Since the time when his mind began to mature, he beheld in the Jews only money-makers, as on the Exchange at Frankfort, or deriders of religion ashamed of their race, as in the salon of Henrietta Herz; moreover, his education had made Judaism seem so despicable that he did not judge it worthy of consideration. Thus Börne never understood what was most sacred to the Jews, and he was unable to fathom the depths of his own mind, and discriminate between what he owed to the general state of culture and what to Judaism.
His healthy spirit, however, and love for the oppressed guarded him from the unprincipled conduct of Rachel, of those who frequented the salons at Berlin, and of many others who turned their backs contemptuously upon the Jews. Even as a youth Börne hated the idea that the word "Jew" might be insultingly cast at him.
"And when they come and tell you that you are a Jew," he wrote in his diary, "how they bandy about the Jewish jargon, so that one must almost die of laughter.
"Oh! when I think of that, my mind is tossed as by a storm, my soul would fain burst from its dwelling-place, and seek the body of a lion, that it might meet the villain with jaw and claw."
His anticipations proved correct, he was not spared the insult, and his lion's claw was shown. While a student, he procured from the police of Frankfort a passport, in which the spiteful police-clerk had inserted the words: "Jew of Frankfort."
"My blood stood still, but I could neither say nor do anything, for my father was present. I then swore in my heart: only wait, the time will come when I shall write a passport for you, a passport for all of you."
For a moment it seemed as if Börne would forget his oath. The Jews of Frankfort had bought equality for half a million of money, and Börne, who had studied law and shown himself a young man of promise, was one of the first to receive a position in the Frankfort police department. But if Börne was inclined to forget that he was a Jew, and remembered only that he was a German, the people of Frankfort did not forget it, and imprudently and brutally reminded him of his secret oath. He was the first victim of the reaction; he was expelled from office, as soon as the Jews of Frankfort were driven back into the Ghetto. The insolent manner in which they were cheated out of trebly pledged freedom revolted Börne's feeling for liberty, and he sharpened his first arrows in defense of the members of his own race. They were directed against the narrow-minded citizens of Frankfort, who in the nineteenth century had restored the laws of 1616 concerning the residence of the Jews, "that romance of malice," as Börne called them. The feelings which agitated him during the years of ever-increasing reaction against the Jews he put into the mouth of a Jewish officer in a novel:
"You stole from me the pleasures of childhood, you arrant knaves! You threw salt into the sweet cup of my youth, you placed malicious slander and hateful derision in my road in manhood; arrest me you could not, but fatigued, vexed, without joyfulness, I reached my goal.... That I cannot even revenge myself, that I should not have the power to forgive, nor the weakness to chastise! They are out of my reach in their fox-hole!... You ask me why I shun my fatherland. I have none; I have never left my home. My home is in dungeons; where there is persecution I breathe the atmosphere of my childhood. The moon is as near to me as is Germany."
Instead of revenging himself for the wounds inflicted upon him and the members of his race by German Jew-hatred, Börne undertook the difficult task of extinguishing this hatred. In the "Waage," his organ, he erected ideal standards, by which he measured the narrow, petty circumstances of the Germans, and their short-sightedness.