Hostages of Modernization: Studies on Modern Antisemitism, 1870-1933/39: Germany-Great Britain-France (Current Research on Antisemitism) 3110107767, 9783110107760

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Hostages of Modernization

w DE

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Current Research on Antisemitism Edited by

Herbert A. Strauss and Werner Bergmann

Volume 3/1

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York 1993

Hostages of Modernization Studies on Modern Antisemitism 1870 -1933/39 Germany - Great Britain - France

Edited by

Herbert A. Strauss

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

1993

Published with the support of the Technische Universität Berlin, Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung.

Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hostages of modernization: studies on modern antisemitism 1870-1933/39 / edited by Herbert A. Strauss. XVI, 666 p. 15,5 X 23 cm. - (Current research on antisemitism; v. 3/1- ) Contents: [1] Germany, Great Britain, France. ISBN 3-11-010776-7 1. Antisemitism--History. I. Strauss, Herbert Arthur. II. Series. DS145.H68 1992 305.8' 924—dc20 92-35612 CIP

Deutsche Bibliothek Cataloging-in-Publication Data Current research on antisemitism / ed. by Herbert A. Strauss and Werner Bergmann. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter NE: Strauss, Herbert A. [Hrsg.] Vol. 3. Hostages of modernization: studies on modern antisemitism 1870-1933/39. 1. Germany - Great Britain - France / ed. by Herbert A. Strauss. - 1992 ISBN 3-11-010776-7

© Copyright 1992 by Walter de Gruyter & Co. D-1000 Berlin 30. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. N o part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Typsetting: Dörlemann-Satz, 2844 Lemförde — Printing: Ratzlow-Druck, 1000 Berlin 36 — Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer GmbH, 1000 Berlin 61 - Cover design: Rudolf Hübler, 1000 Berlin 41.

Foreword This series, "Current Research on Antisemitism," organized and edited by the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung at the Technical University of Berlin, is aimed at improving our understanding of a scourge of mankind that has grown vicious in our century. "Modern antisemitism," most historians agree, began sometime during the 1880's. The main characteristics that set it apart from older forms of "anti-Judaism" were the rise of ultra-nationalist and racist thought; the development of antisemitic social movements and political parties; and the turn against the constitutional equality of Jews. The modern forms were seen to rest on centuries, if not millenia, of religion - based discrimination, defamation, and persecution suffered by the Jewish minority in the Christian world. Ever since Christianity and Judaism - its parent religion separated and began to compete, ever since Christian thought and faith had affirmed their separate identities from Jewish thought and practice, ever since permissive Roman Imperial usages had collided with the often crude "adversos Judaeos" tradition articulated by the church fathers - the teachings of the Christian churches had given a special and ambivalent place to Jews and Judaism. Jews were assigned a unique place in the Heilsgescbichte of Christendom: their ultimate conversion to the true faith would provide the ultimate test of the validity and superiority of Christianity. Yet the alleged involvement of Jews in the death of the Christ and the collective guilt incurred thereby demanded that, until the last judgement would introduce new realities, Jews were to exist in a demeaned and lowly state as punishment for their deed. Christian anti-Judaism was carried on as a religious and cultural norm; it became a self-fulfilling social and political prophecy, the basic paradigm within which secular motives for prejudice and hatred at times acquired increased irrationality and viciousness. Ironically, even thinkers of the Enlightenment in France and England used traditional Christian defamations of Jews and their religion to attack Christianity. There is good reason to agree with those historians who see strong continuities between what was now called Christian "anti-Judaism" and modern "antisemitism." Still, the most destructive effects wrought by antisemitism, although occurring in a nominally Christian country and carried out by baptized Christians, were planned in an anti-Christian and racist context.

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Foreword

With the rise of the nation-state in Central Europe, and the crisis of liberal nationalism turning imperialist, Jews began to be blamed for the alleged ills of liberalism. Antisemitism fused with a broad range of political ideas and interests. Emancipated Jewries were identified with "modernizing" trends in "Western and Central continental Europe by old conservative and new extremist nationalist forces. In Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, similar economic and socio-political influences united with rising national independence movements within the traditional empires (Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires and Czarist Russia) to exaggerate sharply traditional religious and "middle-man minority" tensions. Thus, when World War I broke out, the basic racist and ultra-nationalist ideas and alignments had been rehearsed, as "modern antisemitism" gave way to the "new antisemitism" of the interwar period, most pointedly in Central Europe in the wake of the dislocations attendant upon the lost war. Antisemitism served to project responsibility on local Jews, or a phantom "world Jewry," for the political and economic crises of the late 1920s and early 1930s. The Nazi seizure of power in Germany and their subsequent invasions and conquests of "space" for "racial superiority" brought ultimate horror and destruction to European Jewries. The government of one of the most civilized nation-states of Europe executed the most pernicious policy of persecution and extermination the world has seen so far. And although antisemitism has been recognized as one motive in the policies and opinions of other nations of the period as well, it did not match the final brutalities inflicted on the Jews by the Hitler regime. Since the end of World War Π, hatreds and prejudice have survived even as the horror of the Holocaust entered the consciousness of Western civilization. However, articulated attitudes of hatred and prejudice against Jews declined, expecially among the young. Except among unreformed Nazis surviving as marginal men in Germany and Austria, antisemitism has turned latent due to its total unacceptability in politics, public life, or cultural institutions. In recent history, it has surfaced when politicians in Germany and Austria were caught with heretofore unrevealed involvements in the Nazi past, or when intended or unintended slurs were mobilized for political ends. In place of prejudice against Jews taking center stage, the arrival of new ethnic, religious, or "racial" minorities in Western Europe led to new patterns of stereotypes and prejudice against foreign workers, seekers of asylum, or immigrants from the now independent former possessions of Western European countries. They have created new challenges for social action as well as for research and theory in European social science. In the USA, changes in the status of Blacks and other minorities, and immigrants from Third World

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countries, have woven new patterns into the rise and decline of discrimination and prejudice. And in the Third World itself, numerous tensions akin to those discussed in Western research have emerged, since decolonization has effected an entirely new pattern of national state formations based on tribal ethnicities. These ethnic conflicts have often led to tragically violent confrontations and to genocidal exterminations involving millions of human beings. At about the same period, a new world-wide phenomenon developed among communist and Third World countries. There a foreign-policy form of stereotyped hostility to Jews - anti-Zionism - emerged and revived, in turn, older antisemitic stereotypes, especially in communist-controlled Eastern European propaganda systems. Thus the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, the first of its kind in Europe, faced a complex variety of phenomena subsumed under the imprecise terms "antisemitism" and "anti-Judaism." It also confronted a research situation characterized by the co-existence of multiple strands of theory and empirical research concerning antisemitism and its scholarly Unterbau, the historical and social science disciplines dealing with prejudice, conflict, group tensions, minorities, and ethnicity. As a result, the Zentrum opted for approaches to the study of antisemitism that would prepare the way for basic theory and empirical research and for historic studies of more than local significance. This opting for basic and interdisciplinary research implies several assumptions. Antisemitism cannot be studied historically without being placed in the larger contexts of the economic, social, political, religious, and cultural histories of the discriminated-against group as well as its discriminators. Negative stereotypes cannot be studied without reference to the many positive forms of interaction and economic, cultural, religious, etc. relations that have formed positive mutual images at least since the beginning of Jewish emancipation in the middle of the eighteenth century. Antisemitism cannot be understood unless the genera proxima of its several forms are clearly conceptualized in the languages of several social sciences, above all in sociology and psychology. Thus, research on antisemitism requires not only historical and structural analyses of majoritiy and minority, but the consideration of the full range of theories and empirical studies dealing with group relations in all their complexity. This series, then, "Current Research on Antisemitism," has been planned to account for the state of international scholarly knowledge of antisemitism in the relevant disciplines. It assembles in four volumes what each volume editor considers the most valid or recent contribution to the particular problems of

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antisemitism, as well as to basic research in theory and empirical studies on general mechanisms and processes in such fields as group relations, prejudice, conflict, attitudes and behavior, to name just a few. Each volume consists of articles grouped in systematic chapters of the editor's choosing, and of introductions to each chapter by the editor, drawing the frequently divergent approaches and results of the several researchers into as coherent and concise a synthesis as possible. The present volumes (ΙΠ,Ι and ΙΠ,2) were preceded by two compilations reviewing the contributions of the normative social sciences and of psychology/psychoanalysis to the analysis of antisemitism. They were edited by Helen Fein (New York) and Werner Bergmann (Berlin), and introduce the reader to basic research from a multi-dimensional perspective. The compilation of historic studies on modern antisemitism prior to the Holocaust offered in the present works is limited to the considerable range and variety of antisemitically inspired or -rationalized actions in government, politics, economics, culture, and education, etc. The guiding framework for selecting the studies included here rests on empirical assumptions derived from the earlier normative works, as far as the concentration on the discrete and particular that is the historian's craft can be linked with the structural and the long-range influences that invite comparative European analysis. Vol. IV to follow (edited by Werner Bergmann, Rainer Erb and Christhard Hoffmann, Berlin) will review the intellectual and religious foundations of modern antisemitism, its deep roots in ideology, theology, positivistic science, and the academic disciplines that succumbed to the Zeitgeist during the peak epoch of the national state and colonial imperialism. The editors thank all contributors and publishers for granting their permission to reprint the materials included in this volume. The Technische Universitaet Berlin generously allocated funds to subsidize the publication of the series. The Zentrum fuer Antisemitismusforschung Berlin has put research, library, and editorial assistance at our disposal. We especially thank Stefanie Borst, MA, and Claudia Bräutigam for their highly professional cooperation in the preparation of these volumes. We also thank Belinda Cooper for the carefully prepared translations from the German. The secretary of the Zentrum, Mrs. Ingeborg Medaris, provided unfailing good sense and support on the administrative end of the entire series, and typed some of the manuscripts. The compiler also wishes to thank the support staff of the Institute for Advanced Study (Wissenschaftskolleg) in Berlin for their

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assistance in typing introductions: a three-months stay at that Institute provided object lessons for the challenges posed by diverse national intellectual styles in research, and the problems posed by the search for a common denominator. Finally, our publisher, de Gruyter Verlag, Berlin, has been patient and generous in extending our deadlines as these volumes grew beyond their planned limits into two-volume compilations necessitated by the explosion of research on the subject. Berlin, March 1992

Herbert A. Strauss Werner Bergmann

Contents Volume 3/1

Foreword

V

HERBERT A . STRAUSS

Introduction: Possibilities and Limits of Comparison

1

Part I: Germany HERBERT A . STRAUSS

Germany - Continuities, Ambiguities, and Political Style

11

H A N S ROSENBERG

Anti-Semitism and the "Great Depression", 1873-1896

19

H A N S - U L R I C H WEHLER

Anti-Semitism and Minority Policy

29

WERNER JOCHMANN

Structure and Functions of German Anti-Semitism 1878-1914

41

SHULAMIT VOLKOV

The Social and Political Function of Late 19th Century Anti-Semitism: The Case of the Small Handicraft-Masters

62

NORBERT K A M P E

The Jewish Arrival at Higher Education

80

D A V I D BLACKBOURN

Roman Catholics, the Centre Party and Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany

107

D A V I D PEAL

Antisemitism by Other Means? The Rural Cooperative Movement in Late 19th Century Germany

128

Contents

XI

SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER

Political Transformations During the War and Their Effect on the Jewish Question

150

HERBERT A . STRAUSS

Hostages of "World Jewry": On the Origin of the Idea of Genocide in German History

165

U W E LOHALM

Völkisch Origins of Early Nazism: Anti-Semitism in Culture and Politics

174

HEINRICH AUGUST WINKLER

Anti-Semitism in Weimar Society

196

DONALD L . NIEWYK

The Jews in Weimar Germany: The Impact of Anti-Semitism on Universities, Political Parties and Government Services

206

THOMAS CHILDERS

Voter Perceptions of Nazi Propaganda: The Issue of Modernization . 227 HERBERT A . STRAUSS

Nazi Persecution of the Jews and Emigration

236

IAN KERSHAW

German Popular Opinion and the "Jewish Question", 1939-1943: Some further Reflections

269

ANDREAS HILLGRUBER

The Persecution of the Jews: Its Place in German History

280

Part Π: Great Britain HERBERT A . STRAUSS

Great Britain - The Minor Key

289

GEOFFREY G . FIELD

Anti-Semitism with the Boots Off

294

COLIN HOLMES

Anti-Semitism in British Society 1876-1939

326

ALAN LEE

Aspects of the Working Class Response to the Jews in Britain

350

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Contents

GEOFFREY ALDERMAN

The Anti-Jewish Riots of August 1911 in South Wales

365

JOHN A . GARRARD

The English Dilemma: Political Custom and Latent Prejudice

376

GISELA LEBZELTER

Political Anti-Semitism in England 1918-1939

385

COLIN HOLMES

Attack and Counter-Attack

425

COLIN HOLMES

The Balance Sheet: Summary and Evaluation

435

Part ΙΠ: France H E R B E R T A . STRAUSS

France - Intertwined Traditions

455

ZEEV STERNHELL

The Roots of Popular Anti-Semitism in the Third Republic

464

LOUIS L . SNYDER

Chronology of the Dreyfus Case

486

PHILIP G . N O R D

The Politics of Shopkeeper Protest

496

MICHAEL BURNS

Boulangism and the Dreyfus Affair 1886-1900

514

STEPHEN W I L S O N

Antisemitism in France at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair

541

ANDREAS ZOBEL

The French Extreme Right and the Concept of Pre-Fascism

593

M I C H A E L R . M A R R U S / R O B E R T O . PAXTON

The Roots of Vichy Anti-Semitism

599

STEPHEN A . SCHUKER

Origins of the "Jewish Problem" in the Late Third Republic

631

M I C H A E L R . M A R R U S / R O B E R T O . PAXTON

Public Opinion, 1940-1942

644

Contents

Volume 3/2 Part IV: Austria HERBERT A . STRAUSS

Vicissitudes of Anti-Modernism: Origins and Continuities of Populist Antisemitism ROBERT S . W I S T R I C H

Georg von Schoenerer and the Genesis of Modern Antisemitism ANDREW G . WHITESIDE

Pan-Germanism: Anti-Semitism in Mass-Style Politics PETER G . PULZER

Lueger's Heritage: Anti-Semitism in Austrian Party Politics JOHN W . BOYER

The Viennese Artisans and the Origins of Political Antisemitism, 1880-1890

JOHN W . BOYER

Lueger and the Viennese Jews: Rhetorics and Realities GEORGE E . BERKLEY

Vienna and Its Jews: The Solitary Scapegoat in Post-War Vienna BRUCE F. PAULEY

Political Anti-Semitism in Interwar Vienna GERHARD The Jews ofBOTZ Vienna from the Anschluss to the Holocaust

Part V: Hungary HERBERT A . STRAUSS

Hungary: Historic Catastrophes and Long-Range Changes ROLF FISCHER

Anti-Semitism in Hungary 1882-1932 EZRA MENDELSOHN

Trianon Hungary, Jews and Politics RANDOLPH L . B R A H A M

Right Radicalism in the Immediate Postwar Period

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Contents

BERNHARD KLEIN

Hungarian Politics and the Jewish Question in the 1930s NATHANIEL KATZBURG

Anti-Jewish Measures and Policies and Nazi Influence in the 1930s H . SETON-WATSON

Two Contrasting Policies Toward the Jews: Russia and Hungary

Part VI: Poland HERBERT A . STRAUSS

Poland: Culture of Anti-Semitism NORMAN DAVIES

Polish-Jewish Relations: Historic Background EZRA MENDELSOHN

The Jewries of Interwar Poland FRANK GOLCZEWKSI

Rural Anti-Semitism in Galicia Before World War I NORMAN DAVIES

Ethnic Diversity in Twentieth Century Poland PAWEL KORZEC

Polish-Jewish Relations During World War I YISRAEL GUTMAN

Poles and Jews Between the Wars: Historic Overview DIETRICH BEYRAU

Anti-Semitism and Jews in Poland, 1918-1939 JOSEPH MARCUS

Anti-Semitism and Jewish Economic and Social Conditions, 1918-1939 CELIA S . HELLER Jewish Social Status in Sociological Perspective ALEKSANDER HERTZ

Jewish Caste Status in Poland W L A D Y S L A W BARTOSZEWSKI

Polish Folk Culture and the Jew

Contents

Part VE: Russia H E R B E R T A . STRAUSS

Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union: Enduring Mentalities HEINZ-DIETRICH LÖWE

Anti-Semitism at the Close of the Czarist Era HANS ROGGER

Reforming Jews - Reforming Russians I . M I C H A E L ARONSON

Grographical and Socioeconomic Factors in the 1881 Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia SHLOMO LAMBROZA

Jewish Self-Defence During the Russian Pogroms of 1903-1906 HANS ROGGER

The Beilis Case: Anti-Semitism and Politics in the Reign of Nicholas Π M A U R I C E SAMUEL

World and Domestic Reaction to the Beilis Case STEFAN T . POSSONY

Periods of Kremlin Jewish Policies SALO W . B A R O N

Jews in Russia: The First World War and the Revolutionary Period STEFAN T . POSSONY

The Ukrainian Jewish-Problem L E S T E R SAMUEL ECKMAN

Soviet Policies Toward the Jews: From Lenin to Stalin SALO W . B A R O N

Social and Economic Changes Among Soviet Jews Z V I Y . GITELMAN

Socio-Economic Modernization and Imposed Culture Change WILLIAM KOREY

Continuities in Popular Perception of Jews in the Soviet Union Epilogue

H E R B E R T A . STRAUSS

Epilogue

H E R B E R T A . STRAUSS

Introduction: Possibilities and Limits of Comparison Research on antisemitism in the twentieth century has become an international enterprise of considerable dimensions. It has involved the study of ideas, literature, religions, history, politics, sociology, psychology - the entire range of the social sciences and the humanities. The concepts and methods applied have yielded a multi-dimensional understanding of the subject. Both its international and multi-dimensional character have caused scholars and institutions to resort to symposia and multi-author Sammelwerke to inform themselves and the public of the state of research, and reach for strategies opening up new insights and preparing for cross-disciplinary innovations. Of the significance of their work there can be little doubt at the end of the bloodiest century in European history: the catastrophe of the shoa (Holocaust) did not only mean death to 6 million Jews. It was part of the larger catastrophe of World War Π that left as many as 50 million victims in its wake, damaged and destroyed, in many instances forever, the cultural heritage of centuries, signified crisis and breakdown in the civilization of many institutions and social groups in continental Europe. Interest in antisemitism is not only a scholarly subject for Jewish history: antisemitism has proven above all a symbol of the crisis of European civilization, a problem of general history. It concerns a continent that prepares itself at last to acknowledge that it has long since become the target of international migration, that its nations have become immigration countries of multi-national character, that the relative weakening of the national state by political integration and multi-national economic organizations has set a dynamic process in motion. Its dimensions are as yet dimly understood - European scholarship is in need of the lessons sadly learned from the history of its foremost minority, the Jewish people. The series "Current Research on Antisemitism" has been designed in response to the research experiences accumulated by the Center for Research on Antisemitism of Berlin Technical University since 1982. The first two volumes aimed to present the best of normative thinking on the social

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and psychological mechanisms effective in antisemitism. They demonstrate clearly that the hostile group relations and the numerous forms of prejudice, stereotype, emotional and cognitive frictions that make up antisemitism must be conceptualized in terms of contemporary social science like sociology, psychology, or psychoanalysis. The present volume in this series, and the one being prepared to follow, rest on the results of scholarship in these fields. Its approach, in contrast to the first two volumes, is historical. The present volume (in two divisions, ΠΙ,Ι and ΙΠ,2), concentrates on the social and political institutionalization of antisemitic thought, i. e. on antisemitic social and political movements. The last volume (IV) will collate analyses of the course of antisemitic ideas. To turn to the present volume: like all others, it has the form of a reader, a compilation of research studies offering what its compiler was able to identify as significant contributions to current thought. In terms of methodology, this thought has reflected broad changes in methods and contents of general history, specifically the turn from political and intellectual history to social, group, and regional histories. Antisemitism is more and more conceptualized in its political and social forms as part of this general history, involving problems of social tensions, economic dislocations, political power struggles, electoral and political mobilization, conflicts of interests - in short, the entire range of political culture and social structure. Most recently, too, research on antisemitism has been integrated into work on "popular cultures" using hitherto unused and frequently elusive sources e. g. on the perceptions of rural populations, workers, villagers, students, random samples of rioters, or subscribers to antisemitic causes. Much of this work is indebted to normative social science, whether their authors articulate their working hypotheses for the analysis of social movements or, more likely, follow research designs implicit in the paradigmatic changes in their research climates. Thus, antisemitic social and political movements are at last understood for what they should have been seen all along - reflections of critical developments in European societies, results of social and political tensions that could not be, or were not, resolved by the elites that would have been capable of initiating their resolution. This volume is about the general histories of these societies. It has selected materials bearing on seven European nation states, two of whom, Austria-Hungary and Czarist Russia, exercised imperial control over other national or ethnic groups, while two others, Poland and Hungary, entered the post World-War-One period harboring up to 33 % of their populations as national or ethnic minorities. The countries selected are Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. The reasons for selecting them rest not only on the fact that within their borders

Introduction

3

lived the vast majority of European Jews prior to the Holocaust and after. They also represent a range of political and socio-economic structures that characterized the change-over from predominantly agrarian societies, including, in some cases, serfdom and feudal landholding systems or significant remnants of such, to industrial and commercial capitalist organizations and the beginning of post-capitalist welfare states. And they reflect different forms of nationalism, from the liberal nationalism of Western societies to repressions of national minorities and their ethnic cultures by chauvinistic and/or insecure nationalistic governments in Eastern Europe. However different the historic forms had been that differentiated Eastern European societies from Western states, they have roots in cross-European histories in political organization, religious, and cultural traditions, the international relations framework as well as economic structures. Their developmental trends justify the sober and laidback use of the concept of societal modernization as a guiding working hypothesis for comparing, or at least categorizing, the social roots of antisemitic movements. The concept will help to avoid unstructured impressionistic comparative histories: comparisons, after all, are designed to isolate differences among observed objects or processes as much as similarities, ^/comparability has been established by a joint conceptualization. It will be attempted in the concluding comments of this reader and in the introductory observations for each of the chapters dealing with the several countries to lay the groundwork for testing the usefulness of the modernization concept. The impending political Europeanization of national states suggests that a postnational approach may promise new insights. If antisemitism must be thus conceptually integrated into general European history, the development of the several Jewish communities involved will not be adequately understood without such integration, certainly not as one factor in the social and psychological analysis of antisemitic movements. Even if it is impossible to precisely estimate its impact, the macro-historic facts of size, communal cohesion, and migrations were major factors in the general European process of acculturation between Jews and environment. (The term acculturation is more useful than the originally constitutional-legal term emancipation, or the one-sided or political concepts of integration or assimilation for concrete descriptions of the modernizations of the Jewish communities.) Like majorities and minorities in the several states, the Jewish communities were part and parcel of general modernization and, at the same time, underwent a modernization of their religious and communal structures on their own, parallel with the broad intellectual and structural trends of their societies, yet translated into their own terms. That this process was truly European and provides objective grounds for

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comparative analysis derives from the common starting point of modern - i.e. emancipation - Jewish history: saving numerous known differences in legal or communal affairs between, say Eastern and Western European Jewries or, more precisely, the condition of so-called Ashkenazic branches (Germanspeaking or -influenced Central European Jews), both had been subject for many centuries first to Catholic then Catholic and several Protestant controls. This was not only true of church-controlled territories but of most secular states as well: religious reasons or rationalization long defined an outsider status for Jews, even if they had not been expelled from their places or countries of settlement before or with the onset of the early modern period (England, France, the German cities, numerous territories of the Holy Roman Empire, etc.). The impact of this church tradition - or these traditions, they were certainly not monolithic in theory or application - on Jewish-Gentile relations or on the legal-constitutional condition of Jewries varied of course considerably from period to period and country to country. The emergence of Sephardic Jews (Jews of Spanish origin and linguistic base migrating a. o. to several European territories following their expulsion from Spain in 1492) presented alternative forms of Christian repression (marranos!). Calvinist Holland, Cromwell's England, Calvinist-Lutheran Prussia differed from the Papal state. Poland, its nobility attracted by the least fundamentalist influences of Reformed Christianity, offered a haven and relative prosperity to Jews living there or arriving from West-European territories persecuting them. The emergence of court Jews in continental absolute states brought about social differentiations and economic roles that differed significandy from the persecutions and murder visited upon Jews in Eastern Europe (Poland-Lithuanian republic of nobles) after the mass murder catastrophe of the Chmielnitzky pogroms of 1648/1650. Granted these obvious and well-described differences, there still remains the Christian religious and social tradition defining the status of the Jew as the historic outsider, assigning him occupations outside the feudal/agrarian structure, imposing demeaning and degrading behavior patterns on him including forced residence, exclusions from cities (de non tolerandis Iudaeis pnvilegia), fostering a negative image of his religion, his dress marked with a special badge, his language, his behavior. To be emancipated from his premodern condition was the major goal of generations of Jews. It was not a matter of will but a social process beyond their control in which theirs paralleled the modernizations of the respective societies. Its direction was a European phenomenon, the social dynamics of this middle-men minority in occupational structure and economic behavior integrated them into the social dynamics of the societies around them, modernizing adequately

Introduction

5

or inadequately - in terms of what the period understood as modernization1. The need to conceive modernization as a term relative to the period at hand will have to be detailed below. For the history of antisemitic movements, the relationship between direction and speed ofJewish and general modernization is recognizable as a crucial factor. The time-warp between majority and minority within countries and the lag between countries emerge as factors in such European developments as international Jewish migration, the rise of Zionism, the maintenance or transformation of patterns of folk culture. Yet, it is precisely the like origin in a religion-controlled or -originated image that suggests comparisons. Antisemitic movements, to be sure, were not "caused" or "brought about" by Jewish conditions or behavior. Studies have shown that antisemites do not need live Jews to hate (e. g. in post-1945 Austria or in Chaucer's post-expulsion Canterbury Tales). The relationship between Jewish realities and the stereotypes serving the needs of antisemitic agitators is as tenuous as it is complex. Yet, phantasy images or traditional stereotypes need some support from perceptions present, past, imagined for the future, or projected from a folkloristic past, to become effective. Groups whose social or economic tensions can be deflected on "the Jews" and for whom antisemitic movements are plausible cures to their social or economic ills, will more easily convince themselves or be seduced into believing that one-issue antisemitism will solve the structural problems they see symbolized in the Jewish competitor. If antisemitic movements are thus analyzed as the results of crises in interrelated modernization processes, the circumstances that turned the Jew into the target emerge as complex fields of interaction. Social crises help to understand the social malfunction of such movements. They do not explain the frequent, near-universal lack of perspective and common sense that makes Jews liable to turn into targets, the missing reality component in the antiJewish stereotypes (as exemplified in Nazi phantasies of Jewish racial power, or the world conspiracy phantasies of the Protocols ofthe Wise Men ofZion (see below p. 385). Structure-function analysis of antisemitic movements presupposes the historically negative image of the Jew, and raises, in fact, the question of its continuity into the 19th and 20th centuries. Social and psychological working hypotheses and the history of antisemitic ideas have to complement each other. The period for which readings have been selected in this volume begins with the 8 th decade of the 19th century and ends with the rise of National Socialism in Germany and Austria, and of fascist parties or governments elsewhere. This has several reasons. Research on Nazism and the shoa (Holo-

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Herbert A. Strauss

caust) has become so extensive and multidisciplinary that it could not be accomodated in a volume of this kind. Modern antisemitism, on the other hand, begins in Germany and Austria, and to some extent France, during the 1870s and is seen as characterized besides its racist ideologists and its aim of reversing Jewish emancipation by the rise of the social and political movements that are the subject of this reader. None of these definitions is as tight as suggested. They should be taken as useful working approximations. Some papers reproduced in the following have been included although they transcend the stipulated time frame. Separating the shoa, the awesome uniqueness of government-organized genocide, from the history of what has been defined as "modern" antisemitism raises the problem of continuity between earlier antisemitism and the factors that brought about this genocide, or induced populations to collaborate or remain passive onlookers even in occupied Europe during World W a r H The very principle of the Rankean tradition conceives of history as a series of organic unfoldings of events from their roots but demands equally that each period be seen in its own context rather that ex eventu. Several of the authors reprinted in this volume will be seen grappling with this dilemma or with implications arising from the behavior of European governments and populations for the meaning of their traditions. In view of the range of European behavior, a global answer appears beyond the reach of empirical scholarship. But given the burden of this past on present-day scholars, its silent shadows project forever into the future. The historians' task is to contribute his savoir to thought and action of those whose duty it is to prevoir and to prevenir. Past generations can not talk back any longer even if they bear guilt for events that happened long after they passed away. Historicism and precise methodologies face the test of pragmatism and of post hoc propter hoc evolutionism in the still ongoing scholarly debate on this issue. If the foregoing reflections convey an impression of the complex nature of scholarship and of the subject it attempts to clarify, the purpose of these first comments has been satisfied. A short summary may be useful for following the thread that will be taken up in the readings selected, in the summaries attempted for each country chapter, and in the tentative interpretation that will close the book: 1. The essays selected for these volumes deal with the antisemitic social and political movements in seven European countries for the period ca. 1870 to the onset of the Holocaust and the Third Reich. 2. They were selected because they use current scholarly methods of social and political history or regional and group history, and thus place these movements into the historic context of the countries they are analyzing. 3. The guiding hypotheses of these social and political histories rest on

Introduction

7

social-scientific or political theories concerning the social or psychological mechanisms activitated in group conflict, stereotyping, discrimination, political mobilization, economic crises and tensions, to name a few. 4. The like approach taken by scholars for the different countries within the given period (modern antisemitism, 1870s to ca. 1933/1939) has located antisemitic movements in crises engendered by economic, social, political, or religious changes: antisemitism is perceived as a malfunction of these changes. It is proposed to test the usefulness of relating these crises in certain countries to incomplete modernization attempts in economics, society, political integration, religion, or cultural development. To avoid implying a macro-evolutionary framework and the hidden value bias recognized in operationalizing this hypothesis, its use relative to period and situational perceptions will be tested. 5. In interpreting the material, comparisons between the national patterns documented will be advanced on a tentative basis, it being understood that structural comparisons should reveal differences among the objects compared as well as attempt placing them into a common framework. In the present case these involve European changes from agrarian to commercial and industrial economic predominance, from bureaucraticabsolutist forms of government to rule by ever-increasing groups of citizens, or at least their emergence and demand for such rule based on property, status, merit, or ultimately pure citizenship, etc. Relating the crises and frictions in this Europe-wide process to the social and political causes of antisemitic movements within the like frameworks of the essays selected is facilitated also by the common European condition in which Jews found themselves at the end of their premodern condition as imposed on a Christian religious rationale of hoary if differentiated ancestry and varying interpretation and application. 6. The question of the continuity of pre-Holocaust antisemitic movements with the Holocaust - its "causation" by these movements - is being asked in these essays for the relevant countries both for perpetrators (Germany, Austria) and for by-standers (occupied France, Poland, Hungary). 7. The question should be kept in abeyance if the conditions stimulating antisemitic movements as demonstrated for the period under discussion are likely to recur in the post-1945 world.

Parti Germany

HERBERT A . STRAUSS

Germany - Continuities, Ambiguities, and Political Style The atmosphere in which antisemitism coalesced into political and social organization emerges from several of the readings in this section. Generally, research efforts have moved to designs locating antisemitism in identifiable social groups found in printed sources that avoid heady, often wrong-headed speculations on national character and psychology. Authoritarian personalities abound in many European cultural traditions without creating a Third Reich antisemitism, or the shoa. Yet, the liberal tradition against which antisemitic movements rose in late 19th century Germany had, in a basic way, been defeated before Bismarck founded his Reich on the body of defeated France in 1871: In 1866, the Prussian parliament - Abgeordnetenhaus - absolved its then Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck from having violated the constitution in favor of unauthorized military expenditures. They had proved instrumental in reforming the army that had defeated Austria and Bavaria that very year. Success defeated constitutional principle. The elites that won these wars maintained themselves in power in the Reich from 1871 on by political institutions that secured them decisive advantages in decision-making. Diaries, letters, memoirs reflect the strident, militaristic atmosphere of Imperial Berlin's society, its snobberies, discriminations, honor code, in the midst of impoverishment and a long-range depression that lowered the grain prices on which the Junkers among them depended to maintain themselves in the accustomed style. Wehler takes up Rosenberg's analysis of the link between the Great Depression that began its long (Kondratief) cycle downward in the mid-1870s and lasted to the mid-1890s. Based on limited suffrage in Prussia and universal manhood suffrage in the Reich parliament, the Reichstag, liberal majorities predominated in the 1870s and took credit for the new Reich. By 1879, Bismarck manipulated the parties and shifted to a conservative-center-Catholic coalition that effectively limited liberal restraints. Nationalism combined with religious rationalizations to institute a harsh Germanization policy against the (Catholic) Polish and other Slav minorities in the Eastern provinces of Prussia

12

Herbert A. Strauss

(acquired mostly in 1815 only). The Catholics became a one-third minority religion in the Reich. A struggle between Church and State prerogatives (the Kulturkampf of the 1870s) left them on the defensive. As Blackbourn makes clear, Catholics suffered from considerable structural economic weaknesses, did not penetrate the upper ministerial bureaucracy, or upper management or ownership in business and industry. The Jewish bourgeoisie, in constrast, acquired a widely noticed and publicized visibility in several branches of the economy, including banking, textiles, department stores, scrap iron, and soon acquired high visibility in professions like law, medicine, or journalism. Reality contrasts with visibility if the data are consulted. Most German Jews resided at the lower edge of the middle and lower middle classes, big cities like Berlin harbored a working class including immigrants from Eastern Europe after 1881. By the end of the period, in 1933, every fifth Jew in Germany had been an immigrant, living on the lower margins of middle-class income. In the countrysides of primarily South and West Germany, Jews were wedged as middlemen-traders-cattledealer-farmers into traditional agrarian society. Their neighbors, the peasants, were just working their way out of a poorly conceived legislation that had freed them from agricultural serfdom without providing them with training or finances to survive as independents. These Jewish communities had for centuries provided incomes for their territorial lords who imposed a great variety of taxes on them for their seigneurial lifestyle. With emancipation, urbanization began to end the antagonistic cooperation carried on between the religions and their folk forms. The flashpoint for modern antisemitism was provided by the crash of the stock exchange in 1873. It was the predictable result of feverish over-speculation fuelled by the early payment of the French indemnity to Prussia after 1871. Rosenberg and Jochmann analyze the identification of "the Jews" and "the Jewish spirit" with an economic system that dislocated traditional occupational groups or endangered traditional status arrangements. Objectively, verifiable displacements did not correspond to the panic reactions felt by affected groups when faced with stagnating income in relation to other groups (Rosenberg). Stereotyped links between Jews, now seen in racial terms, and liberal market economics had been established by disappointed liberal democrats as early as 1875 and 1879. In 1879, the Prussian history professor Heinrich von Treitschke, another disappointed and worried liberal nationalist, politized antisemitism as a conservative-nationalist defence against threats to the elites that had maintained their influence under changing constitutional arrangements. Thus, both objective political developments - the linkage between civic equalitiy and bourgeois interests with Jewish emancipation - and the effect of stereotyping verbal aggression combined to turn antisemitism into

Germany - Continuities, Ambiguities, and Political Style

13

a code word (Volkov). It stood for opposition to the changes brought about by the industrial age and its setbacks through structural dislocations and the swings of prosperity. They included recessions, economic losses suffered through world market movements (grain prices and imports from the USA), the appearance of competitors in free professions, loss of business independence, farmer indebtedness, a. o. I Readings 1-7 isolate the social and occupational groups found in the sources that were attracted to antisemitic organizations, became members, or for whom the action programs of these organizations were tailored. Feeling threatened by both short-and long-range swings in economic prosperity, they represented the old middle class reduced to lower rank by the growth of prosperous commercial and industrial entrepreneurs, and corresponding groups of civil servants, teachers, semi-professionals, finally white-collar employees. Liberal economic legislation answered as little to their needs as did dignitarian conservatism. Left homeless in search of legal protection or reprieve from their new economic difficulties, they embraced antisemitism. Jews had become the symbol of the then modern trend they were unable to turn in their favor, or to influence through the available political channels for the protection of their interest. As yet, the antisemitic political parties they formed were shortlived and relatively marginal, rent apart by personal and ideological antagonisms and contradictory social interests. "Christian Reform" faced atheistic radicalism, social legislation to wean away workers from socialist parties stood opposed to calls for quality control through compulsory examinations and guild membership. Volkov details the master artisans' disillusionment with what they considered inadequate legislative responses on the Reich level to their demands. Beginning with the late 1870s, antisemitism mobilized students at German universities most prominently incited to hatred by Treitschke, no doubt the spearhead for the university "mandarines"1 in nationalistic xenophobia, feelings of national inadequacy, and anxiety of being overrun by Eastern Jews, the urban equivalent of the migrant Catholic Slav labor of the East. Once again, the appeal of antisemitism among students rested on concrete anxieties about status and future careers in a restricted academic job market, or limited oppor-

1

Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarines, Cambridge, Mass., 1969.

14

Herbert A. Strauss

tunities for prescribed laboratory training in university curricula: Kampe details the impact of Jewish students on the finely-tuned prestige system of changing higher education. Jewish social mobility and occupational choices anticipated modernization patterns as new social strata pierced the monopoly of privilege and function as avantgarde for the professional needs of the service society to come. The antisemitic students of the pre-war generation became the backbone of a status society that accorded high prestige to the "Akademiker". In spite of their significant function in German society this new class of educated parvenue professionals failed to make use of the liberal tradition that accompanied the rise of das Bürgertum to power and created the liberal era. Instead, they patterned their social behavior after the models set by "throne and altar", gentry and military. Besides, organized lower-middle and middle class antisemitism persevered among a nationalistic bourgeoisie linked to an anti-liberal nationalist tradition that included antisemitism in numerous forms. Not that it was present in German history formed part of the much discussed German difference from Western patterns - the German "Sonderweg". Bürger sub-infeudated in other societies, too. That it combined with an ineffective liberal tradition, the transfer of military ways of behavior to civilian life, divisions amongst status groups that were not mitigated by countervailing humane prescriptions or egalitarian traditions - factors such as these made the difference and transported antisemitic attitudes and social patterns from one period to the next. Withal, however, in the Kaiserreich organized antisemitism died of its contradictions and of the quarrelsomeness of its leaders - a persistent phenomenon in German right radicalism. Several readings mark subdivisions within the period. In the 1890s, during the second downswing of the economy within the larger cycle, major social organizations embraced antisemitism in their programs. They included a white-collar employees' organization, a powerful agrarian lobby, the Farmers' Association (Bund der Landwirte), and, in 1892, the national convention of the Conservative Party (Tivoli Program). Several readings reveal the function of antisemitic programs in their particular contexts. Between the 1890s and World War I, antisemitism spread sufficiently through German political, intellectual and social groups to justify the observation that it had become a "social norm", its great variety in expressions notwithstanding. The Protestant majority of the Reich had deserted the religious tolerance they were made to observe in pre-modern Prussia by some of their absolute rulers and the clash between the Reformed religion of the Hohenzollern and the Lutheranism of their subjects' churches. Now, from 1871 on, the Protestant churchgoer turned into a national Bürgertum of recent status and relative wealth. Attention paid to radical court

Germany - Continuities, Ambiguities, and Political Style

15

preacher Stoecker tends to obscure the fact that Bürgertum had opted with Bismarck against their best humane traditions. They survived in the labor movement. That antisemitism was accepted as a social norm fits into this syndrome. Several large questions, however, remain unanswered in this connection: Blackbourn points to the fact that German Catholics were politically committed to using the protection of civil rights legislation to defend their interests as a religious minority,2 but their rank and file made use of several forms of antisemitism to articulate their economic interests. Given the fact or the self-estimation that Catholics belonged to the less-successful socio-economic groups in Germany, anti-modern protest and resentment was overdetermined by the vigorous opposition offered by Papal policy to liberalism as a secularist danger. Catholic voters continued to stay loyal to the Catholic Zentrum or the Bavarian People's Party right to the beginning of the Third Reich, but proved ineffective in resisting Nazi take-overs of governments and administrations after 1933, the religious conflict between state and church notwithstanding. Social antisemitism of the antiliberal kind was articulated at the base and in numerous special organizations without leading to spectacularly antisemitic politics on the national level. It reflected both the antimodernism and the backwardness of the "Catholic experience" (Blackbourn). A final test for the meaning of anti-modernism is being provided by work dealing with the countryside and its reception of antisemitism. The discussion of the Rural Cooperative Movement by Peal, one of the few studies on rural antisemitism as yet available, points to the gap between urban capitalistic development and rural Naturalwirtschaft as basis for the mobilization of antisemitism in the countryside. As the depression in farm prices accentuated under-employment and credit scarcity. Free trade in real estate and agricultural goods was seen as usury engaged in primarily by Jews - at least in the popular stereotype. Both scholarly discussion and legislation as well as the ideologies connected with the newly founded rural cooperative movement (Raiffeisen cooperatives) reveal underlying or open anti-urban, anti-capitalist and anti-trade ideas not dissimilar from American populist trends. Here, too, antisemitism forms part of the anti-modern protest and Utopia.

2

The Reich Constitution of the Empire, different from those of the Weimar and the Bundesrepublik, did not include separate civil rights catalogues - they were embodied in positive legislation.

16

Herbert A. Strauss

Π The subsequent readings (8-16) deal with the period 1914 to 1933/1939 - a seminal period in the fateful history of German antisemitism. Surprisingly, no book-length study has been attempted on antisemitism in any form, including movements, for this period. Research has followed the turns in general history and concentrated on Nazism, and its antecedents - in the Kaiserreich. The war for whose outbreak the Kaiser's government bears a solid part of the historic guilt - although not the exclusive responsibility - and the upheavals following its loss threw German politics and society into considerable turmoil. It ended only with the stabilization of the currency following a runaway inflation in 1923. This period was also the culmination of antisemitic dominance in anti-liberal and anti-modern trends before the 1930s. The symbolic and substitute quality of the anti-Jewish stereotype moved once again to the fore of the political discussion: defences were needed against the dawning insight that the war would be long, costly, bloody and, finally, lost. Information on the spread of such attitudes among organizations and parties is missing for the war and immediate post-war period as are in fact reliable data on opinion for the Weimar Republic. Trained observers (cf. the historian Golo Mann)3 expressed the opinion that the immediate post-war period 1919-1923 was the most virulent period in the entire history of German popular antisemitism, including the Nazi period. The issue around which antisemitic agitation and organization revolved were clearly continuous with pre-war antisemitism. Jews worked for peace especially in the liberal press and recognized the folly of unleashing unrestricted submarine warfare because it would - and did! - draw the United States into the war. The educated national bourgeoisie was antagonized by the extreme pacifist lines mocking national sensibilities, written in part by Jewish members of the radical bohemian intelligentzia. Prominent liberal Jewish journalists were held responsible for the "defeatist" stand taken by liberals and Socialists on war goals. Ironically, these writers, alienated in the majority from the patriotic German-Jewish mainstream, presented a continued problem for Jewish defence against antisemitism. A major war-time issue of the period 1914-1918 and after was presented by the increased Eastern Jewish migration, a great part of which had followed the German High Command's recruiting appeal for war-workers in Reich factories and mines. Antisemitic reactions

3

Deutsche undJuden, ein unlösbares Problem. Reden zum Jüdischen Weltkongreß 1966, Emmerich 1966, p. 45. See below in Friedländer, pp. 157-164.

Germany - Continuities, Ambiguities, and Political Style

17

here fused with a history of (Prussian) anti-Polish sentiment and the historic regimentation and pariah-position of Polish seasonal agricultural laborers working the large landed estates. Their German population had fled earlier from Junker-dominated East-Elbia to the "improvement" offered by factory work in the big cities. The level to which anti-Jewish resentment fell is also documented in the inviduous poll organized by the Prussian High Command in 1916 to account for Jews fighting in the trenches (over against home front or desk job) and for the number of Jews killed in action. Its results were never published but enough was leaked to show the malignant intent. Thus, when the collapse of the German army brought about withdrawal, political revolution, and considerably increased suffering among the civilian population, and Jews played visible roles in the upheaval, the anti-symbol "Jew" was made to serve many needs of exculpation and evasion of true responsibility for the catastrophe. Out of this cauldron the Nazi movement and its forerunners arose, as Friedländer and Lohalm make clear. Its organizational models, to be sure, had older roots. They included the political groups organizing in the AustroHungarian Empire before World War One, where populist, nationalist, and radical democratic ideologies merged in the bitter economic and nationalist competition eg. between Czechs and Germans, or in pre-war Vienna (see Vol. ΠΙ,2). From their inception in Germany, these organizations cut across class lines. Rabidly nationalist demobilized officers, bitter veterans, teachers, physicians, or university teachers and students, as Winkler points out (p. 201), formed the top of the broader social base composed of the traditional antimodern protest of the Kaiserreich: craftsmen and small business, white-collar employees, the lower and middlings ranks of the civil service, or small farmers and non-socialist workers. Antisemitism not only appeared as the cement, that kept the socially disparate interests within one organization: it permeated the nationalist right and focussed the guilt and shame of war and revolution on an enemy who was powerless yet could be phantasized into a threatening world conspirator of superhuman cunning. As early as 1920, as Strauss documents, war-time traumas and brutalization, post-war suffering, political desperation, and military defeat had produced a moral vacuum in which the annihilation of Jews within reach - German Jews - could turn Germany's fortune: Jews as hostages for the Allied occupation - forces phantasized as being controlled by Jews! The document originated in the rabidly nihilistic circles around Dietrich Eckardt, Hitler's first mentor, and formed part of the esoteric genocidal tradition that lay latent in Nazi radical minds until the time came to realize its mad intent. In contrast, main-stream Nazism rested on the respectable and "normal" German citizen despairing of demo-

18

Herbert A. Strauss

cratic institutions when they failed to secure his economic status quo, his need for international recognition and a revision of the Versailles treaty, the farmer's anxiety about world-market competition and falling prices for his products. Winkler's and Hillgruber's judgment that Nazi propaganda before 1933 based its appeal to voters more on the real (or imagined) grievances of each segment addressed than on antisemitic invective is based on good evidence, but needs to be modified by some methodological considerations. Volkov has drawn attention to the fact that Jews and Judaism became code-words for the entire brew of anti-liberal, anti-socialist, anti-Christian (materialist) etc. stereotypes and was associated with antisemitism. Equally, years of bracketing symbols of German guilt, defeat, disorder, or low status with Jews must be analyzed in their effect on attitude and behavior. It appears fair to point out that considerable segments of German political opinion - Social Democrats, to some extent Communists, the trade unions, the vanishing liberal center and the Catholic parties (Zentrum, Bayerische Volkspartei), even the humanistic but power-oriented section of conservative opinion - did not vote Nazism into power. Yet, enough evidence has been adduced to show that except for the socialists, all shades of opinion were infected by despair or hostility to modernity for whose failures and excesses Jews could be blamed, and enough "environmental support" could be cited to feed the underlying cultural norm. "Despite all criticism in detail", Hillgruber sums up the evidence: "Nazi antisemitic measures until 1938/1941) reflected the wishes of a large section of German society". They also were passed by a Cabinet and by ministers and authorities composed in no small measure of conservative German ministers or civil servants, while conservatives and the churches remained silent or approved. The large number of perpetrators in the Holocaust who were university graduates "is the most deeply alarming aspect" (Hillgruber). The shoa occurred against the background of acceptance of the . . . secret process by the mass of the German population". That Allied analysis of war-time propaganda noted antisemitism as the most widely accepted Nazi propaganda line embedded in German opinion, - an observation borne out by early post war polls - forms the somber frame of reference for Kershaw's carefully documented analysis of the limits of Nazi antisemitic penetration into opinion: of a population that had denied Hitler and his party a national majority in the last semi-free elections of March 5, 1933.

H A N S ROSENBERG

Anti-Semitism and the "Great Depression", 1873-1896* The development of Central European anti-Semitism started with the transition to industrialization. It occurred in broad waves, and was characterized by alternations between long-term upturns and downturns. The social range and intensity of hostility and hatred towards Jews, and the resulting susceptibility to anti-Semitic ideologies and corresponding political slogans, were subject to heavy swings. They can only be made plausible on a case-by-case basis through a differentiated investigation that takes account of respective historical circumstances. However, the direct and indirect shock of the "permanent economic revolution" to people's emotions and attitudes, and on society and politics, was so persistent and extreme that explanations remain meaningless without taking economic developments into consideration. One of the elementary preconditions of modern anti-Semitism was the radical change in economic and social structures as well as the effects, not always clear to contemporaries, of swings in the economic situation. The fact that the traditional world of guilds and estates venerated by many was threatened with ruin created not only economic insecurity and social unrest, but above all psychological disturbances expressed in hallucinations and irrational reactions. After liberal legislation had created the basis for a blossoming of Central European Jewry in economic and professional competition and education, it was the dazzling use of educational and commercial opportunities by an astonishingly high percentage of the Jewish population that first made their almost meteoric rise a social reality. It was through this collective, so to speak provocative achievement that the slogans "archenemy," "the alien in our homes," and "the cause of our misfortune" first came into being for modern anti-Semites, whose motives and stereotypes were often non-economic and anti-materialist. Longterm as well as short-term changes in economic life were temporary occur-

From: Hans Rosenberg, Große Depression und Bismarckzeit. Wirtschajtsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1967, pp. 94-117 abridged. Translated from the German by Belinda Cooper. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

20

Hans Rosenberg

rences that heated up or cooled down the secular development of modern anti-Semitism. That the dynamic of the economic process and the growth of anti-Semitism were connected in causes and effects is suggested in any case by the remarkable correlation that existed, up until the Second World War, between the long-term waxing and waning of acute hatred ofJews and, in reverse proportion, long-term swings in economic situations and social tensions. Thus the period of the Great Depression was the founding epoch and the first upswing of modern anti-Semitism. This was followed by its decline during the satisfactory advance of heavy industrialization from 1896 to 1914, during which agriculture and small business once again gained strength. However, after the collapse of the Empire and in the course of the crisis- and calamity-filled period from 1918 to 1939, the wave of anti-Jewish hatred rose suddenly and more steeply than ever before, until the National Socialist mass murder factories carried out their plans for annihilation and brought an end to a secular trend whose beginnings went back to the 1870's. However, besides these long-term swings, economic history and modern anti-Semitism are also correlated in short-term ups and downs. Thus during the Great Depression, its dynamics stood in a strikingly close relationship to short-term changes in the economy. Anti-Semitic hysteria and agitation, seen as one, peaked in two booms that stood out sharply and began during the most intensive cyclical downswings in the economy, the years 1873 to 1878 and 1890 to 1894; however, they lasted somewhat longer, since aroused emotions took more time than the unemotional market mechanism to relax and return to "normal" for a time. Even in the 20's, as agitation against Jews became more persistent and violent and the effects of the creeping poison of racial anti-Semitism more disastrous, there still came a short-term cooling-off stage that coincided characteristically with the prosperous years 1925 to 1928. In a certain sense, one can indeed say that from 1873 on, "anti-Semitism rose when the stock market fell."1 Economic anti-Semitism must be fundamentally distinguished from fanatically racist, political and cultural anti-Semitism; still, in real life these types were combined - the latter being the more important and dangerous in its impact - and thereby changed in nature. Economic anti-Semitism proliferated during the Great Depression and was the most pronounced form of antiSemitism in the popular consciousness. Economically-based hatred of Jews was much more directly and clearly connected to economic processes than other, newer, as yet untested manifestations of enmity towards Jews. The 1

Raymond James Sontag, Germany and England. Background of Conflict 1848-1894, New York 1938, p. 146.

Anti-Semitism and the "Great Depression", 1873-1896

21

repeated flare-up and growth of economic anti-Semitism perse was a particular manifestation of the Depression, a consequence as well as a symptom of "bad times". The change in the often already-existent, if still latent acceptance of antiSemitism into open aggression was sparked and kept alive by the abrupt deterioration of the economic situation and the insecure, ruthless and complicated struggle for existence. At first it was a generally spontaneous popular movementfilledwith dull anger, a reaction by "little people" who felt cheated of the fruits of their labor and blamed first Jewish businessmen, then gradually "the" Jews in general, for the non-fulfillment of their expectations and wishes. The supporters of this movement, who included conservative landowners, as mentioned earlier, were above all frightened, threatened farmers and smalltown small businessmen. They were joined by dissatisfied, bitter petty bourgeois elements in Berlin and Vienna, where finance capital and with it, Jewish wealth - were especially concentrated; there, the generally-flourishing Jewish population had rapidly increased and "spread itself", accompanied by the liberal bourgeoisie that had also come into its own since the industrial revolution. In this context, it must be pointed out that in the period from 1825 too 1900 the number ofJews in Germany grew from 223,000 to 520,000. The urbanization process taking place at the same time was concentrated most sharply in the two capitals, which became the centers of anti-Semitism in German Central Europe: In Berlin, in half-century from 1850 to 1900, the Jewish population increased from 9,595 to 106,000 persons, and in Vienna from 2,000 to 146,926.2 The excitement and reorientation affecting the lower middle classes was socially significant in that an initially unorganized, non-ideological mass movement appeared, taking a defensive position against the misunderstood modus operandi of the free, competitive economy and seeking expression for its accumulated discontent. The displeasure, turning to hatred, at the frightening advance of these upstarts of the modern economy and society found a concrete human symbol in what was closest and most concrete on a local level: Jewish businessmen, the agents and exponents of "grasping capital," the "exploiters" and "throat cutters" of the farm- and petty land-owners in the villages, the proliferating creditors and "unfair competitors" of master artisans and small shopowners in the cities. This "specialized" anti-Semitism by small, oppressed proprietors who associated Jewish business, Jewish profiteering and 2

Bernard D. Weinryb, "Jews in Central Europe," Journal of Central European Affairs 6, 1946, p. 49; idem., "The Economic and Social Background of Modem Antisemitism," in Essays on Antisemitism, 2nd ed., New York 1946, p. 26.

22

Hans Rosenberg

the control of capital with moral inferiority and made Jews above all into the "class enemy," become much more comprehensive in the last quarter of the 19th century only indirectly, because politicians, agitators and ideological fanatics had seen their chance and begun to get busy. [· · ·] To the extent that the intensification and spread of economic anti-Semitism can be explained rationally by actual changes in the market situation and the displacement of social forces, nothing created so much bad blood in the agricultural sector of society as the disparity that developed during the Great Depression between the long-term, though quite differentiated decline in peasant yields, and the advancing profitability of agrarian middlemen and traders. In this period, too, prosperous farmers, specifically among productive large and medium-sized farmers in cattle regions like Schleswig-Holstein, benefited from price developments and had nothing to complain of materially. However, for a very considerable number of German farmers, especially for the economically-backward and less adaptable elements among the small farmers, the continuing agricultural depression brought rising debts, declining real income, increasing economic dependency on personal creditors, often under degrading conditions, lost economic security and sometimes loss of livelihood. In contrast, the dynamic, well-capitalized, better-informed, carefully calculating traders in agrarian products adapted flexibly to market conditions. They belonged to a class that generally accumulated considerable wealth, even riches, during this period often at the expense of the little people, who felt themselves "exploited" and "duped." Jewish businessmen of the time, known as "fast talkers" ("schmusers") to many Germans, played a large part in rural business and economic life, except in northwest Germany. There were underdeveloped regions, even in southern Germany, where Jewish business had a practical monopoly on the money, cattle and grain trade, and sometimes on the real estate market. Even if there were other trade or credit organizations in these rural districts that affected village life, their representatives often scorned the needs and concerns of small farmers, and failed, for example, to encourage them - as the "schmusers" often did, functioning as unintentional economic advisors - to distrust their old routine and run things more rationally. [. ..] In Austria-Hungary's agrarian economy one encounters the influence of Jewish business on a large and small scale, for better and worse, creatively and destructively. It was far more marked here than in the German Reich. In the rural regions of the Austrian, but also the Hungarian half of the empire, Jews not only did business on their own account, but often functioned as the indispensable agents for large landowning nobles who remained in the back-

Anti-Semitism and the "Great Depression", 1873-1896

23

ground when doing business, leaving the "dirty work" to the "little" middlemen, the "court Jews". If one approaches this context without prejudice and investigates, for example, the historic effects of the nobles' lucrative alcohol monopoly in Galician villages and Polish-speaking areas, one often encounters highly unedifying moral circumstances and social types in noble and Jewish circles who did humanity little honor. They can easily be explained historically and socially with reference to the economic structure of their time - which of course does not excuse them. The Jewish village barkeeper holding a concession was not only most of the time the local moneylender and cattle and grain dealer who demanded excessive interest rates and kept prices down. He also "fenced" for Christian thieves, corrupted morality in the villages and organized youths into thieving bands. N o wonder "the" Jew was hated, feared and despised in these regions, and that anti-Semitism, once it had been ideologically justified and politically organized, did not need to be concerned with finding followers, especially when market conditions were unfavorable.3 As serious as the situation was, it must be kept in mind that rural antiSemitism did not become the typical phenomenon. As election results in rural areas unmistakably indicate, neither in Germany nor in Austria were the highly-differentiated farm owning and agricultural working classes in the same camp with regard to the "Jewish question," even towards the end of the period from 1873 to 1896. The attitudes of intellectuals, politicians and large landowners on this question were equally heterogenous, if measured by those who spoke for, led or seduced the rural population. The Jew-baiters among them carry a great historical responsibility for planting permanent roots for modern anti-Semitism. This is true especially of the large East Elbian farmers, who firmly controlled the "Bund der Landwirte" (Agrarian League), despite their small numbers. The "Bund" was one of many anti-Semitic mass organizations controlled from above. It aimed at inciting the rural population and confusing public opinion. Because of these real economic and social conditions and the emotional reaction to them described above, obsessed demagogues encountered a highly receptive public when they began their thundering diatribes against the "immorality" of "mobile capital" controlled by "haggling Jews" and "Jewish control of liberalism," while at the same time denouncing their Jewish fellow citizens as the ringleaders of socialist "anarchy" who blocked the path to

3

See Richard Charmatz, Deutsch-Österreichische Politik, Leipzig 1907, pp. 98; W.J. Thomas and F. Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, vol. 2, New York 1927, pp. 1200; Oscar Jaszi, The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy, Chicago 1929, pp. 170-176.

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prosperity by preaching revolution. As early as 1879 it was said that "Jews and descendants of Jews are the leaders of German Social Democracy, Russian Nihilism and the Red International."4 Among urban occupational groups, as far as they were numerically significant, it was the class-conscious, easily-led artisans and small store owners (whom we will encounter often) who proved to be most susceptible to those economic and social slogans of anti-Jewish agitation produced by economic and political as well as racial anti-Semites, which referred clearly to unsatisfactory aspects of the economic situation. Numerous members of the urban petty bourgeoisie tended to mistake the often bad old days of the estate-based society, before modern business reforms, for paradise. To think independently about the reasons for worsening competitive conditions, to adopt a spirit of economic enterprise and to adopt technical improvement (resistance to the use of machines!) generally was not within their limited horizons. Thus it required no superhuman efforts to convince them that their middle class status and their economic security were more endangered than ever, not only by Jewish capital and the Jewish clothing industry, but also by Jewish retail stores, travelling salesmen and peddlers, to whom were ascribed magic destructive powers. Yet other professions as well, dissatisfied with their economic status and the rungs they had climbed on the ladder of social mobility in industrial mass and class society, added to the chorus that kept calling for restricting Jewish influence on economic and social life. These were above all the class of private employees and clerks that had increased greatly towards the end of the century; now they blamed their successful Jewish fellow citizens for the fact that they had not become independent wealthy entrepreneurs as well, but only dependent "white collar workers," at best members of the "new middle class" constantly threatened by the Damocles sword of dismissal. Thus Jewish citizens were not admitted as "comrades in destiny" [Schicksalsgenossen] (as fellow members of the profession were called at the time) to the anti-Semitic Deutschen Handlungsgehilfenverband founded in 1893 and to the "judenrein" Bund der Landwirte since 1894. Among the active preachers of anti-Semitism in the 1880's and 1890's were also found a relatively large number of elementary and middle-school teachers, obviously worked up about the presence of Jewish Gymnasium teachers here and there - of whom, incidentally, many would certainly have become university professors had their paths not been blocked because of their faith or descent.

4

Otto Glagau, Deutsches Handwerk und historisches Bürgertum, Osnabrück 1879, p. 46.

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In the long run, pointing the direction more clearly than the newlyemerging Jew-hatred and the struggle against abuses and frictions in economic life, and more fatal than the shrill slogans and alarms of economic antiSemitism, was the change in quality and function of anti-Semitism that grew out of the fundamental commitment to Jew-hatred, boycott of Jews and legislative discrimination against Jews. This was led by academically and nonacademically educated writers and incompetent literati who had already appeared and gained attention as the ideological petrels of the anti-Semitic "revival" in the turbulent transitional years from 1873 to 1879. ·

·

]

The anti-Semitic "Kulturkampf', symbolized in moderate form by Treitschke and in extremes by Lagarde and Richard Wagner and their fellow thinkers, was based on an exaggerated, romantic national feeling, but often also on a somewhat strange mixture of moral idealism, anti-liberal political animosity, anti-modern economic views, oversensitive, wounded vanity and indignation over the "ideological misuse" of equal rights by Jewish intellectuals. Its supporters came mainly from the academically-educated classes most influential in German society and were split in their world views; they included higher civil servants and university professors - that is, precisely the groups who, even while stormily opposing and declaring war on the condemnation of Jews on ideological and ethical grounds, at the same time broadcast their agreement or expressed it in smiling whispers "between us" behind closed doors. It was the anti-Semitism of the "better people" in secure, higher social positions, removed from the business world, untouched by negative economic crises, whose social thinking was generally oriented around hierarchical, class-based, aristocratic values. It was the salon-based, elite-conscious, esoterically chic anti-Semitism of intellectually exclusive notables. Although it sometimes resembled racial anti-Semitism, as in the case of Lagarde, it was superior to the confused scrawls of trashy and obscenely racial anti-Semitic literature. Its representatives distanced themselves from the crass, plebeian, materialistic Jewhatred of the "simple people." The fact that even famous members of the educated aristocracy who enjoyed great personal and social prestige propagated anti-Semitism and gave the hatred toward Jews their blessing contributed not a little to the fact that hatred of aliens, to the extent it was aimed at Jews, could take firm root in the educational system, upper-level schools, universities, and intellectual life. The small minority of the German educated elite that sanctioned anti-Semitism at the time worried about "ultimate concerns." They saw in the Jewish question above all an acute national cultural problem, and considered the active struggle against "Jewish" influences on the "German spirit" - which was in no way

26

Hans Rosenberg

limited to third-class, arrogant Jewish literati - a patriotic duty and a point of moral honor. Earlier-held optimistic, unrealistic expectations in regard to the speed, intensity and universality of social and cultural assimilation were not fulfilled; the successful integration of a relatively large number of upper-class Jewish citizens and academics was limited to the upper levels of the Jewish minority. Starting with the "pessimistic" view fashionable in the "reactionary" 1870's that one could not count on the collective disappearance of Jewry as a separate group and its complete Germanization, supporters of the anti-Jewish Kulturkampf protested against Jewish influence; in their view, it had become too dominant and concentrated in particular strategic professions, undermining Christian social ethics and threatening German cultural life with foreign infiltration and corruption. The spokesmen and supporters of cultural antiSemitism and national cultural imperialism were particularly annoyed by the "Jew-press," which at the time meant the liberal press that made the lives of non-liberals difficult, because it tried "to inject the noisy clamor of the business world into literature and the jargon of the stock market into our sacred language."5 As we have seen, behind the surface economic anti-Semitism of small businessmen and small and large farmers lay far more central issues: rejection of industrial capitalism and anxiety about unfettered competition, the snares of the modern credit economy and the loss of one's own position in society and state. In contrast to this largely materialistic way of thinking, the negative reaction of national-cultural anti-Semites, in thought and action, to modern economic developments was based upon idealistic considerations and fears. Precisely because they were rather unworldly and permitted themselves to think in economic terms only on occasion, they encountered the revolution in economic life, the undermining of the old social order and the new "materialistic" spirit of mammon with a deep and principled defensiveness as well as with moral and aesthetic aversion. The social targets of this aversion were Jewish business and the Jewish literati, whom they blamed as the prime causes of the cult of the golden calf. However, as already mentioned, the most characteristic concern of Germanic-Teutonic cultural anti-Semites was to rein in the allegedly fatal Jewish influence on German intellectual and artistic life. "Like a primal cry, hatred of this alien essence that has seized control of our press and public opinion breaks from a hundred thousand Germanic hearts."6

5

6

Heinrich von Treitschke, "Noch einige Bemerkungen zur Judenfrage," Preussische Jahrbücher 45, 1880, p. 91. Treitschke to Emil Herrmann, 25 August 1879 in Max Cornicelius (ed.), Heinrich -von Treitschkes Briefe, vol. 3, Leipzig 1920, p. 502.

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27

Behind this mood certainly hovered also deep-rooted, generally inarticulate and often probably unconscious social and political resentments, especially against traditional class arrogance and the exclusive claim to leadership. This was also the source of the passionate indignation at the fact that Jewish journalists and writers, instead of meekly appreciating the favors they had received from emancipatory legislation and remaining modestly in the background, "pushed themselves forward," made ideological and political trouble and "competed unfairly," and presumed to set the tone. For was it not the height of "impudence" that "subversive" Jewish intellectuals and newspaper editors had the audacity to criticize the traditional governing powers and the privileges, deeds, and ideals of the old-established ruling classes that still dominated the state and the social rankorder despite the industrial revolution; that they did so by sharply and sometimes disrespectfully and sarcastically wounding these classes' vanity and exclusive class consciousness; and that they stepped forward with demands for intensive liberalization and democratization of the social and political order? [ . . .] As alarming as the anti-Semitic trends that developed in the period from 1873 to the end of the 1890's appear even in retrospect today, in fact, from the point of view of their concrete and immediate political effect they were of quite limited historical significance. Yet that which is most immediately and visibly active is not always that which is most important in history. Farther-reaching and more brutalizing are the creeping, more sustained, though basically unmeasurable intellectual and spiritual effects of the anti-Jewish hate campaign. However, it must not be forgotten that the "reichsdeutsche Juden" (Jews of the German Reich) were only one among numerous minorities - the "dirty Polacks," the Alcase-Lorrainers, the Danes, the occasionally persecuted Prussian Catholics and the Socialist "betrayers of the Fatherland" - who were defamed. Although Bismarckian and Wilhelminian Germany, and even more the multinational Hapsburg state, did not want for hatred and neurotic fears, these were directed against many varied groups and so tended, up to a point, to neutralize themselves. Thus in practical life there arose a new sort of "Judenschutz" (privileged Jewish status), and for the Jews themselves, despite all defamation, a feeling of security deepened in many cases by love of the homeland - especially since the government limited their opportunities for advancement only in the civil service. In addition, besides hatred of Jews there existed not only an (admittedly weak) philo-Semitism, but also other, far stronger counterforces deeply rooted in history. These included the enlightened thinking and humane beliefs of the liberal bourgeoisie that had been forced on the defensive; the responsible, precise legal formalism of the bureaucracy; and also the feeling for respectability, good manners, truth and justice

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that could even be encountered in individual members of the pre-industrial social classes that, having been thrown off balance, now collectively formed the mainstay of the fractured anti-Semitic movement. The long-term changes in modern anti-Semitism in Central Europe from 1873 to 1945 reflected the long-term ups and downs in the tensions and conflicts of interests and ideas of a society forced into motion - a society whose members were unable to reach a reliable and lasting agreement on rules of cooperation, a basic economic, social and political order, and socio-ethical goals. The rise in the anti-Semitic wave so characteristic of the epoch of the Great Depression was a by-product of a more extensive movement. From a functional point of view, anti-Semitism was above all nothing more than a contradictory part of the social protest movement aimed at big, mobile capital by supporters of the pre-industrial world, as well as the nationalist movement stirred up primarily by intellectuals - the latter being particularly intensified by the transition to economic nationalism introduced in response to economic fluctuations to "protect national labor." In the interplay of forces during the epoch of the Great Depression, the power of dissatisfaction and of unsettling economic developments over excited emotions and changing social and political forces was so great that, characteristically, despite their ideological and emotional obsessions, even racial anti-Semitic crusaders turned themselves into a significant political factor only by stressing the material interests of the small rural and urban middle class for whose vote they competed with the conservative, clerical, and liberal parties. And these were just the groups that, as we recognize, tended to blame above all the Jewish "blood-suckers" and "throat cutters" for their own highly unsatisfactory economic and social situation. This concealed the foolish as well as primitive and dangerous dream of cutting the ground from underneath the much more productive supporters and pioneers of economic progress and free competition, by limiting or destroying Jewish influence and reviving exclusive estates and corporative institutions.

HANS-ULRICH WEHLER

Anti-Semitism and Minority Policy"" Government Policies Starting in the 1870's, racist views proliferated in German domestic policy like poisonous mushrooms. In addition to traditional cultural, religious and economic anti-Semitism, organized political anti-Semitism appeared; its rapid rise must first of all be seen as a phenomenon of the period following the second world economic crisis. Since then, anti-Semitism is seen as generally closely correlated with economic fluctuations. It was clearly a crisis ideology that channelled the emotional tensions and concrete disappointments, the hysteria and uncertainties of the economic slump, and directed them against a minority that had long suffered discrimination. As one form of socio-psychological escape from the painful experience of unequal economic growth and changing social status, anti-Semitism brought together the dissatisfied who saw in the Jew a scapegoat for all the period's negative developments. In the anti-Semitic accusations vented, for example, in over 500 writings on "the Jewish question" between 1873 and 1890 - they contained all the topoi of the virulent antiSemitism of the 20th century - a lightening rod was sought and found not only for the depressed mood, but also for a general discomfort with the anonymous processes of industrial capitalism, especially among the middle classes. The anti-Semitism that started in Berlin in the autumn of 1879, the antiJewish agitation of the court chaplain Stoecker, and the persecutions ofJews in Pommerania in 1881 brought this new danger abruptly to the attention of the liberal German public. Even before, "a painful moment [occurred] in the experience of every young German Jew" which according to Walter Rathenau, he "remembered all his life; when he first became fully aware that he was born a second-class citizen, and that no industry and no achievement could free him From: Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1918, Vol. 9 der Reihe Deutsche Geschichte, edited by Joachim Leuschner, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1973, pp. 110-121, translated from the German by Belinda Cooper. Reprinted with permission of the author and the publisher.

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from this situation."1 From now on, dull resentments were fanned even further, publicly approved by larger groups, and translated into political or even direct action. By December, 1880, following a large assembly of antiSemites, "organized bands" had marched to Berlin-Friedrichstadt "to the most-frequented cafes . . . shouted repeatedly and in rhythm 'Jews out,' refused admission to Jews or Jewish-looking passersby, and thus provoked fights, broke windows, and caused chaos. All this, of course, under the motto of defending German idealism against Jewish materialism."2 It is no wonder that Theodor Mommsen, who organized liberal resistance to anti-Semitic university teachers around Treitschke at Berlin University, asked himself "where our half-acknowledged barbarity" (only in comparison with Russia) "will end." Bamberger, too, was "disgusted" by "so-called anti-Semitism's excessive and unrestrained unleashing of vulgarity that delights in the oppression of its equals or betters. The organs that are the actual life blood of the nation - army, schools, the scholarly world - are filled to the brim with i t . . . it has become an obsession that does not leave one untouched." And after the first outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence, the Berlin banker Gerson von Bleichröder complained with presentiment that it was "just the beginning of a catastrophic and terrible social revolution."3 But neither his petitions to the Emperor nor those of the Left-Liberals could stop political anti-Semitism, as the socio-economic changes in structure that underlay it overcame all wellmeaning protests. In 1884, the conservatives openly called upon the voters to "renounce" their "fealty to Jewry." The fact that "Jewry" belonged to the "international, non-German powers," as it was put in a typical expression, "must finally convince every truly German man" that Jews "would never accord precedence to the interests of the German fatherland."4 In the [Catholic] Center, too, starting in the 70's, the traditional anti-Semitic component in its propaganda became even more apparent. The anti-Semitic organizations of the 1880's (Christlich-Soziale Partei, Antisemitenliga,, Soziale Reichspartei, Deutscher Volksverein, Deutsche Reformpartei, Deutsche Antisemitische Vereinigung) united in 1889 to form the Antisemitische

1 2 3

4

Walter Rathenau, Gesammelte Schuften /., Berlin 1925, p. 188 f. Eduard Bernstein, Geschichte der Berliner Arbeiterbewegung, Berlin 1907, Π, p. 59. Theodor W. Mommsen to Anon., 13 August 1882, Nachlaß (the posthumous works) [Nl.] Ludwig Bamberger 151/4, Deutsches Zentralarchiv I: Potsdam [DZA I]; Bamberger to Hildebrand, 17 December 1882, ibid., 91/72; Gerson v. Bleichröder (1880) cited in Walter Frank, Hofprediger A. Stoecker und die christlich-soziale Bewegung, Hamburg 1935, 2nd ed., p. 86. Wahlaufruf der Deutschkonservativen: N l . Goldschmidt, PA.

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Deutschsoziale Partei or Deutschsoziale Partei. The Deutschsoziale Reformpartei arose in 1894 from its fusion with the Antisemitische Volkspartei (1890, since 1893 the Deutsche Reformpartei); however, in 1900 it once again split into its two parts. The number of voters never even reached 300,000, but the Hamburg program of the united anti-Semitic parties had already envisaged the "final solution" by 1899. As they explained it, because "the Jewish question would become a world question in the course of the 20th century," it had to be "finally solved through complete segregation a n d . . . finally destruction of the Jewish people."5 That anti-Semitism had gradually become socially acceptable since its appearance in the 1870's despite its excesses was unquestionably connected with the encouragement given it by the first chancellor of the Reich. Bismarck unscrupulously exploited the anti-Semitic movement to serve his own electoral purposes. It is true that he did not part with his Jewish banker, his Jewish lawyer and his Jewish doctor; and the fact that he vulgarly referred to a member of parliament, Lasker, as a "stupid Jewboy" and to the minister Friedenthal as a "Semitic coward" might still be ascribed to typical aristocratic prejudices.6 But shortly before the Reichstag elections of 1884, he had already permitted a newspaper to quote his statement that "the Jews are doing all they can to make me an anti-Semite." He never repudiated this. Afterwards, he wished "that in articles on the results of the elections it be emphasized that Jews everywhere joined forces with the Poles," and in addition that "Jewish money" provided "the cash for the progressive Republicans."7 It would be "forcing something upon the great mass of the people" for the government to take a public position against anti-Semitism, he instructed the Prussian Minister of the Interior von Puttkamer in 1884, prior to the next elections; on the other hand, if it approved it too openly, "this would drive a great deal of Jewish money into progressive electoral coffers," for "the Jews have always been on the side of progress." In addition, they were "ridiculously sensitive . . . why should one forbid people whose heart moves them to it, to insult the Jews?"8 Even if this cynicism also reflects the great political manipulator's confidence that he could contain anti-Semitism, such statements indirectly legitimized the rowdy anti-Semitism of the streets. Moreover, there were such stirrings even in his inner circle, not only in his violently anti-

5 6

7 8

Wilhelm Mommsen (ed.), Deutsche Parteiprogramme, München 1960, p. 84. Erich Foerster, Adalbert Falk, Gotha 1927, p. 485 (10 March 1878, Eduard Lasker); Ludwig Bamberger, Bismarck Postbumus, Berlin 1899 p. 35 (Friedenthal). Herbert v. Bismarck to Rantzau, 2 November 1881, N l . H. v. Bismarck 41. Wilhelm v. Bismarck to Rantzau, 23 May 1884, N l . Rottenburg 41203, Geheimes Staatsarchiv [GStA] Berlin-Dahlem.

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Semitic press lackey Moritz Busch, but also in his oldest son Herbert, who would have liked to give the "cheeky" Bleichröder "a slap in his Jewish face" [hinter den Judenlöffel]. As Secretary of State for the Foreign Office, he instituted the policy that no "Jewish rascals" were to be hired, and ridiculed the "Jewish-thinking" British undersecretary Meade. 9 Anti-Semitism also played an unmistakable role in the expulsion of some 32,000 Poles from the eastern Prussian provinces, inaugurated by Bismarck in 1885: a third of the expelled were Jews. Full of foreboding, Bamberger had used impressive language early on to characterize the effects of Bismarck's attitude in considering only the needs of the moment. "The curious feature of our present circumstances is the fact that the truly great man who now governs us delegates everything he does not control with his own hands to vile riff-raff. That is the only collaboration he can bear. Perhaps this was always the case. It is, however, twice as bad when the theory of brutality is extolled to a people with barbaric tendencies as a species of idealism of strength, manliness and virtue. This is the signature, and from it arises the infamous spirit that now . . . is taking over." Given the frightening massivity of political anti-Semitism, one can understand the extremely skeptical tone also taken by Mommsen. "You are deceiving yourself," he wrote bitterly to Hermann Bahr, "if you believe that one can achieve anything at all with reason. It is all in vain. What I could tell y o u . . . are all only reasons, logical and moral arguments. No anti-Semite listens to that. They only listen to their own hate and envy, the basest instincts . . . there is no protection against the rabble - whether it be the rabble in the streets or the rabble in the salons; there is no difference. Scoundrels are scoundrels, and antiSemitism is the belief of scoundrels. It is like a horrible epidemic, like cholera one can neither explain nor cure it. One must wait patiendy until the poison dissolves by itself and loses its power." 10 In the long run, it proved particularly consequential that anti-Semitism, whose parties in the more narrow sense could only secure a very small number of protest voters up to the last elections in 1912, penetrated the Conservatives - beginning with Bismarck's approval, but reaching a wider scale with the Bund der Landwirte [BdLJ.In this way it settled into the old power elites; its slogans became socially acceptable, even becoming the property of rightwing journalism. And with progressive in-

9

10

H. v. Bismarck to Rottenburg 3; 25 September 1887 (Auswärtiges Amt), ibid., to Münster, 20 April 1885 (Robert Meade), N l . Münster 5, Schloß Derneburg. Bamberger to Hildebrand, 7 December 1880, N l . Bamberger 91/33; Mommsen to Hermann Bahr, cited in Paul W. Massing, Vorgeschichte des politischen Antisemitismus, Frankfurt a. Μ. 1959, p. 177.

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dustrialization arose a social reservoir; economic cycles and the process of concentration acted almost unremittingly to create insecurity in the middle class bourgeoisie, which had long held fast to the commercial capitalist ideal of the independent small businessman. Anti-Semitism became an integral part of a syndrome opposed to capitalism in its highly industrialized form, until, after 1929 and following further deep crises, German Fascism could exploit this extreme right-wing protest against the modern world. Not only anti-Semitism, however, but also the nationality policies of the Empire provide information on the country's domestic situation. As a result of the 1871 decision, the Polish national minority (prior to 1918, every tenth Prussian was Polish!), the French of Alsace-Lorraine, the North-Schleswig Danes, the Lithuanians and Masurians were included in a state that soon after began to assert its ideal of national and cultural homogeneity against them. In the area of language rights, the absolute primacy of German was to be achieved in education, assemblies and the judicial system; in commercial and military law; in short, in all areas of public and legal life. The population of Alsace-Lorraine was treated relatively generously; aside from the small number of French speakers, respect for French culture probably made a rigorous attack difficult. Here, unlike in the East, the Germans relied upon their increasing weight. The Danes were more severely affected (though German policy can also be seen as a reaction to the "Danization" policy after 1848). Finally, the anti-Polish nationality conflict was carried out with the greatest severity. Influenced lastingly by the ideas of a West-East cultural divide and a Germanizing superiority to the Slavs, this battle was waged against the linguistic and cultural particularity of the Prussian-German Poles, as well as, in the area of agrarian law, against the material assets of this minority. German policy met with the greatest resistance here; it did not end until 1918 with, on the whole, greater Polish success in asserting themselves. In general, in the East two nationalisms collided against one another with undiminished force; given the historical conditions, it is hard to imagine that these entanglements could have been avoided completely, even if they could have been made more bearable. In this regard as well, the fundamental decisions were made in Bismarck's time. Certainly, the Reich chancellor was prepared to hold to the statecentered ideas of the old, multinational Prussian state, as long as the Poles subordinated themselves as subjects to the authorities. But at the same time, beneath the cloak of this reason of state was a passionate hatred of the Poles. "Beat the Poles until they despair of life," he had already written in 1861. "I have every sympathy for their situation, but if we want to exist, we can do nothing else but wipe them out; the wolf cannot help having been created as

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he is by God, and one shoots him dead for it when one can." 11 In the 1870's, the advance of the German language was supported legally and administratively in all minority areas - only the Lithuanians, Masurians and Sorbs retained a special status. In 1871 and 1878, in North Schleswig, the minimum number of hours of German instruction was raised; in 1872, German became the official language of business in Alsace-Lorraine, in 1873 the general language of education, and in 1881 the language for negotiating business in the Parliament of Notables of the regional commission. While numerous exceptions in favor of French still remained (until 1914!), by 1873 a decree issued by the President of the Province had already made German the only language of public education in the Prussian-Polish region; further, the priority of German was asserted decisively with the Business Language Law of 1876 and the Law on the Constitution of the Reich Courts of 1877 - which, for example, was not adopted in Alsace-Lorraine until 1889! But it was the 80's that saw a militant increase: in 1888, a decree made German the only language of instruction in North Schleswig. That in itself greatly intensified tensions, which would reach their peak with the deportation policies of Oberpräsident von Koller and the treatment of the plebiscite question between 1897 and 1901. In addition to the expulsion of the Poles starting in 1885, the actual beginning of irreconcilable conflict was marked by the anti-Polish settlement law of 1886, which allowed a state commission with increasing financial means to purchase land in the eastern provinces for German farmers. This law was intended to pull the rug out from under the Polish landed nobility, a carrier of Polish nationalist resistance; the Kulturkampf had similarly aimed at the influence of the Polish clergy in this zone of conflict. "With all these colonialization laws," Bismarck explained to a trusted circle, he had "had in mind primarily the elimination of the trichina of the Polish nobility from the country." With this fatal metaphor, he revealed not only his "limitless contempt for humanity" (Holstein), but also a terrifying affinity to the biological vocabulary of anti-Semitism that complained of "Jewish parasites."12 However, the intentions of the Berlin legislators were vitiated because the Polish community reacted by withdrawing and encapsulating itself, and by the demographic factor of the Poles' higher birthrate. In a short time, far more property was passing into Polish than into German hands, and the Settlement Commission controlled primarily German lands. By 1914, nearly one billion

11

12

Otto v. Bismarck, Gesammelte Werke, 19 vols., 1924-35, [GW XIV/1, 568 (Bismarck to his sister, 26 March 1861). Rantzau to Rottenburg, 12 December 1886, N l . Rottenburg 5/237 and N l . Otto v. Bismarck; Friedrich v. Holstein to H. v. Bismarck, 13 December 1884, N l . Bismarck 44.

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35

gold marks had been spent by the Commission for "Germanizing the land"; thus it proved less a defensive anti-Polish institution than an additional redevelopment enterprise for debt-ridden German landed Junkers, who could sell their goods at favorable prices. For the landowners' "lucrative patriotism," disguised as national self-assertion, the Commission's funds were a "rescue bank" that - as Franz Mehring remarked sarcastically - provided large sums to help them "to be Germanized, too". 13 In face of the failure of this Eastern Area [Ostmark] policy, the Prussian parliamentfinallypassed an expropriation law against the Poles in 1908, which was used once in 1912. This flagrant violation of the Constitution revealed the extent to which the guarantees of the "rule of law" lost their force in the nationality struggle. Even earlier, in 1904, "new settlements" in controversial areas had to be sanctioned by the Regierungspräsident·., Poles were subjected to the harrassment of discretionary decisions by the authorities, who in 1898 were told by Reich Chancellor HohenloheSchillingsfürst to "encourage Germandom" within and beyond the scope of their duties. Language policy had similarly worsened, leading to open resistance by Polish parents in Wreschen in 1901, and to major school strikes by Polish children in 1906-07. The Reichsvereinsgesetz (Reich Association Law) of 1908 then reached a high point with its infamous language paragraph (§ 12), according to which the use of their language, for a transitional period only, was permitted exclusively in districts containing more than 60 % long-established settlers; civil rights guaranteed in the Constitution were made dependent upon the results of a politically-biased nationality census. With this, a "level of ideological state nationalism" (Schieder) was reached that violated all constitutional safeguards. Not until April, 1917 - half a year after the creation of a Polish kingdom by the Central Powers - was paragraph 12 reluctantly repealed. During the war, an expulsion of Poles on a grand scale was narrowly avoided. In 1887, the future Reich Chancellor von Bülow had already expressed the hope that a future armed conflict would allow "evicting the Poles en masse from the Polish parts of our country." 14 That after 1900 he, too, had done nothing against the annual influx of some 300,000 Polish seasonal

13

14

Hans-U. Wehler, Krisenherde des Kaiserreichs 1871-1918, Göttingen 1970, p. 188; on policies towards Poland, see pp. 181-199 (incl. figures) and Alsace-Lorraine, pp. 51-56; on NorthSchleswig see idem, Sozialdemokratie und Nationalität, Nationalitätenfragen in Deutschland 1840-1914, Göttingen 1971, 2nd ed., pp. 86-102. Holstein Papers, ΠΙ, 1961, p. 214 (Bülow to Holstein, 10 December 1887); Theodor Schieder cit. in Wehler, op. dt., 1970, p. 194.

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laborers from Russia and Galicia might have to do with the fact that the profitability of numerous East Elbian estates depended upon the modesty of these laborers' needs. However, the aggressive Ostmarkenverein (East Mark Association) had pushed for "resettlement" and "deportation" since the 90's. Starting in 1914, such ideas had combined with a plan for a "Polish borderland" to be annexed along the German eastern border for strategic and settlement purposes. Here an "ethnic land redistribution," that is, a large-scale expulsion - calmly envisioned even by a liberal-conservative historian like Friedrich Meinecke 15 was expected to create free space, which would be filled by German settlers to form a "bulwark against the Slavic flood." Beginning in 1939, the radicalized Germanization policy was being announced. It clearly reenacted in memoranda the early forms of barbaric oppression that had revealed the earlier degeneration in the language battle. Additionally, it is difficult to overlook in this "East Mark policy" the genesis of later ideologies, such as "Lebensraum," Germanic cultural responsibility, and Ostland imperialism. Above all, however, the dilemma of this policy became apparent in the treatment of Poles as "enemies of the Reich." The ambiguous laws developed against these citizens who spoke a different language prepared the ground for formally legal, statesanctioned erosion of the rule of law and constitutional principles, and encouraged a dangerous acceptance of discrimination against minorities. Deportations and expropriations, social ostracism and Germanizing oppression were also features of the Imperial Reich. Without acceptance of this public injustice, the path to the violent actions of the subsequent period could not have been cleared with such ease. Religion as a Legitimizing Ideology Religion played a not-insignificant role in the nationality struggle on the eastern border. Romantic Polish nationalism considered Germanizing Protestantism a deadly enemy; on the German side, militant Protestantism colored the dispute with Catholic "Polonism." However, these influences remained subordinate to the dominant nation-state ideas and socio-economic factors. Yet, for a variety of reasons, in the imperial state's domestic policies of 1871 the Christian denominations retained the considerable significance they had always possessed in this classic country of confessional divisions.

15

F r i e d r i c h M e i n e c k e , Ausgewählter Briefwechsel, Ludwig Dehio and P. Classen (eds.), Stuttgart 1962, p. 59 (to Goetz, 6 May 1915).

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The Protestant State Church: Throne and Altar One of the most significant decisions of the Reformation of the 16th century was the creation of Protestant state churches and, in connection, the transformation of state princes into little Protestant popes, the Summi Episcopi [supreme bishops] of their states. However strongly the Calvinist influence may have affected the elite Prussian leadership's desire for achievement and worldly success, it could not effectively relax the extremely authoritarian ideology of the Lutheran state church; it certainly did not succeed in bringing about a right of Protestant resistance or a freer view of the government as a social organ without divine consecration. For the Germans, Lutheran religiosity led to a "purely emotion-based state metaphysics" with "far-reaching political consequences." On the other hand, pietism, with its influence among the most important groups, had additionally emphasized a retreat into "inwardness," and even led to orthodox servility. It encouraged transformation of the world through reform of the individual's life, thereby purposely refraining from transforming state structures. Protestant anti-liberalism since the 70's, a reaction to the push for modernization beginning in 1850, intensified these attitudes. Especially after the union of 1817, the Protestant state church became a public institution that could levy taxes with state assistance and help to shape primary school education; instruction had to have (and still must have) the approval of the state churches. The Prussian king was enthroned at the summit of the official clerical hierarchy, as Summus Episcopus. Because of this merging of the legal and religious hierarchies, his power had a "Caesaro-Papist character," which only intensified the anachronistic doctrine of divine right. In Prussian Germany, too, the state "made available" to religious institutions "its external means of coercion" and collected church taxes "for the preservation of their position of power;" the churches typically offered in return "to recognize and secure the legitimacy of the state, and to domesticate its subjects by means of religion."16 After 1871, the king and emperor was also the supreme head of the Church. This created an unusual concentration of authority, at least in the northern German "Empire State." For the pastor in his parish - especially in the countryside, where he depended on the patronage of royalist landowners - the traditional alliance of throne and altar took on new lustre. The functional significance of Evangelic sermons, Evangelic religious instruction, and the Evangelic military chaplaincy for the stabilization and legitimation of Hohen16

Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, II, Tübingen 4th ed. 1956, pp. 683 f., 698 f.

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zollern Caesaro-Papism must not be underestimated, especially in those areas where domestication was easiest - in rural regions and small towns. However, the opposite effects of this unbroken identification of state and church interests emerged in the industrial cities and regions. Here it became most glaringly apparent that the Protestant church was a church of the owning and governing classes, from which the proletarian was, so to speak, "absent." Through the Home Mission, the "Rough Houses" of the workers' colonies of Bodelschwingh, and so forth, at least selective improvements were attempted. But however deserving of recognition these noble efforts by outsiders, they could hardly eliminate the overall impression that the church was more interested in the self-satisfied bourgeoisie and the noble gentleman on the estate than in the rural laborer or the exploited city dweller. The quicklyincreasing de-Christianization and estrangement from the church of the industrial centers was closely connected with the church's attitudinal failure. An example: in 1874, in Berlin, only 20 % of all married couples had been married in Protestant church ceremonies, and only 62 % of the newborn baptized! 17 In face of this identification of the church with the old aristocracy and the new plutocracy, there is a certain logic to the fact that workers organized in the SPD and the unions held predominantly anti-church views after their daily experiences they hardly required Marx's ideological critique of religion as the opiate of the people. Thus Germany confirmed de Tocqueville's thoughtful analysis following his trip to America. "Religion cannot.. . participate in the worldly power of those who govern without attracting some of the hatred that they excite," he wrote in the 1830's. "The more democratic a nation becomes and the more society tends toward a republic, the more dangerous becomes the combination of religion and state power." Even if this condition was not yet generally valid for Germany, ist was as true for the prodemocratic and, for a long time, pro-republican working class as was the prognosis that the alliance of throne and altar induced religion to sacrifice "the future for the sake of the present."18 The problem was intensified by the fact that Germany completely lacked free churches - or "sects," as they would be called pejoratively - for the underprivileged, whereas they operated with indisputable success in Great Britain, offering workers a sense of identity as a class even more so than their unions and political affiliations. The Social Democrats made good use of the gap that existed in Germany in this regard; one can observe in their ideology elements of a substitute religion and a

17 18

Ministerialblatt für die gesamte innere Verwaltung 37.1876, Berlin 1877, p. 44. Alexander de Tocqueville, Über die Demokratie in Amerika, I, Stuttgart 1959, p. 343.

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worldly gospel of salvation. In face of the spiritual isolation of the urban working class, the Social Democratic "political Utopia" provided much more than merely an organizational constitutional ideal. Thus it was not by chance that, in 1911, Eduard Bernstein called a review of the SPD's development "From a Sect to a Party." But because, within a relatively short time, Social Democracy began to present its revolutionary goals in words only, it also served at least indirectly to stabilize the entire social system by disciplining the protest potential of the working class.

Roman Catholicism: Class Ideology and the Claim to Monopoly Status For the Catholic Church, whose symbiosis with the extinct Holy Roman Empire was conceivably close in many places, the new Protestant Greater Prussian Reich was seen first of all as an enemy power, although the oftquoted "casca il mondo" by a Vatican dignitary grotesquely exaggerated the effect of the rise of Prussia and the founding of the Reich. The Kulturkampf was not calculated to mitigate this early animosity; instead, it closely united the Church's interests with those of its worldly institutions, including the Center Party - more closely, in any case, than was sometimes comfortable for the Center's leader, Ludwig Windthorst. Condemned as a sinister papist power behind Catholic "enemies of the Reich," while itself concerned with rigid assertion of traditionalist positions, the Catholic Church had a difficult status into the mid-80's. Then the grimness of the domestic struggle in Germany relaxed to a degree, though discrimination against Catholics continued in various forms, and political Catholicism did not adopt more tolerant policies in its churches. N o t only the dogma of the Virgin Mary and infallibility shocked the enlightened public of the time. In the Syllabus Erromm, the index of eighty "contemporary errors" of 1864, Catholic orthodoxy had marched into relentless battle with liberalism, socialism and science; it had intensified the call for Church control of education and research to the point of totalitarian demands, and, with radically conservative blindness, proscribed some of the most dynamic forces of the 19th century. Under Church law, the Syllabus Errorum remained binding on all the faithful, until it was at least partly revised by the popes many decades later. The Roman Catholic Church could emerge only with great effort from the corner into which - enveloped in the aura of the infallibility of its highest functionary, leading a hierarchy of equally self-confident professional administrators of salvation - it had maneuvered itself. The contempt that it felt for the deeply Protestant principle of tolerance added to its difficulties in coexisting with rival ideas and organizations. However, there is no question that the anti-

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modernist character of this period's Roman Catholicism was increased by the Thomist Neo-Scholasticism that developed in the mid-19th century and was supported by some popes. This conglomerate of theorems was aimed against modern social mobility, the representative parliamentary constitution, and especially the democratic concept of equality; by ideologizing the almostextinct world of the estates and hoping to place the straitjacket of medieval order over the 19th century - aiming, as it was, for very different shores - this doctrine cemented the retrogressive traditions of Catholicism.

W E R N E R JOCHMANN

Structure and Functions of German Anti-Semitism 1878-1914'"' One after another, waves of anti-Semitic agitation swept across the country unhindered after 1878. Countless writings, brochures, tracts and flyers were printed and distributed, some in large editions. Magazines and newspapers appeared of many different sorts, though they generally lasted only a short time. Insignificant provincial papers, retaining their readership only with an effort and often fearing for their existence, paid homage to the demons of the day. The main goal of anti-Semitic demagogy was to bring about a change of political direction in the electorate. In particular, the Progressive Party's voting strength was to be decimated. This intention, as well as the fact that antiSemitic journalists and speakers like Wilhelm Marr, Otto Glagau, Franz Perrot, Bernhard Förster and others were in the end themselves children of the liberal era, led them to aim principally for the urban bourgeoisie. Thus, activities often remained confined to the cities. Only gradually did it become clear that the response was livelier in the provinces. There teachers, civil servants, pastors, commercial travelers and retired officers were eager to distribute flyers and give away or praise writings among those who thought as they did, and among subordinates and supporters. In this way, they influenced even those who had had no contact with Jews and had no complaints, but who rejected or denounced Jews simply because it was what the people around them were doing. Suggestions for improvement and effective organization of the agitation came from all sides. Famous patrons helped to find sources of funding and make important connections, guaranteeing particular activities and recruiting

* Abridged from: "Struktur und Funktion des deutschen Antisemitismus 1878-1914," in Herbert A. Strauss and Norbert Kampe (eds.), Antisemitismus. Von der Judenfeindschaft zum Holocaust, Schriftenreihe der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung Bd. 213, Bonn 1984, pp. 99-142, here pp. 110-135, translated from the German by Belinda Cooper. Reprinted with permission of the author.

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powerful sympathizers. Where anti-Semitic demagogues might still have reservations about their actions, these were completely eliminated by the surge of agreement and sympathy from around the country. [ . . . ] The question very soon arose of how to turn sympathy, once obtained, into political will and get those who had been indoctrinated to serve anti-liberal politicians. Because there was no organization that would accept them, they had to create one, and thus prevent either the Social Democrats or the Catholics from "very cleverly using the agitation and reaping its fruits in political connections." 1 The first impulse toward party formation came from the most unexpected source. At the beginning of 1878, in Berlin, the court chaplain Adolf Stoecker called into being a Christlich-soziale Arbeiterpartei (Christian Social Workers' Party), with the declared aim of reconciling workers and artisans to the existing state order and luring them away from Social Democracy. Despite a major propaganda effort, however, he did not succeed in overcoming the workers' distrust of state and church. He attracted few workers; instead, he attracted members of the economically-threatened middle class who were still affiliated with the Church, in Berlin as well as in the provinces. They had been moved to action by the anti-Semites. These people were already so fixated in their political outlook that they pushed Stoecker to take a position on the "Jewish question" in accordance with their views.2 He hesitated at first, because he knew that a Christian was supposed to preach the gospel of love, not slogans of hate; but he gave in to pressure from his followers. On September 19, 1879, he gave his first anti-Semitic speech, thus violating the neutrality demanded of his office. Carried away by his listeners' fanaticism and his own eloquence, he began to be effective; the consequences for Germany's intellectual and spiritual development can hardly be overstated. Stoecker had correctly judged the mentality of those who came to his assemblies. He articulated these people's fears and hopes so precisely that his popularity continued to increase. Within a short time he was a much-courted, celebrated people's tribune. Thanks to his position and skill, he reached every sector of the bourgeoisie, but particularly the youth. No one contributed more lastingly than he to the "mobilization of the middle classes and the new generation of scholars." He created the formula from which would arise the

1

2

Prince Carl zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen to Wilhelm Marr, 14 September 1878, Staatsarchiv (StA) Hamburg, Nachlass Marr, A 108. Kurt Wawrzinek, Die Entstehung der deutschen Antisemitenparteien (1873-1890), Berlin 1927, pp. 23; Friedrich Lorenzen, Die Antisemiten, Berlin-Schöneberg 1912, p. 9.

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"alloy of anti-Semitism and nationalism" 3 that would prove strong enough to last into the mid-20th century. However, Stoecker was denied continuing organizational success. Because he only built up a party apparatus in the capital of the Reich, he met everywhere with opposition from the Social Democrats and the Fortschrittspartei (Progressive Party); thus he could not get past the initial stages. H e never tried to take organizational advantage of his agitation in the Reich's states and provinces, although friends and advisors encouraged him to do so. He lacked the ability and the right partners. Yet there is no doubt that Stoecker had greater success in his activities outside Berlin than in the capital itself. The Reichstag delegate Hans Leuss, a member of Stoecker's group, was not making calculated political propaganda when he declared, fifteen years after Stoecker's first anti-Semitic speech, that the court preacher would have long since been "the head of an anti-Semitic fraction in the Reichstag with 50 to 80 members" if he had only "dedicated half the effort he wasted on Berlin to the provinces, and had also organized to cash in on his rhetorical efforts." 4 However, organizing the anti-Semites was not as simple and unproblematic as Leuß imagined. They were united in their enmity to the Jews, but not regarding their allies and sponsors. They preferred not to commit themselves to a common political program because of their differing views on economic, social, religious and ideological issues. The so-called Berlin movement was visible here in its early stages. Stoecker had hardly achieved his party's first major membership increase when those who did not want to leave the field to the Protestant theologian began forcing their way in. In autumn, 1879, the atheist Wilhelm Marr, supported by his religiously-unaffiliated followers, founded the Antisemitenliga (League of Anti-Semites), in which anti-Christian tendencies had the upper hand, and Jews were fought and defamed as a foreign race. The experiment failed completely. However, it served as a model for other, more skillful organizers, although subsequent attempts to form parties and associations in Berlin as well as in the provinces also failed. Bernhard Forster and Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg attempted to unite the anti-Semites in a very different manner. In their view, common action was the correct means. Thus in summer, 1880, a petition to the Reich's Chancellor was circulated which demanded, among other things, the exclusion of Jews from state positions, and especially from the teaching profession. The petition

3

4

Friedrich Meinecke in a review of a book by Walter Frank, "Hofprediger Adolf Stoecker und die christlich-soziale Bewegung," Historische Zeitschrift 140, 1929, pp. 151, reprinted in Friedrich Meinecke, Werke, vol. 7, 1968, pp. 443. Hans Leuß, „Die antisemitische Bewegung," Die Zukunft 33, 19 May 1894, vol. 7, p. 328.

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was to be distributed throughout Germany and was to assume the "character of a plebiscite."5 To encourage the average citizen to sign, the request for participation in the petition drive was supported by prominent public figures. It was especially significant in this regard that, thanks to the academic effectiveness of Treitschke, Wagner, Diihring, and other university professors. Förster could move the students to action and gain their participation in agitation in favor of the petition. In October, 1880, the law student Dulon addressed a letter to students at all universities in which he asked that they sign the petition, and in addition that they participate actively in collecting signatures. At many universities, committees immediately formed to prepare this so-called plebiscite. The first Vereine Deutscher Studenten had already grown out of this at the beginning of 1881 in Berlin, Halle and Breslau. Academic youth's desire for action was so strong, and liberalism already so discredited, that within the year part of the German student body at almost every university had been sucked into the vortex of anti-Semitism. In contrast, efforts to unite artisans in one large anti-Jewish interest group, and in this way exercise increased political influence, bogged down in the initial stages. The initiator, Reichsfreiherr von Fechenbach-Laudenbach, was able to form an "action committee" to represent the interests of German artisans, but succeeded in only a few states and provinces in gaining a foothold and awakening political consciousness, above all young people. This Bavarian aristocrat appealed quite consciously to popular passions in order to achieve success. He was as little aware as were Stoecker and the influential patrons behind the scenes of how difficult it is to bring emotions under control once they have been unleashed. By 1880, religious and conservative circles had already discovered that their anti-Semitic pupils had minds of their own. The spirits they had called up, which had come so willingly, no longer obeyed their commands. In Berlin, Dr. Henrici, barely 27 years old, swept along by the applause of his listeners, allowed himself to be led into outbreaks of hate against the Church in a speech of December, 1880 in the Reich Halls. He was carried away by the fanaticism he unleashed. [. . .] Based on the popular agitation they had aroused, the anti-Semites hoped to induce the governments of the Reich and the states, especially the Parliament, and in it, in particular, the Center and the Conservatives, to take more decisive action against the National Liberals, the Progressive Party, and the alreadypersecuted Social Democrats. However, the Jew-haters knew they could only 5

Text und accompanying letter from Bernhard Förster to Wilhelm Marr, 11 and 17 August 1880, StA Hamburg, Nachlass Man., A 63.

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demand the use of force if they could insinuate that their opponents were planning violent acts. Thus the Jews were no longer denounced merely as secret masters and rulers of the world, but, more and more, as paving the way and planning strategy for a putsch, or as activists and leaders of the Nihilists. By accusing the Jews of wanting to destroy the state and connecting them with Nihilistic attacks and assassinations in Russia, they not only justified their own fanaticism, but also intentionally invoked fear as a means of militarizing and nationalizing the German population. Individual security and protection of the community could only be guaranteed if the entire nation were governed by one will, if it reacted uniformly, and if discussions on the correctness of specific policies were prevented as endangering the community. Thus the anti-Semites pretended that their motive was "pure patriotism," especially "the simple sense of a duty to preserve the intellectual substance of one's own people."6 In plain English, this meant that intellectual pluralism could not be tolerated in the national state. Opposition was declared "criminal." Imperceptibly, and barely noticed by contemporaries, politics were gradually made sacred; religion was replaced by a far more effective political dogmatism. Everything for which critics had once blamed the Church was now practiced far more decisively and unscrupulously by the apostles of bourgeois nationalism. Here, however, the anti-Semitic leaders and propagandists had overreached themselves. Many who had used anti-Semitism to serve their own interests had most likely to make concessions in consideration of their supporters. Nevertheless, in the long run, the conflicts that everywhere arose could not be reconciled; they had to be fought out. Catholics and Protestants became vehemently involved as the anti-Semites increasingly attacked not only Judaism, but also Christianity. They realized with horror that the idea of a Christian state had faded; the coming generation was pursuing very real, secular interests. Supporters of the class system waxed indignant at the egalitarian tendency of the new nationalism. They felt cheated; the classes politicized by the anti-Semites were demanding a voice, and wanted absolutely nothing to do with a return to the old social order. Now in the process of emancipating themselves politically and socially, these groups had no intention of recognizing the old "dependent relationships" as binding. Especially for the Conservatives, who considered extending the suffrage for the Reichstag to be the greatest of evils, it was a bitter disappointment when they became aware that the voters, moved to action and brought to the polls by the antiSemites, enjoyed their numerical strength and were not prepared to give up 6

Erich Lehnhardt, „Judenthum und Antisemitismus," Preussische Jahrbücher 55, 1885, p. 680.

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this advantage. They no longer allowed the Conservatives to incite them into action against the "electoral evil," and certainly not to convince them that it had always been "just a few" who had possessed political judgment, and that these few were found only in the ranks of the Conservatives.7 Sooner or later, almost all of the original anti-Semites became resigned; their clients, to the extent that they had oriented themselves according to historical models, felt snubbed and humiliated. Developments had overtaken both groups. "They sowed a storm," wrote the Reichspartei delegate Freiherr von Frankenberg to Marr, who had himself raised money for the Deutsche Wacht ("German Guard"), "and were unpleasantly surprised when the seed shot up stormily into a stalk and outgrew the sower!" But he had no comfort at the ready. Though he had been constantly annoyed by Marr's methods, he had supported this aim. Therefore, like Marr, he lost his bearings when some groups of anti-Semites began to work for shorter working hours and to make socio-political demands that he considered revolutionary.8 Thus the antiSemitic "movement" was disunited from the beginning. Deep social and ideological differences could not be overcome; the hoped-for "action community" of all the like-minded never materialized. Because of the disunity within the anti-Semitic movement, the established parties and those politically responsible did not take it seriously; they rejected it with that mixture of intellectual arrogance and lack of political understanding with which, in the end, they only covered up their own inactivity. Thus nothing truly decisive occurred that would at least have prevented the further advance of anti-Semitism. At first, the strength of the unruly protest movement seemed to have given out. After the spectacular occurrences of the years 1878 to 1882, things quieted down once again; the public seldom was made aware of the presence of the anti-Semites. But they remained active in small groups throughout the country. Following the initial failures at forming parties and organizations, their organizational strategists needed a "stage of calm, continued development" during which they could create the basis for new approaches.9 In 1885, Theodor Fritsch founded his Antisemitische Corresponded ("Anti-Semitic Correspondence") with the intention of uniting all the "like-minded," indoctrinating them, and "training" them for agitation.10 7

8 9 10

Freiherr von Frankenberg to Wilhelm Marr, 28 September 1887, StA Hamburg, Nachlass Marr, A 65. Freiherr von Frankenberg to Wilhelm Marr, ibid., 1 November 1888. Lehnhardt, op. at., p. 667. Flyer no. 1, „Wie lösen wir die Judenfrage?", edited by Theodor Fritsch under the auspices of the Anti-Semitic Committee, January 1886; Theodor Fritsch to Wilhelm Marr, 1 December 1885, StA Hamburg, Nachhss Marr, A 67.

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If the anti-Semites at first made great efforts to obtain the support of influential persons and groups, and had often attempted to gain the goodwill of the "authorities," they now began systematically to recruit every individual in the city and countryside. There were two deciding factors in this. Support by the powerful had not been sufficiently emphatic, and had often come with undesirable conditions attached. Above all, however, the awareness had gradually taken hold that the important thing in the modern state was the power of organized interests; in the long run, that is, only the number of supporters could guarantee influence and success. Therefore, the focus of agitation was consciously transferred to regions where the other parties were barely present. The anti-Semites' preferred field of operations was no longer the big cities with their educated, well-off bourgeois and confident laboring population, but "the small towns and villages." They went to work there "with many more plans and much more circumspection and knowledge of human nature" than any party before them. 11 The "small-scale work" was deliberately concentrated on smaller areas and groups. The anti-Semites were only able to develop their organizational and agitational activities because they had many young people working for them. They were full of energy and had more time than older politicians, whose profession made many demands on them. Members of this generation were expected to enter politics by gaining experience in a limited area, and to seek their field of political activity in the social and intellectual milieu from which they had come or in which they felt secure. The young engineers, artisans, clerks, leaders of Protestant youth groups and adult education teachers preferred to work with people like themselves, or with people with whom they were acquainted. They tried as far as they could to avoid contact with members of other professions whose mentality was foreign to them, or to whom they did not feel equal, either educationally or in terms of professional experience. In view of their failure to organize their supporters, the original members of anti-Semitic parties viewed the activity of the youth groups with satisfaction, and trusted that their members would develop greater solidarity, better organizational talent and greater consciousness of political power than they had by themselves. They were not mistaken in this regard. N o w that these young people had completed their training and started professional careers, they brought anti-Semitism to the professional and vocational associations in particular, and made it a constitutive element in numerous political and cultural organizations. 11

Theodor Fritsch to Wilhelm Marr, ibid., 12 November 1890.

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Of particular consequence was the fact that young academics who had come under the influence of anti-Semitism as members of the Vereine Deutscher Studenten (VDSt) first became truly active once they had taken responsible positions; they furthered those who shared their views wherever they could. Henceforth, anti-Semitism would often be fostered by civil servants, judges and teachers. In many cases, government employees openly took part in the anti-Semites' agitation or held leading positions in their organizations. Arbitrary action by the authorities against Jewish citizens ranged from disregard to conscious insults to covert or open discrimination. Thus began what Rudolf von Gneist criticized over and over, in vain, as the "reversal of the Constitution by the administration;" in some cases, it resembled a rescinding of emancipation.12 In some cases, Jewish victims of bureaucratic caprice had no chance to secure their rights, as judges fell victim to anti-Semitic insinuations or even accepted them as proven. The repeatedly-expressed assumption that the Prussian Minister of Justice took the anti-Semitic current within the population into account on a case by case basis can hardly be denied, given that the Jews were forced out of the judicial service from the beginning of the 90's, as well as the wrongful judgments of individual courts, and many of the state prosecutor's practices against Jews. In the long run, most disastrous was the fact that anti-Semitism found a secure home in the country's universities. In the very places where, by their own standards, responsibility for the intellectual and cultural substance of humanity had to be taken most seriously, the greatest concessions were made to the demons of the day. Year after year, more and more students who left the universities had come into contact with anti-Semitism there and could now act "according to their convictions" in influential positions. Given the great respect accorded academics in Germany during that period, much of the nonacademic bourgeoisie, especially in the small towns, acted in accordance with the behavior of distinguished citizens; these were, above all, district judges, gymnasium teachers, lawyers, doctors, apothecaries and pastors. Many adult-education teachers, too, fell victim to anti-Semitic slogans in the 80's and 90's, until the left-liberals and Social Democrats became a decisive opposing force after the turn of the century. Teachers took leading roles in anti-Semitic parties and associations, especially on the regional and local level. They also became involved journalistically in the regional press, set the tone in social and folk organizations, and influenced the activities of youth groups and

12

Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Nachlaß

Gothein

13.

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sports clubs. Many cases have come to light of heedless incitement of ignorant, defenseless children who were at the mercy of anti-Semitic influences. At the end of the 1880's, with the entry into professional life of young academics influenced by the VDSt, the gradual politicization and indoctrination of the professional associations of the higher civil servants, jurists, doctors, engineers and theologians began. The anti-Semitic bacillus spread especially quickly to the Protestant ministers' organizations. As early as the beginning of the 90's, individual church authorities had to admonish their pastors insistently not to participate in anti-Semitic agitation, as this was consistent neither with their "Christian duties" nor with the "official duties of a clergyman." 13 But the holders of religious office themselves often avoided a clear decision. On the one hand, they condemned the fact that "invoking Christianity, a crusade is being preached against the Jews;" on the other hand, however, they found it only too "understandable" that, given the extreme "crisis in popular life" and unnamed so-called "sins" of the Jews, an anti-Semitic "movement" had arisen. They, too, attributed greater "guilt" to the Jews than to the Christians, finding more words of excuse than of blame for the pastors. Such admonitions - obedience to which was not particularly insisted upon - bore little fruit; this can hardly come as a surprise, especially as one could hardly forbid a simple country minister that which was permitted a court chaplain. Stoecker's spirit forced its way far beyond the bounds of the old Prussian union, not least because of his social involvement, his impulse for communal work, and his activities in Protestant associations. In the late 19th century, he was "the most powerful religious leader for the pastors" of all state churches. While Protestantism, in the era of popular sovereignty, increasingly used anti-Semitism to gain necessary support in society, Catholicism tried to eliminate it and fall back upon its own strengths. However, it was not at all easy to escape political entanglements, especially as the intellectual ones had not been severed. In the provinces, where the educational level of the faithful was low and their political consciousness underdeveloped, and where the antiSemites used concrete crisis situations or occurrences to inflame passions, Catholics, too, allowed themselves to be manipulated and swept along. They remained particularly irreconcilable to the Jews in Bavaria and some areas of the Rhine, in which Catholic traditions were mixed with particular rural ways and a marked self-confidence; or in regions such as Posen or Upper Silesia, where social tensions were intensified by national differences. As a rule, strong 13

Official letter from the High Consistory of the Grand Duchy of Hesse of November 3,1890 regarding the anti-Semitic agitation, in Allgemeines Kirchenblatt für das evangelische Deutschlands, 1891, pp. 110.

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anti-Jewish ressentiments continued to smoulder in the Catholic population as well. Without a doubt, clergymen and individual organizational functionaries repeatedly took this fact into account when they deemed it advisable. In the meantime, however, it had become clear to the political representatives of the Catholic part of the nation what dangers would be created by an alliance with forces that could barely be influenced, let alone controlled. They were far more aware than the Protestants that the anti-Semites were not only up in arms against Judaism, but against religion itself; many of them were preparing the ground for biological-materialist ideologies. In addition, Catholics were unable to identify with the national state as unreservedly as the Protestant majority. They always kept their distance from the Protestant Hohenzollern empire. True, since the end of the Kulturkampf they were no longer on the defensive, but given the anti-Catholic ressentiments in influential court and government circles, especially in the Prussian civil service, vigilance and skepticism were certainly called for. German Catholicism's leading political circles correctly asked where they, as "those condemned to eternal minority status in Germany and Prussia, would end up" if they offered assistance in "taking political equality away from an even smaller minority." They were entirely aware that the rights of the Jews, anchored in the Constitution, could not be infringed upon if they wished to prevent a precedent that might make it possible for action to be taken against, for example, Polish-speaking Catholics in the eastern Prussian provinces. They admonished the faithful to resist the temptation of anti-Semitism by bearing in mind the saying, "Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you." 14 In the Wilhelminian Era, anti-Semitism was primarily the concern of the Protestant majority of the German people. The breakdown of the old social order, the forced, often quite violent transition from the old agrarian to the modern industrial society, resulted in great disruptions; but people reacted to them differently depending on their degree of religiosity. It became clear that people's social behavior was determined not by economic factors alone, but also by their basic religious views and church affiliations. The new, second wave of anti-Semitism in the last decade before the turn of the century was triggered by the changes in economic and domestic policies after Bismarck's fall, particularly by the repeal of the Socialist Law. As long as the workers' movement was forbidden and persecuted, the ruling classes and the bourgeoisie felt relatively secure. However, the moment the decision was

14

Leipziger Zeitung 38,16 February 1892, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Zeitgeschichtliche Sammlung (ZSg) 113, no. 15.

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made to repeal the special law, anxiety and even fear spread through large sectors of the bourgeoisie, primarily in Protestant areas of the country. Organizational and agitational activity began everywhere, with the aim of erecting protective barriers. In some bourgeois circles, confidence was so underdeveloped that their propaganda campaigns mainly served to build up their own courage. As a rule, all this activity was supposed to ensure that no further workers, but especially no peasants, artisans, employees and lower civil servants, would go over to the Socialist camp. It was necessary at all costs to prevent a migration of these middle classes, so varied in their interests and disunified in their consciousness, that could result in a catastrophe for the established bourgeois parties and the decline of the existing political order. Small nationalist groups hoped to create distractions from domestic tensions and "concerns" through an active, even aggressive foreign policy 15 , giving the nation permanent responsibilities through dynamic colonial policies, and thus at the same time increasing its prosperity. The anti-Semites were among the earliest and most decisive advocates of German colonial and power politics. In their opinion, the German people were especially qualified to rule due to their racial and biological strength and military and political abilities. At most, then, Bismarck's "Klein-Deutschland," as it had come into being in 1871, could be a "perhaps unavoidable, perhaps necessary stage on the march toward Greater Germany." 16 The anti-Semitic "reformers" believed that only through uncompromising national power politics could they overcome the "discontent and pettiness" of the bourgeoisie, end the "low ebb in spiritual and national life," create a positive mood, and use this to shape a special law against the domestic Jewish minority. 17 The new "popular movement" was to strengthen and consolidate itself in a "fresh, merry attack on the presently most extreme left," according to the wishes of its intellectual leaders. By combining national and social goals, they hoped they had found a magic formula that would guarantee the "merger of all elements that uphold the state." Bismarck's dismissal, received by "broad sectors of the German people" with a "feeling of liberation"18, released longsubdued, pent-up energies. These were captured primarily by those who

15 16

17 18

"Sorgen" Die Grenzboten 50,1, 1891, pp. 385. Paul Lagarde to Prince Wilhelm (later Kaiser Wilhelm Π), 6 April 1886, in Anna de Lagarde, Paul de Lagarde. Erinnerungen aus seinem Leben, Göttingen 1894, p. 105. "Die herrschende Unzufriedenheit und ihre Gründe," Die Grenzboten 52, Π, 1893, p. 529. Walter Bußmann, "Wandel und Kontinuität der Bismarck-Wertung," in Hans Hallmann (ed.), Revision des Bismarckbildes. Die Diskussion der deutschen Fachhistoriker 1945-1955, Wege der Forschung 285, Darmstadt 1972, p. 489.

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believed to have "found their highest national goal" in the struggle against Jews and Socialists. 19 However, the dynamics that now gripped German society brought different results than those who constantly called for national unity had hoped. N o powerful new reform party arose; instead, numerous splinter parties, associations and societies with the most varying political, economic and cultural programs went into action. Many of these only achieved regional significance, and few had any political weight. Most of these new anti-Semitic organizations fought amongst themselves; some merged, fell apart, reconstituted themselves. The effectiveness of these mergers and sectarian groups should not be overestimated. Yet combined with the people's anti-Jewish indoctrination, they achieved temporary, partial significance. A wealth of examples shows how, in the 90's, anti-Semitism infiltrated in this way into every last citizens' association, penetrating folk clubs and cultural societies. It must not be overlooked that anti-Semitism, despite all its contradictions and shortcomings, was the only "theory" however modest - that could be opposed to liberalism as the ideology of the capitalist system, and especially to socialism, and that was "capable of uniting the bourgeois to a joint formula". 20 In the 90's of the last century, it was particularly significant that antiSemitism primarily infiltrated associations, served to justify their interests, and became the governing ideology in some. There were good reasons why Freiherr von Fechenbach-Laudenbach and Theodor Fritsch and his devoted following attempted to address mainly the artisans. This numerically strong class sought political support; it felt its interests were not guaranteed by the established parties, or guaranteed only imperfectly. However, artisans were certainly not drawn to the Social Democrats, since they promised only social decline and proletarization. They were therefore only too happy to be organized by those who flattered their selfconfidence, assuring them that they were one of the most important producing classes and formed the foundation on which the state rested. Their class, they were told, had been freed of many hindrances by the introduction of free trade, but at the same time robbed of all protection. In the interests of selfpreservation, the state had to guarantee this once again. This argument gradually penetrated down to the last Protestant and general artisans' associations and guilds. O n the other hand, it gained little

19 20

Walter Pohlmann, Das Judentum, und sein Recht, Neuwied/Leipzig 1893, p. 10. Theodor W. Adorno, "Zur Bekämpfung des Antisemitismus heute," Das Argument 29,1964, p. 89.

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access to Catholic professional organizations, as these organized their own self-protection. Because the artisans organized themselves before the bourgeois parties had attained considerable membership and thus a solid base of support in the country, the parties were often put under pressure by anti-Semitic artisans' associations and forced to make extensive concessions when soliciting voters' support. If they refused, they would often suffer perceptible losses at the polls. Most affected were the Conservatives, and in some areas the National Liberals as well; they nevertheless remained generally true to their principles, and only made concessions to the anti-Semites in Saxony. Once it had been proven how easily middle class interests lent themselves to be ideologically reenforced and represented with the aid of anti-Semitism, it became the dominant ideology of most middle class organizations. In 1893, young clerks founded the Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfenverband (DHV). This organization officially claimed to be "born of anti-Semitism," and placed itself entirely at its service. "We cannot escape this wave," the board declared at the association's first general meeting, "and would be well advised to let ourselves be carried along by it." The association's functionaries were firmly convinced that they would be condemned to failure without political or ideological commitment.21 Young and obsessed with the belief that they served the only true "world view," they therefore became far more active than was normal. Supported by the preliminary work of the Protestant youth and young men's associations, the DHV quickly spread, and soon played an active role in the German anti-Semitic movement. It is an open question whether the DHV actually became "the strongest pillar of all anti-Jewish movements" in the two decades before the First World War, as its members and friends believed. In any case, it is indisputable that the most active members of the anti-Semitic parties came from the DHV and were supported by it materially, and that it gradually became the largest "recruitment school for political antiSemitism."22 The second special-interest group brought up on the anti-Semitic wave was not quite as active, and was deliberately onesided. The large landowners had created the Bund der Landwirte (Agrarian League - BdL), also in 1893, not because they feared the Social Democrats would infiltrate the agrarian regions of the Reich, but because it seemed necessary to them, in a concrete situation, to use their interests massively to their best advantage. They were primarily 21 22

Johannes Irwahn, Deutsche Handels-Wacht 3, no. 3, 1 February 1896. Max Maurenbrecher, "Zwischen zwei Feuern," Deutsche Zeitung 27, no. 537, 30 November 1922; Mitteilungen aus dem Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus 23, no. 4,12 February 1913.

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concerned with restrengthening agriculture's influence in an advanced capitalist system, and in becoming more deeply involved in political decision-making by exploiting their positions of social power. It is not surprising, given the distinct class consciousncss of its representatives, that the Bund der Landwirte claimed to represent "the first and most important profession in Germany," upon whose ups and downs the existence of the Reich and the individual states depended. Because influential circles in the Bund knew perfectly well that the large East Elbian landowners were pursuing different interests than, for example, the peasants of SchleswigHolstein and Hesse, they avoided a precise definition of their demands and aims. The leaders and powerful patrons of the Bund knew that they needed supporters among small farmers and artisans dependent on agriculture in order to make their demands effective. Anti-Semitism appeared to be almost the only means of recruiting and holding them. Despite many differences and enmities, in their ressentiments against foreigners and those of different faith the large landowners always found common ground with servants and farm hands, large tenants, middle-sized farmers and rural artisans who improved their meager existence slightly by farming a small piece of land. Because the BdL had wealthy members and sponsors, it was able to spread faster than other organizations, especially as it had no serious competition in Prussia's agrarian provinces. That the Bund's anti-Semitic agitation was so effective right from the beginning stems essentially from the fact that activists and founding members of the Vereine deutscher Studenten such as Diederich Hahn, the journalists Bley and Schmidt-Gibichenfels, and numerous major and minor regional functionaries joined its service. The Bund members even temporarily got anti-Semitic parliamentarians and party leaders involved, as long as this did not violate the principles of their Prussian-conservative policy. Given the preliminary work done by Bockel among the peasants of Hesse, Dr. König among those in Westphalia, Fritsch and his supporters in Saxony, and Liebermann von Sonnenberg and others in the North and East German agrarian areas of Prussia, it was not difficult for the BdL to take hold there within a few years and spread an increasingly tight organizational net across the country. With the help of the cooperatives, the Bund could also exert massive economic and political pressure. The hope held by many that the majority of the educated bourgeoisie, disgusted by the activities of the "rowdy anti-Semites" in the associations, would return to the path of political moderation proved false. Those who had fallen for anti-Semitism seldom freed themselves from it. They became annoyed at the anti-Semites' political practices and vulgar methods of agitation, but only in order to try to do it better than the others at a "higher level." Thus

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starting in the last decade of the nineteenth century, anti-Semitism spread increasingly through sophisticated writings, found a home in literary and cultural associations and circles, and penetrated to the columns of serious newspapers and magazines. Only a few of the numerous organizations created in the last decade of the last century need be presented as examples. Above all, the Alldeutscher Verband (Pan-German League) must be mentioned; it hoped to help achieve conscious, expansionist power politics by creating nationalist radicalism among the German people. The League at first was not distinctly anti-Semitic, but became so as a necessary consequence; it postulated total integration of the individual in the community and subordination to a supposed general national will, which could accept no member of a minority without surrender of his identity. In 1894, a year after the founding of the Alldeutscher Verband, two associations formed with the unclear goal of "protecting the German species," in particular through promotion of the Nordic-Germanic race; they were to unite the "core of all true Germans." These were the Deutschbund (German League) and the Gobineau Society. Both organizations wanted to determine how "teutonic", volksbewusst Germans had to act, how racial awareness could be transformed into political activity. The societies had few members, and were in this regard almost insignificant. But the intellectuals and journalists active in these associations had become such prolific writers that they provided a good part of the anti-Semitic associations and parties with the necessary "intellectual equipment." The head of the Deutschbund, Friedrich Lange, first began to exercise great influence on the attitudes of the nationalist German bourgeoisie as editor of the Tägliche Rundschau. As translator and interpreter, Ludwig Schemann, mentor of the Gobineau Society, had adapted Gobineaus works for political use in Germany. He made sure that extracts from Gobineau's racist works appeared in the yearbooks of the German Deutschnationaler Handlungsgehilfenverband and other "German-conscious" Vereine, and that selected editions were available for political training. H e even succeeded, thanks to the support of several Ministers of Culture, in providing, it to the teacher's and student's libraries of the gymnasia of several states. [. . .] Given the inability of party anti-Semites to organize their supporters and, with their help, to gain influence or become politically active at all, it is not surprising that the established parties attempted to win the politicized antiSemitic voters by cleverly appealing to their mentality, even by coopting some of their demands. The Conservative Party accomodated the anti-Semites to a great degree, even as the leaders were shocked at anti-Semitic penetration of their own party associations. They hoped to gradually win back these "se-

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duced" voters, disappointed by the political and parliamentary failures of the anti-Semites. Thus there was no dearth of good advice and plans; all pointed in the direction of half-heartedly recognizing the anti-Semitic "movement" as a "youthful variant of conservatism," and coming to arrangements with socalled moderate groups in order to "introduce new blood and new strength" to the aging, disoriented parties. 23 For a moment it seemed as though, in the course of these attempts to curry favor, the Conservative Party would be forced by those it was trying to court to take the initiative. Hammerstein and Stoecker attained such decisive influence in this party that, at the Tivoli 24 assembly in December, 1892, they succeeded in having anti-Semitic demands included in the party program. However, the fact that the conservative party convention at the Tivoli took on some of the character of a noisy, vulgar anti-Semitic rally, and that even a radical like Ahlwardt received applause, called up strong reactions. The majority of the conservative delegates, particularly the party's influential patrons, opposed "radicalism" because it was, in the end, not in the interests of the party's "state-preserving" efforts25, it diminished Germany's prestige in the world, and it limited the government's and administration's scope of action. Stoecker was criticized and his influence increasingly reduced. He was rightly accused of being more of an agitator than a party leader, of not knowing how to "strike a balance" in his parliamentary and political activity and thus aiding revolution. That anti-Semitic practices were tolerated at a conservative party conference would inevitably reinforce the popular belief that certain domestic conditions "can only be eliminated by the most radical, even revolutionary methods." 26 Such an impression had to be avoided at all costs. Consequently, a revision of the Tivoli program and a retreat from radical slogans and practices were demanded. "Not in a union with anti-Semitic excesses", believed the old-line conservative Prussian aristocrats, "but in opposition to them" could the Conservative Party flourish. It speaks well for the Conservatives that individuals among them recognized that the majority of anti-Semites could not reach their goals by constitutional means; that pursuit of these ambitions would rather "necessitate a

23 24 25

26

"Die deutsch-soziale Bewegung und die konservative Partei," Die Grenzboten 50, ΙΠ, p. 339. Α Berlin restaurant and meeting place, located in the Tiergarten near the Reichstag building. Conrad Valentin, Die conservative Partei unter Kaiser Wilhelm II, Berlin 1890, pp. 88; „Die Stellung der konservativen Partei zum Antisemitismus," Die Grenzboten 52,1, 1893, p. 51. „Konservatives und Antisemitisches. Zuschrift eines altpreussischen Konservativen," Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung 32, no. 347, 27 July 1893.

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putsch . . . if possible even more far-reaching than that planned by Socialism." 27 However, it speaks against them that they drew no significant conclusions from this insight. They did separate from a large part of their ChristianSocial following in 1895 and 1896, and finally also from Stoecker himself, but not until they had adopted certain socio-political demands and pleaded for rural social reforms. This affected the immediate interests of the large landowners in the party, and political considerations were always subordinated to these interests in the end. In addition, the Conservatives could now separate from their Christian-Social following without risk because the Bund der Landwirte had created a broader and more solid rural basis through its widespread organizational network, and the loss of the Christian-Social middle classes could be overcome without difficulty. On the other hand, given the tight interconnection between "large landowning interests and conservatism," a decisive rejection of anti-Semitism was impossible. Without the support of the Bund der Landwirte the party would have remained without followers and voters, as all attempts to ground political activity on a wider basis were defeated by the programmatic limitation. Thus more-or-less major concessions to the sometimes very brutal racial antiSemites in the Bund der Landwirte remained on the agenda for the future as well. The Conservatives gradually became accustomed to the unscrupulous agitation of the Bund, and they put up with it. Thus, in the long run, they helped considerably to undermine their own position. The more they gave up "consideration of the upper ten thousand" in electoral campaigns, the more the authority of the old ruling classes in state and society disappeared, and the more questionable their claim to power became.28 Lacking a program that took into account changes in the economy and society and considered the interests of all classes, the Conservative Party relied upon the help of these associations, and especially the BdL, which in the end dictated its political and ideological direction. The National-Liberal party remained relatively unaffected by anti-Semitic challenges. It is true that it turned increasingly to nationalism after the founding of the Reich, and, in the face of the rapid advance of Social Democracy, accepted the Prussian-German authoritarian state more unreservedly than was defensible considering its goal of a free, democratic Reich. However, as great as the National Liberals' need for security was, they never agreed to infringements of constitutional rights; to that extent, they remained true to their political principles. The fact that they had joined the Jews in fighting for 27 2S

Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung 31, no. 180, 16 April 1892. Die Antisemiten im Reichstag, Berlin 1903, pp. 20; Antisemiten-Kalender

1896, p. 47,

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the emancipation of the bourgeoisie obligated them enough for many prominent parliamentarians to spring into the breach for the Jews again and again, or to lead organizations that defended the rights of the Jews or fought against anti-Semitism. Anti-Semites did penetrate regional party organizations temporarily, but gained no influence and therefore did not stay long. The party paid for its loyalty to principles and consistent policies with continual losses of supporters and voters. In some regions, in fact, a majority of middle-class voters went over to the anti-Semitic camp. It was particularly disastrous that, because of the loss of supporters, large and respected National Liberal newspapers fell into the hands of outspoken enemies of liberalism. Some state organizations, fearing for their existence due to the rapid loss of voters, partially conformed to the anti-Semitic trend. The Saxon NationalLiberals went particularly far in this regard; at the beginning of the nineties, shocked by defeats in numerous constituencies, they lost their bearings and self-confidence for a time. As a rule, however, party leaders knew quite well that the anti-Semites went after liberalism with irreconcilable hatred and let no opportunity pass to slander against it. Thus any attempt at accomodation was equivalent to surrender. However, because of its significant connections to entrepreneurs and the academic bourgoisie, the party was also unable to settle upon policies that would take greater account of average middle-class interests and thus prevent losses to the anti-Semites. It defended its program, but increasingly lost political influence and no longer served as an effective counterweight to the demon of anti-Semitism. Although individual politicians from the Center attempted to "exploit" anti-Semitism "for themselves" during the party's early phase, it persisted in distancing itself from anti-Semitism officially. This was undoubtedly the work of its intelligent, farsighted leader. Right from the beginning, Windthorst opposed pressures exerted by prominent Center politicians to exploit the allure of anti-Semitic arguments for the party. He refused to advance the party by employing emotions and hatred. On the other hand, in Catholic states and provinces in which the Kulturkampf had not influenced Catholicism decisively, anti-Semitic ressentiments continued to proliferate without interruption. They often combined with anti-Prussian and anti-centralist tendencies. Thus the Reich leadership was denounced simultaneously as Prussianized and Judaized. Under these conditions, regional Center organizations could be convinced to come to electoral agreements with the Bund der Landwirte. At such opportunities, religious aversions and ancient prejudice resurfaced. The feeling of foreignness and distance from the Jews continued to exist, kept within bounds primarily by political calculation. This explains why the Center never intervened positively in favor of the Jews, and only rarely condemned

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discrimination against the Jewish minority. Some newspapers associated with the Center even continued to participate in anti-Semitic slanders, creating social and political ressentiments and thus compromising the party's policies. The Left-Liberals took a decisive position against anti-Semitism, and never allowed themselves to be shaken from this position. They fought on the side of the Jews against administrative arbitrariness, particularly against the military authorities, who were free of any parliamentary control. However, they failed to achieve great success in combatting anti-Semitism. As intellectuals, they incorrectly judged the power of the anti-Semitic protest movement. They thought to overcome emotion with reason, doctrine with arguments, fanaticism with persuasiveness. Because the liberals considered anti-Semitism a symptom of intellectual backwardness, there was no way they could get the better of it. They completely failed to reach the helpless, anxious anti-Semitic voters, hopelessly caught as they were between capitalism and socialism, with their educational efforts; they could not even make themselves understood. The Social Democrats, who believed they owned the truth, looked down with contempt upon the poverty of anti-Semitic theorizing bungling. To them, anti-Semitism offered nothing worth discussing. Certain of possessing the superior theory, and trusting in the strength and activity of their own organization, they too completely misjudged and underestimated anti-Semitism as a political force. Following the repeal of the Anti-Socialist Law, the Social Democrats had constantly faced anti-Semitic competition in recruiting artisans, employees, and the rural population. This taught them to accept failures, and to exercise some tactical restraint. They recognized that the antiSemites had set "classes of the population in independent motion that until now had indifferently and modestly" been satisfied "to act as honor guard for other interests and parties as they prepared to enter Parliament."29 They were careful not to frighten away these people, and reckoned firmly with their joining them. Once those who had been seduced, argued the Socialists, would discover how empty their erstwhile leaders' statements and promises had been, they would turn to the SPD. The Social Democrats believed that the anti-Semites and their agitators, in the end, prepared the SPD's way forth, and make the "politically backward" classes ready to embrace Marxism, and, at the same time, undermine the old parties.30 Thus they turned soft on antiSemites more than was called for, given their constant challenges.

29 30

"Der wildgewordene Kleinbürger und Bauer und die Wahlen," Die Neue Zeit 11, Π, 1893, p. 390. Ibid., pp. 390; "Die deutsch-soziale Bewegung," Die Grenzboten 52, ΠΙ, 1893, pp. 387; Philipp Scheidemann, "Wandlungen des Antisemitismus," Die Neue Zeit 24, II, 1906, p. 632.

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Occasional anti-Semitic tendencies existed under the surface even in Social Democratic organizations. These included residues of the artisan ideology carried into the SPD by guild-influenced union members, or reservations about the intellectuals in the party who always stood out in theoretical discussions, and among whom there were many Jews. In general, however, the classconscious working class remained untouched by anti-Semitism. The workers organized by the Social Democrats were the only force feared by the antiSemitic demagogues. Where the workers' movement was strong, anti-Semites were unable to start up. The anti-Semitic flood broke before the dam of Social Democracy, as it had before the Center. Apart from minor changes, the anti-Semitic parties and associations managed to preserve that what they had achieved by the end of the nineteenth century into the First World War. This was true of their geographic strongholds as well as the social composition of their members and voters. The antiSemites had their base of support in Protestant areas, primarily in Hesse, Saxony, Franconia, parts of Westphalia, and certain districts of Northern Germany, as well as the East Elbian provinces of Prussia; they recruited their following mainly from the ranks of the peasants and the rural population, from the commercial middle-class, minor employees and lower civil servants, and a good number of academics and the technical intelligentsia. Nevertheless, the expectation did not materialize that the anti-Semitic cells would become a major middle class party and in the end unite all "who wished neither to be devoured by big capital, nor forced to give up their modest property by Social Democracy". 31 The interests of its supporters were far too diverse for that. What united the anti-Semites was still only their joint hostility to all big business, to the anonymous apparatus of economic institutions and bureaucracies, to the rational, practical politics of the established parties and professional associations. Anti-Semitism was the protest movement of all who were worried by the modernization of national and social life, who wanted to preserve as much individuality and tradition as possible in the professional, social and intellectual areas of modern society. Its sympathizers were all those who, as a contemporary observer, Sidney Whitman, judged, rebelled against a process that had its origins "not in the Jews at all, but in modern development." 32 They called anyone they did not like a Jew, and denounced anything inconsistent with their views as Jewish. No effective policy could be conducted on this basis, and

31 32

"Der Antisemitismus wie er ist. 1. Die soziale Seite," Die Grenzboten 53, vol. Π, 1894, p. 11. Hermann Bahr, Der Antisemitismus. Ein internationales Interview, Berlin 1894, p. 199.

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thus, in this area, the anti-Semites completely failed. The failure of party antiSemitism can also be explained in part in this way. But despite these failures, anti-Semitism as a conviction or a "piece of a world view" (Weltanschauungj went far beyond the circle of anti-Semites in parties and associations, and more or less heavily influenced the consciousness of large classes. Whether highly educated or completely uneducated, those thus indoctrinated closed their minds to all arguments in regard to the Jews. Whatever happened, "the Jews" were responsible. It had little if anything to do with how they behaved. While party anti-Semites lamented the fact that they became increasingly less influential despite all their efforts, and that their petitions to the government and Parliament received no attention, anti-Semitism had penetrated deeply into nationalism and imperialism and had indissolubly fused with them. Only by looking at the ideologies and intellectual trends of the time can one comprehend how deeply bougeois consciousness had changed since the founding of the Reich, and what a decisive role was played in this process by so-called "scientific anti-Semitism," supported by political interpretations of "race science" and "Germanic prehistory", and other academic disciplines.33 Anti-Semitism thus became "socially acceptable," but at the same time more enigmatic and dangerous.34 In any case, its fate remained tied to that of nationalism. [. . .]

33 34

"Volkische Erneuerung," Deutsch-Soziale Blätter 27, no. 86, 26 October 1912. "Deutschtum und Judentum," Mitteilungen aus dem Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus 22, no. 20, 25 September 1922.

SHULAMIT VOLKOV

The Social and Political Function of Late 19th Century Anti-Semitism: The Case of the Small Handicraft Masters"' It is one of today's standard historical 'truths' that among the various social groups and classes in Germany the Mittelstand has always been most susceptible to anti-semitic propaganda, and most active in anti-semitic political organizations. In broad outlines this has been argued, and partially demonstrated, for the interwar period when Mittelstand voters were among the most persistent supporters of the Nazi Party 1 . Less convincingly the same has been said of the last quarter of the 19th century, when the Mittelstand allegedly nurtured the first political anti-semitic movement in Germany 2 . But while the sociology of the Nazi party has been under serious investigation for some * From: Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.), Sozialgeschichte heute. Festschrift für Hans Rosenberg zum 70. Geburtstag, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Göttingen 1974, pp. 416-431, slightly abridged. Reprinted with permission of the author and the publisher. 1 See, for example, Rudolf Heberle, Landbevölkerung und Nationalsozialismus. Eine soziologische Untersuchung der politischen Willensbildung in Schleswig-Holstein 1918-1932, Stuttgart 1963; Heinrich-August Winkler, Mittelstand, Demokratie und Nationalsozialismus. Die politische Entwicklung von Handwerk und Kleinhandel in der Weimarer Republik, Cologne 1972; Arthur Schweitzer, "The Nazification of the Lower Middle-Class and Peasants," in The Third Reich, UNESCO, London 1955; David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution. Class and Status in Nazi Germany, New York 1966. 2 The literature on early political anti-semitism is surprisingly limited. The major works are Paul W. Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction. A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany, New York 1949; PeterG. J. Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria, New York 1964; still indispensible is the work by Kurt Wawrzinek, Die Entstehung der deutschen Antisemitenparteien 1873 bis 1890, Berlin 1927. Recently much additional information and an interesting analysis has been provided by Hans Jürgen Puhle in his Agrarische Interessenpolitik und Preussischer Konservativismus, Hannover 1966, 2nd ed. 1974, esp. pp. 111-140, 298-302. Insight into the problem of modern antisemitism can also be gained from Eva G. Reichmann, Hostages of Civilization: The Social Sources of National Socialist Anti-semitism, Westport, Conn., 1949; Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York 1951; and from a recent contribution in Hebrew: Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in the 'Second Reich' 18701914. A Study in the Rise of German Totalitarianism, Jerusalem 1969.

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time, the social composition and the peculiar social character of late 19th century anti-semitism has largely remained a matter for speculation. Most of what has been said about it is couched in general terms and appears to be largely intuitive, although often intelligent and plausible3. Some remarks on the frustration of the middle-class in the face of rapid industrialization and social change are invariably included in all attempted explanations of the intensity of anti-Jewish sentiment. But the transition from wide-spread resentment of Jews to the emergence of an organized political anti-semitic movement has rarely been analyzed. Discussions of the causes and the effects of anti-semitism leave untouched the social and the political functions of the movement, and neglect to examine in depth the unique environment in which it grew. These deficiencies have resulted from the preoccupation of the research into the nature of anti-semitism with the theoretical and ideological aspects of the movement; from its tendency to perceive anti-semitism in general as a chapter in world-wide Jewish history; and from the efforts to reveal the sociopsychological roots of this phenomenon, while avoiding its social and especially its political functions. All three directions of research have by no means been exhausted, but they all seem to have arrived at something of a dead end. Since the end of the Second World War surprisingly little new ground has been gained in the study of modern anti-semitism - so crucial a topic for the understanding of our age and for the self-evaluation of an entire civilization. Recent historiographical trends in the study of mass movements have left the subject of anti-semitism virtually untouched. They do, however, suggest the need for a new direction in the treatment of this problem, which will begin to ask new questions and apply new tools and new conceptions to old ones. Thus, even if we accept the thesis that the German Mittelstand constituted the social basis of the anti-semitic parties in Germany, we still ought to seek answers to a host of additional questions: Which elements within the Mittelstand were more, and which were less, susceptible to anti-semitism? Was the old Mittelstand of artisans and shop-keepers more anti-Jewish than the new Mittelstand of white-collar employees and managerial staff? Was it the educated Mittelstand consisting of teachers and bureaucrats, which led the antisemitic movement? Was it led perhaps by the small industrial producers, or by the small tradesmen? Where in Germany was anti-semitism among Mittelständler more rampant - in rural or in urban areas? In Catholic or in Protestant 3

Characteristic are the two spirited and inspiring studies of modern anti-semitism by Hannah Arendt and Eva Reichmann, which are full of interesting but unsupported suggestions. See Arendt, op. at., chp. Π. and Reichmann, op. dt., chp. I and Π.

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regions? In the east or in the west? In industrial Germany or in its traditional regions? Only when answers to these and other questions begin to emerge can we hope to be able to examine anew the motivation for anti-semitism, its socio-psychological sources, its social meaning and its political function. We shall attempt to investigate the extent of anti-semitic sentiment among traditional handicraft masters in Germany during the two distinct waves of political anti-semitism in the last quarter of the 19th century. We shall then proceed to examine the specific social and political role of anti-semitism during each of these waves, and attempt to offer an analysis of their peculiar characteristics. The economic nature of anti-semitism during these years has often been stressed. Recently, Hans Rosenberg has suggested a specific approach to the analysis of the relationship between the anti-semitic movement and the periodic fluctuations of the German economy during the so-called "Great Depression" 4 . Recognition of the link between the two spheres is indeed essential for studying the emergence of anti-semitism in Germany among certain social elements and at certain points in time. It is also relevant for an explanation of the changing character of the movement. Nevertheless we shall intentionally attempt to keep away from this issue5. We shall instead concentrate on the handicraft-masters' place in the social and the political structure of the German Reich, leaving aside their peculiar economic history. We shall focus on the role which political anti-semitism played in forming the masters' political allegiances and in shaping their character as a group. I. As the anti-liberal campaign got off the ground in 1874/75, anti-semitism immediately became popular. A host of newspaper articles, pamphlets and books argued the connection between the operation of Jewish capitalists and the collapse of the Viennese stock-exchange 6 . The Jews and the "Jew-like Germans", ran the argument, were responsible for the economic catastrophe.

4

5

6

Hans Rosenberg, Große Depression und Bismarckzeit. Wirtschaftsablauf Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa, Berlin 1967, pp. 88-117, selected parts in this volume. For this and other aspects of the handicraft-masters' history see Winkler, op. cit., pp. 21-64, and the author's, The Emergence of Popular Anti-Modernism. The German Handicraft-Masters 18731896, dissertation University of California, Berkeley 1972. The anti-semitism of the 'Era-Articles' which opened the anti-liberal campaign in the Kreuzzeitung in July 1875 was strong and apparent. See also C. Franz, Der Nationalliberalismus und die Juden-Herrschaft, Munich 1874; Otto Glagau, Der Bankrott des Nationalliberalismus und die 'Reaktion', Berlin 1878; Die Gartenlaube, December 1874-December 1875; Die Deutsche Wacht, Berlin 1879-1880; G. Wilmanns, Die Goldene Internationale und die Notwendigkeit einer sozialen Reformpartei, Berlin 1876; E. Henrici, Was ist der Kern der Judenfrage, Berlin 1881.

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It was at best a result of their irresponsible behaviour, and at worst an outcome of their sinister scheming. In fact anti-semitism was an old ally of antiliberalism. The two views were often held simultaneously and in conjunction during the pre-March years, and became increasingly intertwined in 1848. Both those who opposed liberalism on political grounds, and those who objected to its economic doctrines revealed intense anti-semitic sentiments. They all objected to the emancipation of the Jews as an attack on traditional privileges and on the old socio-economic order 7 . Although no open antisemitic pronouncements were heard in the two major master-artisans congresses in Hamburg and in Frankfurt a. M. during the eventful summer of 1848, there is enough evidence to show the prevalence of anti-semitic sentiment among master-artisans during that time 8 . Thus, for example, a group of masters from Leipzig sent out a circular letter to all guild-members in Germany, closing a tirade of anti-liberal rhetoric with an attack on the emancipation of Jews, the greatest enemies of the honest German Bürgertum, of the working-men and of society at large, the hated "Fremdlinge, die nirgends heimisch sind und kein Herz für das Volk haben, wo (sie) sie wohnen" 9 . During the following years of rapid industrialization in Germany some masters continued to associate their material difficulties with the activities of the Jews. In their daily life, however, master craftsmen could have only rarely encountered direct Jewish competition. In the old territories of the German Reich Jews were barred from the practice of most handicrafts10. In Prussia in 1817 only 4.6 % of the Jews were occupied in handicrafts, while over 90 % were employed in various commercial enterprises11. The number of Jewish craftsmen undoubtedly increased considerably during the 19th century, first under the influence of the French occupation and then through the effects of the liberal state legislations. The Jews all over Germany were entering new professions as a sign of their growing emancipation. However, centuries-old

7

8

9

10 11

For the Pre-March period, by far the best study of anti-semitism is Eleonore Sterling, Die Anfänge des politischen Antisemitismus in Deutschland 1815-1850, Frankfurt 1969, first published in 1956 under the title 'Er ist wie Du', esp. pp. 115-130. See the protocols of these meetings: G. Schirges (ed.), Verhandlungen des ersten deutschen Handwerker- und Gewerbestandes zu Hamburg, 2.-6. Juni 1848, Hamburg 1848; and idem., Verhandlungen des ersten deutschen Handwerker- und Gewerbekongresses zu Frankfurt am Main, 14.Juli-18. August 1848, Darmstadt 1848. Offener Briefan alle Innungsgenossen Deutschlands so wie zugleich an alle Bürger und Hausväter von Zweiundzwanzig Innungen zu Leipzig, Leipzig 1848, pp. 21-22. See Mark Wischnitzer, A History ofJewish Crafts and Guilds, New York 1965, pp. 197-205. Hans Martin Klinkenberg, "Zwischen Liberalismus und Nationalismus im 2. Kaiserreich 1870-1918" in Konrad Schilling (ed.), Monumenta Judaica, Cologne 1963, pp. 366.

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customs, both among Jews and among Christians, slowed down the entry of Jews into the traditional crafts and most new legislations left untouched a host of previous restrictions 12 . Even by 1895 less than 20 % of the Jewish labour force in the country was occupied in industry and the handicrafts together, as compared with over 35 % of the general population 13 . Striking is the fact that the ratio of independent handicraftsmen among the Jews was far greater than among Christians. Thus it was reported that in Berlin only 1.05 % of all the men employed in the various wood crafts were Jews, but that among them 35 % were employers, 19 % self-employed artisans and 45 °/o wage-earners. Among the Protestant artisans in the same crafts only 9.4 % were independent employers, 6.6 % were self-employed artisans and as many as 84 % were wage-earners 14 . This picture is confirmed by a study based on the general statistical survey of 1912, in which over 17.000 independent Jewish craftsmen were counted among 40.000 Jewish artisans. The Jews, however, concentrated in a limited number of trades only, and were mostly tailors, shoemakers, bakers and butchers 15 . Moreover, the great increase in the number of Jewish craftsmen which was noticeable towards the end of the 19th century was a direct result of the growing immigration of Jews from the newly acquired Polish territories of Prussia. These constituted as late as 1880, at the time of the first anti-semitic wave, only 3.9 % of the total Jewish population of the Reich 16 . Thus, at that time Jewish competition in the handicrafts, although not entirely unknown, certainly was not a widespread phenomenon. Equally unrelated to actual economic circumstances was the association of peddlars, among the alleged competitors of the established small masters, with the Jews. Research has shown here, too, that in 1852 77.5 % of all peddlars in Germany were non-Jews, and that this percentage rose to over 95 % by 1895 17 . Nevertheless, the emancipated Jews were easily noticeable in the growing German towns. The small peasants and agricultural labourers who found their way into these cities usually encountered there a far larger

12

13 14

15

16 17

See Jacob Toury, Prolegomena to the Entrance of Jews into German Citizenry, Tel Aviv 1972, in Hebrew, pp. 94-111. Klinkenberg, op. cit., p. 368. Paul Voigt, "Das Tischlergewerbe in Berlin," Schiften des Vereins für Sozialpolitik 65, Leipzig 1895, p. 377. For these data see Jacob Segall, Die beruflichen und sozialen Verhältnisse derJuden in Deutschland, Berlin 1912. Klinkenberg, op. cit., p. 366. See Bernard Dov Weinryb, "The Economic and Social Background of Modern Anti-Semitism," in Koppel S. Pinson (ed.), Essays on Anti-Semitism, New York 1946, p. 29.

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proportion of Jews than in their previous communities 18 . Jews, intermingling in gentile society and often showing outstanding energy and resourcefulness in enhancing their social and economic position, were an unpleasant novelty for these new arrivals19. With the help of demagogues and rabble-rousers antisemitism became increasingly popular in the German urban environment, attracting struggling new immigrants as well as a segment of the etablished community. What gave the anti-semitic sentiment and the emerging anti-semitic movement of mid 70's its unique character was the assertion which was first coined and made public in the notorious, and then endlessly paraphrased, Gartenlaube articles, that "the social question is the Jewish question". Otto Glagau himself, the author of these articles, is an interesting example of the role which his brand of anti-semitism had played in the 1875-1882 years 20 . Glagau had previously been an economic correspondent of the Nationalzeitung, one of the leading liberal dailies of Berlin. His desertion of liberalism, although partially motivated by his own personal failure, became characteristic of many among his Mittelstand readers. Like him, they too finally broke their former liberal allegiance, and like him they sought a new political home for themselves. It was indicative of the mood among the master-artisans during these years that Glagau, who was a shrewd if not always an original political observer, dedicated one of his popular books to the fate of the small traditional handicraft-masters21. His peculiar brand of ideology did indeed appeal to them. His new anti-liberalism was based upon a principled opposition to the economic measures introduced by the liberals at the creation of the German Reich. These were blamed for the alleged misery and the impoverishment of his Mittelstand readers. His anti-semitism helped to explain the 'degeneration of German liberalism', which he, as well as the majority of the small masters, had previously supported. If it was embarrassing for them to attack their previous allies, the attack became comprehensible as a defense against the progressive Verjudung of the German liberal movement. If it was unpleasant to attack the patriotic German liberals as a whole, it was easy enough to attack

18

19

20

21

The rate of urbanization was much more rapid among Jews than among non-Jews in Germany. By 1900 48,5 % of the Jews lived in cities classified as large, while only 16,2 % of the non-Jewish population lived in them. See Weinryb, op. cit., pp. 25. Nowhere is this encounter more vividly described than in Adolf Hider's, Mein Kampf, München 1942, pp. 54-62. On Otto Glagau see the brief but illuminating comments in Hellmut von Gerlach, Von Rechts nach Links, Zürich 1937, p. 110; also Pulzer, op. at., pp. 88-90, and Massing, op. at., pp. 1014. Deutsches Handwerk und Historisches Bürgertum, Osnabrück 1879.

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the Jews among them. Thus it was not capitalism which was to be blamed but Jewish capitalism; not liberalism but Jewish 'Manchesterism'; not the 'national' government but its Jewish advisers. F. Perrot, an old Kreuzzeitung reactionary could publish his anti-liberal history of the handicrafts without any open anti-semitic overtones22. Glagau, the former liberal, apparently could not. For him, as for many Mittelständler anti-semitism appeared to serve as a necessary stage of transition between a traditional, though often contradictory, liberalism, and an increasingly entrenched conservatism. The master-artisans' organizations in the early 1870's were clearly liberal in their overall political leanings. They followed the pattern which had evolved among the majority of the handicraft masters after the events of 1848/49, and which combined political liberalism, sometimes of the radical democratic type, with specific economic demands having strong anti-liberal connotations. During the 7O's, when both liberals and conservatives fortified their ideologies and made their social alliances more explicit and more binding, the masters' political position appeared increasingly untenable, and gradually they resolved their ties with liberalism. But while the alliance with liberalism was slowly deteriorating, no clear political alternative was yet available. The leaders of the master-artisans' movement repeatedly attempted to fill the vacuum by establishing a separate artisans' party. Their desire to avoid a full-scale shift of artisans' votes into the established conservative camp was predominant in all these efforts. Not surprisingly, however, none of these organizations survived the planning stage, and by the time of the election-campaign of 1879 they were all long forgotten 23 . All the existing parties at the time attempted to appeal to the small handicraftsmen. Most vocal among them were the various anti-semitic associations, parading their social-conservatism, their support for state-protection, and above all their ardent opposition to all the manifestations of the liberal political and economic doctrine. The Soziale Reichspartei, led by the "progressive" and ex-liberal Ernst Henrici, the Deutsche Volksverein organized by the conservative Max Liebermann v. Sonnenberg, the Saxonian Deutsche Reformpartei and the various anti-semitic leagues and conferences all wished to appear as allies of the small handicraft masters in their economic struggle against liberal state economic measures, and against the competition of big capital and modern industry. Each in its peculiar style supported the master-

22

23

Das Handwerk, seine Reorganisation und. seine Befreiung von der Übermacht des Großkapitals, Leipzig 1876. For the sources and the bibliography on the handicraft-masters' organizations during the 1870's see the author's dissertation, op. cit., pp. 220-248, 264-273.

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artisans' limited demands for compulsory guild-membership, for reintroduction of masters' qualifying examinations, for restriction on prison work-shop production, reorganization of the bidding system and the like 24 . In spite of these propaganda efforts, one encounters little open anti-semitism in the masters' own pronouncements during the late 1870's. The masters showed little anti-Jewish feelings but seem to have nevertheless joined, in growing numbers, the organized anti-semitic movement. There is no way to assess the number of handicraft-masters who actually voted for anti-semitic candidates in national and local elections. Undoubtedly they accounted for a considerable segment of the 46.000 anti-semitic votes cast in Berlin during the 1881 election 25 . In Dresden, another center of handicraft production, a building-master won the Reichstag seat on the ticket of the anti-semitic Deutsche Reformpartei. But only a detailed analysis of local voting could perhaps overcome some of the difficulties in investigating the voting behaviour of a group whose members were scattered in all German towns and throughout the country. But if, indeed, precise numbers cannot as yet be provided, a general trend can certainly be observed. In May of 1880, the two most prominent leaders of the Berlin masterartisans' movement took part in a public meeting organized by Adolf Stökker's Social Conservative Party. The formerly liberal leaders of the masters' national Verein were ceremoniously seated at platform. They had indeed travelled a long way since their days of political activism on behalf of the Progressive Party in Berlin and their repeated efforts during the 1870's to preserve the general liberal character of the artisans' movement 26 . The story of Adolf Stöcker has been told many a time 27 . [· · ·] During the years of his political experimentation, primarily but not exclusively in Berlin, Stöcker became aware of the need to supply his potential supporters with an emotional battle-cry, stronger than the negative attitude towards liberalism and the nostalgic view of past society. Anti-semitism, by then already practiced by other social-conservatives, seemed to be the obvious 24

25 26 27

See Massing, op. dt., pp. 77-89; and for some of the anti-semitic party programs Fritz Specht, Die Reichstagswahlen 1867-97, Berlin 1898, pp. 66. Pulzer, op. cit., p. 99. See the report in Wilhelm Marr's anti-semitic publication, Die Deutsche Wacht, July 1880. The most detailed story is by the official Nazi historian Walter Frank, Adolf Stöcker und die Christlich-Soziale Bewegung, Hamburg 1935. See also the remarks in von Gerlach, op. cit., pp. 102, and Wanda Kampmann, "Stöcker und die Berliner Bewegung," Geschichtein Wissenschaft und Unterricht 13, 1962; Wawrzinek, op. dt., pp. 18-29; Massing, op. cit., pp. 21-47; Pulzer, op. dt., pp. 88-101.

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choice, and Stöcker enthusiastically seized upon it. He was operating in the spirit of Liebermann v. Sonnenberg, the Junker among the local anti-semitic social conservatives, who had shocked the young Helmuth v. Gerlach when he casually remarked to him in a street-side cafe in Berlin: "First we want to become a political power; then we shall seek the scientific evidence for antisemitism."28 In the same way that a militant social-conservative, anti-semitic movement was needed in Prussia and Saxony in order to finally sever the ties of the small master-artisans with the Liberals, so was it also needed in the mixed Protestant-Catholic areas of Western Germany. The small master-artisans in the Rheinland and in Westphalia were the first to demand the repeal of Gewerbefreiheit and a reconstitution of the guild system. It was they who introduced a strong anti-liberal tone into the discussions of the otherwise liberal Verein selbständiger Handwerker. They too, however, needed a transition through militant social-conservatism and vocal anti-semitism, before, they could finally join the established Conservative forces. Freiherr Friedrich Carl v. Fechenbach was a Protestant landowner from Hesse, who started his political career in the National-Liberal Party, and eventually joined the Deutschkonservative Partei in 187829. Towards the end of the 70's he had evolved his own political program and was, for several years, stormily engaged in publicizing it and in attempting to give it an organizational backbone. Living in a mixed Catholic-Protestant area, he visualized a socialconservatism which would be capable of uniting Protestants and Catholics into a mighty political force, jointly withstanding the tide of socialism. Fechenbach's political objectives were the abolition of the Kulturkampf, far-reaching social legislation particularly for peasants and artisans, and the institution of strong anti-capitalist and anti-semitic legal measures. Early in 1880 he attempted to reach an agreement with Stöcker, Perrot, and a number of other south-German Protestant social-conservatives. When these efforts failed, he convened in Frankfurt a. M. a joint meeting of Protestant and Catholic celebrities interested in the social question, at which a Verein für konservative Sozialreform was established. The program of the new Verein urged an end to the anti-Catholic campaign, restrictions on the power of Geldkapital, a break with the policy of 'unlauterer Wettbewerb', a return to the joint silver-gold money standard, a 'healthy' colonial policy, an expulsion of all non-Christians

28 29

von Gerlach, op. cit., p. 112. Hans Joachim Schoeps, "CDU vor 75 Jahren. Die sozialpolitischen Bestrebungen des Reichsfreiherrn F. von Fechenbach 1836-1907," Zeitschriftfür Religion und Geistesgeschichte 9,1957, pp. 266-277.

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from the German legislative bodies, and the establishment of "ein auf Berufsstände gegründetes Repräsentativsystem"30. In striking parallelism with the development of Adolf Stöcker's career, v. Fechenbach sought to create, side by side with his organization of conservative notables, a powerful grass-root movement. Operating after Stöcker, and no doubt learning from his mistakes, v. Fechenbach immediately concentrated his efforts on the recruitment of Mittelstand elements, especially master-artisans and peasants. For the former his program included a demand for the establishment of compulsory guilds with legal corporative rights, and a replacement of taxation on industrial enterprises with taxes on stock profits, inheritance and luxury-articles. Like Stöcker in Berlin, v. Fechenbach in the Rhein area combined a strong anti-liberal campaign with fervent anti-semitism and with a conservative nostalgia for the past. It was a mixture specifically designed to appeal to the small ex-liberal master-artisans in the rapidly industrializing regions of western Germany, who were increasingly clinging to the old socialindustrial structure as a remedy for all their present hardships. By 1881, v. Fechenbach had established some 50 branches of his Verein zum Schutze des Handwerks, mainly in south-western Germany, but also as far as Hamburg and Breslau31. In Cologne, v. Fechenbach prepared the ground for establishing a new master-artisans' organization. For several years he managed to run a special two-monthly artisans' journal, Die Innung, subtitled "Organ der Sozialkonservativen Vereinigung für das deutsche Handwerk" 32 . Fechenbach's movement was short-lived. The tireless Freiherr toyed with the prospects of a national anti-semitic movement for a while, and participated in drafting the program for the Deutsche Reformpartei, established in Dresden in September 1881. By 1885, however, he finally joined the Center Party. Many of his previous supporters followed the same route. By the middle of the 80's

30

31

32

Die Post, 13 November 1880; see also Hugo Böttger, Das Programm der Handwerker, Braunschweig 1893, pp. 137-138; and Eugen Jäger, Die Handwerkerjrage. Geschichte der Handwerkerbewegung bis zum Jahre 1884, Berlin 1887, pp. 166. Jäger, op. cit., p. 176; and a propaganda pamphlet entitled Die Demokratische Partei und die Handwerker, Munich 1883, which describes in detail von Fechenbach's acitivities among small handicraft-masters. On the degree of von Fechenbach's appeal one can judge from reports on the master-artisans' national congresses. For 1881 see the Kölnische Zeitung, 5 August 1881, for 1882 and 1883 the protocols of the meetings: Verhandlungen des allgemeinen deutschen Handwerkertages zu Magdeburg 1882, pp. 25-36, and the Verhandlungen des allgemeinen deutschen Handwerkertages zu Hannover 1883, pp. 23-25. The most ardent supporters of von Fechenbach during these years in the masters' organizations were the master-tailors Fasshauer from Cologne and Möller from Dortmund. Both remained until well into the 1890's among the most militant anti-semitic and radical leaders of the master-artisans in Germany.

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both the Protestant social-conservatives and their Catholic counterparts had joined their respective established conservative parties. Their separate political existence was of transitory nature. It had filled a temporary political vacuum during a period of radical shift in the popular pattern of political allegiances. It served to smooth the transfer of a segment of the German Mittelstand population, including numerous small handicraft-masters, from the Liberal to the Conservative camp. Π. The early beginnings of the second wave of political anti-semitism among small handicraft masters in Germany can be dated to 1887. By that time the majority of the politically-minded masters had settled for consistent, though often unenthusiastic, support of the established Conservative parties. They probably voted for the Deutschkonservative Partei in the Protestant north, and for the Catholic Zentrum in the south and in much of south-western Germany. The masters' conservatism was rooted in their anti-liberalism and in their growing opposition to all the manifestations of modern industrial society. While the alliance of the Catholic master-artisans with the Zentrum has proven relatively unproblematic and lasting, the Protestant master's support of Junker-conservatism, increasingly in alliance with big business, often remained half-hearted. Anti-liberalism and a romantic nostalgia for the past did not quite suffice to make the small urban master-artisans at ease within the party of aristocratic owners and cultivators of big agricultural estates. The Liberal-Conservative cartel policy which crystallized before the 1887 Reichstag election dramatically brought into the open the ambivalence of the masters' position vis a vis the Conservatives. They were suddenly faced with a coalition between those who claimed to be their most loyal supporters and those who had been their allies and were therefore all the more objectionable as their present opponents. The organ of the handicraft masters in southern Germany, the mouthpiece of the masters' Bund, mourned the alliance between the Conservatives and the Liberals, and predicted with apprehension the end of the parliamentary cooperation between the Conservative party and the Zentrum on all social and economic matters - a cooperation which had lasted since the beginning of the decade. It saw in the new political constellation "ein trauriges Bild unseres heutigen Parlamentarismus", and immediately proceeded to launch a doubly heated campaign against liberalism and the liberal parties33. This was sprinkled with occasional anti-semitism. But with

33

Die Allgemeine Handwerkerzeitung, throughout 1887.

25 January 1887, and a barrage of articles in every issue

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some significant exceptions, master-artisans' meetings during the late 80's and successive issues of their journals were very restrained in the expression of anti-Jewish sentiments. Open and radical anti-semitism can be detected among them only from around 1892. From that time on it seemed to be on the increase. It reached unprecedented proportions, and was pursued with previously unknown determination and passion. By then it had developed all the characteristics of racial anti-semitism, and its connection with anti-liberalism, while certainly present, had lost its predominance. The anti-semitic movement of 1892-97 was a new phenomenon. Whereas it had been a by-product of political re-grouping during the late 1870's, it had become by the 90's an expression of a structural crisis in German society and in its relationship with the state. The late 1870's and early 1880's had been years of reorganization of the social and the political forces in the Reich 34 . By 1890 a new structure had clearly emerged. Within it the master-artisans had a peculiar position. Regardless of their actual material standing, the new industrializing economy always remained basically alien to them. By the end of the 19th century little if anything had been preserved of their old handicraft community. Masters and journeymen were by then aligned in opposite and hostile camps. The craft apprenticeship had lost the last vestiges of its traditional image, and apprentices were often no more than a source of cheap labour. No other community emerged to replace the disintegrating one. The Mittelstand was a conglomeration of elements with objectively conflicting interests and with fierce internal conflicts. During the 19th century it was often no more than a slogan. The bond among retail shop-keepers, master craftsmen, white collar employees, teachers and low-echelon bureaucrats always remained tenuous. The master-artisans' position inside this heterogeneous social unit was particularly ambivalent. As manual workers they remained outsiders in a group whose members were normally engaged in non-manual occupations, and as small industrial producers they were outsiders in a group whose members were primarily consumers. Their relationships with all the segment of the Mittelstand, with their workers, with larger entrepreneurs and with the bourgeoisie of Besitz and of Bildung, were characterized by envy and estrangement35.

34

35

The Reichstag election results between 1877 and 1884 offer a glimpse into this period of political instability. Specht, op. cit., pp. 88-104, provides a series of useful tables combining changes in the relative power of the various parties with the shifts in the political allegiance within the various German states and provinces. For a fuller treatment of this problem see the author's dissertation, op. cit., pp. 117-188.

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The isolation of the small handicraft-masters was not merley a social and cultural phenomenon. By the 1890's it had been extended into the political sphere. Without much enthusiasm, but nevertheless in a consistent fashion, the central Reich government had accepted a great number of the masters' reform demands 36 . These were passed in the Reichstag throughout the 1880's, supported by the Center party and the Conservatives, with occasional help from the Free Conservatives and segments of the National-Liberal Party. At a time of relative economic recovery the consistent, though often slow, move of the Reich government towards the social reform demands of the masters, gave the latter reason for optimism and time for consolidating their own interestgroup organizations. In 1890 the German economy suffered a renewed cyclical crisis. At the same time, in response to the growth of the SocialDemocratic Party and the Socialist Trade-Unions after the repeal of the antisocialist legislation, the government embarked upon a new reform program for master-artisans. It wished, so it had repeatedly claimed, to give legislative expression to its concern for the needs of the staatserhaltende elements in German society37. The government was ready to meet representatives of the handicraft-masters' national organizations in order to hear from them directly their specific reform demands. Soon, however, it became clear that the Ministry of the Interior was intent on pursuing its own reform program, and the masters' hopes for finally achieving their major objectives, above all a compulsory guild-system and an obligatory masters' examination, were once more shattered38. During the following years of government procrastination the masters lost their initial confidence in it, and became bitter and hostile towards it. At the same time, the support of government social legislation by both the Center and the Conservative parties in the Reichstag was increasingly resented by the masters. What had previously been the source of their pressure power, became an obstacle to their further plans. They suddenly remembered that as

36

37

38

Legislation for the reorganization of the handicrafts was passed in 1881, late in 1884, 1886, 1887, and 1889. For a summary see "Gewerbegesetzgebung" Handwarterbuch der Staatswissenschaften IV, 1910. See, for instance, the speech by the State Secretary of the Interior von Boetticher in the Reichstag on 24 November 1891. Also Karl Erich Born, Staat und Sozialpolitik seit Bismarcks Stun., Wiesbaden 1957, pp. 90-112; and Hans Rothfels, Τ. Lohmann und die Kampfiahre der staatlichen Sozialpolitik 1871-1905, Berlin 1927, pp. 123-125. See the fierce argument in: Protokoll über die Verhandlungen am Ii., 16. und 17. Juni 1891 mit Vertretern des Centralausschusses der Vereinigten Innungsverbände Deutschlands und des Allgemeinen Deutschen Handwerkerbundes zu München, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv ΜΗ-14661, and in the Reichstag on 24 November 1891.

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late as 1890 the Deutschkonservative Partei had no representative of the handicraft-masters among its Reichstag members, and that the Catholic Center included only three master-artisans among its parliamentary fraction of over 100 men. The two most loyal supporters of the master-artisans appeared to have easily accepted government legislation which was vehemently opposed, both for its details and for its general concept, by the organized master-artisans' movement 39 . The masters felt increasingly neglected by the government and scorned by their former political supporters. Their 1892 national congress gave ample expression to their rage, their feeling of helplessness and their growing defiance. They claimed to have been treated as "Stiefkinder der Nation", and as "Paria der Gesetzgebung" 40 . Their repeated organizational failures, their political disillusions, and above all their feeling of social and political homelessness created a mood of lonely despair among them which gave their pronouncements a threatening overtone. "Wir deutsche Handwerker" - exclaimed the Deutsche Handwerkerzeitung "fühlen uns als eine der festesten Stützen eines geordneten Staatswesens; wir deutsche Handwerker fürchten aber Niemanden in der Welt als Gott, den unerbittlichen sicheren Rächer alles Unrechtes auf Erden." 41 As in the late 70's, the severing of ties with previous allies again forced the masters to attempt the organization of a separate political party. Once again, however, they found themselves unable to overcome the opposition and the active sabotage of the existing parties, the numerous organizational and financial difficulties and their endless internal disputes. At the same time the newly organized anti-semitic parties made strong efforts to turn the masters general hostility and their political isolation into electoral capital. The anti-semitic propaganda during the 1890's was explicitly directed at the various Mittelstand elements in Germany. It emphasized the urgent need for state intervention in the running of the economy, the demands for progressive income tax, inheritance and capital tax, a supervision of the stock-exchange and the protection of agriculture, handicraft and small business. It was essentially antiliberal and anti-capitalist, reformist and nationalist. The endorsement of the specific reform demands of the master-artisans' interest-organizations by the various anti-semitic parties, however, was initially no more emphatic than the endorsement offered by the Conservatives or by the Catholic Center Party.

39

40 41

Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des deutschen Innungs- und allgemeinen Handwerkertages zu Berlin 1892, passim. Ibid., pp. 42, 46. Protokoll über die Verhandlungen des XIII. Allgemeinen Deutschen Handwerkertages zu Halle 1895, p. 4.

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In the 1890 Bochum program of the Deutschsoziale Partei, article 13 unfolded the party's plan for reform of the handicrafts42. It included a call for the restriction of the Gewerbefreiheit, for the introduction of official examinations for master-employers, for shorter terms of limitations, and for the institution of Handicraft Chambers with jurisdiction over matters of professional ethics. It further demanded the improvement of tender regulations and the prohibition of all handicraft production in prison work-shops. While these were, indeed, all part of the master-artisans' standard reform demands, the anti-semitic plan did not mention compulsory membership in the guilds, nor was it explicit on the matter of a comprehensive and obligatory masters' examination. The Antisemitische Volkspartei was even more elusive on these two essential points. In its 1890 program it demanded assistance for the handicrafts by means of putting an end to the "schrankenlose Gewerbefreiheit", and to the competition of state-prison workshops. It then proclaimed the need to expand the rights of, and the support for, handicraft organizations 43 . Thus, during the early years of the decade, the anti-semitic parties in their intense recruitment efforts preferred to follow a cautious line on the handicraft question, in order not to alienate any potential supporters. But in spite of these hesitations and the lukewarm attitudes of the anti-semitic leadership towards the essential demands of the master-artisans' interestorganizations, the latter were showing growing enthusiasm for these parties. This time it was not merely a passing phenomenon, but an expression of a social and political crisis manifested in an outburst of intense anti-Jewish sentiments. At the masters' 1892 national congress, Adolf Stöcker, again on the podium to express the anti-semitism of his audience, was warmly applauded. A string of speakers from all parts of the country voiced their anti-semitism in extreme and often vulgar terms to the general approval of the delegates44. Eventually the anti-semitic parties, forced by the aridity of their own programs, and apparently impressed by the masters' enthusiasm, came closer to the position of the master-artisans interest-groups on matters related to the reform of the handicrafts. By 1895 the reconstituted Deutschsoziale Reformpartei introduced the masters' demand for compulsory guilds and obligatory masters' examinations into its new official program 45 . The alliance between the small handicraft masters and the anti-semitic political movement was thus fortified and publicly acknowledged. 42

Specht, op. at., p. 503. « Ibid., p. 504. 44 Protokoll, 1892, op. at., passim.

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77

At the artisans' congress in April of 1893, the Catholic master-shoemaker Beutel from Munich was still apologetic, and was far from being unanimously applauded, when he stated that "ein bißchen anti-semitisch sind wir ja alle, wenn nicht gerade im Ahlwardtschen Sinn" 4 6 . But in May of the same year the Bavarian Allgemeine Handwerkerzeitung openly called upon its readers to vote for anti-semitic candidates in all cases where they could not in good conscience continue to vote for Conservative or Center party representatives47. Early in 1894 the two major artisan newspapers, in Munich and in Berlin, were inundated with anti-semitic articles, reprinted public speeches, letters to the editors and even occasional verses. The Jews were made responsible for everything that was objectionable to the craft masters: for liberalism, capitalism, socialism, trade-unionism, industrialism. They were presented as the main exploiters of the small masters, and the cause of their alleged misery. Issue after issue of these papers was filled with articles providing additional evidence to prove the moral degeneration and the utter ruthlessness of the Jews 4 8 . By the 1890's the small independent handicraft-masters had joined the political anti-semitic movement as "true believers". It has been often noted that anti-semitism served to bring together various ideological positions, unrelated and often openly contradictory. Thus, for the unsophisticated, anti-liberalism, anti-capitalism and anti-socialism could all be expressed by opposition to the Jews - as the social element responsible for the corruption and subversion of all three. Likewise, anti-semitism permitted the expression of repressed hostility by disoriented men and channelled it into an acceptable, and in some circles even respectable, direction. For small masterartisans, however, anti-semitism had an additional function: It provided this isolated and unintegrated group of men with a much needed negative identity. A sense of social isolation was not unique to the small master-artisans in German society of the 1890's. Rainer Lepsius has suggested a rough model for understanding the structure of this society from the turn of the century until the Nazi seizure of power 49 . German society, he argues, was divided by the early 1890's into four major social 'milieus', each representing a unique subculture, an overall Weltanschauung, and a specific political direction. Within

45 46 47 48

49

Specht, op. cit., p. 507. Allgemeine Handwerkerzeitung, 28 April 1893. Ibid., 26 May 1893. See, for instance, the Deutsche Handwerker-Zeitung, 6 January, 24 February, 3 March and 7 June 1894; and die Allgemeine Handwerkerzeitung, 5 and 12 May 1894. Rainer Lepsius, "Parteiensystem und Sozialstruktur. Zum Problem der Demokratisierung der deutschen Gesellschaft," in Wilhelm Abel (ed.), Wirtschaft, Geschichte und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Festschrift Friedrich Lütge, Stuttgart 1966, pp. 371-393.

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each of these blocks, culture and life-style, ideology and political organization coincided, overlapped and enforced each other.The four were the Conservative, the Liberal, the Socialist and the Catholic milieus. Each developed a strong cohesion within itself and evolved a pattern of interaction with the others. In addition, however, a fifth social element in Germany became increasingly discernible. It was composed of the various groups of individuals who, for a variety of reasons, did not succeed in becoming associated with any of the major blocks in the country. This 'left-over' mixture of men from different walks of life normally constituted about 10 % of Germany's voters - a small but flexible and susceptible body. Among them one can easily identify a large segment of the master-artisans population. The Catholic masters normally managed to be integrated within the general, and increasingly influential, Catholic 'milieu'. It was the traditional masters in the Protestant North and in the mixed areas who were chronically unattached and isolated. It was these men who responded to the lore of demagogues and rabble-rousers; who in the face of their isolation clung to distorted historical memories and cultivated generalized resentment and hostility. Bismarck had correctly appreciated the extent of the centrifugal forces within German society. For years he had practiced tactics for internal cohesion based upon the permanent availability of a national enemy. Anti-semitism can be easily perceived within this context. It provided the necessary internal enemy in the years between the repeal of the anti-socialist legislation and the embarkment of the Reich government upon an aggressive Weltpolitik. In addition the Jews served as an object for contempt and hatred in contrast to whom the belonging of small masters and other isolated social groups to the glorious German nation was indisputable. The European tradition of antisemitism made the Jews a perfect target for the hatred of the unattached 50 . Small master artisans, outside the mainstream of German social and political development, identified themselves negatively as non-Jews and thus hoped to achieve a greater sense of belonging within Christian society. The existence of a group which was so apparently outside the social fabric of the Christian German Reich made their belonging to it - both as Christians and as Germans more secure. Positively, extreme nationalism helped these men to identify themselves as members of the proud and indivisible German nation. Antisemitism thus served a complementary function to nationalism, and it is only within this context that the affinity between the two becomes comprehensible.

50

From this point of view modem anti-semitism, in spite of its unique character, is nevertheless a chapter within the general history of European anti-semitism.

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Our efforts to investigate the social and the political function of the antisemitic movement for the small master-artisans in Germany of the late 19th century have brought into sharp focus the distinct nature of the two antisemitic waves during these years. In many ways the first wave, between 1875 and 1882, was characteristic of the 19th century, and expressed the major ideological and social conflicts associated with liberalism and the process of industrialization. During these years, master-artisans who had little if any contact with Jews at all, showed sporadic anti-Jewish sentiments, and were only temporarily attracted to the anti-liberal, anti-semitic political organizations. It was only during the 1890's that anti-semitism became a major and permanent feature of their Weltanschauung. Together with extreme nationalism it served to alleviate a crisis of identity for men who otherwise felt isolated, rejected and even scorned by all other elements in German society and by the spokesmen of the German state. Political anti-semitism was a phenomenon unique to Germany, drawing its strength from its particular integrative function in a specific sociopolitical situation. As such it was close to the political anti-semitism in Germany of the 20th century. O n the basis of our analysis it can perhaps be suggested that another crisis of belonging was at the root of the great appeal of anti-semitism during the years of the Weimar Republic. Even by the 1920's the master-artisans in Germany had not succeeded in becoming a part of any of the major social milieus in the country. They still felt outsiders vis a vis the modern market economy. The Mittelstand was as far from being a social community or a base for a unified political force as it had ever been. The masters had even less confidence in the government of the new republic than they had had in the Imperial Reich government. Indeed, the Nazis' initial popular support came from an assorted mixture of declasses and isolated social groups. They all had in common the desire to find a way - indeed any way - for escaping their sense of social and political homelessness.

N O R B E R T KAMPE

The Jewish Arrival at Higher Education"" The educated public of the German Empire was definitely aware of the fact that German Jews gave opportunities to their children to enter higher education on a far larger scale than their Christian neighbours. The reactions of the Gentile community to this development will be dealt with later. First the "over-representation"1 of Jews in higher education in relationship to their number in the general population is to be quantified. Then the differences, if any, between Jewish and Gentile students will be analysed. This essay will therefore reach beyond the attempts, hitherto unsatisfactory even in scholarly literature, to ascribe Jewish attendance at universities to a Jewish Bildungsdrang - as it was called at the time - and to test whether a real social conflict played a role in the antisemitism among students. [. . .] The Matrikelverzeichnisse (lists of enrolled students) of the universities allow at least some rough conclusions about the early and mid-nineteenth century. According to these, German Jews started to enter universities in larger numbers about the year 1815. From 1830 onward the proportion of Jewish stu-

* From: "Jews and Antisemites at Universities in Imperial Germany (I) Jewish Students: Social History and Social Conflict," Year Book, Leo Baeck Institute 30, 1985, pp. 357-394; pp. 358360, pp. 362-364, 368-385, 389-390. Reprinted with permission of the author and the pubKsher. 1 The term 'over-representation' conveys the notion of an ideal situation of balance, here as between different religious groups in institutes of higher education. The discussion of 'overrepresentation' of Jews in business, for example, is not uncommon. The pejorative connotation is not intended here and it must be emphasised that it is in the nature of a minority to be different. The purpose of an "index" as a quantitative measure of varying types of students admitted to higher education (see Table IH) is to evaluate the background to emotional argument. A similar index was used by Hartmut Kaelble, in comparing chances for members of varying social classes to obtain higher education, in his "Chancenungleichheit und akademische Ausbildung in Deutschland 1910-1960," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 1,1975, pp. 121-149, esp. pp. 128 f. For the part played by education in upward social mobility, see Kaelble, Soziale Mobilität und Chancenungleichheit im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Deutschland im internationalen Vergleich, Göttingen 1983.

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dents in the student communities of several German universities exceeded the relative proportion of Jews in the population as a whole. On the eve of the Revolution of 1848, the degree of Akademisierung among Jews was at least twice as high as among the Christian population.2 In 1886 Prussian university statistics showed an "over-representation" ofJews by a factor of seven. Thereafter it decreased continuously (compare Table ΠΙ, section e, pp. 96-97). The gap in research for the period 1850-1880 remains to be filled. Data for the earlier period have been published only for the two universities in Baden shown in Table I. Table I Ratios ("Indices") of Percentages of the Various Religions among NewlyEnrolled Students at Freiburg and Heidelberg Universities to the Percentage of Baden Population Professing each Religion, 1869-1893 Five-year average

1869/73 1874/78 1879/83 1884/88 1889/93

Protestant

115 1-15 1-24 1-11 1-04

Indices Catholic

0-89 0-86 0-76 0-85 0-91

Jews Jews

2-21 3-14 4-96 4-37 3-59

Number

% of All Students

22 27 64 92 85

3-94 5-43 8-52 7-38 5-86

Of course, the Baden data do not correspond with the whole of Germany as closely as the Prussian data always do in thefieldof education. But if we take the Baden data as an example, "over-representation" seems to have remained 2

Monika Richarz, Der Eintritt derJuden in die akademischen Berufe. Jüdische Studenten und Akademikerin Deutschland 1678-1848, Tübingen 1974, Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 28, pp. 91-97. For the early nineteenth-century developments omitted here, see also Richarz, "Juden, Wissenschaften und Universitäten. Zur Sozialgeschichte der jüdischen Intelligenz und der akademischen Judenfeindschaft 1780-1848," Jahrbuch des Instituts für Deutsche Geschichte, Beiheft 4, Tel Aviv 1983, pp. 55-73. And generally, Jacob Toury, "Der Eintritt der Juden ins deutsche Bürgertum," in Hans Liebenschütz and Arnold Paucker (eds.), Das Judentum in der deutschen Umwelt 1800-1850. Tübingen 1977, pp. 139-242; Ismar Schorsch, "The Religious Parameters of Wissenschaft. Jewish Academics at Prussian Universities," Year Book, Leo Baeck Institute 25, 1980,pp. 3-19;ErnstG. Lowenthal, "Die Juden im öffentlichen Leben," in Werner E. Mosse and Arnold Paucker (eds.), Entscheidungsjahr 1932. Zur Judenfrage in der Endphase der 'Weimarer Republik, Tübingen 1965, Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts, pp. 51-85.

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relatively constant from the mid-century until the early 1870s. The quantitative leap in Baden occurred in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The peak of Jewish "over-representation" among the student body in Baden (nearly five times the ratio in 1879/1883) probably coincided with an even higher peak in Prussia. Thefirstavailable data for Prussia shows the index for "over-representation" as 7-48 from the late 1880s (Table ΙΠ, section e). The quantitative leap to nearly this degree of "over-representation" in the whole of the Reich seems to have occurred from about the mid-1870s to the mid-1880s. This sudden and steep increase in the university enrolment among German Jews within a relatively short period of time is a major fact of Jewish social history. [. . .] The main reason given by the famous Jewish sociologist Arthur Ruppin in 1902 for the "over-representation" of Prussian Jews in higher education was the greater wealth of Jews acquired during the previous decades.3 In 1905, he modified his thesis slightly by pointing to urbanisation as the main reason, since it made secondary and higher education cheaper and more easily available. "The above-average wealth of Jews and their traditionally deep respect for learning and knowledge" were, Ruppin considered, only secondary factors.4 His explanation, that Jewish students were of wealthy and metropolitan origin, is an assumption yet to be verified by quantitative data. In addition, the usual reasons given, such as embourgeoisement and urbanisation, do not adequately explain the higher motivation to study among the poorer Jewish students, who may have been in the majority, as will be shown below. A crucial imperfection of the Prussian statistics is presumably the basis for acceptance of this inadequate pattern of explanation: namely that data for university students collected since 1886 offer no correlation between the students' religion and their fathers' professions - the vital index of social origin.5 There is, fortunately, one further indicator to religion which helps to identify the social background better than the often meagre information provided by the father's occupation: the statistics on financial aid granted to students (Benefizienstatistik). [.. .]

3

4

5

Arthur Ruppin, "Die sozialen Verhältnisse der Juden in Preussen und Deutschland "Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik 78, 1902, pp. 374-386, esp. p. 376. Arthur Ruppin, "Die Juden auf preußischen Universitäten," Zeitschrift für Demographie und, Statistik derJuden 1, no. 9, pp. 12-16. As with the census data, the statistics of university students show only the economic sector in which the father works - not his income or status. It has not been possible to combine tables including religion with those including father's profession.

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Jewish Arrival at Higher Education

Commentaries in the Preussische Universitätsstatistik agree that Honorarstundung is a true index of indigence.6 Students had to apply to university authorities to be granted suspension of payment. The applicants had to prove poverty to obtain the testimonium paupertatis. The Honorarstundung was the most frequently claimed and most important form of support, since it was not possible to obtain a degree by attending the few free lectures (publica), the only ones covered by the professor's basic salary. Although a professor had no right to refuse admittance to a student provided with testimonium paupertatis, the academic staff as a whole insisted on a strict application of the means test. Still, for indefinite periods they forwent lecture fees, which generally amounted to much more than basic pay and were the only source of income for the Pnvatdozenten.7 In contrast, Honorarerlass was granted independently of social situation, for example to sons of professors teaching at the same university. Table Π clearly shows the high degree of poverty among Jewish students, contrary to common assumptions about their social situation: Table Π Students with Prussian Citizenship at Prussian Universities Receiving testimonium paupertatis, Shown over an Average of Eight Semesters from 1886/1887 to 1890 and Related to Religion of Recipients8 Religion Protestant Catholics Jews Others Total

6

7

8

All student enrolled

Recipients only No.

%

7,983 2,265 1,062 36

1,736 698 296 6

or or or or

21-7% 30-8 % 27-9 % 16-7 %

11,346

2,736

or

26-1%

Preußische Statistik 125,1895, pp. 79-96; 167,1901,pp. 152-189;204,1908,pp. 173-195;223, 1910, pp. 195-217; 236,1913, pp. 150-161; all references are to Part I; Zeitschrift des Königlich Preußischen Statistischen Bureaus 31, 1891, p. LXXXIX. Privatdozenten were not paid wages and they led lives in insecurity - always hoping for a professorship - so that they became a stereotype in caricatures of academic life. In general, the academic career of an unbaptised Jew ended at this level; see Alexander Busch, Die Geschichte des Pnvatdozenten, Stuttgart 1959. Preußische Statistik 106, 1892, Part Π (Tables).

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In 1892 the Prussian statisticians commented on this: "No matter how one approaches the results, Catholic and Jewish students always stand out as poor and in need of support. Protestant students evidently came from those social classes whose wealth required comparatively little access to Honorarstundung."9

One socialist author even thought that "the generally accepted opinion that Jews study in a far higher proportion simply because they are wealthier should be conclusively rejected". 10 Both evaluations are generally acceptable. The fact remains, however, that the data utilised were not originally intended as indices for social stratification. That means, for example, that the 28 % poor Prussian Jewish university students shown above must be seen against the remaining 72 °/o ofJewish students on whom the figures do not provide information. We can only be sure that poverty or sub- or petty-bourgeois origin do not exactly coincide with the number of the recipients of testimonium, paupertatis. But, assuming the tests were impartial,11 the data can be used to compare the percentages of the poorest in each religion. In the long-term development of Honorarstundung, the proportion of poor Catholic students was clearly higher than that of their Jewish counterparts.12 [...]

The Academic Labour Market Crisis In 1882 the ratio of academically trained and gainfully employed professionals among German Jews reached 4.9 %, the same level as for the German population as a whole. Thereafter it exceeded the national average. The 1882 statistics for the professions in Prussia show 857 academically trained Jews in "administration and legal professions", or 5-1 % of all academically trained

9

10

11

12

Ibid., Parti, p. 60; and zgdin, Preußische Statistik 125,1895, Parti, p. 80 ("Contrary to received opinion and somewhat surprisingly, Jews are included among more needy students"). Der Sozialistische Akademiker!, 1896, p. 601. For example of the usual explanation ofjewish 'over-representation' in terms of wealth and urbanisation, see Akademische Monatshefte 7, 1890/1891, p. 37. No political student group appears to have suspected discriminatory practices. Another source of funds, grants, were most likely (according to student papers) to be obtained by the Protestants, the wealthiest denomination. With expanding enrolment, the ratio of Honorarstundung was reduced despite the influx of petty-bourgeois origin students. This corresponds with the general policy of not assisting upward social mobility through education. Apart from Christian theology students, between 1890 and 1912 Honorarstundung declined- for Protestants from 14 % (700 cases) to 8 % (950), for Catholics from 11 % (174) to 8 % (444), for Jews from 12 % (119) to 7 % (85). See Preußische Statistik 236, 1913, Part I, p. 156.

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85

professionals in this field. A s J e w s were usually barred f r o m serving as judicial officers, Jews w o r k i n g in this area must have been almost exclusively lawyers. In the health services, 9 0 3 academically trained J e w s (physicians) are m e n tioned, or 8-8 % of all professionals in this sphere. In larger t o w n s and cities, the ratio of Jews was even higher. In 1 8 8 1 / 1 8 8 2 , 7-9 % of all lawyers and 11-7 % of all physicians in Berlin w e r e J e w s . 1 3 It appears from this that a large part of the German-Jewish Bildungsbürgertum originated during the last third of the nineteenth century. Having tried to assess the quantitative developments at pupil and student level as preconditions for "academisation" of J e w s

13

Preußische Statistik 102, 1890, Part I, p. 66; Jacob Toury, Soziale und politische Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 1847-1871, Düsseldorf 1977, p. 92; Avraham Barkai, "The German Jews at the Start of Industrialisation. Structural Change and Mobility 1835-1860," in Werner E. Mosse, Arnold Paucker and Reinhard Rürup, Revolution and Evolution. 1848 in GermanJewish History, Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts 39, Tübingen 1981, p. 131. Although, in the light of the scanty data for previous years, they can only speculate, Toury and Barkai also query whether German-Jewish academisation came opportunely or surprisingly late. For the long-term development, see Jakob Lestschinsky, Das wissenschaftliche Schicksal des deutschen Judentums. Aufstieg. Wandlung. Krise. Ausblick, Berlin 1932 (Schriften der Zentralwohlfahrtsstelle der deutschen Juden und der Hauptstelle für Jüdische Wanderfürsorge VII) p. 101 and Usiel O. Schmelz, "Die demographische Entwicklung der Juden in Deutschland von der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis 1933," Zeitschrift für Bevölkentngswissenscbaft8,1982, p. 64. According to Lestschinsky, taking two groups -Jews and Gentiles - of the Prussian working population, the percentage of professional men and public servants was as follows: Jews (°/o) 2-9 4-0 6-7 8-7

1861 1882 1907 1925

Gentiles (%) 4-6 4-9 5-4 6-0

Schmelz, too, shows the same tendency in his statistics of the relative percentages of professional men among Jews and among the whole working population: Jews (%) 1882 1895 1907 1925 1933

(Prussia) {Reich) {Reich) (Prussia) {Reich)

5-3 7-1 7-9 10-3 12-5

Working population (%) 5-3 6-4 6-2 6-7 8-4

Rar Berlin (that is, the territory later known as Groß-Berlin including Charlottenburg) 1907 1933

9-8 17-6

8-2 15-0

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and their motives for studying in such increased numbers, we shall now analyse the general conditions under which the German-Jewish Bildungsbürgertum, emerged. The question will be raised, whether there were special additional factors in the field of higher education and academic professions, operative upon the acceptance of the emerging broad layer of Jewish professionals by the German Bildungsbürgertum. In the early nineteenth century, professionals as a modern functional elite grew out of the older and smaller groups of Gelehrte. That coincided with the need of the State to widen the scope of its services, stimulating an increase in the number of graduates. As the population grew at an unprecedented rate, demand for professional services increased correspondingly. From 1600 to 1800 the number of students was relatively stable between 4,500 and 2,500, showing a long-term tendency to decline.14 Owing to the school and university reforms instituted by the Prussian Minister of Education, Wilhelm von Humboldt (1808-1819), which were largely copied by other German states, the number of university students increased immensely, climbing to almost 16,000 in 1830.15 After a decrease to about 12,000 students in mid-century, the level of 1830 was again reached in 1875. Thereafter the number of university students in Germany expanded continuously, apart from short-lived small contractions about 1890, and reached a peak of almost 64,000 students in 1914. Regardless of the already impressive increase in the number of students in the early nineteenth century, it was only in the last third of the century that the increase in population was clearly exceeded by the rise in student

14

15

Franz Eulenburg, Die Frequenz der deutschen Universitäten von ihrer Gründung bis zur Gegenwart, Leipzig 1904, pp. 255, 302-307; Hans-Georg Herrlitz, Studium als Standesprivileg, Frankfurt a. M. 1973, p. 35. For data on Student enrolment, see also Johannes Conrad, Das Universitatsstudium in Deutschland während der letzten fünfzig Jahre, Jena 1884, p. 15, Appendix VT[; Wilhelm Lexis (ed.), Das Unterrichtswesen im Deutschen Reich, vol. 4, Berlin 1904, pp. 44-46, p. 652; Konrad Jarausch, "The Sources of German Student Unrest 1815-1848," in Lawrence Stone (ed.), The University in Society, vol. 2, Princeton 1974, pp. 533-569, esp. p. 557. This led to the first public debate on excessive numbers of students, the nineteenth-century Uberfüllungsdebatte. The authorities blocked the trend by introducing the Abitur examination as the formal and only means of entering the university. Regarding its efficacy, see the enrolment figure for 1800-1914 in Norbert Schafferdt, "Die arbeitslosen Akademiker. Die Krise 1880-1900 und der Rechtsruck des Bildungsbürgertums," Journal für Geschichte 6,1982, pp. 10-15. The situation was more complex than can be shown here; see Jarausch, 1974, op. cit., pp. 555-556; Hartmut Titze, "Überfüllungskrisen in akademischen Karrieren. Eine Zyklustheorie," Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 27, 1981, pp. 187-224 and ibid., "Die zyklische Überproduktion von Akademikern im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 10, 1984, pp. 92-121.

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numbers. Between 1869 and 1912 the number of students per 10,000 male inhabitants grew from 8-83 to 21-77.16 In public generally the relative growth in student enrolment was less discussed than the absolute growth in numbers and the emergence of the large universities. When about 1880 the supply of new graduates finally exceeded the capacity of the academic labour market, while the number of students still continued to rise, a widespread debate on student numbers arose (Uberfüllungsdebatte). A book by the political economist Johannes Conrad, published in 1884, provided the public with data on the rise in the number of students, became a best-seller and was used to legitimise government decisions.17 In 1891, the statistician Wilhelm Lexis, on a government commission, submitted a long memorandum on the Normalzahl of students appropriate to the needs of Prussia.18 With hindsight, this projected estimate of a "normal" demand for students seems highly questionable. At the time, it flatly prophesied how many students in each faculty would be superfluous for years to come. Colleges offered prizes for the best essay on such topies as 'The Causes of Addiction to Study and its Remedy'. 19 A special bibliography recorded 55 works on the subject published between 1874 and 1898,20 in which the Gymnasium system was the most frequently mentioned cause. The humanistic Abitur examination led pupils towards university enrolment. Some of these works also allege that Jews contributed to the rise in student numbers, since they were now exempted from all legal restrictions on study and were pouring into the universities. In the early 1870s, opportunities of finding a post in the academic professions were relatively good. Schools, for example, offered money even to

16

17 18

19

20

Konrad Jarausch, "Frequenz und Struktur. Zur Sozialgeschichte der Studenten im Kaiserreich," in Peter Baumgart (ed.), Bildungspolitik in Preußen zur Zeit des Kaiserreichs, Stuttgart 1980, pp. 123 f. Conrad, op. dt. Wilhelm Lexis, Denkschrift über die dem Bedarf Preußens entsprechende Normalzahl der Studierenden der verschiedenen Fakultäten, Berlin n. d. (1891). Basic articles on the higher education crisis are to be found in Zeitschriftfür Pädagogik 14,1977, Beiheft, esp. Detlev K. Müller, "Qualifikationskrise und Schulreform," pp. 13-36; D . K. Müller, Bernd Zymek, Erika Küpper and Longin Priebe, "Modellentwicklung zur Analyse von Krisenphasen im Verhältnis von Schulsystem und staatlichem Beschäftigungssystem," pp. 37-78; Sebastian F. Müller, "Mittelständische Schulpolitik. Die Rezeption des Uberfüllungsproblems im gewerblichen und Bildungsbürgertum am Ende des 19 Jahrhunderts," pp. 79-98. Wilhelm Erman and Ewald Horn, Bibliographie der deutschen Universitäten. Systematisch geordnetes Verzeichnis der bis Ende 1899 gedruckten Bücher und Aufsätze über das deutsche Universitätswesen, vol. 1, Leipzig 1904, pp. 229-231.

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teachers without a degree in an attempt to poach them from their rivals. A general change in prospects first occurred around the year 1880 in the judicial field. From 1879 onwards, however, there was a sudden erratic increase in the numbers of law graduates and trained post-graduate Referendare and Assessoren, while the number of posts available remained constant. Consequently, waiting several years for a position was already the rule from the second half of the 1880s. Soon after 1880, physicians were complaining about a deterioration in their economic situation. As matriculations in medical faculties increased up to the end of the decade, incomes fell and the setting-up of practices became more difficult. This development reached its height in the 1890s. Teachers were affected about 1880, when demand for their profession suddenly decreased, leading to high unemployment from about 1885 to 1900. From the early 1880s, Protestant theological graduates had difficulty in obtaining benefices. Their employment crisis was at its worst in the mid-1890s.21 Whilst the 1880s were characterised by a rapid deterioration in professional prospects for young academics, the 1890s saw the peak of a general crisis marked by high unemployment. Shocking reports appeared in the contemporary press. In Silesia, where the average waiting-period was especially long in the mid-1890s - thirteen years for an appointment in a secondary school the Neue Zeit reported that one candidate, despairing of finding work as a teacher, had studied medicine and become a practising doctor. His circumstances, however, were still so precarious that he kept his name on the waiting list for school employment even after eleven years had passed.22 That this was the general tendency in all professional fields is confirmed by the statistics on "crisis indicators" (waiting-period until first secure employment, numbers of vacancies compared with numbers of applicants and failure-rates in final examinations as a hidden post-studies numerus clausus). For example, the waiting-period for qualified teaching candidates at public Gymnasien in Prussia increased from 3 years 9 month (1888) to 5 years 5 months (1891) and then to 8 years 8 months (1898). The severity of the struggle for posts may be

21

22

Since students and young graduates were direcdy threatened by the labour market crisis, academically-orientated and student newspapers reported extensively on the existing sitiation. There is no space here for full citations: but see my Studenten und 'Judenfrage'im Deutschen Kaiserreich. Die Entstehung einer akademischen Trägerschicht des Antisemitismus,. Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft 76, Göttingen 1988. For prospects in the professions, see Müller et. al, op. dt. Der Sozialistische Akademiker 1, 1895, pp. 130, 257; on the practical basis of a marriage between Bildung and Besitz - a popular fictional theme during the Kaiserreich - as a survival or career strategy, see ibid, 2, 1896, pp. 236 f.

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judged from the fact that for a long time teachers of classical languages had the worst prospects because of competition from unbeneficed clergy.23 Judges or public prosecutors faced 22 years of training, badly paid or not at all, before obtaining their first regular employment, taking into account the length of their studies, practical training as Referendar and Assessor, military service and waiting-periods. Those who sought to open a legal practice, having completed training in the courts as a Referendar, needed family help (as did physicians) until they had enough regular clients to enable them to make a living.24 The crisis in the professional labour market was further aggravated by government measures. Especially in Prussia, government seized this opportunity to build up a socially homogeneous and politically reliable conservative civil service. 25 This purpose was served, both by a second post-university phase of civil service training controlled by the government authorities, and by the creation of an extended system of unpaid or low-paid assistants in school and courtroom jobs. The assignment to a post with tenure became a reward for many years of good conduct. Their depressing employment situation made students and graduates increasingly disposed to aggression towards outsiders, whose right to study they disputed. Moreover, established professionals suffered from educational "inflation" and increased competition due to the petty bourgeois in secondary and higher education. The self-confidence of the Bildungsbürgertum, always fragile in comparison with that of the new class of wealthy bourgeoisie, was shattered. The handing down of status to their children became less attractive. In consequence, the academic labour crisis caused a serious shift in the political demarcation of Kaiserreich society. 26 The argument concerning the fundamental importance of the Bildungsbürgertum crisis may be proved by Reichstag election results. When in 1879 Chancellor Bismarck helped to establish the alliance of "Iron and Rye", the (Bildungs-)Bürgertum en bloc did not immediately follow this anti-liberal, 23

24

25

26

See data on "crisis indicators" collected in Müller et. al, op. cit., pp. 49 f., 65 f., 76. And see Hartmut Titze, "Die soziale und geistige Umbildung des preußischen Oberlehrerstandes von 1870-1914," Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 14, 1977, Beiheft, pp. 107-128; Herrlitz and Titze, "Uberfüllung als bildungspolitische Strategie. Zur administrativen Steuerung der Lehrerarbeitslosigkeit in Preussen 1870-1914," Die Deutsche Schule 68, 1976, pp. 348-370, esp. pp. 367 f., (Tables 2 and 3). Evidence for this is to be found in student newspapers. See also Müller et. al., op. at., pp. 4751, 65 f., 75 f. Eckart Kehr, "Das soziale System der Reaktion unter dem Ministerium Puttkamer" in HansUlrich Wehler (ed.), Der Primat der Innenpolitik, Berlin 1970, pp. 64-86; Herrlitz and Titze, op. cit. This is the chief theory in Detlev Κ. Müller, op. cit., see esp. p. 16.

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conservative, so-called "second foundation of the Reich". Whilst the National Liberal Party moved to the right to join the trend, a left-wing Liberal opposition was formed in response. The average election results for the Reichstag from 1881 to 1893 show that the proportion of left-wing Liberals was even one per cent higher than that of the right-wing Liberals (17-9 % compared with 16-8 °/o) 2 7 The crisis of education arising from the labour market crisis provided the Bildungsbürgertum with a new incentive to cooperate with the industry and Junker camp. The establishment of the new Wilhelminian elites' consensus against political and social reform was not the direct result of negotiations but sprang from common interests. Shortly after the Uberfüllungsbise was perceived as a severe problem, professional associations of the Bildungsbürgertum and the ministerial bureaucracy were working together to reduce the number of students entering university. The former professionals feared the loss of their prestige and their political influence.28 The ministerial bureaucracy wanted to halt the rise of an allegedly subversive "academic proletariat" and to prevent democratically-minded people seeking social advancement from "infiltrating" unnoticed into key positions.29 The final step in the course of this collaboration seems to have been the

27

28

29

This interpretation of election results follows Hans Rosenberg, Große Depression und Bismarckzeit. Wirtschaftsablauf, Gesellschaft und Politik in Mitteleuropa, Berlin 1967, p. 137. Apparently they had no real strategy, but men of various professions advised schools and teachers that Abitur students should not enter their own particular field, in each case because it was said to offer the worst prospects. After 1880, the terms 'akademisches Proletariat' and 'gebildetes Proletariat' were widely used in the Uberfüllungsdebatte, often by right-wingers who wished to maintain the differential between members of the old elite and their graduate successors. Left-wingers questioned whether unemployed petty bourgeois academics really belonged to the proletariat; see Ddf. (pseud.), "Die soziale Lage des Akademikers," Der Sozialistische Akademiker 1,1895, pp. 233236, 254-257; an anonymus article, "Das gebildete Proletariat und die Sozialdemokratie," ibid., pp. 128-130, 139-143; Paul Ernst, "Das gebildete Proletariat in Deutschland", ibid. 2, 1896, pp. 232-238; Franz Workman, "Die akademische Frage," Sozialistische Monatshefte 13/2, 1907, pp. 1020-1027. See also Dietfried Krause-Vilmar, "Die zeitgenössische marxistische Diskussion der 'Uberfüllung' akademischer Berufe am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts," Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 14, 1977, Beiheft, pp. 99-106. In 1897, the Prussian Minister of Finance von Miquel expressed government concern about Uberfüllung, but said that by making civil service entry more difficult, the rise of a 'Beamtenproletariat' would be prevented. Cited from Akademische Turn-Zeitung 14, 1897/1898, pp. 186 f. In 1890, Bismarck had suggested to Wilhelm Π a long list of administrative measures not requiring parliamentary consent, which would halt upward mobility through learning. The need for such measures was emphasised by the Chancellor's dramatic picture of 'the Uberfüllung of professional opportunities for educated people and the growth of an educated proletariat hostile to the state', perhaps he thought, resulting in rising nihilism, as in Russia. Cited from Erziehung und Wissenschaft 29, no. 13, 1977, p. 14.

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great school conference of 1890, 30 now considered to be the occasion on which the "Triple Alliance" of junkerdom, bourgeoisie and Bildungsbürgertum was concluded. The 44 participants, the cream of Prussian educational experts, had the task of "depopulating the Gymnasien and reducing the intellectual proletariat which was growing from these schools", in the words of a National Liberal member of parliament, v. Schenkendorff.31 As a solution, they sought to strip Gymnasien of their function as comprehensive schools, to discourage socially ambitious parents from sending their sons to Gymnasien and Realgymnasien and to redirect them to establishments lower down the educational scale. »Modern" (practical) types of school with a lower degree of qualification were meant to suggest to the petty bourgeoisie new possibilities of social advancement, especially in technical professions, and to preserve leading public positions from the inrush of the petty bourgeoisie, thus favouring the sons of the old elites. Although "realistic" education was institutionally established, enrolment figures at technical colleges and universities show no decline in the number of students seeking university places.32 The ministries therefore exercised their power, overriding constitution, constitutional state and parliaments, to limit mobility through education. For example, in the Justizdienst, students were accepted for the second phase of training only if they could prove their ability to support themselves in accordance with their rank for five years without a regular earned income. The president of a higher regional court, for example, could refuse applicants for the Referendariatif he considered them "unworthy to be admitted to higher service in the courts". 33 By cleverly making the most of the crisis caused by the excess of candidates, the socio-political elites succeeded in drawing the Bildungsbürgertum into their own camp. Thus the latter ceased to be a force for further liberalisation and

30

31 32

33

Ministerium der Geistlichen, Unterrichts- und Medizinalangelegenheiten (ed.), Verhandlungen über Fragen des höheren Unterrichts, Berlin 4.-17. Dezember 1890, Berlin 1891. On the school conferences, see Heinz Joachim Heydorn and Gemot Koneffke, "Zur Bildungsgeschichte des deutschen Imperialismus. Die Schulkonferenzen von 1890, 1900 und 1920" in Heydorn and Koneffke (eds.), Studien zur Sozialgeschichte und Philosophie der Bildung, vol. 2, Munich 1973, pp. 179-215. (The authors, in our opinion, have gone astray in judging the chief result of the 1890 conference as a victory for industrial, commercial and military circles voting for more 'practical education'; see p. 196. In fact, the Humanistisches Gymnasium was not abolished but acquired the privilege of 'protection' from the onslaught of the masses. This was in the interests of the Bildungsbiirgertum. Verhandlungen, op. at., p. 331. See the figures in Schafferdt, op. cit., p. 15; Konradjarausch, Students, Society, and Politics in Imperial Germany. The Rise of Academic Illiberalism, Princeton 1982, p. 28. Müller et. ai, op. cit., pp. 47-51.

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parliamentarisation. Thereafter, the liberal Left remained marginal in German politics. In general, this weakening of liberalism was accompanied by a weakening of the political base of the majority of German Jewry. After all, enlightened intellectuals of noble and bourgeois origin had called forJewish emancipation as part of their demand for the emancipation of developing bourgeois society from the hierarchical feudal class system. N o w this type of intellectual disappeared almost completely as a progressive force from the stage of German history. Seeking out the Culprits As the gravity of the crisis increased, the question of how to attribute responsibility for it was posed more and more urgently. At the end of the 1880s, few parents of pupils hoping to enter university, of students or of young graduates could avoid facing the situation when considering the future of their children. 34 Their answer to the question of responsibility depended not only on their ability to understand complex issues, but also on their social perspective. Three student groups were mentioned most frequently as having caused the crisis: Jews, petty bourgeois and foreigners. A further group of potential "trouble-makers" in the academic world were women fighting for admittance as regular students. They were barred from the universities by general male consensus until after the turn of the century, when the crisis in the labour market began to slacken somewhat. 35 The popular image of these scapegoats 34 35

See Akademische Revue 3, 1897, pp. 553-555. In 1897/1898 women were allowed to enter German universities, but only as 'listening', nonparticipating students (1.669 in 1905/1906). Eventually they achieved regular status and admission to graduate courses (in Prussia, this occurred in 1908/1909). The growing female student population contained a hard core of politically radical Russian and East European Jews. Konrad Jarausch, "The Social Transformation of the University. The Case of Prussia 1865-1914," Journal ofSocial History 12,1979, pp. 609-636, esp. pp. 618 f. For criticism of the admission of Russian-Jewish women 'listening' students, see Akademische Blatter 16, 1901/1902, p. 7. Unlike most male Jewish students, the Jewish women appear to have been of upper-class origin, the avant-garde of women's emancipation in education. See for Württemberg: Albert Rienhardt, Das Universitätsstudium der Württemberger seit der Reichsgründung, Tübingen 1918, p. 18; and generally Zeitschriftfür Demographie und Statistik der Juden 9,1913, p. 114; ibid. 10, 1914, pp. 84 f., 87 f. The following figures for female students at Prussian universities are taken from PS 223, 1910, Part I, p. 138, part Π (Tables); 236, 1913, Part I, p. 124, Part Π (Tables):

German Citizens Gentiles Jews

Winter 1908/1909

Winter 1911/1912

468 = 82-11 % 102 = 17-89 %

1497 = 88-79 % 189 = 11-21%

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and the extent to which their characterisation agrees with reality appears in contemporary sources, revealing an important perspective on the selective perception of the crisis: all three groups of "culprits" were often identified as Jews! The antisemitic pamphlets of the 1870s had represented the Jews as having profited most from the liberal era. It was said that the economic exploitation of "the Germans" by "the Jews" was almost total. In addition, the intellectual "domination" of Jews, who were said to turn more and more zealously to study, was occasionally denounced. In this context, it was common to refer to the number of Jewish grammar school pupils as proof of the looming danger. 36 While signatures were being actively collected for the Antisemitenpetition presented to the Reich Chancellor in April 1881 together with a request for the partial repeal of Jewish emancipation, the left-liberal Fortschrittspartei forced a debate on the "Jewish Question" in the Prussian parliament. During this debate, the parliamentarian Professor Rudolf Virchow attacked polemics against the high proportion of Jewish pupils at Berlin grammar schools: "I really do not know what people are supposed to do if they want to make their way in the world. Is this not the best and noblest way to be found, a way, it might be thought, to which nobody could object?. . . But if [the Jews] are blamed for their education, if it is made an issue, when it can be called a struggle for survival in a purely Darwinian sense, then every possibility of peaceful development ceases to exist. It is impossible to maintain peace, if fathers are blamed for sending their children to a grammar school." 37

The introduction of official Prussian university statistics in 1886 was a result of the discussion about the "overpopulation" of universities and grammar schools. The factor of religion was included in the questionnaires and tables, 36

37

To mention only one of the fathers of modern political antisemitism, Adolf Stöcker assailed, from his first antisemitic speech, the 'disproportionate onslaught on institutions of higher education' (19th September 1879), 'the overloading of higher schools with Jewish elements', 'the Judaisation of girls' grammar schools' - all equated with alleged economic exploitation of Christians (20th March 1890 in the Prussian Diet). He proposed the separation of Christian and Jewish pupils and teachers and the establishment of a State-funded Jewish school system in areas of greater Jewish population. To him, the danger in a 'surfeit of the educated' was aggravated by the 'fact' that 'the Jewish element contributes so hugely to this overproduction'. See Adolf Stoecker, Christlich-Sozial. Reden und Aufsätze, Berlin 1890, pp. 367-369,485-494. Thereafter, every handbook for antisemites included 'statistics' of Jews in higher education. For a recapitulation of these figures, see Sigilla Ven, vol. 1, Erfurt 1929, pp. 497-513; vol. 3, pp. 6-8. Cited from Die Judenfrage im preussischen Abgeordnetenhause. Wörtlicher Abdruck der stenographischen Berichte vom 20. und 22. November 1880, Breslau 1880, pp. 41-55. For the petition, see Richard S. Levy, The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties im Imperial Germany. Religion, Politics and Ideology in the Second Reich, 1870-1914, New York 1974, pp. 21-23.

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evidently as part of the search to identify the guilty party. 38 The comments of the official statisticians on Jewish "over-representation" were exquisitely discreet. Only once, in a subordinate clause, was it alleged that "facts which can be deduced from the above plain figures will inevitably produce problems for state and society". 39 This sounds like a justification of an antisemitic point of view. In 1889, the editor of the paper of the Kyffhäuserverband der Vereine Deutscher Studenten, the leading antisemitic association of students, drew the following conclusion from press reports on the government-issued university statistics: "There is unfortunately a lack of statistical material or exact figures for the sudden inrush of Jews [since the emancipation of 1869], However, it is clear that the increase in the number of students since 1879 is connected with the entry of Jews . . . If the disproportionate increase of students, at German universities is to be evaluated, the influx of Jewry must also be considered."40

This is a particularly grotesque statement in view of the ratio of approximately 1,300 Jewish students to 29,000 university students in the whole of Prussia at the end of the 1880s. Yet there were more reasonable authors who blamed the Jews. Generally, only the most telling figures were quoted, such as the proportions of students at universities and pupils at grammar schools to the Jewish population. These were rarely absolute figures, as the following example indicates: "This fact [that proportionally more Jewish pupils enter universities than would be expected from the proportion ofJews at school] may also be a contributing cause to the greatly excessive numbers in the so-called scholarly subjects."41

This explanation would seem to be based on fallacy. From 1886 to 1900, the proportions of students belonging to each of the three religions were the same as those of pupils obtaining the Abitur. Only after that period does a slight shift of percentages occur, especially in the two Christian denominations. As against the proportions of male Prussian pupils of all grades at all forms of grammar schools, the Jewish group shows the smallest change.42 38

39 40 41

42

The introduction or reinterpretation of a Religionsstatistik was widely demanded: it was one of the items in the Antisemitenpetition. PS 106, 1892, Part I, pp. 30-33. Akademische Blätter Λ, 1889-1890, pp. 3 f. Otto Kuntzemüller, Die Überfüllung der gelehrten Fächer. Deren Ursache und Mittel zur Abhülfe. Ein Beitrag zur Lösung der Schulreformfrage, Berlin 1889, pp. 6 f. Based onfiguresof Arthur Ruppin and Jacob Thon, Der Anteil derJuden am Unterrichtswesen in Preußen, Berlin 1905, p. 35; Lexis (ed.), 1904, op. dt., vol. 2, p. 178., p. 186; Conrad Rethwisch, Deutschlands höheres Schulwesen im 19. Jahrhundert, Berlin 1893, Appendix, pp. 2 f.

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That even non-antisemites tended to overestimate the participation of Jews in the rise of student numbers must be attributed, first, to the accelerating growth in the number of university students, which, beginning at the time when the Reich was founded, continued to parallel the dramatically increasing academic enrolments of German Jewry. Next, the uneven distribution of Jews in certain schools, universities and subjects, and their tendency to concentrate in certain professions and metropolitan regions made the "over-representation" seem many times larger than it was. Lastly, in the 1880s and later, observers were not aware of the decreasing proportion of German Jews in secondary and higher education, and therefore predicted further increases. Actually, in the late Kaiseneich the ratio of Jews in universities in Prussia was barely maintained by the arrival of East European Jews. (See Table ΠΙ, sections a-c). The social elite among German students, in particular, identified students of petty bourgeois origin as having caused the crisis in the labour market for professionals. The newspaper of the duelling Korpsstudenten in the Kösener Senioren- Verband protested against the onrush of "uninvited elements", underfinanced students and social climbers seeking "unnaturally rapid advancement" within a single generation. It also opposed the publicity campaign for education of the common people, the system of grants (which it alleged served to train Socialist leaders) and the acceptance of students with a Realschulabitur.43 Disparagement of social advancement through study put considerable pressure on those students who found great difficulty in financing their studies and who were most threatened by unemployment because they lacked social connections. These petty bourgeois students (between 1871 and 1900 about 30 %: in 1914 about 50 % of German university students) 44 showed two typical modes of behaviour in the 1880s and 1890s: 1. The majority melted into the anonymity of large metropolitan universities. They were ridiculed by the social elites as Brotstudenten (students working towards gainful employment immediately after graduation). Since they were not organised and were somewhat passive regarding the

43

44

For example, Akademische Monatshefte 3, 1886/1887, pp. 332-335; 4, 1887/1888, pp. 239 f., p. 306 f.; 6, 1889/1890, pp. 392-394, 396 f., 527. After all types of Abitur hat been ranked equal in 1900, some faculties and professional bodies tried to hinder upward mobility by demanding that Latin should be necessary for certain disciplines. These discussions fill endless columns of 'pedagogic' literature. Jarausch, 1980, op. at., pp. 132-141.

Norbert Kampe

Co ο on •vo ρ

m < Nο m ND ND uS NO Mrs. Pardee to B. Menetrel, 29 March and 10 April 1941, A N : AGIII 76 SP3. 1 0 2 Baudouin, op. at., p. 366. 99

The Roots of Vichy Antisemitism

627

did feel strongly about them. He had no history of overt antisemitism, nor had he taken any role in elaborating Vichy's first racial laws. Indeed, there were some whispers that the rather exotic-looking Auvergnat was Jewish himself. In the summer and fall of 1940, however, Laval adapted to the new climate. In early August he allowed himself a rather brutal comment to Robert Murphy, the American charge d'affaires at Vichy. According to Murphy, Laval said that the Jews "were congregating in Vichy to an alarming extent. He believed they would foment trouble and give the place a bad name. He said he would get rid of them." 1 0 3 A calculated antisemitism had a small but distinct place in Laval's grand strategy in the fall of 1940. During those first fluid months there was a kind of footrace to see which of the emerging Vichy leaders would establish the most rewarding contact with the elusive German authorities. Minister of the Interior Adrien Marquet had been the first to make contact, signing an agreement with German police officials for informal cooperation on 25 July 1940. 1 0 4 Another route was through the Armistice Commission at Wiesbaden, where successive French delegates tried to widen the agenda. After trying Wiesbaden, Laval settled on Paris and Ambassador Abetz, with whom he formed a close working relationship. Abetz saw in Laval a counter to the clericalist and reactionary elements at Vichy, a kind of popular tribune who could give the new European order a mass base in France. It had not hurt that Laval had been sending antisemitic signals to the Germans during July and August. When Hitler finally thawed, after Vichy's vigorous defense of Dakar against the British and the Gaullists, and acceded to a meeting with Petain, Laval was well situated to make the most fruitful contact of all. At Montoire on 22-24 October, he became the only French leader who possessed an independent link to the Führer. A calculated antisemitism had helped him come out on top in this scramble for influence. At the same time, Laval had to fend off the French far Right in Paris who never lost hope that, with German help, they could supplant Laval by showing that he was a mere parliamentary hack, incompatible with the new fascist spirit. Laval was playing a delicate game, not the last of his career. His fundamental attitude toward Jews in 1940 seems to have been indifference, laced with a keen appreciation that Jews were an obsession to others. As we shall see, he was capable of the most total callousness. In the view of a recent biographer, Laval "felt neither hatred nor pity for those being persecuted. He

103

104

Murphy to Secretary of State, 15 August 1940, Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS] 1940 Π 565). AA, Inland n g 8 1 .

628

Michael R. Marrus / Robert O. Paxton

had adjusted to a tolerant France; now he adapted himself to intolerance because purges were in style." 105 The basic indifference of Petain and Laval left the field to the zealots. Vichy antisemitism seems to us neither the work of mass opinion nor of the men at the very top. It was pushed by powerful groups and fanatical individuals, given a free hand by the indifference of others ready to abandon the values of the hated ancien regime. There was a substantial minority of convinced antisemites among the new governing team at Vichy in summer and fall 1940. When he visited Vichy at the end of July, Pastor Marc Boegner, the leader of French protestantism and favorably inclined at first to many aspects of the new regime, was struck by the "passionate antisemitism" of several ministers, which "gave itself free rein without any German pressure." 106 The neo-socialist Minister of the Interior Adrien Marquet, who hated the "reactionary" clericals such as Alibert and tried to persuade Abetz as early as August-September 1940 to get rid of them, found that anti-Jewish sneers set the tone at Vichy. 107 We know little about the position of General Weygand on the Jewish question while he was a dominant influence as defense minister at Vichy, up to 6 September; but thereafter he applied the racial laws zealously as Vichy's proconsul in North Africa. Most ardent of all was Raphael Alibert, a mercurial personality who had been long associated with the monarchist Action Frangaise, and whose Justice Ministry prepared the Statut des juifs. Alibert's authority derived from his imperious temperament, from his rancor owing to his years of exclusion from public service and his failure in professional life, from his favored position in Petain's inner circle, and from the ruthless consistency of his monarchical world view. With Alibert was fulfilled the long campaign waged by Action Fran^aise leader Charles Maurras against the meteques, or halfbreeds (by which he meant Jews, Freemasons, and Protestants), who, in his opinion, had weakened modern France. Antisemitic spokesmen also occupied more modest public positions. We have mentioned some of those in the Petain entourage. Presiding over French radio and cinema from Vichy was Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, whom 105 p rec l Kupfermann, Pierre Laval, Paris 1976, p. 88; cf. Geoffry Warner, Pierre Laval and the Eclipse of France, London 1968, p. 147. 106

Marc Boegner, "Rapport," in Les Eglisesprotestantespendant la guerre et l'occupation. Actes de I'assembUe geniale du protestantisme franqais, Paris 1946, p. 18. 107 Marquet-Abetz conversation, September 1940, T-120/364/206021 ff.. For a defense of Marquet's posture, see Levi Eligulashvili, "How the Jews of Gruziya in Occupied France were saved," Yad Vashem Studies 6, 1967, pp. 252-253. 108 Maurice Martin du Gard, Chronique de Vichy, Paris 1948, p. 55.

The Roots of Vichy Antisemitism

629

Maurice Martin du Gard described at Vichy in July 1940 as delighting "in Jewbaiting, and in looking for chances to cast more insults at Leon Blum, distant and forlorn." 108 Still other rightist stalwarts like Xavier Vallat, at this point secretary-general for veterans' affairs in the new government, applauded the racial legislation as the fruition of a "long national tradition." 109 At the local level it was no longer taboo to avow antisemitism, and "Jew hunting" promised to offer possibilities for place or enrichment. The prefect of the Oise reported that "adventurers" and "gangsters of the press" were "trying to implicate in their anti-Jewish and anti-Masonic campaigns decent people who have always been adversaries of the Jews and Masons but against whom they bear old local grudges." 110 Prefects were alarmed by the number of letters of denunciation which arrived on their desks. The prefect of the Indre reported that the "tale-telling mania" brought him diverse denunciations "every day." 111 The position of administrateursprovisoires now being appointed by SCAP to oversee Jewish properties in the Occupied Zone was beginning to attract candidates, not always disinterested ones. Vichy tried to reassure foreign opinion about these new developments. Before a group of American newsmen in October 1940, Foreign Minister Paul Baudouin declared that "we have decided to limit the action of a spiritual community that, whatever its qualities, has always remained outside the French intellectual community." No longer could the Jews, with their "considerable international influence," constitute "an empire within an empire." He wanted the American newsmen to know that Vichy had no intention to persecute. "Neither persons nor property will be touched, and, in the domains from which they will not be excluded, there will be no humiliating discrimination."112 Foreign Jews were already in detention, however; and before nine months were out French officials would be seizing Jewish property in the Unoccupied Zone; before two years had passed, French police would be rounding up Jews for German deportation schedules. The momentum of antisemitism could hardly be contained within Paul Baudouin's benign expressions of good intentions, echoed by many at Vichy during 1940. Certainly not within Hitler's Europe. But why should Vichy have launched itself in this direction at all? Why, to an experienced official like Paul Baudouin, should being different have seemed

109

110 111 112

Xavier Vallat, Le Nez de Cleopätre: souvenirs d'un homme de droite (1919-1944), Paris 1957, pp. 244-245. Le Prefet de l'Oise, 15 November, 15 December 1940, AN: F1 C1I1 ,, 76 . Le Prefet l'Indre, 30 January 1941, AN: Fl c '« 1 1 5 7 . Journal des debats, 25 October 1940.

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Michael R. Marrus / Robert O. Paxton

so threatening, in October 1940? Why, with so much else to do, did the emerging National Revolution spend so much time and effort on the dangers posed by different "spiritual communities"? And why, among these, were Jews singled out with such insistent attention and manifest fear? Thus, in explaining a shift of attitudes that was far more widespread and profound than a mere foreign import, imposed at bayonet point, we give little credence to German pressures. [ . . . ]

STEPHEN A .

SCHUKER

Origins of the "Jewish Problem" in the Later Third Republic"'

[···]

The more closely one examines French antisemitism in the 1930s, the more different it appears in inspiration and character from the type of Jew-hatred that had marked public life in France during the late nineteenth century. Hostility to the Jews has assumed such a variety of forms that historians have often found it heuristically more useful to focus on persistence rather than on changes in the phenomenon.1 Even those who distinguish clearly between the medieval Christian hostility to the Jewish religion and the secular nineteenthcentury ideology that ascribed to the Jews an inner nature different from that of other people tend to treat the period 1880-1945 as a bloc.2 In this view the nationalist awakening of European peoples heightened their perceptions of Jews as unassimilable outsiders precisely at the time when Jews were first beginning to assimilate; the antisemitic parties of the 1880s are frequently pictured as forerunners of the antisemitic political movements of the interwar era. Yet whatever the truth of this model for Central Europe, it clearly has limited applicability in France.3

* From: Stephen Schuker, "Origins of the 'Jewish Problem' in the Later Third Republic," in Frances Malino and Bernard Wasserstein, The Jews in Modem France, University Press of New England, Hanover and London 1985, pp. 135-180, abridged: pp. 146; 151-153; 155-156; 160-161; 165-167; 168-170; 172-177. Reprinted with the permission of the author and the publisher. 1 See, for example, Leon Poliakov, Histoire de l'antisemitisme, 3 vols., Paris 1968, and James Parkes, Antisemitism: A Concise World History, Chicago 1968. The semantic analysis by Ben Halpern, "What is Antisemitism?," Modern Judaism 1,1981, pp. 251-262, proves most helpful in faciliating a clear definition. 2 See, for example, Paul W. Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction - A Study of Political Antisemitism in Imperial Germany, New York 1949, which examines the antisemitic parties of the 1880s as forerunners of the political movements of the interwar era. 3 See Hannah Arendt's incisive analysis in Antisemitism, part I of The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York 1951, pp. 48-50.

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Antisemitism flourished as an ideology on both the right and the left in nineteenth-century France. But outside Alsace-Lorraine (and Algeria) the movement had only a tangential connection to the presence or social role of actual Jews. Paradoxically, at the height of Edouard Drumont's campaign against la France juive, fewer flesh-and-blood Jews inhabited that country than any major nation in the Western world. [. . .] Given the large symbolic component in turn-of-the century Jew-hatred and the diffuse nature of the practical complaints involved, it is scarcely surprising that antisemitism dissipated as a mass movement as rapidly as it had arisen. The years 1899 to 1905 saw the final defeat of the army, the church, and the rural notables of la vieille France. They marked the consolidation of the anticlerical Republic dominated by the social classes and political forces to which native Jews increasingly belonged. The smart set in the faubourg St.Honore might still engage in antisemitic banter (like the joke about the Jewish heiress, "as beautiful as Venus, as rich as Croesus, and as innocent . . . as Dreyfus"), but worse could be heard in the drawing rooms of London or New York. 4 While racialist thinking did not disappear, lethal admixtures of integral nationalism and social radicalism appealed mainly on the political fringes during the Belle Epoque. Only in retrospect would they appear as precursors of "fascism." 5 It certainly seemed at the time that World War I had brought the final step in acceptance of the Jews. Their battlefield ardor won general recognition; three figured prominently in the Clemenceau ministry that achieved victory in 1918; and even Maurice Barres acknowledged them as one of the "spiritual families" of France. As a further augury, La Libre Parole, flagship of the antisemitic press, foundered ignominously in 1924 because of lack of subscribers.6 [. . .] Frangois Goguel's now familiar typology interprets French politics since 1789 as a cyclical conflict between a party of order and a party of movement. 7 Until the early twentieth century, the Jews had always had reason to favor the party of movement. From the Revolution onward, every step forward for that party had fostered new advances for the Jews. The outcome of the Dreyfus Affair, however, freed the Jews from having to take a defensive position on the

4 5

6

7

Beatrice Philippe, Eire juifdans la societefrangaise: Du Mayen Age ä nos jours, Paris 1979, p. 254. Zeev Sternhell, Maurice Barres et le nationalisme frangais, Paris 1972 and La Droite revolutionnaire, 1885-1914: Les Origines frangaises du fascisme, Paris 1978, provides a brilliant exposition of this ideology but does not always escape the peril of reading history backward. Paula Hyman, From Dreyfus to Vichy: the Remaking ofFrench Jewry, 1906-1939, Stanford, Ca. 1979, pp. 49-62; Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, New York 1981, pp. 31-32. Frangois Goguel, La Politique des partis sous la Ille Republique, Paris 1958.

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"left." And the same generation that witnessed the consolidation of the Republic also confirmed the embourgeoisementoi the various strands in native Jewry. Thus the material interests of most French Jews lay increasingly with the center - that is to say with the parties of order. One might have expected these developments to facilitate a more normal distribution of the community across the political spectrum. But such a realignment proceeded slowly. The Jews continued to exhibit distinctive political characteristics and to stand, as a voting bloc, predominantly on the left. Two factors joined to produce this result. The predilections of Jewish intellectuals, and of the Jewish political class that came to consciousness during the Dreyfus period, still reflected the struggles of the past. Even more significant, the demographically static native community was submerged by a new immigration, which tripled the number of Jews in France within twenty-five years. The new arrivals from Eastern Europe brought with them the chiliastic outlook and radical politics of the shtetl. Moreover, they bore the stigmata of "underdevelopment" characteristic of their homelands, and that would confine at least the first generation to the lowest rungs of French society. Although the cultural gap between the two subgroups grew ever wider in the 1930s, each faction found reasons to support the Popular Front. If antisemites in the 1890s had known little about the Jews, their successors in the 1930s perceived them much more clearly. Of course extreme elements among the new antisemites drew on an irrational xenophobia rich in conspiratorial fantasy as well as on the crude racism in vogue across the Rhine. Yet for moderates who considered that the Popular Front meant social upheaval and economic disaster at a time when France faced the greatest foreign menace in its history, dismay at certain manifestations of "Jewish influence" also represented a pragmatic response to a not wholly imaginary threat. [ . . .] The mass of native Jews had secured economic and social mobility for their children in the course of a single generation, namely 1871-1905. The political processes that opened doors for the Jews during this period also brought the cultural homogenization of the French people, the public school emerged as the crucible of social change. In a process that began with the Ferry laws of 1879-86 and culminated with banishment of the Catholic teaching orders in 1902-5, the government imposed exclusively state-run educational institutions at every level from the primary school through the university. Because education became increasingly hierarchical, it afforded predictable mobility to the academically gifted. Jews of modest origins thus found a way to penetrate the elite. But along with the opportunities came considerable ideological baggage. With clerical competition vanquished, a highly indoctrinated teach-

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ing corps preached a secular religion of the Republic, and young Jews embraced this secular faith as eagerly as any segment of the population. Moreover, those who reached the pinnacle of the scholastic system - the Ecole Normale Superieure - often fell under the spell of its remarkable librarian, the socialist Lucien Herr. The doctrines of Jean Jaures exerted an attraction on idealistic youth at the universities as well (particularly before the cultural shift that set in around 1905). N o wonder, then, that the bulk of the Jewish intelligentsia developed left-republican, anticlerical, and even socialist sympathies, and that they maintained these values long after they had ceased to be fashionable in other circles.8 In view of this background, the prominence of Jews in radical politics during the 1930s should occasion no surprise. Yet historians sympathetic to the left have persistendy sought to minimize Jewish involvement in the Popular Front. Marc Bloch, so scrupulous in his medieval scholarship, initiated the exculpatory process shortly after the 1940 collapse. "It is the fashion to say that the Jews were behind the Left-Wing movement," he observes in Strange Defeat. "Poor Synagogue - always fated to act as scapegoat! I know, from what I saw with my own eyes, that it trembled even more violently than the Church." 9 Bloch's disingenuousness seems the more peculiar because he elsewhere acknowledges how utterly marginal religious institutions had become for educated Jews of his generation. [.. .] As Socialists, Communists, and left-wing Radical Socialists moved toward formation of a Popular Front, the rhetoric of the left grew increasingly violent. At the same time, anti-Jewish sentiment revived on the extreme right on a scale unparalleled since the Dreyfus era. But which phenomenon was cause, and which merely effect? It is at least arguable that antisemitic outbursts in the

8

9

On the genera] processes, see Mona Ozouf, L'Ecole, l'eglise et la Republique, 1871-1914, Paris 1963; Antoine Prost, Histoire de l'enseignement en France 1800-1967, Paris 1968: Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914, Stanford, Ca. 1976, esp.pp. 303-338; and Katherine Auspizt, The Radical Bourgeoisie: The Ligue de l'enseignement and the Origins of the Third Republic, Cambridge 1982. For a concrete description of educational integration for the Jews, see Julien Benda, La Jeunesse d'un clerc, Paris 1936. For the connection between republican ideology and the new orthodoxy in a representative discipline, see William R. Keylor, Academy and Community: The Foundation of the French Historical Profession, Cambridge, Mass. 1975. On the influence of Lucien Herr see H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society: The Reconstruction of European Social Thought, 1890-1939, New York 1958, and The Obstructed Path: French Social Thought in the Years of Desperation, 19301960, New York 1966, pp. 60-61; and Robert Smith, "L'Atmosphere politique ä l'Ecole Normale Superieure ä la fin du XIXe siecle," Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 20, 1973, pp. 248-269. Marc Bloch, Strange Defeat: A Statement of Evidence urritten in 1940, New York, p. 165.

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right-wing press - however offensive in tone - constituted one element in an essentially defensive reaction by conservatives in the face of the vituperative campaign mounted by the left against the Doumergue, Flandin, and Laval cabinets. Numerous signs bear witness to this change in mood. For example, in the pre-Depression years elderly clericals had often nurtured an obsession about Jews as progenitors of Freudianism, nudism, the cocktail, jazz, cubism, and other aspects of modern life that they abhorred. But more or less active philosemitism had also made significant headway among the adherents of Social Catholicism and among younger Catholics generally. Now the balance reversed itself.10 In the Royalist Action Frangaise, which spawned most of the far-right groupuscules that emerged in the 1930s, the older leaders had manifested prior to the advent of the Popular Front what Eugen Weber calls a pragmatic or incidental antisemitism - largely aimed at increasing visibility. After Leon Blum aligned his SFIO with the foreign-controlled Parti Communiste Frangais (PCF) a metamorphosis took place. In early 1936 the government dissolved Action Frangaise and the paramilitary Camelots du Roi (whose strength the Ligue Internationale contre l'Antisemitisme [LICA] had always ludicrously exaggerated) after a mob no longer connected with either organization had roughed up Leon Blum. Charles Maurras, the revered elder statesman of the movement, would shortly suffer trial and imprisonment under a hastily drafted press law for having verbally menaced Blum and other supporters of sanctions against Italy. Subsequently, right-wing newspapers increasingly conducted their vendetta against Blum and the Popular Front in antisemitic terms.11 Yet the essentially political nature of this campaign appeared patent from the outset. [ . . . ] The anti-Jewish animus that engulfed most sections of French opinion in 1940 derived in part from the political stands of highly visible native Jews. But this irritant figured largely as a backdrop for the most proximate cause of public feeling - the presence on French soil of some 200,000 recent Jewish immigrants or refugees from Eastern and Central Europe. Between 1914 and 10

11

For a discussion of the turning point from a different point of view, however, see Lazare Landau, De Γ.aversion a Vestime: Juifs et catholiques en France de 1919 ä 1939, Paris 1980, pp. 162-202. On Catholic sentiment, Pierre Pierrard, Juifs et Catholiques frangais: de Drumont a Jules Isaac (1886-1945), Paris 1970, pp. 245-285, also proves very helpful. Eugen Weber, Action Frangaise, Stanford, Ca. 1962, pp. 194-201, 360-374. For a surprisingly favorable view of LICA and its president, the intemperate Bernard Lecache, by Jewish historians, see Hyman, op. cit., pp. 205-206 and 227-230; and David H. Weinberg, A Community on Trial: The Jews of Pans in the 1930s, Chicago 1977, pp. 26-27,164-165, And passim.

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1939 the newcomers overwhelmed the demographically static native Jewish community. The number of Jews in the country tripled. Yet only a small minority of the new arrivals had achieved French citizenship by the time World War Π broke out. Fewer still had genuinely assimilated. A substantial number of the newest refugees had settled in France illegally, simply because the nation did not maintain effective border controls; they had evaded expulsion on a variety of pretexts. The politics and culture of the Eastern Jews rendered them highly unpopular in conservative circles. The French people generally felt neither an affinity with them nor a responsibility for them. Why, then, the Vichy authorities might well have asked themselves, should they sacrifice their limited bargaining power with the Nazis in order to safeguard people who neither in fact nor in law were wholly French? The answer may seem at first glance obvious to those whose humanitarian sensibility reflects a retrospective knowledge of the Jewish Holocaust in all its horror. And yet the question deserves examination in context - as it presented itself to political authorities at the time. Pierre Laval would argue before his execution that the government had one primary duty: "to protect French Jews." It could not hope also to guarantee the wider right of asylum in a country occupied by the German army. 12 N o doubt, Laval made concessions that he did not have to make. 13 Still, the distinction that he drew between French and "foreign" Jews remained fundamental - Not least for the Jews themselves. The Jews, to be sure, divided further along the axes of class, religious belief, political affiliation, and degree of assimilation. A scrupulous sociologist would undoubtedly prefer to speak of a continuum rather than a sharp split and would note that correlations of belief and ethnic origin are never perfect when individuals think for themselves.14 But on a political level, the distinction between natives and immigrants manifested itself clearly. Between the wars social divisions between the two groups actually widened, and the resentment of the one and the jealousy of the other frequently surfaced in public hostility. The nativedominated consistorial organizations distanced themselves sharply from the extremist politics of immigrant Jews in the 1930s, just as the accomodationist

12 13

14

Pierre Laval, The Diary of Pierre Laval, London 1948, pp. 91, 99. See the review of the evidence in Fred Kupferman, "La Politique de Laval, 1942-1944," in George Wellers, Andre Kaspi, and Serge Klarsfeld (eds.), La France et la question juive, 19401944, Paris 1981, pp. 31-56; and in Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, op. at., esp. pp. 261-269 and 343-346. This view is expressed persuasively by Pierre Vidal-Naquet in his introduction to Maurice Rajsfus, Des juifs dans la collaboration: L'UGIF (1941-1944), Paris 1980, p. 17.

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Jewish notables who ran the Union Generale des Israelites de France followed a wartime strategy entirely opposed to that of the foreign militants who enlisted the Communist-affiliated Main d'Oeuvre Immigree (MOI). 1 5 [. . . ] But the French have little notion of immigrant gifts. They hold no brief for pluralism. In the best of times they maintain a relentlessly assimilationist culture. In a period of tension like the 1930s such attitudes could easily shade into xenophobia. We cannot hope to see the immigrants as native Jews perceived them - still less to appreciate how ordinary Frenchmen felt about their presence - unless we acknowledge the cultural assumptions of French society. France had remained largely outside the turbulent population movements of nineteenth-century Europe. Few potential Jewish migrants from the Romanov and Hapsburg empires even thought of going there. W h y should an observant Jew from the shtetl want to enter the cross fire between intolerant Catholic clericals on one side and antireligious republican zealots on the other? And since France industrialized slowly, it offered in any case little employment opportunity to newcomers without skills. 16 Between 1881 and 1914 almost 2 million Jews immigrated to the United States, and 120,000 went to Great Britain. Scarcely 30,000 arrived in France, and Sephardic refugees from parts of the Ottoman Empire or North Africa touched by Gallic cultural influence made up fully a third of these. 17 Paris could not compete with New York as the "promised city." Any number of New York neighborhoods boasted more Jews from the Pale of Settlement than peopled all of France. 18 After World War I, however, conditions governing both the push and pull of population movements changed. The United States followed Britain's lead in restricting immigration. At the same time France, because of its frightful battlefield losses, experienced a labor shortage that grew most acute during the industrial spurt of the later 1920s. Meanwhile, Poland, Rumania, and the Austrian succession states once more made life difficult for Jews. The Eastern Jews who arrived in France during the interwar period joined a stream that

15

16

17

18

Compare the account in Rajsfus, op. cit., (which after a third of a century still exhibits raw hostility to the native community) and the nostalgic discussion of MOI by Annie Kriegel, "La Resistance communiste," in George Weilers et. al., op. cit., pp. 345-347, 354-370. Louis Chevalier, La Formation de la population parisienne au XIXe siecle, Paris 1959; Andre Armengaud, La Population frangaise au XIXe siecle, Paris 1971; Georges Mauco, Les Etrangers en France, Paris 1932. Hyman, op. at., pp. 63-64; Weinberg, op. cit., pp. 2-10; Michel Roblin, LesJuifs de Paris, Paris 1952, pp. 52-73. The several estimates made in the absence of firm census data do not coincide perfecdy. Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York'Jews, 1870-1914, Cambridge, Mass. 1962.

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included in all almost a million foreign workers. The newcomers initially found work in the mines and factories as well as in certain "preindustrial" crafts and the ethnically traditional clothing and textile trades. But when the Depression struck, their presence became unwelcome. The Laval government succeeded in placing quotas on the employment of aliens in 1934-35, yet the Popular Front repealed those measures, and the renewed tightening of employment regulations in 1937-38 came too late to discourage additional migrants (many of them Eastern Jews long resident in Germany and Austria who now moved on for political reasons). A discontented Jewish subproletariat developed, reduced to eking out a living on the margins of society.19 About three-quarters of the immigrant Jews eventually found their way to Paris. There they lived, often packed six or eight to a room in scarcely imaginable squalor, concentrated in the Pletzl section of the Marais, the area behind the Bastille, and especially in the Yiddish-speaking ghetto located in the bas quartier of Belleville. A large number did not even try to assimilate into French society. The representative shtetl Jew who emigrated to America before the war had carried with him the institutional supports of small-town life - the landsmanskaftn, the burial society, the synagogue - that cushioned his acculturation. By contrast, the characteristic emigrant in this later cohort had undergone urbanization and a degree of deracination in Poland. Frequently he had become radicalized in the Polish trade union movement and arrived in France with an identity forged in the heat of class struggle at home. (Indeed, the typical Paris militant of the 1930s had suffered expulsion from Poland in his youth for underground actitity.) Yet whatever their background or skills, Jews who had not already obtained a residence permit in the prosperous 1920s could not aspire to industrial employment in France. Most new arrivals found themselves relegated to home labor under exploitative conditions in the clothing trades, while others survived as rag merchants, tinkers, or repairmen of second-hand goods. Under the circumstances, the chiliastic element in traditional Judaism could easily resurface as a chiliasm of despair. Although the immigrant community remained segmented into a welter of competing organizations riven by ideological animosities and personal rivalries, one common denominator united virtually all: a radical approach to the issues of contemporary French politics.20

19

20

For an account of general migration and employment trends, see Colin Dyer, Population and Society in Twentieth-Century France, Sevenoaks, Kent 1978. For the Jewish perspective see Weinberg, op. at., pp. 14-19; and Hyman, op. at., pp. 65-68. This analysis draws heavily on Weinberg, op. cit., pp. 11-14, but the material in Weinberg's notes often proves more helpful than his text.

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Immigrant Jews typically adhered to some variation or permutation of Zionism, socialism, or communism. Traditional Jews often belonged to one of the seven Zionist parties, while their secularized coreligionists transferred their enthusiasm to one or another of the socialist faiths. To French conservatives in the 1930s, all of these doctrines seemed pernicious. Native Jews had earlier won acceptance by acknowledging the unitary quality of French culture and ostentatiously repudiating any notion of dual allegiance. During World War I they had opposed the Balfour Declaration [.. .] vigorously [.. .] The immigrant Jews, by contrast, went well beyond verbal sympathy for Zionism. In the 1930s they actively campaigned for a boycott against goods from Nazi Germany and proselytized in favor of various forms of intervention to aid their persecuted brethren abroad. Their mounting sense of urgency proved wholly realistic. All the same, their expressions of concern and outrage fanned the flames of suspicion among xenophobes that persons with a shaky legal right to stay in France at all sought to embroil the nation in foreign quarrels.21 The Ligue Internationale contre l'Antisemitisme, headed by the former communist Bernard Lecache, linked the militant defense of Jewish interests abroad to what it defined as the struggle against "fascism" within France. In practice this degenerated,into an attempt to align the pro-Zionist forces in the immigrant community with the extreme left in politics. [. . .] In the 1936 elections, Jewish voters provided the margin of victory for at least ten Popular Front candidates - including seven Communists - in the Paris region alone. In a particularly revealing contest in the Pletzl, the Jewish voting bloc cast its second-round ballots overwhelmingly for the hard-bitten proletarian apparatchik Albert Rigal in preference to the centrist native Jew, Edmond Bloch, founder of the Union Patriotique des Frangais Israelites. The result seemed the more extraordinary because the normally pro-Socialist Yiddish daily, Panzer Haint, and Israel Jefroykin of the Federation, who was fighting to stem Communist infiltration of his organization, had issued categorical warnings about Rigal's extremism.22 (The irony of the outcome would become fully manifest only in September 1939, when Rigal signed the Communist manifesto for immediate peace with Nazi Germany while still sitting for his Jewish constituency.23) [...]

21 22 23

ibid., pp. 45-148. ibid., pp. 114-116; 142-142; Hyman, op. cit., pp. 214-215. On Rigal's later role, see Jacques Fauvet, Histoire du parti communiste frangais, 2 vols. Paris 1964-65, II, p. 41; and Stephane Courtois, Le PCF dans la guerre, Paris 1980, pp. 60, 439.

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In 1937, disappointment with the economic achievements of the Popular Front drove Jewish militants further to the left. Meanwhile the PCF dissolved its Yiddish subsection as a response to the growing xenophobia of the party's mainstream working-class constituency, and this too augmented the prevailing sense of isolation. In the last two years before the war the immigrant community became increasingly factionalized and demoralized. While a further Communist endeavor to seize the leadership of Jewish cultural organizations and to group them in the Farband fun yidishe gezelshaftn in 1938 fell somewhat short of success, no constructive political alternative emerged. The months after the Munich conference witnesses the expression of various forms of despair. Some urged an impractical "return to the ghetto"; others argued that, as far as Jews were concerned, little remained to choose between the democracies and the totalitarian states. The Daladier government began for the first time to imprison illegal immigrants or to force them to volunteer for the army as an alternative to peremptory deportation. 24 While the plight of the immigrants worsened distressingly as war approached, the situation inevitably looked different from the point of view of the French government and people than it did from the vantage point of the Jews. When a social reaction to the Popular Front, accompanied by a justified panic about the state of French defenses, took hold in 1938-39, beleaguered conservatives were not disposed to overlook the actual role played earlier by immigrant, or native, Jews. Meanwhile, the Nazi invasion of Austria and then the German Kristallnacht pogrom brought two new waves of desperate Jewish refugees fleeing westward. This time the French government remained stonily unsympathetic. Though it could not deter a certain amount of infiltration, Paris declared itself "saturated. " 2 5 American officials who at the Evian Conference and afterward argued that, with a modicum of goodwill, the nations of the world could absorb the German refugees expressed dismay at the refusal of the French and other states bordering on the Reich to do their part. "Whatever one may think individually about Jews," wrote the responsible State Department official, "the suffering that these people are going through cannot but move the humanitarian instincts of even the most hard-hearted." 26 The posture adopted by the French government seemed all the more hypocritical because, in February 1939, Paris admitted willy-nilly almost half a

24 25

26

Weinberg, op. at., pp. 131-211. See Joseph Cotton memorandum for the president, 3 September 1938, U. S. State Department (US) file 840.48 Refugees/809 1/2, Record Group 59, National Archives. T. C. Achilles memorandum, 15 November 1938, US 840.48 Refugees/900 1/2.

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million Spaniards who came pouring over the Pyrenees as a result of Franco's victory.27 And yet French hard-heartedness, however reprehensible in moral terms, possessed a certain logic. For the Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels, the assassination of a German embassy secretary in Paris by a Polish Jew served as a mere pretext for launching the November 1938 pogrom. 28 In view of the ethnic tensions of which Paris had become the scene, however, it is scarcely surprising that most Frenchmen drew a perverse conclusion. Even RadicalSocialist newspapers now joined the clamor that the government deal sternly with refugees who sought to carry on the struggle against their persecutors from French soil. The incident lent an appearance of verisimilitude to charges made by the right after Munich that the Jews, even if they denied it, secretly wanted war. 29 Moreover, despite the Americans' optimistic prognostications, the refugee problem did not really admit of a solution. Poland demanded to be relieved of its Jews on a basis of parity with Germany; Rumania and Hungary watched its maneuvers with undisguised interest; and the millions of potential emigrants from all those states could not be placed anywhere. 30 The French knew that the mass expulsion ofJews from Central Europe, with its inevitable confusion, provided Germany with an easy opportunity to infiltrate agents into France. Although the Nazi "fifth column" never became as grave a problem as some anticipated, French leaders had no wish to become the victims of "war by refugee" while preparing belatedly for armed conflict.31 That the fear of such infiltration did not entirely lack substance received unhappy confirmation during the war, when the Nazis employed the Viennese Jews Leo Israelowicz and Wilhelm Biberstein to monitor the activities of the Union Generale des

27

28 29

30

31

Louis Stein, Beyond Death and Exile: the Spanish Republicans in France, Cambridge, Mass. 1979, pp. 5-54. Helmut Heiber, Goebbels, New York 1972, pp. 246-247. See the superb analysis by Edwin Wilson of the American Embassy on the growth of antisemitism in France after Munich: Wilson to State Department, 8 November 1938, US 862.4016/1809. For Polish representation and direct threats to foment antisemitic outbursts, see Messersmith memoranda, 3-19 November 1938, in US 840.48 Refugees/884, 949, 952, 1056; on attitudes of the other Eastern European states, see Truman Smith report, 16 December 1938, US 862.4016/2064. For discussion of "war by refugee" and evidence that American officials suspected Germany of taking advantage of the refugee' continued plight after the fall of France to send agents on to the United States, see Fred I. Israel (ed.), The War Diary of Breckinridge Long. Selections from the Years 1939-1944, Lincoln, Neb. 1966, pp. 114, 133-135, 154, 174 (26 June, 28 September3 October, 20 November 1940, 28 January 1941).

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Israelites de France.32 But the greatest danger to national security in 1939 came from the Communist side, particularly after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact. The disorderly roundup of enemy aliens (many of them Jews) that took place when war broke out in one sense reflected French paranoia; in another it represented a confession of inability to control the vast number of refugees of various provenance now resident in the country. The historian's evaluation of French government policy in this period must depend on his reading of later events. The role played by immigrant Jews in the armed struggle against Nazi Germany after 1939 remains, even today, a sensitive question. The dispute centers on the policies of the Communist party and its affiliate, the Main d'Oeuvre Immigree (MOI), which coordinated the resistance activity of most Eastern Jews. By all accounts younger Jews from this background gave proof of extraordinary heroism once Germany had turned against Russia; according to Annie Kriegel, they may have undertaken half of all urban guerrilla actions against the Nazi invader in 1941-42. But despite the evocative force of her recollections, Kriegel views the stirring events of those years through the astigmatic lens of nostalgia.33 The Gaullist resistance, both for security and social reasons, did not, Kriegel maintains, accept foreign adolescents like herself. The MOI offered to immigrant Jews a way out of their isolation and the single realistic alternative to the negative identity thrust upon them by the Nazis. The Jews thus enlisted under the Communist flag out of special motives of their own. 34 But did the shock troops of MOI do battle for patriotic reasons or to further the interests of the Soviet Union and the international working class for which it claimed to stand? The anecdotal evidence suggests that some young Jews, at least, considered themselves engaged in a class war against the French and German bourgeoisie and hesitated, for example, to take action against "working-class" German enlisted men. 35 Moreover, as Kriegel herself concedes, a goodly

32

33

34

35

Rar the role of Israelowicz, Biberstein (incorrectly identified by Marrus and Paxton as Bigerstein), and Kurt Schendel, see Rajsfus, op. cit., pp. 69,145,151-152,265-283; and Anny Latour, La Resistance juive en France (1940-1944), Paris 1970, p. 46. Kriegel, op. at., pp. 358-360; for detailed evidence on M O I operations, see also Adam Rutkowski (ed.), La Lutte des juifs en France a l'epoque de I'occupation (1940-1944), Paris 1975. Kriegel, op. cit., pp. 360-365. Kriegel has promoted the theory in other publications also that the Jews, despite their social isolation, were really patriotic and merely "duped" by the Communists. (See for example her French Communists: Profile of a People, Chicago 1972, pp. 129-135). That interpretation has provided great comfort to Jewish historians. See, e. g., the use made of it by Monique Lewi, Histoire d'une communaute juive: Roanne. Etude bistorique et sociologique d'un judaisme, Roanne 1976, pp. 68-69. See the revealing testimony in Philippe Robrieux, Histoire interieure du parti communiste, 19201945, Paris 1980, pp. 530-531.

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number of M O I leaders departed after the war to carry on the struggle for "socialism" in Poland, Hungary, and Rumania, and returned only in the 1960s when antisemitism drove them out of their leadership positions in these East European Utopias.36 The acid test of loyalty for Jewish and other Communists came in 1939-41, during the period of the Nazi-Soviet alliance. Thirty years later the majority of Jewish Communists interviewed by David Weinberg recalled that, after a moment of confusion, they had decisively repudiated the new Moscow line. 37 But the recent research of Stephane Courtois into this murky era suggests a more nuanced conclusion. While a substantial number of militants quietly disengaged from the PCF in 1939-40, the central party apparatus held firm. It endorsed the explanation that the security of the Soviet state figured as the precondition of socialist triumph everywhere. In a party where the Comintern overseer Eugen Fried called himself Clement, the Paris leader Ginsburger went by the name Pierre Villon, and the party treasurer Michel Feintuch cast himself as Jean Jerome, it is impossible to isolate "Jewish" positions with any assurance. Apart from university spokesmen like Georges Politzer, however, the party leadership as a whole promoted sabotage in 1939-40 and turned to collaboration after the national collapse. Individual regional leaders - Charles Tillon of Bordeaux, Auguste Havez of Brittany, and Georges Guingouin of Haute-Vienne, for example - who took a patriotic line in the crisis never won the full trust of the party high command again. Indeed a special party execution squad under a "Colonel" Epstein subsequently carried out the murder of some who had shown unacceptable independence of thought in these years. 38 Given the orthodoxy of the party structure that emerged from this agonizing period, Jews who rallied to the M O I after 1941 should - if they possessed any political sophistication - have had little doubt about the moral quality of the organization for which many of them made the supreme sacrifice. [. . .]

36 37 38

Kriegel, op. at., p. 347. Weinberg, op. at., pp. 203-205. Courtois, op. cit., esp. pp. 11-202, 473-554; cf. also the earlier study of David Caute, Communism and the French Intellectuals, 1914-1960, New York 1964, pp. 112-161. For an illuminating account of the Epstein murder squad and its victims, see Courtois, op. at., pp. 254-255, andRobrieux, op. α'ί.,ρρ. 498-500,542-544. Jean Jerome's memoir, La Part des hommes, Paris 1983, recalls the milieu of the immigrant Jewish militants of the 1930s with characteristic discretion.

MICHAEL R . M A R R U S AND ROBERT O . PAXTON

Public Opinion, 1940-42* The Climax of Popular Antisemitism [· * · ]

The most striking revelation of a study of Marshal Petain's own intelligence sources is a powerful surge of popular antisemitism in the Unoccupied Zone during 1941-42. As we have already seen, public opinion as reflected in the prefects' reports had seemed largely indifferent to Vichy's antisemitic campaign at the beginning. Only fourteen prefects out of forty-two in the Unoccupied Zone reported any public reaction to the first Statut des juifs - nine of them favorable to the Statut, four unfavorable, and one mixed. Only twelve reported some public reaction to the second Statut des juifs and the further measures ofJune-July 1941 - six favorable and six mixed. Then, with a nearly unanimous voice, during the fourteen months between the second statute and the first massive roundups for deportation in the southern zone in AugustSeptember 1942, thirty of the forty-two prefects commented on the influx of additional Jewish refugees from the Occupied Zone and on the sharp hostility these newcomers provoked. Twenty-two prefects wrote at great length on the matter, in tones of unmistakable urgency.1 Of course, all refugees drew attention as outsiders, even if they were native Frenchmen adrift in the Unoccupied Zone, far from their homes in the north;

* From: Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France and theJews, Basic Books, New York 1981, pp. 181-186; 193-208; notes 393-396. Reprinted with permission of the authors and the publisher. Unless otherwise indicated, the following pages are based on prefects' monthly reports. The prefects' contacts may have been one-sided, and prefects may have wished to demonstrate how thoroughly they had their populations in hand; but they also risked their careers if they failed to prepare the government for bad news. On balance, the regime preferred honest reporting to flattery. Thus, one finds frank opinions in the prefects'reports about public distrust of Laval or preferences for the BBC, which can hardly have pleased the minister of the interior. We take the prefects' reports seriously as a source, when used with appropriate caution. 1 AN: F i c m 1135-1204.

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but Jews were insistently singled out for particular suspicion and hostility. The greatest animosity by far was directed at foreign Jews or the recendy naturalized. French Jews who fled to the south also shared some of the animosity. At least one prefect (Marion, l'Aveyron, 3 September 1942) expressed the personal hope that the deportation measures would also be extended to French Jews. Sometimes there was physical violence. Incidents of window smashing and slogan painting were reported in Lyon, Nice, and other major urban centers. A more subde form of violence was the robbery of some Jewish refugees at the Demarcation Line by unscrupulous frontier guides (passeurs). Prefects always reported such depredations with distaste and declared that the public welcomed the action they took against youth groups from the collaborationist Parti Populaire Frangais and other people responsible for overt antiJewish violence. Antisemitisme d'etat and the public feelings supporting it insisted upon legal means. The themes of public animosity were remarkably uniform throughout the Unoccupied Zone. Blame for the black market was by far the most insistent of them. It was repeated both in the old haunts of antisemitism, such as the columns of Action frangaise,2 and also in villages and hamlets where Jews had never been heard of before the war. Food was becoming an obsession. "A single preoccupation: the stomach" (Pyrenees-Orientales, 30 October 1942). Stripped of its rich produce by the German occupation forces, France was becoming one of the worst fed of the occupied territories.3 To make matters worse, food was inequitably distributed by a flawed rationing system. Scarcity pitted townspeople against farmers, shoppers against merchants, and practically everyone, it would seem, against new arrivals. No new arrivals seemed more conspicuous than the Jews. The black market was probably the one issue on which the Vichy regime could have built a successful popular appeal against them. According to Pierre Limagne's journal for 10 May 1942, "Darquier de Pellepoix defines his antisemitic program. Unfortunately, he is likely enough to be applauded in speaking of the place of Jews in the black market the only [market] that remains accessible to those natural businessmen."4 Jews were considered "synonymous" with the black market in unoccupied parts of the Jura (1 September 1942). Nine tenths of black market cases in the Alpes-

2 3

4

For example, "Les Juifs et le marche noir," Action frangatse (Lyon) 16 July 1942. Karl Brandt, Management of Agriculture and Food in the German-Occupied and Other Areas of Fortress Europe, Stanford, Calif. 1953; Robert O. Paxton, Vichy Ranee: Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, New York 1972, pp. 359-361. Pierre Limagne, Ephemerides de quatre annees tragiques, 1940-44, 3 vols, Paris 1945-47, I, p. 540.

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Michael R. Marrus / Robert O. Paxton

Maritimes could be traced to Jews, reported the prefect (4 October 1941), making popular prejudice his own. He thought that Gaullism and antigovernmental remarks were also attributable mostly to Jews. The regional prefect of Limoges liked so much the phrase "grabbing up everything that could be eaten" to describe what Jews were doing in the Limousin countryside that he used it twice (departmental report, 4 March 1942; regional report, 5 June 1942). Jews, reported the prefect of the Dordogne, had " corrupted" the local populations, "previously so honest," and peasants and merchants were not ensnared in temptations. It is worth pondering this simplistic projection upon Jews of behavior widely indulged in by a broad cross-section of the French population in the Unoccupied Zone. The government knew that German purchases - both official ones and the clandestine forays of German soldiers and officers - were a principal cause of black market operations. Laval went so far as to tell the assembled public prosecutors in 1943 that Germans "were at the bottom of all black market deals."5 Efforts to get the Germans to limit their purchases and to stop blocking judicial action against some of their illicit suppliers had become a major item of Franco-German negotiations. It was a point that the regime could not, or would not, explain to the public. As for the public, it was certainly aware that persons of all kinds were involved in illicit deals over food. It was French sellers who, in many cases, demanded the exaggerated prices that Jews sometimes had to pay. In the fragmentary arrest reports we have seen, Jews figure no more prominently than anyone else among black marketeers. Even if a careful study eventually demonstrates that they were arrested for black market operations beyond their proportion in the population, it was the Vichy state that had uprooted them from normal occupations and scrutinized them with particular suspicion. The next most frequent charge against Jews was "the easy life that they are leading" (Rhone, 5 July 1942). They were "lazy" (Ariege, Creuse, Dordogne, Haute Garonne, Savoie, Tarn, Haute Vienne). This reproach took on a new edge of bitter jealousy in 1943 when young Frenchmen, but not Jews, were drafted for work in German factories. The program of labor conscription for Germany, known as the Service du Travail Obligatoire, then came to seem the real deportation, and the journey of young Frenchmen to the Ruhr or the Saar distracted attention from the journeys to Auschwitz of Jewish men, women, and children.

5

AN: AG"28SGqF. For the black market activities of the German espionage group known as the Bureau Otto, see Jacques Delarue, Trafics et cnmes sous I'occupation, Paris 1968, pp. 32-35.

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647

In spas and resort areas, Jews were taxed with "ostentatious and excessive expenditures" (Hautes-Pyrenees, 2 March 1942), with the "impudence" of their "luxury" (Alpes-Maritimes, July-August 1942), and with the "shameless way they behave in public." "In Aix-les-Bains, in particular, they are riding high, live in the best hotels, spend lavishly, and lead a lazy, luxurious life, making a fortune at the gambling tables" (Savoie, 1 July 1942). The other resentments that fed the groundswell of popular antisemitism in the Unoccupied Zone in 1941-42 were more diffuse. It was mostly officialdom that fretted that Jews were responsible for "insidious and demoralizing activity," for propaganda hostile to the regime, for arousing political feelings against Petain, for their political attitudes in general (Alpes-Maritimes, Indre, Jura). The real popular resentment was subpolitical and had to do with food and with allegations of conspicuous consumption - often wholly imaginary - at a time of penury. It seems grotesque today that signs of distress among Jews were misread, according to an ancient symbolism, as signs of privilege. If many Jews were "lazy," it was because one government or another had excluded them from useful work. If they had cash, it was ofen because their business or property had been forcibly sold off, as often as not at a fraction of the real value. If they spent the cash, it was often because they found themselves sent to rural villages where they were outsiders, isolated from the network of friends and family from whom ordinary people could obtain an occasional illicit ham without raising an eyebrow, because they desperately needed the services of passeurs, suppliers of false documents, and furnishers of packages to camp inmates, and because not to demonstrate financial independence was to court internment in a concentration camp or in a groupement de travailleurs etrangers. N o doubt there were some Jews who spent money in a kind of dizzy despair. The vast majority were neither rich nor ostentatious, but the traditional symbolism had it otherwise, and no responsible voice could, or would, explain these verities. In the absence of any moderating explanations, the Jews became a kind of lightning rod for generalized urban-rural tensions, merchant-consumer tensions, fears about future scarcities and price increases, envy at certain not clearly specified "others" who were rumored to have it easy, and even guilt about practices widespread within the general public. As in the 1930s, hostility to Jews was nurtured by a broader xenophobia. But this time, within the crabbed perspectives of wartime suspicion and scarcity, foreigners included people from the other side of the hill. A defensive localism now treated any visitors as outsiders. "In a country formerly open to tourists and particularly interested in the development of the hotel industry, there is a violent reaction against the Jewish or aryan summer visitors unani-

648

Michael R. Marrus / Robert O. Paxton

mously seen as parasites, in the small mountain resorts" (Basses-Alpes, 5 August 1942). The prefect of the Haute Loire reported that his department had been "literally plundered by the tourists" (29 August 1942). It is not surprising, in a climate of real material want and diminishing social solidarity, that popular resentment against foreign Jews sometimes splashed over onto the French-born Jews who found themselves fleeing to the Unoccupied Zone. In the opinion of the regional prefect of Limoges, French-born Jews, in their turn, "cut themselves off' from foreign Jews whom they blamed for antigovernmental propaganda and the black market6 - and perhaps also for endangering their place in French society. These reactions are probably best seen as aggravations of familiar antipathies, resentments that we have already encountered in our consideration of the refugee problem of the late 1930s. The issues were still those of the 1930s, now raised to a new power by the tensions of defeat, occupation, and deprivation: unemployment, the fear that French culture was menaced by dilution, and the fear of being dragged back into the war. Once again there was a flood of refugees, concentrated this time in the narrower confines of the Unoccupied Zone. This time the refugees included the uprooted from the Occupied Zone, city populations on the prowl for food or safe havens for their families, as well as the Spaniards, Italian antifascists, and Jews from Central Europe of the 1930s. Even more exposed, in the summer of 1942, were the Jewish fugitives who had recently fled the Occupied Zone as German policy took a much more severe turn. One of the first mass arrests of Jews - the thousand important Jewish professional and intellectual personalities rounded up in Paris in December 1941 - and the massive roundup of July 1942 set off a "veritable exodus" across the Demarcation Line.7 The tide of Jewish refugees that had begun in 1933 now reached its highwater mark in the Unoccupied Zone of France, and so did fear and resentment of these "undesirables." The months culminating in autumn 1942 form the only period of the occupation when the "Jewish problem" figures in almost every monthly prefectoral report from Unoccupied France. Illegal crossings of the Demarcation Line were a growing preoccupation. Near the line, there was no longer "the slightest place to live," and the "presence of this well-heeled foreign population stands in the way of effective food distribution" (Indre, 31 July 1942). The prefect of the Dorgogne said something must be done and proposed a new census and special passes to limit the mobility of Jews 6

7

Le Prefet regional de Limoges, rapport mensuel, 11 July 1942, F i c m l 197. Also synthese des contröles, 5 August 1942, AN: AG n 4 61 . Synthese des contröles, no. 194, 5 August 1942, AN: AG n 4 6 1 CCXXXIV-G.

Public Opinion, 1940-42

649

(4 August 1942). The regional prefect of Limoges called for urgent measures to "clear out" his region, to avoid a rise in prices and a "heating up of tempers" (13 August 1942). "A quick solution is needed" (Indre, 31 July 1942). Quite independently of the prefects' worries, and unknown to them, a solution had been hatched in Hitler's inner circle; and at the very moment when the Final Solution was about to be applied to western Europe, exasperated officials in the Vichy Zone, egged on by a deprived and resentful populace, were looking for some remedy too. "There is growing concern to find a solution that will permit the reduction of the number of Jews living in France" (Cher, unoccupied section, 3 December 1941). [. . .] A Special Case: Algeria [···]

Algerian antisemitism flourished in the 1930s. Metropolitan extremist movements like Action Frangaise and Doriot's Parti Populaire Fra^ais found their most fanatical and important following in Algeria. The Algerian wing of Colonel de la Rocque's Parti Social Fran$ais (successor to the dissolved Croix de Feu after 1936) affected a sharp antisemitism that was relatively absent in the parent movement. Anti-Jewish riots in Constantine in 1934 left more than a score of Jewish dead. Tension reached its sharpest point during the Popular Front. Leon Blum, together with a former governor-general, Maurice Viollette, made a modest proposal to extend French citizenship to about twentyseven thousand Moslems without obliging them to abandon as heretofore their special legal status as Moslems. This proposal mobilized enraged Algerian opinion not only against the government but against the Jews who were somehow seen to be behind the move. This was the French-Algerian equivalent of the financial collapse of the Union Generale. In the fall of 1938Jacques Doriot appeared at an Algerian conference of the PPF and called for the abrogation of the Cremieux decree. This proposal became common currency in Algerian politics, as public opinion increasingly lumped the Jews with the Moslems as a supposed challenge to existing institutions. Wide circles of North African opinion now equated a defense of French domination with opposition to the Jews. 8

8

Michel Ansky, Les Juifs d'Algme: du decret Cremieux ä la liberation, Paris 1950, pp. 88-98; Charles-Robert Ageron, Histoire de l'Algme contemporaine, II: De l'insurrection de 1871 au declencbement de la guerre de liberation (1954), Paris 1979, pp. 89-90; "The Jews of Algeria," Institute of Jewish Affairs, World Jewish Congress Reports 2, October 1949: 7; World Jewish Congress, The Abrogation of the Cremieux Decree, New York 1943, pp. 13-14.

650

Michael R. Marrus / Robert O. Paxton

Paris and republican discipline restrained some antisemitic elements before 1940. The advent of Vichy, however, removed all limits upon the expression of anti-Jewish feelings. When Marcel Peyrouton, a former governor-general of Algeria sympathetic to the European settlers became minister of the interior at Vichy in September 1940, he saw to it that the Cremieux decree was abrogated, and forged new legal machinery to refuse any extension of French citizenship to either Jews or Moslems.9 Algerian Jews found themselves in the position of their German co-religionists after the Nuremberg laws: having previously been citizens, they were reduced to subjects. Anti-Jewish feelings so permeated the Algerian administration and colonial society that Morinaud, a veteran of the Algerian antisemitic movement, could write credibly of "the joy that gripped the French when they learned that the Petain government was at last repealing the odious [Cremieux] decree."10 It was Vichy that felt pressured by Algiers in Jewish matters, rather than vice versa. General Maxime Weygand, the delegate-general of the government in North Africa (September 1940-November 1941), and the successive governors-general - Admiral Jean Abrial and, at the end of 1941, Yves Chätel - all supported the anti-Jewish mood and the battery of antisemitic laws that followed. We have already noted the various proposals to Vichy from generals Francois and Martin of the veterans' Legion, and the role of Algerian promptings in the imposition of student quotas and in the closure of the Chantiers de la Jeunesse (the obligatory youth camps) to Jews. Darlan cited the intensity of Algerian feelings when he urged in the summer of 1941 that the Jews remaining there in civil service posts be removed.11 With the support of Abrial and Weygand, the numerus clausus was applied not only to Jewish university students but - beyond the provisions of the Vichy statues - to primary and secondary school pupils. Although this measure was not the equivalent of the hermetic segregation of children attempted by the Nazis after 1938, the expulsion of 18,500 Jewish children from public primary schools (6,500 remained) was a far more substantial step toward segregation than anything envisaged in metropolitan France (separate schooling was a particularly strong fear among the French Jewish leaders who were negotiating with Vallat over UGIF in late fall 1941). Even Monsignor Leynaud, the archbishop of Algiers who believed Marshal Petain was sent by

9

10 11

Ansky, op. cit., pp. 88-98; Ageron, op. cit., p. 91. For the contrasting situation in Tunisia, see Jacques Sabille, Les Juifs en Tunisie sous Vichy et l'occupation, Paris 1954. Le Republicain de Constantine, October 1940, quoted in Ansky, op. cit., p. 93. Darlan to Commissariat-general aux questions juives [CGQJ], 27 June 1941, AN:AJ 3 8 5.

Public Opinion, 1940-42

651

Providence, transmitted his private dissent to Governor-General Chätel. 12 Chätel was particularly zealous. A few days before the Allied landings in North Africa, he ordered the fabrication of yellow star of David armbands for Algerian Jews, though not even Darquier de Pellepoix had succeeded in marking the Jews of the Unoccupied Zone of metropolitan France.13 Moslems continued to abstain from the anti-Jewish campaign. Although North African anti-Jewish measures have sometimes been explained as a French concession to Moslem pressures, the Western-educated Moslem elite, leaning toward the Resistance, seems to have even supported the Jews. As the lawyer A. Boumendjel wrote to the Jewish deputy Jean Pierre-Bloch, the Moslems "could not reasonably align with those who were attempting to impose a racial policy, when they themselves were continually abused in the name of 'racism'." 14 On 29 November 1942, a group of Moslem leaders including the lawyer Boumendjel and the Cheik-el-Okbi, one of the spiritual leaders of the Algerian Moslem community, wrote to Dr. Loufrani, a proponent of Jewish-Moslem understanding. By putting down the Jew, one only brings him even closer together with the Moslem. It was thought that at the abrogation of the Cremieux decree, the Moslems would rejoice; but the latter can easily see the dubious worth of a citizenship that the granting authority can take away after seventy years's enjoyment. If the antagonism between Jews and Moslems had existed, it would not have failed to show itself during the events of recent years. And yet nothing has been spared to set the Moslem and Israelite communities against each other.15

During the April 1943 session of the Oran Conseil General, the regional governing body, all the Moslem members signed a declaration affirming their "sincere friendly understanding with Frenchmen of the Israelite religion" and their support for efforts to abrogate the repeal of the Cremieux decree.16 So deeply rooted was hostility toward the Jews in European circles that the anti-Jewish laws were not repealed when the Allies landed in North Africa in November 1942. The new French regime in Algiers, under Admiral Darlan and General Henri Giraud, defended French sovereignty against the Allied presence and continued to fly the colors of the National Revolution, despite

12

13 14 15 lft

Ansky, op. cit., pp. 105, 107-137; Joseph Billig, Le Commissariat general aux questions juives (1941-44), 3 vols, Paris 1955-1960, III, pp. 40-41. Ansky, op. cit., p. 96; Yves-Maxime Danan, La Vie politique ä Alger de 1940 a 1944, Paris 1963, p. 30. Ibid., p. 46. Ansky, op. cit., pp. 296-297. Ibid.

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Michael R. Marrus / Robert O. Paxton

being disavowed by the now totally occupied metropolitan France. In a remarkably obtuse gesture, the new rulers in Algiers named Petain's former interior minister Marcel Peyrouton to be governor-general of Algeria. Peyrouton maintained Vichy laws against the Jews, with the sanction of the British and the Americans. To a group of hand-picked Jewish leaders assembled in Algiers at the beginning of 1943, the new governor-general justified in an extraordinary statement the maintenance of the racial legislation. He recapitulated the arguments of the colonial administration: the Jews "have been declared responsible for the defeat," which had prompted "an explosion of antisemitism in all social strata in the country." The racial laws were "one of the essential conditions of the armistice," to which France was still persumably bound. Abrogation of these laws would provoke the Moslem population, itself denied full citizenship. Since Algeria was "still France," it could not go its own way and repeal them. And, in a final outbrust, "the Jews go to see the American and the English authorities too often. Christians, Moslems, and Jews who do that are bastards \sont des salaudsJ."17 Peyrouton and General Henri Giraud seem to have been genuinely surprised when British and American protests crystallized over Jewish policy. Peyrouton was evasive in answering journalists' questions on the subject, and urged gradualism. He reminded his listeners that Giraud was a man of fortythree years of experience in North Africa.18 The new governor-general claimed the right to pursue French "internal policy" without interference. But were not the racial laws themselves the product of German interference in French affairs, asked one Jewish official, referring to the numerus clausus in education? Peyrouton's answer was hard. "Don't kid yourselves; this measure was taken by the French government at the request of French students." The Jews, he added, ought to be aware of how many enemies they had: "You know very well all the harm that has been done to France and to all of you by that man whom you know . . . [that is, Leon Blum]. He is the cause of this current of antisemitism which swept France after the defeat; before, I did not even know what antisemitism was; no one ever spoke of Jews at home." 19 The open expression of antisemitic sentiments remained acceptable in French North Africa after November 1942. Very few knew clearly, of course, 17

Ibid., p. 249.

18

"The Government of North Africa: M. Peyrouton's Reply to Criticism," Manchester ian, 8 February 1943. Ansky, op. at., p. 253.

19

Guard-

Public Opinion, 1940-42

653

what the recent beginning of the deportations to the East meant, and in North Africa, where there had been no roundups for deportation like those that shocked and altered opinion in metropolitan France, Vichy's policy could be detached in people's minds from its murderous sequel. General Auguste Nogues, another veteran colonial administrator who had served as French commander-in-chief in North Africa in 1940 and who as governor-general of Morocco had made at least one anti-Jewish proposal to Vichy, 20 did not even bother to change his tune when assuming the guise of a postwar statesman. At Casablanca, in January 1943, he told President Roosevelt and other highranking American officials "that it would be a sad thing for the French to win the war merely to open the way for the Jews to control the professions and the business world of North Africa." Nor did he need to mute his hostility. In the climate of French North Africa, even F.D.R. felt free to deliver some gratuitous anti-Jewish shots. According to the American account of the meeting, the U. S. President proposed that "the number ofJews engaged in the practice of the professions (law, medicine, etc.) should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population." The President continued that his plan would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore toward the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty per cent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc. in Germany were Jews.

Roosevelt repeated these views to Giraud the same day.21 It took months to end the discrimination begun under Vichy, and almost a year to restore the Cremieux decree and full Jewish political rights. Intense efforts were necessary on the part of the Algerian Jewish community, Jewish organizations the world over, and friendly individuals such as the jurist Henry Torres. The delay was excruciating for many Jews and offered a sobering commentary on the strength of anti-Jewish feeling in French North Africa and on the lukewarm Allied interest in the problem. 22

20

21 22

Nogues to Darlan, 2 April 1942, AN:AJ 3 8 67:92; Roosevelt-Nogues conversation, Casablanca, 17January 1943, Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS], Conferences at Washington 1941-42 and Casablanca 1943, p. 608.

Ibid., p. 611.

The prefects of several departments (Aude, Eure-et-Loire, Lozere, with mixed opinions in the Cher) reported strong disapproval of the repeal of the anti-Jewish legislation in North Africa. The French police commander Bousquet told SS officer Hägen that the United States would make a grave error if it changed Vichy's policy there. Hägen memorandum, 18 November 1942, Centre de documentation juive contemporaine [CDJC] :XXVI-68b.

654

Michael R. Marius / Robert O. Paxton

The Churches and the Jews [• · ·] The changes of summer 1940 seemed to offer Catholic France the prospects of deliverance. After decades of growing secularism, declining official support for the Church and its values, and images of violent hostility to religion evoked by the Popular Front and the civil war in Spain, Marshal Petain promised order, hierarchy, discipline, and respect for religious and traditional values. It was not specific programs that did most to draw Catholics to the new regime, for material concessions to the Church were less sweeping than many churchmen might have wished. Some state aid to parochial education, the return to the church of properties still unsold since the separation of Church and State, reduced legal restrictions on religious orders - all were welcome gestures; but the return of religion to the classroom lasted only until 1941; and tentative steps in the direction of a restoration of official Church-State relations revealed great caution on the part of both. The main attraction was a change of tone, a new world view, in which the new regime took on the imprint of a moral order and made public expressions of deference to the Church. N o Vichy public ceremony was complete without some form of religious observance. When, in a tremulous voice, Petain offered France "the gift of my own person" and spoke of the penitence and suffering that must come before redemption, the Christian symbolism of his gestures was lost on no one. The eminent Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon believed that Petain's reconstruction of France would make it "more Christian." As he noted, "The Marshal said one day: O u r fatherland must recover the beauty of its roots.' What is then the most authentic and the most beautiful of all its roots if not Christianity, which gave it birth?" 2 3 In return, with virtual unanimity, religious leaders poured out their adulation for the old Marshal, who in earlier life had given little sign of piety and some grounds for condemnation as a roue married late and by civil ceremony to a divorcee. Cardinal Suhard, the new archbishop of Paris, called Petain "the Frenchman without reproach." Monsignor Piguet, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, was another who thought that the Marshal had been given to France by

23

"Dans un vibrant discours, Mgr. Gerlier engage tous les Frangais ä s'unir autour du Marechal," Journal des debats, 28 December 1940; Roland dePuri, "Engage dans la lutte," in Chretiens sous I'occupation Sens: Juifs et chretiens dans le monde d'aujoud'hui 9/10, 1978, p. 31. See Claude Langlois, "Le regime de Vichy et le clerge d'apres les 'Semaines reügieuses' des dioceses de la zone libre," Revue frangaise de science politique 22, 1972, pp. 750-774.

Public Opinion, 1940-42

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Providence.24 The small clerical Left was, if anything, happier with the end of the godless and laissez-faire Republic than were the traditionalists, so that by the end of 1940 Frenchmen seemed joined in an intense new Christian commitment, encouraged by churchmen of the most varied persuasions and political beliefs. The Jews were easily forgotten in this atmosphere of reconqmsta. Few churchmen had anything at all to say about them. Religious euphoria was at its height as the first Statut des juifs was being promulgated. Pierre Pierrard refers to "the almost total silence of the Catholic hierarchy in the face of anti-Jewish legislation." After the war, Xavier Vallat reminded everyone that Catholics had not opposed the anti-Jewish legislation, and in a handful of important cases had given their approbation. Dissent came, he admitted, but only in 1942 with the deportations.25 Vallat may have exaggerated the extent of active support for antisemitism among the hierarchy, but he could have cited many individual cases as evidence. An article on Algeria in the Jesuit journal Construire, for example, referred to the anti-Jewish laws as "measures of moral purification as useful for Algeria as for France."26 The bishop of Marseille wrote optimistically about the Statut des juifs: "Already we see the face of a more beautiful France, healed of her sores which were often the work o f . . . foreigners."27 In his Easter sermon of 1941, the elderly bishop of Grenoble congratulated Petain on his repression of Freemasons, as well as of "that other, equally harmful power, the meteques, of which the Jews are a particularly outstanding specimen."28 Such samples of Church opinion may not be representative, but they remain the views most commonly heard in 1940 and 1941. Silence was doubtless more common; but in the flush of enthusiasm for the "man sent by Providence," silence could fairly be taken as approval. The Jewish census and the beginnings of aryanization brought the first murmurs of disagreement, in the summer of 1941. By then the intensity of Jewish suffering was apparent to anyone who would look. But we should not confuse these stirrings with the full-blown opposition, still of a minority, that

24

25

26 27 28

Renee Bedarida, Les Armes d'esprit: Temoignage chretien (1941-44), Vans 1977, p. 14; Jacques Duquesne, "Defensor Judaeorum - the French Episcopate, 1940-44," Wiener Library Bulletin 21, 1967, pp. 19. Xavier Vallat, Le Nez de Cleopätre: souvenirs d'un homme de droite (1919-1944), Paris 1957, pp. 240, 264; Le Proces de Xavier Vallatpresentipar ses amis, Paris 1948, pp. 65, 110-111. Jacques Duquesne, Les Catholiques franqais sous I'occupation, Paris 1966, p. 252. Langlois, op. at, p. 757. Frangois Delpech, "La persecution des juifs et l'Amitie chretienne," in Xavier de Montclos et al., Eglises et Chretiens dans la lie guerre mondiale: region Rhone-Alpes, (Actes du colloques tenu a Grenoble du 7 au 9 Octobre 1976) Lyon 1978, p. 158.

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was born a year later. Dissenters in the summer of 1941 tended to accept the principle of anti-Jewish laws; they worried about their application. In June four professors of the Catholic Univesity of Lyon attempted to launch a declaration against the persecution but apparently failed to obtain the necessary official support29 - although some historians have wrongly assumed that this protest was actually made.30 In general, the voices of opposition were neither loud nor clear. Consider, for example, the views ofJ. M. Etienne Dupy, in a letter to all heads of religious houses of his order in the region of Toulouse to guide them in their own responses: "While accepting the legitimacy of the measures taken, we have the charitable duty to help out with the individual suffering that results." Charity, however, had its limits. "The common good of the nation comes before that of the Jews alone, and a baptized Jew, son of the Church, before him who is not, and spiritual goods before temporal goods." What was the answer? Prudence, he replied. Take care not to be seduced by stories of individual miseries or by promises of conversion, he warned his subordinates. "The Jews, according to an often well-deserved reputation, require us to exercise extreme prudence." Catholics should guard against "a hatefilled antisemitism" while carrying out their obligations of Christian charity.31 Cardinal Gerlier, archbishop of Lyon, perhaps best epitomizes the hesitations of much of the hierarchy, torn between charitable impulses and the pull of Petainist loyalties and anti-Jewish stereotypes. Like many of his peers, Gerlier was ripe for redressement in 1940. He was outspoken in his veneration for Petain and the National Revolution, seeing in them a hope for a French resurrection, the kind of moral revival so longed for in the late 1930s. Gerlier was not a theologian; nor was he a political enthusiast for the Action Frangaise. He was a practical, courtly man of affairs, a brilliant lawyer who had been a classmate of Jacques Helbronner at law school and who was on good terms with Jewish officials. He was a life-long follower of Action Catholique, a movement that advocated constructive social action rather than political engagement. But he had a weakness for traditionalist, authoritarian regimes with a veneer of Catholicism. While he abhorred Nazi ideology, he showed great sympathy for Franco in Spain. He thought Petain was following the same path. Despite his enthusiasm for the head of state, however, Gerlier

29

30

31

Ibid., p.

159; Wladimir Rabi, "L'Eglise catholique sous l'occupation," Le Monde juif33, 1977, pp. 39-40. See, for example, Duquesne, op. cit., p. 255: Cf. interventions of Frangois Delpech and Wladimir Rabi in Montclos, op. at., pp. 195-199, 201. 18 July 1941, AG n 609CM25-A.

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believed in "loyalty without subservience" - a conditional loyalty to legitimate authority. He was prepared to criticize.32 On a number of occasions in 1940-41, Cardinal Gerlier intervened on behalf of Jewish internees and, after the prompting of Abbe Glasberg, he protested against the terrible conditions at Gurs. 33 By the summer of 1941, after his visit to Petain, Gerlier began to stand out more conspicuously. In September he met with the regional director of the CGQJ, and the following month, in order to convey his misgivings, he received Xavier Vallat himself. Even at this point Gerlier had no objections to the principle of the Statut des juifs. According to Vallat's account, the cardinal called the commissionergeneral "an excellent Christian," and said, "Your law is not unjust,.. . but it lacks justice and charity in its enforcement."34 The wordly priest particularly understood the economic case against the Jews. "He did not agree to the racial viewpoint," reported the CGQJ regional director, "but on the other hand was extremely understanding from the economic and financial viewpoint. The Jewish problem exists, he told me; it is indeed inescapable, and I approve [of the anti-Jewish measures] within the framework of justice and freedom." 35 Did Cardinal Gerlier reflect a general disposition within the Church? Indirect evidence indicating precisely this situation comes from no less a source than the Holy See itself. During the summer of 1941, Petain seems to have been troubled by critical opinions. He wrote on 7 August 1941 to his ambassador in the Vatican, Leon Berard, asking for the papal view of Vichy's anti-Jewish measures. Berard replied quickly, saying that he had heard nothing at the Vatican that might suggest disagreement. He promised to find out more. On 2 September, Berard submitted a full report - a lengthy document of several closely typed pages, which could only have comforted the marshal.36

32

33

34 35 36

Jean-Marie Mayeur, "Les eveques dans Panvant-guerre," in Montclos, op. cit., "Pierre-Marie Gerlier, Cardinal Archbishop of Lyon" Public Record Office [PRO]: F0371/31944 [Z8q60/81/17], "Le Cardinal Gerlier associe dans une meme hommage le Marechal Petain et le General Franco," Le Figaro, 14 June 1941. Delpech, in Montclos, op. cit., p. 161; Varian Fry, Surrender on Demand, New York 1945, pp. 234-235; Duquesne, op. cit., p. 54; "Rapport sur la situation des centres d'hebergement et des camps en zone non-occupee," 1941, International Jewish Relief Organisation [HICEM]: HH 2 FR 2 -38. CDJC: CIX-106. CDJC: ccxxxvm-6i. Among various publications of Berard's report, see L. Papeleux; "Le Vatican et le probleme juif, 2, 1941-42" RHDGM 27, 1977, 75-84; Le Proces de Xavier Vallat, op. cit, pp. 500-509; Leon Poliakov, "Le Vatican et la question juive," Le Monde juif2, December 1950, pp. 11-14; Georges Wellers, "Dans le sillage du colloque du CDJC (mars 1979)," Le Monde juif94, AprilJune 1979, pp. 40-51.

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Berard's first point was that France's anti-Jewish program had hardly concerned the Vatican. "At no time did the papal authority seem occupied or preoccupied with this part of French policy." The Church was fundamentally opposed to racist theories, being long committed to "the unity of mankind." Within the human species, however, the Jews were not merely a religious community but a group with "ethnic . . . particularities." There was consequently every reason to "limit their activity in society and . . . restrict their influence." Important theological and legislative precedent on this point went back to Saint Thomas Aquinas. Therefore, reported Berard, "it is legitimate to deny them access to public office; also legitimate to admit them only in a fixed proportion to the universities {numerus clausus) and the liberal professions." Berard noted that, by focusing on race, French law was in formal contradiction to the teaching of the Church: the latter "has never ceased to teach dignity and respect for the individual." Moreover, a racial interpretation was in conflict with the sanctity of the sacrament of baptism. The Holy See could not accept that a person who had duly converted to Catholicism, and had been baptized, was still a Jew because he had three Jewish grandparents. Church law was explicit: "a Jew who has been properly baptized ceases to be Jewish and merges with the 'flock of Christ.' " This was "the sole point on which the law of 2 June 1941 [the second Statut des juifs] is in opposition to a principle espoused by the Roman church." Even so, Vichy got off lightly. "It does not follow from this doctrinal divergence that the Etat frangais is threatened . . . with censure or disapproval." When it came to the exclusion of Jews from the civil service or to the numerus clausus in certain professions and schools, "there is nothing in these measures that can give rise to criticism, from the viewpoint of the Holy See." In conclusion, Berard reassured Petain that the papacy would not make trouble over the issue. "As an authorized source at the Vatican told me, they don't intend to get into a fight over the Statut des juifs." Papal spokesmen had insisted upon two things, however. First, Vichy should not add to its antiJewish law any provision touching marriage. This was a point on which the Holy See felt that Mussolini had broken the Concordat of 1929,* by imposing restrictions on marriage between Jews and non-Jews. According to the Church, marriage was a sacrament, and the State had no business regulating it by racial laws. Second, Vichy should take care that its laws be applied with due consideration "for justice and charity" - the precise words Gerlier had used in

* In the Lateran Pact of 1929, Mussolini made concessions to the Holy See, agreeing to papal sovereignty over Vatican City and conceding Catholic authority in certain areas of life, in exchange for which the Church came to terms politically with the fascist state.

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659

his meeting with Vallat. In particular, the Vatican felt concern about the liquidation of business in which Jews had an interest. Petain put this message to use at once. A few days after receiving it, he was at dinner with a number of diplomats, including Monsignor Valerio Valeri, papal nuncio in France. In the presence of the ambassadors of Brazil and Spain, the Marshal referred to Berard's letter, telling them that the papacy had no serious objections to the anti-Jewish legislation. The nuncio, an opponent of the Statut des juifs, was embarrassed. When Valeri suggested that the Marshal must have misunderstood the intentions of the Holy See, Petain replied good-humoredly that it was the nuncio who was out of line. Petain offered to show Valeri the text of the letter. Valeri took him up on the offer. Writing to the papal secretary of state, Cardinal Maglione, Valerie protested that the antisemitic laws contained "grave indiscretions [inconvenienti]" from the religious viewpoint. He wondered openly who had given Berard his information. Maglione thought the matter worth pursuing and looked into it. Berard's sources, it turned out, were highly placed within the secretariat of state and included monsignors Tardini and Montini (the future Pope Paul VI). At the end of October, Maglione replied to Valeri, affirming the substance of Berard's report but dissenting from what he thought were Petain's "exaggerated deductions" from it. The feeling at the Vatican was that the Statut des juifs was "an unfortunate law [malaugurate legge]" which should be limited in interpretation and application. There is no record, however, of Petain's having been told any of Maglione's conclusions.37 Whatever this curious exchange signified, Vichy assumed Vatican support and acted on that assumption. Vallat had sent Berard's report around to high officials as a circular. He brandished it in his conversation with Gerlier on 9 October; but at the time, the latter claimed not to have seen it. 38 Shortly afterward, Vallat told the Vichy press to deny rumors of Vatican reservations about the government's anti-Jewish measures. "We are in a position to issue the most firm denial of these allegations; according to information taken from the most authoritative sources, it is clear that nothing in the laws passed to protect France from Jewish influence is in opposition to Church doctrine."39 For about a year, indeed, everyone seems to have assumed that the Church's support for the existing legislation was solid, despite occasional dissent by

37

38 39

Actes et documents du Saint-Siege relatifs a la Seconde guerre Mondiale, vol. VIII: Le Saint-Siege et les victimes de guerre, janvier 1941-decembre 1942, Vatican City 1974, pp. 295-297, 333-334. CDJQCIX-106. Press communique of CGQJ, 11 October 1941, AN:AJ 38 62M75; CDJQXLII-110.

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individual clerics.40 One regional director of the CGQJ with aflairfor analogy told an inquiring prefect that no one had any business protesting because the Church itself had counseled obedience. "If Pontius Pilate had ordered a census ofJews, Jesus Christ himself would have complied; his most humble representative on earth should therefore submit to the requirements of the law, especially when these requirements are not at all vexatious, and also because humility is a Christian virtue."41 German officials involved in the Jewish question were relieved to note that France seemed unlikely to pose any obstacle to a general European settlement of the fate of the Jews. Under Secretary of State Martin Luther, in charge of Jewish matters in the German Foreign Office, reported to his superiors in December 1941: "Lately criticism comes only from Hungary, Italy, and Spain. We must expect resistance from these states to a common European solution. This is the result of Catholic ideas and Jewish influence in these countries."42 That France posed no problem for him at the time was not entirely typical of Catholic Europe. Later, when part of the French Catholic hierarchy denounced the massive deportations of Jews which began in the summer of 1942, some antisemites were taken by surprise. One local CGQJ official in Toulouse, horrified at Cardinal Saliege's pastoral letter decrying the deportations, called for "an energetic interdiction [s/c] with the nuncio's office to punish the impropriety of such an action." 43 The nuncio was hardly in a position to act so independently, of course; but if he had been, he might well have criticized official papal policy rather than the aberrant archbishop. The Opposition ·

·

]

The first clear voice of opposition from among non-Jews to Vichy's antisemitism came from French Protestantism. Soon after the debacle, when future policies were still unclear, some French Protestants felt apprehensive that the National Revolution might prove hostile to them. Indeed, in French nationalist journalism, Protestants had often been lumped with Jews and the

40

41 42

43

See Marcel Deat's view that the Church could and should live with racism, "Catholicisme et racisme," L'Oeuvre, 27 July 1943. Duquesne, op. cit., p. 264. Charles Klein, "Le clerge et les chretiens de France tels que les voyaient certains dirigeants nazis sous l'occupation," in Montclos, op. cit., p. 9. Letter of 25 August 1942, CDJC:XXXVm-60.

Public Opinion, 1940-42

661

rest of "anti-France." The regime seemed about to manifest a "new clericalism" which made Protestants uneasy.44 However ill founded these apprehensions, they persisted. Pastor Marc Boegner, president of the National Protestant Federation, still heard menacing rumors "virtually everywhere" in the summer of 1941: "After the Jews and the Freemasons, the Protestants."45 Periodically, too, French Protestants with foreign-sounding names were harassed by CGQJ agents because they could not produce baptismal certificates.46 At the end of 1940, the council of the Protestant Federation decided that Pastor Boegner, its leader and a member of Vichy's Conseil National, should raise discreet objections. In March 1941, following the creation of the CGQJ, these were put in writing in the form of two letters, one to Darlan and the other to the Grand Rabbi of France. The latter was made public, appearing in Au Pilonm Paris, and widely distributed in the Unoccupied Zone. 47 Although Boegner couched his protest in polite terms and also alluded to the "hasty and unjustified naturalizations," his statement was a dignified and open challenge to the injustices of the Statut des juifs. Like many people at the time, Boegner assumed incorrectly that Vichy had acted under German pressure: "We know after all that in the present circumstances there must be powerful pressure upon the French government in order for it to decide to promulgate an anti-Jewish law."48 If this supposition led Boegner to hope for greater Vichy independence in the future, these hopes were quickly dashed in the months that followed. In May, Darlan told Boegner that the former's sole concern was protecting the Jews who had been in France for several generations - "French Israelites," as they were generally known, to distinguish them from "the Jews." "As for the others," Boegner reported Darlan to have said, "he only asked that they leave."49 Protestant interventions became more numerous after the June 1941 second Statut des juifs and the beginnings of aryanization in the Unoccupied Zone. Boegner wrote to Petain at the end of August and apparently mobilized Cardinal Gerlier to make the representation on behalf of Catholic opinion which we have already encountered.

44

45 46

47 48 49

Marc Boegner, "Rapport," in Les Eglises protestantes pendant la gterre et I'occupation Actes de l'assemblee generale du protestantisme frangats, Paris 1946, p. 16. Boegner to Gillouin, 23 August 1941, AN:AG n 610CM26-D. A.-N. Bertrand, "Rapport," in Violette Mouchon et al., Quelques Actions des protestants de France enfaveurdes Juifs persecutes sous I'occupation allemande, Paris n. d., p. 18. Marc Boegner, op. at., 1946, pp. 4-5. Ibid., pp. 22-26. Idem, "Rapport" in Monchon, op. at., p. 7.

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Michael R. Marrus / Robert O. Paxton

The most dramatic appeal came from Rene Gillouin, a Protestant and an authentic traditionalist who was a close friend of Petain and had helped draft some of his major speeches. Gillouin passed Boegner's message to the Marshal and added an anguished appeal of his own. Gillouin's letter was particularly compelling, coming from a man who had once shared anti-Jewish views: I have always thought that there was a Jewish problem for France as for all nations, and I professed a state antisemitism at a time when it took some courage and involved some risk to do so; but I am ashamed of my country for the anti-Jewish policy that it has borrowed from Germany and even aggravated, and I do not know any Frenchman worthy of the name who does not in his heart condemn it as being neither Christian, nor humane, nor French.

Comparing this twentieth-century persecution to the seventeenth-century repeal of the Edict of Nantes, Gillouin added that the latter was a "picnic beside your Jewish laws, Monsieur le Marechal." Gillouin was hard, one of the few of Petain's correspondents who did not address him with fawning obsequiousness. Racism was a Christian heresy, he insisted. Its adoption meant for France "a denial of its spiritualfaith and its moralpersonality" (italics in original). The anti-Jewish measures were "infamous laws" that dishonored the country. Gillouin also sent Petain a lengthy study of the Status des juifs which tore to ribbons its legal foundation as well as its claim to be mere national self-defense. According to Gillouin, Vichy's aryanization provisions were even more severe than the German ones. There were, in Gillouin's letters, no mitigating remarks about "strong German pressure."50 Petain may well have been moved by these appeals, but he was either unable or unwilling to do anything about them. In the summer of 1941 he attempted to play the opposition off against the strong Church support he still retained. According to Boegner, the Marshal later called Xavier Vallat on the carpet and asked for "moderation in the enforcement of the law." If true, this coincided with a similar gesture by Darlan . . . But by the time Petain received Boegner again at the beginning of 1942, the elderly head of state may have wearily given up. "He saw clearly that great injustices had been committed. But it is equally true that he had a sorrowful sense of impotence in preventing injustices or in speedily rectifying them. 'Certain things can only be resolved after a peace settlement,' he told me." 51 The end of the war would clear up all the

50

51

Gillouin to Petain, 29 August and 23 August 1941, AN:AG n 610CM26-D. Gillouin fled to Switzerland in 1943. Rene Gillouin,/'etais I'ami du marechalPitain, Paris 1966. The editors of Ici Londres Les Voix de la liberie, 1940-1944, Paris 1975, published only one BBC broadcast concerning Jews for the years 1940-41 - Rene Casin, "Message aux Israelites de France," March 1941,1, p. 217 - a text that does not mention foreign Jews. Boegner, op. at., 1946, p. 26; idem, op. at., (n. d.), pp. 7, 8.

Public Opinion, 1940-42

663

difficulties. Much the same, one will remember, was the view of Xavier Vallat. Until the massive roundups of summer 1942, open denunciation of Vichy's antisemitism did not extend far beyond these few instances that we have cited. Pastor A.-N. Bertrand, leader of the Protestants in the Occupied Zone, claimed after the war that on several occasions Catholic authorities had been unwilling to act together with Protestants to intervene on behalf of the victims of racial laws. "I always received from those prelates a courteous and warm response, but also a clear refusal to oppose in any way the actions of those in charge." 52 O n e exception to this rule was Archbishop Saliege, once a member of Sillon, an organization of idealistic Catholic social activists which fell from the favor of the Vatican before the First World War. Saliege condemned doctrines of racial superiority from the first days of the regime, with notable popular impact in the Unoccupied Zone. 53 Paul Claudel, strongly Petainist in 1940, wrote a stirring letter of sympathy to the Grand Rabbi of France at the end of 1941.54 Some Catholic priests considered it outrageous to use baptismal records for the purposes of certifying "aryan background," and did not hesitate to say so. 55 Within the Church, such resistance stemmed largely from the lower orders of the clergy and the laity rather than from the hierarchy. This was certainly the case with Temoignage chretien, the first Catholic Resistance publication. Its first brochure, entided France, prends garde de perdre ton ame and published clandestinely in November 1941, directly addressed the issue of antisemitism. Three more brochures appeared before the deportations began in summer 1942, and each raised fundamental issues and left untouched no important aspect of Vichy's racism. Everything was there: concentration camps, the implications of Nazism, and the hypocrisies of Vallat, universally known for his role as a Catholic political leader. 56 Little groups and individuals began to take action, often clandestine action, against Vichy's racial program and thus provided some precedent for the more

52

53

54

55 56

Idem, in Henri Manen, Le Pasteur A.-N. Bertrand, temoin de l'unite evangelique, 1876-1946, Nimes n. d., p. 187. Pierre Pierrard,7»i/s et catholiquesfrangais:de Drumont ä Jules Isaac (1886-1945), Paris 1970, p. 316; Un Eveque franqais sous I'occupation. Extraits des messages de S. Ex. Mgr. Saliege, archeveque de Toulouse, Paris 1945, Bedarida, op. at., pp. 21-23. Lucien Steinberg, Les Autontes allemandes en France occupee: inventaire commentee de h collection de documents conserves au C.D.J.C., Paris 1966; Charlotte Wardt, Le Juif dans le roman frangais, 1933-1948, Paris 1972, p. 234. Billig, op. at., Π, pp. 114-116. Bedarida, op. at., passim, Pierrard, op. at., p. 312-319; Marialetizia Cravetto, "II problema ebraico nella resistenza Christiana," Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 6, 1979, pp. 3-64.

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important work that began in late 1942. In unoccupied France, overt sympathy toward Jews involved marginal risks at the very beginning of the regime, but a year later such action could mean the loss of one's job, arrest, or far worse. In the Occupied Zone, Admiral Bard, the Paris prefect of police, posted a decree in December 1941 forbidding Jews in the department of the Seine from spending the night outside their homes, and forbidding anyone from taking them in, "under pain of the gravest penalties."57 By the summer of 1942 assisting Jews in any way was extremely dangerous in either zone. Protestants and left-wing Catholics, disenchanted with Vichy's link with traditionalist elements within the Church, were frequently the first to aid Jews in trouble.58 Help came from particular urban centers despite the real hazards: from Lyon, where there were good contacts with Switzerland and possibilities of escape in that direction; from Toulouse which, with its large concentration of Spanish exiles, was an important assembly point for refugees arriving across the Demarcation Line from the Occupied Zone or awaiting passeurs to take them across the border to Spain. Despite the reticence of their elders, idealistic leaders of Catholic youth groups, such as Germaine Ribiere, eagerly aided the Jews. 59 Particularly outstanding was Abbe Alexandre Glasberg, a priest of Jewish origins, whose relief work after 1940 drew him inexorably into underground activity. Glasberg joined another cleric, Father Pierre Chaillet, in the Amitie Chretienne, also centered in Lyon, an association of priests and laity which was organized, in the first months of 1942, under the patronage of Cardinal Gerlier and Pastor Boegner. Small Protestant groups, often deriving similarly from prewar youth movements, were at least as important. Vital relief work, and later clandestine assistance to Jews, were organized by the Protestant Comite d'lnter-Mouvement aupres des Evacues (CIMADE), led by Madeleine Barot and Pastor J. Delpech. In heavily Protestant areas, such as isolated communes of the Haute Loire, the Hautes Alpes, or the Tarn, Jews found shelter and assistance, some of it illegal, for leaving the country. Chambon-sur-Lignon (Haute Loire) is probably the most celebrated of these Protestant communes. Frequendy cut off by snowdrifts in winter, this almost homogeneously Protestant enclave helped thousands of refugees who passed through it. Jews received the solid

57

58

59

Adam Rutkowski, La Lutte des Juifs en France a l'ipoque de I'occupation (1940-1944), Paris 1975, p. 96. See Richard Cobb, "A Personal State of War," Times Literary Supplement, 10 March 1978, pp. 270-271. G. Ribiere, "Discussion," in Montclos, op. at., p. 205-207.

Public Opinion, 1940-42

665

support of the local population as well as of the Cevenol Normal School, headed by the nonviolent pastors Andre Pascal Trocme and Edouard Theis. 60 The traditional Left was not conspicuous in the early protests against Vichy antisemitism - those formulated before the mass deportations of summer 1942 changed things; nor was it well equipped for the direct practical aid that drew some religious groups into the Jewish question. The Socialist party had not yet reemerged from its stunned silence. The Communist party was implacably hostile to Marshal Petain, the Vichy regime, and all their works; but the racial laws were never at any time during 1940-44 a major theme in its clandestine publications.61 Nor were the racial laws a major Gaullist theme. The general himself seems never to have mentioned Vichy's antisemitic program over Radio London. Personally De Gaulle seems to have been altogether exempt from antisemitism, remarkably so for someone of his social and professional background. But his attack upon Vichy took more general form. The government of France no longer exists. In effect, the organism situated in Vichy and which claims to be such is unconstitutional and subject to the invader. In its present state of servitude, this organism can only be and is only an instrument used by the enemies of France against the honor and interests of the country.62

The overall tenor of his position was clear enough, when he denounced the National Revolution as the "abolition of the last French liberties," and when he promised to help "remake the world on the sacred foundations of human liberty."63 But it was left to Maurice Schumann, the regular spokesman for the Free French on the BBC, to deal with more mundane details; and he duly denounced the first Statut des juifs as "imposed" by the Germans and as "contrary to all our national traditions and condemned by the Church." 64 Good propaganda, but poor history. In focusing the attack upon alleged German pressure, the Gaullist line helped subtly to exonerate the domestic forces at work. The world of higher education provided another setting for some organized, practical help for Jews. In the Occupied Zone, Education Minister Jerome Carcopino strained the law to assist certain individual Jews. Henri ft0 61

62

63 64

Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, New York 1978. Annie Kriegel, "Resistants communistes et juifs persecutes," H-Histoire 3, November 1979, pp. 93-123. Brazzaville Manifesto, 27 October 1940. Charles de Gaulle, Oeuvres completes Discours et messages. Pendant la guerre: juin 1940-janvier 1946, Paris 1970, pp. 38-39. Ibid., 10 December 1940, p. 41, and 18 September 1941, p. 105. Maurice Schumann, La voix du couvre-feu, Paris 1964, p. 33. If Schumann delivered further attacks on Vichy racial laws during 1941, they were not published in his La Voix du couvre-feu.

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Bergson, of course, received support. South of the Demarcation Line individual rectors could afford to be more forthright. Some went rather far and refused to report Jews on the teaching staff or to give information on students. At Clermont Ferrand, to which had fled the faculties of Strasbourg, and at Lyon, Montpellier, and Toulouse, there were noted refusals to cooperate in persecution.65 Personal kindness was extended here and there to individual Jews, of course; but for most of the victims of Vichy's racial policy, the first years were lonely and bewildering. Marc Haguenau, head of the Jewish Boy Scouts, took some comfort in the belief that "the Statut des juifs is translated from German"; this was his "sole consolation."66 Those who shared Haguenau's view, however, that only German pressures were at work were mistaken. The French administration, especially the imposing legal system, provided daily evidence that the Statut des juifs was indeed composed in French. [.. .]

65

66

Commissariat-general aux questions juives [CGQJ] au Mirustre de l'education nationale, 14 March 1942, CDJQCIX-125; Report of 23 September 1943, CDJC:LXXIX-102; Billig, op. at, Π, pp. 49, 120-123; ΠΙ, p. 48. Haguenau to Vallat, 31 July 1941, quoted in David Knout, Contribution a l'histoire de la resistance juive en France, 1940-44, Paris 1947, p. 55.