The humiliation of the Jews soon showed itself in practical life. Lübeck, protected by the unfair interpretation of a paragraph, ordered more than forty Jewish families to leave the town (September, 1815). Bremen did the same with its Jews. Frankfort could not eject its Jewish inhabitants, but their lives were embittered; they were shut out from civil assemblies, Jewish functionaries were deposed, they were excluded from many trades and industries, marriage permits asked by Jewish couples were refused with the heartlessness of the Middle Ages, they were forbidden to live in certain parts of the town, and were treated as though they were still servi cameræ. But as the Senate knew that Prussia and Austria regarded it as a point of honor to preserve intact the civil rights of the Jews of Frankfort, and that the Federal Diet, at the instance of both great powers, might easily determine the controversy in favor of the Jews, it applied to three German juridical faculties, those of Berlin, Marburg, and Giessen, to have the question decided as one of law.
This struggle between the Frankfort Senate and the Jews, protracted during nine years (1815–24), and occasioning many vexations, will ever remain a stain on the time, a monument of German narrow-mindedness. The Jews, relying on the assurance of the two German powers, believed that their civil rights were guarded as by a triple wall.
But just this manifest truth, the Teutomaniacs and sophists, suddenly developed into bigots, sought to obscure and cry down. From all parts of Germany there resounded simultaneously outcries against the Jews, urging the nation, or the German federation, to enslave the Jews or destroy them. Journals and pamphlets raged against them, as if Germany or Christendom could be saved only by the destruction of the Jews.
The most violent attack was that of a physician and professor of natural science at Heidelberg, J. F. Fries, "Danger to the Welfare and Character of the Germans through the Jews" (summer, 1816), in which he asserted that the Jews ought to be expelled the country, that the tribe must be exterminated root and branch, as among all secret and political societies they were most dangerous to the state. "Ask man after man, and see, whether every peasant and every burgher do not hate and curse the Jews as national pests and bread robbers." The Jews, he said, had contrived to get more than half the entire capital of Frankfort into their hands. "Let them go on for forty years, and the sons of the first Christian houses will seek service among the Jews in the meanest capacities." It is remarkable that in the face of such passionate incitement, wild outbreaks against the Jews did not occur at that time, especially as Fries' pamphlet was read in all taverns and public-houses.
Was no Christian voice raised against this injustice? For the honor of the Germans it must be mentioned that some men had the courage to contend against crass prejudice and blind hatred. A highly respected and learned councilor in Ratisbon, August Krämer, wrote a defense, "The Jews and their Just Claims on the Christian States; a Contribution to the Mitigation of the Cruel Prejudices against the Jewish Nation." Councilor Schmidt, in Hildburghausen, on the one hand, pictured the abominable scenes which Christian fanaticism had in the past enacted against Jews, and, on the other hand, showed the superiority of culture possessed by the latter over the Christians in Spain. But their most thorough-going advocate was Johann Ludwig Ewald, a reformed clergyman of Carlsruhe, of high position, and seventy years old. Rühs' and Fries' malignant statements about the Jews incensed him so deeply, that he denied himself a season's recreation in Baden, and employed the time in giving the lie to their impudent assertions in a pamphlet (1816). Ewald vindicated the downtrodden sons of Israel in the name of Christianity, whose representative he was. Every groundless complaint against them he dissolved into nothing. From England and France, too, admonitions reached the Germans not to expose their own pettiness by their insane hatred of the Jews. An English paper thought that the town of Lübeck, as well as all the free towns, ought to be deprived of their independence (of which they had made so infamous a use) by the German federation, on account of the ignorant intolerance displayed against the Jews. A French writer, M. Bail, vindicated the unhappy people in glowing language, and covered their German enemies with shame.
"The Jewish nation to a higher degree than any other possesses the ancient, sanctified character which excites astonishment. I never meet a rabbi adorned with a white beard without thinking of the venerable patriarchs. Nothing is more elevating about the Israelites than their solemn life, which makes them the most devoted and honorable people on earth. In their midst is to be found the illustration of all domestic virtues, of loving care for the needy, and profound reverence for parents. Happy, a thousand times happy, are the nations among whom the basis of morality has been preserved."
But if truth and justice had spoken with angels' tongues, the Germans of those days would have remained deaf to their voices. They were so deeply imbued with hatred of the Jews that they were irrational.
An organ of the Austrian government directed a sort of threat against the encroachments of the people of Lübeck upon the rights of the Jews.
"How can the future Federal Diet discuss the improvement of the condition of the Jews, if individual states anticipate it by the most cruel and arbitrary resolutions? This conduct exhibits want of respect as much towards the ensuing Federal Diet as towards the foremost courts of Germany, whose principles in regard to this matter have been often and loudly enough expressed."
What was done by Austria itself, which displayed such righteous indignation against Lübeck on behalf of the Jews? Francis I and his ruler Metternich completely forgot the benevolent intentions of Joseph II, and kept in mind only the hateful laws of Maria Theresa against the Jews. They did not indeed expel the Jews, as in Lübeck and Bremen, but they were relegated to Ghettos within Austria, beyond which they were not allowed to pass. Tyrol, the secluded mountain province, was closed to them as to Protestants. In Bohemia the mountain cities and villages were forbidden them, and in Moravia, in the great cities of Brünn and Olmütz, they were allowed to stay only over-night or for a short time. Everywhere there were Jew-streets; the restrictions imposed on the Jews of Austria had become proverbial, whilst in Galicia they met with greater oppression than in the Middle Ages. Even the benevolent regulations of Joseph II, in regard to compulsory school attendance and practical religious instruction, were carried out not so much to spread culture among the Jews as to torment and injure them. Emperor Francis ennobled a few Jews, but the others were humiliated; they were obliged to render military service, but the bravest were rarely admitted even to the lowest rungs of the military ladder.