Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

Then came the terrible crash. The bubble burst, and the magnificent day-dreams were dispelled by misery. A succession of bad harvests, and the rapid increase in American corn competition, by impoverishing the agricultural class, added to the general depression. The disillusioned public wanted a victim whereupon to vent its wrath. Those who promoted the companies had to suffer for the folly of those who were ruined by their failure. A great many of the former, by selling out at the right moment, rose to affluence. The discontented public, naturally enough, noticing these large fortunes in the midst of the general wreck, jumped to the conclusion that the few had enriched themselves by robbing the many. “Exposures” followed, and among the implicated financiers there were found many Jews. It was then in order to fill Jewish pockets that the heroes of Germany had bled on the battlefield, and the burghers of Germany had been bled at home! The nationalist ideal of Germany for the Germans, then, was to lead to a Germany for the Israelites! All those trials had been endured and all those triumphs achieved in order to deliver up the Fatherland to an alien and infidel race—a race with which neither the intellect nor the heart of Germany has any affinity or sympathy! This was the cry of anguish that succeeded to the paeans of self-glorification, and those nationalists who uttered these sentiments forgot that their very nationalism had been largely created and fostered by Jewish thinkers. They also forgot that it was a Jewish statesman, Lasker, who, at the cost of all personal and party interests and of his popularity, had alone had the courage to expose in the Prussian Chamber the evils of extravagant speculation, in 1873, and to urge both the public and the Government to turn back, while there was yet time, from the road to ruin which they pursued. But it has been well said: “Who would think of gratitude when a scapegoat is required?”

A tongue was given to the popular indignation in a pamphlet by an obscure German journalist, Wilhelm Marr by name, who seized the opportunity of attaining to fame and fortune by a plentiful effusion of his anti-Jewish venom. The work anathematized the Jews not only as blood-sucking leeches, but as enemies of the Germanic race, and as forming a distinct and self-centred solecism in German national life. The Coryphaeus was ably supported by a crowd hitherto mute. The opponents of industrial and the opponents of religious liberalism, men of rank, men of letters, and high ecclesiastics joined in the chorus, and another “black day” (July 30, 1878) was added to the Jewish calendar. In Adolph Stöcker, a Christian Socialist and court preacher, and a staunch Conservative in the Prussian Diet, the new crusade found its Peter the Hermit. He was the first man of position to preach from the pulpit and to declare in the press that Hebrew influence in the State was disastrous to the Christian section of the community, that Semitic preponderance was fatal to the Teutonic race. As though the printing presses of Germany were only waiting for the signal, a whole library of anti-Semitic literature was rapidly produced, and as rapidly consumed. Some of the most popular journals opened their columns to the campaign, Jewish journalists opposed violence with violence, and the feud daily assumed larger dimensions, until by the end of 1879 it had spread and raged over the whole of the empire.

“It is not right that the minority should rule over the majority,” cried some. Others accused the Jews, loosely and without adducing any proofs, of forming a freemasonry and of always placing the interests of their brethren above those of the country. That there was some kind of systematic co-operation among the Jews seems probable. It is also probable that there was a certain degree of truth in the charge of “clandestine manipulation of the press” for the purpose of shielding even Jews unworthy of protection. But for this the Germans had only themselves to thank. By attacking the Jews as a tribe they stimulated the tribal feeling among them. The social isolation to which they condemned the Jew intensified his gift of reciprocity. To the German Christians the Jew, however patriotic and unexceptionable he may be as a citizen, as a man is a Jew—an alien, an infidel, an upstart, a parasite. His genius is said to be purely utilitarian, his religion externally an observance of empty forms, essentially a worship of the golden calf, and worldly success his highest moral ideal. German professors analysed the Jewish mind and found it Semitic, German theologians sought for the Jewish soul and could find none. Both classes, agreeing in nothing else, concurred in denouncing the Jew as a sinister creature, strangely wanting in spiritual qualities—a being whose whole existence, devoid of faith of any kind, revolves between his cash-book and the book of the Law. Perhaps the most remarkable consequence of all was the growth of an anti-Semitic school of exegesis of the Old Testament.

These, then, were the grievances of the orthodox: the Jew’s want of religious feeling. Free-thinkers denounced him for a superabundance of that very feeling. Stöcker, with unctuous smartness, said, “the creed of the Jews stands on the blank page between the Old and the New Testament.” Duhring ponderously objected to “the tenacity with which the inherited religious manner of viewing things is rooted in the Jewish mind.” These charges, mutually exclusive though they were, were gladly espoused by those who only needed some theory whereby to dignify their spite. The Jew’s own foibles—his arrogance and love of display—supplied that minimum of excuse which has ever been deemed sufficient for persecution. The Jews, said their accusers, hold in their hands the golden key which opens all doors, and flourish it insolently before their less fortunate neighbours. They have killed the ancient simplicity and frugality of German life by their ostentatious luxury, and corrupted German idealism by their inordinate pursuit of material comfort. German idealism has been killed by nationalism and militarism. But, of course, no German patriot can be expected to see this. What, however, surprises one is that it does not seem to have occurred to those who denounce the Jew as the promoter of materialism that they have the remedy in their own hands. Let them cease to worship mammon, and mammon’s ministers will be discredited. As it is, they inveigh against the Jew for enjoying the very things which they themselves hunger after. In Germany, as elsewhere, Christian panegyrists of plain living and high thinking would perhaps like the Jewish millionaire better if they resembled him less.

Prince Bismarck, in the prosecution of his great political object of a united Germany had courted the support of the Liberal party, which, on its side, was not unwilling to help a man who, no matter how anti-Liberal his domestic policy might be, was, in the main, the hierophant of the German nation’s aspirations. Thus, in 1866, there came into being the National Liberal Party. Their position was, however, a false one, as their support of Bismarck and their Liberal tendencies could not be reconciled for a long time. But, while the alliance lasted, the Liberals were instrumental in introducing many legislative measures in the direction of progress, including certain reforms as to banking and commerce. These innovations gave offence to several classes of the population, and the fact that one of the leaders of the National Liberal Party, Lasker, and a great many of its members were Jews, was a brilliant opportunity for the reactionary elements.[232] The Conservatives caught at the opportunity for discrediting the obnoxious reforms by describing them as deliberately intended to serve the interests of the Jews. Prince Bismarck, now hostile to a party for which he had no further use, transferred the weight of his political and personal influence to their adversaries and tried to lure the extreme Conservatives and Catholics, as well as the working classes, by invigorating the anti-Jewish agitation. The organs of these three parties were filled with diatribes against the Jews, and in October, 1879, the first anti-Jewish society was founded in Berlin and Dresden, with the object “to unite all non-Jewish Germans of all persuasions, all parties, all stations, into one common league, which, setting aside all separate interests, all political differences, shall strive, with all earnestness and diligence for the one end viz., to save our German fatherland from becoming completely Judaised, and render residence in it supportable to the posterity of the aborigines.”[233] In accordance with this patriotic programme the society christened itself “The Anti-Semitic League,” partly because there was a sound of learning in the word and partly to make it clear that the race, and not merely the religion, of the Jew had aroused animosity.[234] Prince Bismarck on being interrogated about the movement is said to have answered, “As a Minister of State, I condemn it; but as a Prussian, as a German, as a Christian, as a man, I cannot help but approve of it.” This speech, when compared with the speaker’s utterances of thirty years before,[235] affords sufficiently painful evidence of the long stride which German statesmanship had taken backwards.

Thus the pedantry of the schools joined hands with the prejudice of the streets, social and political interests combined with national vanity, economic jealousy, scientific sophistry, and religious bigotry to bring into being a movement so utterly incongruous with modern, and especially with German, ideas.

In 1880 and 1881 the warfare continued with systematized vigour and increasing violence. Judenhetze, under its less vulgar name, became a virulent epidemic. Both Catholic and Lutheran clerics, mortally hostile in everything else, joined forces against the common enemy, and vied with each other in their efforts to gain the goodwill of the Christian Socialists. The Social Democrats were the only party to denounce the anti-Semitic agitation and to take under their protection the persecuted people; an attitude which earned them the sincere detestation of the ultra-Conservatives. Herr Marr, the great anti-Jewish pamphleteer, however, devoted a whole masterpiece to the demonstration of the fact that the Social Democrats, whom he elegantly called “red mice,” were in every way to be preferred to the Jewish “golden rats.” But the movement, none the less, continued progressing. Meetings were held at which the “Semites” were furiously attacked. The members of the “German” League passed solemn resolutions to eschew all intercourse, social or commercial, with the enemies of the Teutonic race, and Herr Stöcker and his followers, in their zeal for “the strengthening of the Christian Germanic spirit,” presented a petition to the Prussian Chambers, praying:

“That immigration of foreign Jews into Germany might have some restrictions placed upon it.

“That the Jews might be excluded from all posts of supreme authority, and that in courts of justice a certain limitation of their power be instituted.

“That Christian schools, though used by Jewish scholars, should remain distinctively Christian, and that Jewish teachers only be employed where the nature of the subject taught renders it desirable.