to weaken the hold of the Social Democrats on the lower classes. The Lutheran clergy followed suit, in order to prevent the Roman Catholics from obtaining a monopoly of Christian Socialism, while the Ultramontanes readily adopted antiSemitism, partly to maintain their monopoly, and partly to I avenge themselves on the Jewish and Liberal supporters of the Kulturkampf In this way a formidable body of public opinion was recruited for the anti-Semites. Violent debates took place in the Prussian Diet. A petition to exclude the Jews from the national schools and universities and to disable them from holding public appointments was presented to Prince Bismarck. Jews were boycotted and insulted. Duels between Jews and anti-Semites, many of them fatal, became of daily occurrence. Even unruly demonstrations and street riots were reported. Pamphlets attacking every phase and aspect of Jewish life streamed by the hundred from the printing-press. On their side the Jews did not want for friends, and it was owing to the strong attitude adopted by the Liberals that the agitation failed to secure legislative fruition. The crown prince (afterwards Emperor Frederick) and crown princess boldly set themselves at the head of the party of protest. The crown prince publicly declared that the agitation was “ a shame and a disgrace to Germany.” A manifesto denouncing the movement as a blot on German culture, a danger to German unity, and a flagrant injustice to the Jews themselves, was signed by a long list of illustrious men, including Herr von Forckenbeck, Professors Mommsen, Gneist, Droysen, Virchow, and Dr. Werner Siemens (Times, Nov. 18, 1880). During the Reichstag elections of 1881 the agitation played an active part, but without much effect, although Stoecker was elected. This was due to the fact that the great Conservative parties, so far as their political organizations were concerned, still remained chary of publicly identifying themselves with a movement which, in its essence, was of socialistic tendency. Hence the electoral returns of that year supplied no sure guide to the strength of anti-Semitic convictions among the German people. The first severe blow suffered by the German antiSemites was in 1882, when, to the indignation of the whole civilized world, the barbarous riots against the Jews in Russia and the revival of the mediaeval Blood Accusation in Hungary (see infra) illustrated the liability of unreasoning mobs to carry into violent practice the incendiary doctrines of the new Jew-haters. From this blow anti-Semitism might have recovered had it not been for the divisions and scandals in its own ranks, and the artificial forms it subsequently assumed through factitious alliances with political parties bent less on persecuting the Jews than on profiting by the anti-Jewish agitation. The divisions showed themselves at the first attempt to form a political party on an anti-Semitic basis. Imperceptibly the agitators had grouped themselves into two classes, economic and ethnological anti-Semites. The impracticable racial views of Marr and Treitschke had not found favour with Stoecker and the Christian Socialists. They were disposed to leave the Jews in peace so long as they behaved themselves properly, and although they carried on their agitation against Jewish malpractices in a comprehensive form which
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seemed superficially to identify them with the root-andbranch anti-Semites, they were in reality not inclined to accept the racial theory with its scheme of revived Jewish disabilities (Huret, La Question Sociale—interview with Stoecker). This feeling was strengthened by a tendency on the part of an extreme wing of the racial anti-Semites to extend their campaign against Judaism to its offspring, Christianity. In 1879 Professor Sepp, arguing that Jesus was of no human race, had proposed that Christianity should reject the Hebrew Scriptures and seek a fresh historical basis in the cuneiform inscriptions. Later Dr Duhring, in several brochures, notably Die Judenfrage als Racen, Sitten und Cultur Frage (1881), had attacked Christianity as a manifestation of the Semitic spirit which was not compatible with the theological and ethical conceptions of the Scandinavian peoples. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had also adopted the same view without noticing that it was a reductio ad absurdum of the whole agitation. (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (1878), Jenseits von Gut und Bose (1886), Genealogie der Moral (1887).) With these tendencies the Christian Socialists could have no sympathy, and the consequence was that when in March 1881 a political organization of antiSemitism was attempted, two rival bodies were created, the “Deutsche Yolksverein,” under the Conservative auspices of Herr Liebermann von Sonnenberg (b. 1848) and Herr Foerster, and the “Sociale Reichsverein,” led by the racial and Radical anti-Semites, Ernst Henrici (b. 1854) and Otto Boeckl (b. 1859). In 1886, at an anti-Semitic congress held at Cassel a reunion was effected under the name of the “ Deutsche antisemitische Yerein,” but this only lasted three years. In June 1889 the antiSemitic Christian Socialists under Stoecker again seceded. Meanwhile racial anti-Semitism with its wholesale radical proposals had been making considerable progress among the ignorant lower classes. It adapted itself better to popular passions and inherited prejudice than the more academic conceptions of the Christian Socialists. The latter, too, were largely Conservatives, and their points of contact with the proletariat were at best artificial. Among the Hessian peasantry the inflammatory appeals of Boeckl secured many adherents. This paved the wray for a new anti-Semitic leader, Herrmann Ahlwardt (b. 1846), who, towards the end of the ’eighties, eclipsed all the other antiSemites by the sensationalism and violence with which he prosecuted the campaign. Ahlwardt was a person of evil notoriety. He was loaded with debt. In the Manche decoration scandals it was proved that he had acted first as a corrupt intermediary and afterwards as the betrayer of his confederates. His anti-Semitism was adopted originally as a means of chantage, and it was only when it failed to yield profit in this form that he came out boldly as an agitator. The wildness, unscrupulousness, and fullbloodedness of his propaganda enchanted the mob, and he bid fair to become a powerful democratic leader. His pamphlets, full of scandalous revelations of alleged malpractices of eminent Jews, were read with avidity. No fewer than ten of them were written and published during 1892. Over and over again he was prosecuted for libel and convicted, but this seemed only to strengthen his influence with his followers. The Roman Catholic clergy and newspapers helped to inflame the popular passions. The result was that anti-Jewish riots broke out. At Neustettin the Jewish synagogue was burnt, and at Xanton the Blood Accusation was revived, and a Jewish butcher was tried on the ancient charge of murdering a Christian child for ritual purposes. The man was, of course, acquitted, but the symptoms it revealed of reviving medisevalism strongly stirred the liberal and cultured mind of Germany. All protest, however, seemed powerless, and S. I. — 6o
