anti-Semitic Movements Research Articles

Antisemitism, the Limits of Antisemitic Rhetoric, and a Movement against Russian Students at German Universities, 1908-1914

In pioneering articles in the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, authors like Norbert Kampe, Jack Wertheimer, and Keith Pickus described the experience of Jewish students and antisemitism at nineteenth century German universities.1 Many fraternities excluded Jewish students from membership. Large numbers of students signed the 1880 antisemitic petition that called on the German government to limit the numbers of Jews entering professions and to halt Jewish immigration. Perhaps most importantly, the Verein deutscher Studenten (Union of German Students) propagated antisemitism and styled itself as a nationalist vanguard. According to Norbert Kampe, antisemitism became a rigid social norm within student society and together these factors made universities important sites of antisemitic activism.2 Standard narratives describe the efforts of organised antisemites at universities as shaping the development of the antisemitic movement more generally.3 A new generation of scholars, however, has called into question some aspects of this picture. New comparative research has been important in measuring the particular strength of antisemitism in Germany. Historians are now more aware, in Albert S. Lindemann’s words, of how “post-Holocaust awareness has distorted perceptions of antisemitism”.4 A recent comparative study of the universities of Oxford and Heidelberg suggests that, in fact, German institutions were “more welcoming” to Jews than Britain’s oldest universities.5 Marion Kaplan and Oded Heilbronner have emphasised the importance of considering hostility to Jews as one among the many different conflicts and divisions within German society of this period. Concern about antisemitism was not at the centre of most German Jewish men’s and women’s lives.6 With this article I seek to contribute to this new move within the historiography of German Jewry.

The Jews in Mussolini's Italy: From Equality to Persecution, Michele Sarfatti(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), xv + 419 pp., $29.95. * L'Italie fasciste et la persecution des juifs, Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci (Paris: Perrin, 2007), 599 pp., 24.50

The persecution of the Jews in Fascist Italy remains enigmatic. There had been nothing antisemitic in the founding principles of the movement, and there had been a significant number of Jewish fascists from the very beginning; support for the Fascists grew to roughly ten percent of the Jewish population. Though many of the most important anti-Fascists were Jews, Jews also held important positions in Fascist organizations, as well as in government service, from local to national government, from education to the military (including admirals and generals). Unlike France, Austria, Germany, or other countries, during the late nineteenth century Italy witnessed no antisemitic movements or political parties whose familiar themes could be redeployed for political mobilization during the interwar years. By the time of the 1938 racial laws, almost sixteen years after Mussolini came to power, Italy's small Jewish population had been fully integrated into the mainstream, experiencing the highest rate of intermarriage of any Jewish community in Europe. Thanks to greater literacy than the rest of the population, Italy's Jews experienced unusually high rates of mobility during the liberal post-unification period. Though one-tenth of one percent of the population, Jews constituted more than seven percent of the university professorate, and by World War I there already had been three prime ministers of Jewish origin (Fortis, Sonnino, and Luzzatti); by comparison in France no Jew occupied such an important post until 1936. Clearly Mussolini's abrupt turn in 1938 lacked historical precedent, and strikes the comparative reader as an exception to the European pattern.

Revisiting Hateful Science: The Nazi “Contribution” to the Journey of Antisemitism

While this volume of the Journal of Hate Studies is devoted to “The Science of Hate”—research and knowledge about hate’s origins and manifestations seen through the lens of the empirical sciences—this contribution is a cautionary reminder that, like all human projects, intellectual and other, the sciences, too, can be perverted by its practitioners in the service of hate itself.1 The case study is that of the Nazi Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, MD, (1896-1969), eugenicist and geneticist, and, specifically, his (1938) text “Racial Biology of the Jews.” Of particular note is the American “connection,” in supplying both supporting legitimation for the pseudo-science of eugenics and two contemporary examples showing that the ideas of von Verschuer and other members of the German scientific community are far from extinct and continue to play a role in far Right antisemitic movements. The accompanying photographs remind us that this work of hateful science was not confined to intellectual theorizing or laboratory work with lower-order animals, but was made real in the death camps under Nazi hegemony.

60 Years Israel - A Catastrophe? Reply to the Integration Speaker of the Muslim Religious Community in Austria, Mr. Omar Al-Rawi (60 Jahre Israel - Eine Katastrophe? - Replik an Den Herrn Integrationsbeauftragten Der Islamischen Glaubensgemeinschaft in Oesterreich, Landtagsabgeordneten Ing. Omar Al-Rawi)

This article contradicts the theses published by the head of the Integration Department of Austria's official Muslim Community, Mr. Omar Al-Rawi, in the Vienna daily Die Presse (May 15th 2008) on 60 years Israel - 60 years of catastrophe. His article has to be contradicted on behalf of Social Democracy, on behalf of Austrian foreign policy and on behalf of a liberal and tolerant, cosmopolitan Islam. Mr. Omar Al-Rawi says: * the Palestinians have nothing to do with the Holocaust * Hamas will become a political movement, capable of transforming itself * Muslims in Europe have nothing to do with the dark history of Europe. There is a legitimate demand of Palestinian solidarity. It is time to remember the NakbaThe author hopes to provide a more balanced view of events:The tragic events of the year 1948, during which ultimately 2000 Jewish and 13,000 Palestinian civilians have lost their lives, were caused in the ultimate analysis by the anti-Jewish ideology of militant Arab nationalism, which from the beginning did not accept the coexistence between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. The military and political leadership of the young Israeli state at the time of the attack from the outside against the young Jewish state (5 Arab armies) was confronted with the tough question of possible internal subversion. Mr. Omar Al-Rawi does not mention the fact that the countries of asylum for the Palestinian refugees for many years did nothing to incorporate Palestinian asylum seekers. The author then analyses at length the role of Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the important Palestinian religious and political leader at the time, who was a close collaborator of the Nazi regime. The author then analyses the continuity of anti-Jewish Arab extreme nationalism in the Charta of the Hamas movement, which even quotes passages from the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is the worst anti-Semitic propaganda pamphlet before Hitler's Mein Kampf. Hamas blames in its Charta the Freemasons for French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and World Wars of the 20th Century. All this is decently neglected by this important Austrian politician and religious leader.While the website of the Austrian social democracy provides under the heading Israel unequivocally a link to the Aavoda Party - the Israeli Labor Party under Ehud Barak, Mr. Omar Al-Rawi tries to introduce the xenophobic and anti-Semitic Hamas movement as a possible partner for dialogue and cooperation.The author then analyses on the basis of Encyclopedia Judaica today's scientific consensus on the true dimensions of what constituted the al Nakba. The new generation of historians in Israel does not exclude these thorny questions, but it has to be said at the same time that Medinat Israel - the state of Israel - fully respects the Muslim minority, and that a genuine peace and an alternative social policy would facilitate a better socio-political integration. On the basis of European Social Survey data the author shows that the following relationships hold in the country (percentages per total population group):* low trust in the way democracy works in the country, 2002 non-Muslims 25.7 Muslims 49.3 * very difficult on present income, 2002 non-Muslims 39.5 Muslims 47.4 * low trust in parliament 2002, non-Muslims 32.3 Muslims 41.7 * low trust in the police 2002, non-Muslims 14.8 Muslims 26.8 * low trust in the legal system 2002, non-Muslims 15 Muslims 16.4 Inferences about the true dimensions of necessary, feasible and possible change can also can be drawn from the data series of the inequality project at the University of Texas (Prof. JK Galbraith) and World Bank and ILO data series. Globalization and the neo-liberal policies of past Likud governments indeed certainly increased the social contradictions of Israeli society. But a fair and proper balance on Israel 60 would imply that all this - with Israel being a democracy - is debated where it should be - in the Parliament, and that a fair balance would also necessarily imply to state in clearest possible terms Israel's right of existence as a basic and necessary principle of Austrian foreign policy, repeated many times by successive Austrian heads of government and foreign ministers. In analytical terms, the peaceful coexistence and collaboration between Turkey and Israel could serve as a role model for the region. The article also contrasts the unacceptable perspective of Mr. Omar Al-Rawi with the plurality of peaceful coexistence patterns, which the majority of the countries of origin of Austria's Muslims already established with Medinat Israel, and also shows the very positive patterns of active Muslim solidarity with Europe's persecuted Jewry at the time of the Shoa by such countries as Albania and Turkey.

La saisie des biens juifs en Roumanie

Confiscation of Jewish property by the fascist regime in Romania during the Holocaust years was the fulfillment of an old anti-Semitic plan of the nationalist and anti-Semitic movements, not an imitation of the Nazi-German “Arization” action. This paper deals with the seizure of Jewish property in various parts of Romania according to the different fate of the Jews in those areas.Nationalization by anti-Semitic and racial legislation, confiscation of property and plunder by eviction from rural areas and towns; use of force and terror in order to force the Jews to hand over various kinds of property, businesses and money; taxes, levies and “contributions” in Old Romania and southern Transylvania; confiscation, nationalization, robbery during the liquidation and deportation campaign in Bessarabia and Bukovina; post-factum “legalization” of the plunder campaigns; and, finally, seizure of property of all sorts, taken from the Jews deported in Transnistria before their deportation, during and after the mass murder actions.

Le « Réveil juif » en France et en Allemagne Éléments de comparaison en manière d'introduction

In the twenties, Jews occupied an increasingly visible place in the French public sphere. More than ever before, they felt free to explore the particularities of Jewish identity and culture in the mo-dern world in literature, theatre and debating clubs. Both Jewish authors’ choice of themes and contemporary criticism of their writing reveal many of the tensions and conflicts that the Jewish “revival” of the 1920s raised within the French Jewish community. Some French Jews saw no need for self-censorship and welcomed what they saw as an opportunity to counter stereotypes and share the reality of Jewish life, with all its diversity and contradictions. Others, by contrast, expressed concern that this literary “revival” was popularizing dangerously sensationalist, stereotyped images of Jews and Judaism to the French public. These concerns were heightened by the fact that many Jewish authors of the day conveyed an image of Jewishness as an indelible “racial” trait not dissimilar to that of the anti-Semitic movement, which, critics portentously suggested, had perhaps not had its final word in France.

The Jewish Community of Salonica under Siege: The Antisemitic Violence of the Summer of 1931

The antisemitic violence that took place in Salonica during the summer of 1931 constituted a defining moment not just for the city’s Jewish community and relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Greeks, but also for the development of Greek nationalism. After the Greek military defeat of 1922 and the conclusion of the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, Salonica had become a battleground for the reconfiguration of Greek national identity. It was there that the problems of territorial insecurities, the influx of refugees from Anatolia, struggles between various ethnic, religious, and cultural groups, and the wider battle between Venizelism and its opponents played out. Antisemitism proved successful when it could be effectively aligned with these primary causes of social, political, and economic anxiety. Moreover, antisemitic movements in other European countries (primarily Hungary and Romania) set a precedent for the hyper-nationalist, anti-communist, and intensely xenophobic discourse of the period. But Greece was out of step with much of the rest of Europe in that 1931 represented the peak of antisemitic momentum in that country and not a step on the path to further escalation.

Fruitful Death: Mircea Eliade and Ernst Jünger on Human Sacrifice, 1937–1945

AbstractMircea Eliade, the writer and historian of religions, and Ernst Jünger, the hero of the Great War, novelist, and essayist, met in the 1950s and co-edited twelve issues of the periodical Antaios. Before they met and cooperated, however, and while the German writer knew about Eliade from their common friend, Carl Schmitt, they both dealt with the subject of human sacrifice. Eliade began to do so in the thirties, and his interest in that theme was at least in part an aspect of his political activism on behalf of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, or the Iron Guard, the nationalistic and anti-Semitic movement lead by Corneliu Codreanu. Sacrificial ideology was a central aspect of the Legion's political theories, as well as of the practice of its members. After the Iron Guard was outlawed by its allies, and many of its members had been killed, and while the Romanian regime of Marshal Ion Antonescu was still fighting alongside the National Socialist regime in the Second World War, Eliade turned to other aspects of sacrificial ideology. In 1939 he wrote the play Iphigenia, celebrating Agamemnon's daughter as a willing victim whose death made the Greek conquest of Troy possible; and as a member of the regime's diplomatic service in Lisbon he published a book in Portuguese on Romanian virtues (1943), in which he presented what he called Two Myths of Romanian Spirituality, extolling his nation's readiness to die through the description of the sacrificial traditions of Master Manole and of the Ewe Lamb (Mioritza). Jünger's attitude to sacrifice ran along lines that were less traditional: possibly already while serving as a Wehrmacht officer, in his pamphlet Der Friede, the German writer attributed sacrificial status to all the victims of the Second World War, soldiers, workmen, and unknowing innocents, and saw their death as the ransom of a peace "without victory or defeat." In this article, the sacrificial ideologies of the two intellectuals are compared in order to reflect upon the complex interplay between traditional religious themes, more or less freely re-interpreted and transformed, political power, and violent conflict, in an age of warfare marked by fascisms and by the terrible massacre some refer to by the name of an ancient Greek sacrificial practice.

Conservatives and Antisemites in Baden and Saxony

‘There are two words that cannot be uttered without causing a Saxon to become greatly agitated: Jesuit and Jew.’ This observation by the arch-reactionary Saxon minister Count Friedrich Ferdinand von Beust provides an intriguing definition of Saxon identity. It is especially remarkable that Saxons should have become ‘greatly agitated’ on either score, because so few Catholics and Jews actually lived in the kingdom. Did Beust put his finger on the so-called ‘antisemitism-without-Jews’ syndrome and its less well-known corollary, ‘antiultramontanism-without-Catholics’? If so, how did different regional environments condition the search on the German Right for a popular leader, a ‘great agitator’ capable of rousing the masses? Did Conservative antagonism towards the Jews condition the Conservatives’ strategies for political success as they (also) defined themselves in opposition to liberals, democrats, and socialists? These questions provide a starting point for the following reflections on the interpenetration of Conservatism and antisemitism in Germany between the 1860s and 1914. Charges of demagoguery were hurled back and forth between antisemites and Conservatives in almost all German states. Yet ‘authoritarian’ and ‘demagogic’ solutions to the ‘Jewish question’ were not defined the same way everywhere. Certainly much work remains to be done on the microand macro planes before the Alltag of German antisemitism in the countryside or the role of political violence in shaping Imperial Germany’s electoral culture will come into focus. However, these desiderata hint at the usefulness of reconsidering evidence on the meso-level, that is, drawn from the region. We now have some excellent studies of regional antisemitic movements. Building on this body of work, the following analysis attempts to demonstrate that the lines between Conservatism and antisemitism became—for a time—so indistinct as to virtually disappear

Jewish Involvement in Shaping American Immigration Policy, 1881–1965: A Historical Review

This paper discusses Jewish involvement in shaping United States immigration policy. In addition to a periodic interest in fostering the immigration of co-religionists as a result of anti-Semitic movements, Jews have an interest in opposing the establishment of ethnically and culturally homogeneous societies in which they reside as minorities. Jews have been at the forefront in supporting movements aimed at altering the ethnic status quo in the United States in favor of immigration of non-European peoples. These activities have involved leadership in Congress, organizing and funding anti-restrictionist groups composed of Jews and gentiles, and originating intellectual movements opposed to evolutionary and biological perspectives in the social sciences.

Adolf Stoecker: Anti-Semite with a Christian mission

All histories of German anti-Semitism stand in the shadow of an unavoidable telos: Hitler and the Nazi Holocaust. One cannot treat individual leaders of the German anti-Semitic movement without considering their influence (or lack thereof) on the Nazi movement. Historians study nineteenth-century German anti-Semitism with an eye to its similarities to and differences from the anti Semitism of the Third Reich. Historians of anti-Semitism thus treat the German anti-Semitic movement as developmental: the German anti-Semitic movement is said to have evolved from cultural or Christian Judeophobia to cultural anti Semitism and finally to racial, "v?lkisch" anti-Semitism. Since the church leader and politician, Adolf Stoecker, repeatedly denounced racial anti-Semites and always preached anti-Semitism in the context of a more general call for the revival of German Christianity, historians have generally considered Stoecker's anti-Semitism to have been non-racist and relatively benign.

Antisemitism and orthodoxy in Russia today: A sociologist's view∗

Antisemitism in Russia has a complex and colourful history and its influence on Russian history has been very significant. The 'Black Hundreds' element within politics undoubtedly played an important role in the disintegration of the Russian state system before the Bolshevik revolution, as the memoirs of Count S. Witte clearly demonstrate. Until 1917 the majority of Russians automatically considered themselves Orthodox. Orthodoxy was the state ideology and it was therefore impossible to compare Orthodox antisemitism with non-Orthodox antisemitism. There are many examples of protests by the Orthodox intelligentsia against the phenomenon of antisemitism, for example, V. Solov'yev's letter Protiv antisemiticheskogo dvizheniya v pechati (Against the Antisemitic Movement in the Press), which was signed around 1890 by practically all the leading literary figures of that time. We also know that priests attempted to prevent pogroms carried out by the Black Hundreds, who called themselves the champions of Orthodoxy and used Orthodox phraseology and symbols; and that the Black Hundreds persecuted Orthodox priests, the most typical story being that of Metropolitan Antoni (Vadkovsky) (d. 1912), who refused to bless the activity of the Union of the Russian People. These are all well-known facts; but it is not possible to make a quantitative analysis of them. After 1917 a new era began for both Jews and Orthodox and for statistical surveys of society. Under Khrushchev sociology was allowed a little freedom, but under Brezhnev it was carefully restricted again with the result that until the late 1980s proper social research was inconceivable, especially in such a sensitive area. Historical circumstances then changed again, and it became not only permissible but also fashionable to consider oneself Orthodox; the number of those who did so grew rapidly to half the Russian population. In general, people began to express their opinions more openly, including what they thought of Jews. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which were born in the depths of the tsarist secret police and then played their evil part in fascist Germany, appeared in our shops again amidst a whole

Introduction to the Theme

Consideringall that is known about the place of anti-Semitism in German society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there are relatively few studies of anti-Semitism within a religious context. This is surprising given that Germany was and is more evenly divided numerically between Catholics and Protestants than almost any other large European nation, (about 60 percent Protestant to 40 percent Catholic). Most studies of anti-Semitism in the last two centuries have focused on various secular motivations. When scholars do choose to investigate religious anti-Semitism, almost all concentrate on Evangelical Lutherans or on Catholics, but not on both. Likewise, many historians consider religious anti-Semitism to be anachronistic. Yet many study the incidence of secular or modern anti-Semitism within a religious context whether institutional or popular, seldom paying equal attention to that context. Additionally, studies of anti-Semitism emphasized Protestantism and the Protestant north of Germany in particular, because, after 1870, that was where anti-Semitic political parties, movements, and groups appeared to thrive.

Les croix-de-feu et l'antisémitisme

The Croix-de-Feu and anti-semitism, Richard Millman. Was the League of the Croix-de-Feu an anti-semitic movement? What about the Parti social Français (PSF) after 1936? From a careful reading of the press and many accounts, the author draws a measured conclusion, distinguishing the leaders and their troups, before and after 1933, Paris and peripheric areas such as Alsace-Lorraine and Algeria. Quite clearly the Croix-de-Feu were not structured by anti-semitism, unlike other extreme right movements of the interwar period. But in proportion that is still unknown, many of the leagued members, with skulls against a background of crosses of honor, were antisemit.

Under Grand Haven's White Sheets

When the Ku Klux Klan began recruiting in Grand Haven in the fall of 1923, the editor of the Tribune observed that the klansmen's identities were matter of deep mystery.1 The Klan was so successful in maintaining secrecy about its membership that, up until now, scholars have been uncertain as to who donned the white sheets in Grand Haven and other Michigan towns. The Ku Klux Klan has appeared throughout the United States in several incarnations, the first a post-Civil War movement to control freed slaves; the second an anti-Catholic, anti-Black, anti-Semitic movement prominent after World War I; and a contemporary movement that has returned to its prominent anti-Black, anti-liberal origins. Although Michigan avoided most of the early activity, by the 1920s the Klan clearly had found fertile soil in the state. Historical studies of the KKK have pinpointed several areas as focal points of Klan activity. Norman F. Weaver's doctoral dissertation on the KKK in the Midwest examined the Republican primary election of Septem ber 1924 to identify the greatest concentration of Klan strength in Michigan. He concluded that the vote for two Invisible Empire gubernatorial candidates established a substantial Klan membership in Detroit, in central Michigan, in parts of the Thumb, and in a few counties along the west coast of Michigan from Muskegon north. In the western counties, Weaver singled out the Holland Dutch, who took to the Klan and joined in large numbers.2 David M. Chalmers, in a subsequent study, propounded a similar view: the Klan had spread throughout the small towns and industrial cities of Michigan and up the shores of Lake Michigan where the

Sexual Scenarios in Freud's Joke-Analysis

MOST STUDIES OF JOKES AND THEIR RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS take the book at face-value, as an analysis of humor, and avoid discussion of its inherent oddities.' Freud's title indicates that the work is a psychoanalytic, scientific deconstruction of jokes in general, and indeed his terminology for jokes parallels that for his scientific dream-interpretation: most obvious is the similarity between the phrases dream-work and joke-work, a similarity which emphasizes the resemblance between the processes concerned in producing jokes and dreams as Freud himself notes (91n1).2 But Freud's interest in jokes was much more personal than he implies on the level of text. His sub-textual agenda is an attempt to fulfill a wish, to solve a problem. Interestingly enough, Freud twice quoted Goethe's phrase, where he makes a jest, a problem lies concealed (Schorske 181; emphasis mine);3 the problem Freud conceals in the Jewish jests that he tells and analyzes is a problem of identity. If Jokes is read with attention to Freud's self-image as a Jewish physician in fin-de-sikcle Vienna, its puzzling contents begin to make more sense. historical context of Freud's book sheds light on his use of Jewish jokes, which comprise most of the examples in the work. wish that he tries to fulfill in writing the book on Jewish jokes is, ironically, a version of his wish to free himself from the Jewish cultural milieu in Vienna, which was plagued by anti-Semitism. The increasing importance of the effects of the anti-Semitic movement upon our emotional life helped to fix the thoughts and feelings of those early days, writes Freud (The Interpretation of Dreams, 196). Jokes, then, contains a subplot of personal as does Interpretation of Dreams (Schorske 183), a history that is buried in the psychoanalytic discourse Freud himself invented. language he uses to disguise or invent himself is neutral, devoid of any distinguishing Jewish dialect. As a Jew, Freud was encountering great difficulty in attaining a professorship, and he was determined to

Jews in German liberal politics: Prague, 1880–1914

Surprisingly little is known about the extent and conditions for Jewish participation in political life in Central and East Central Europe in the half century before World War I. This is surprising because historians have made the processes of the emancipation of the Jews and their subsequent assimilation into one of the principal concerns of research on European Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and because, too, one of the focuses of this research has been legal and political developments.1 Most general studies of Central and East Central European Jews have emphasized the late, often piecemeal character of their emancipation from inferior legal and social status, the impediments to their integration into surrounding societies, and the rise of political anti-Semitism as a response to general modernization. Readers are left to conclude that the direct role of the Jews in general politics in the brief period between their gaining political rights and the emergence of powerful anti-Semitic movements was sharply restricted.2 Recent studies of Jewish political responses to anti-Semitism and of the emergence of Jewish nationalist movements have tended to reinforce the general impression of the limited Jewish role in non-Jewish political affairs.3

American-Jewish Reactions to the Spanish Civil War

European Jews during the 1930s were confronted with severe economic and political threats to their existence and safety. One should need only to recall Nazi Germany as an example of the most calculated and vicious form of anti-Semitism. The gradual exclusion of Jews from public life, coupled with lootings and confiscations of property, was copied to lesser degrees in Austria, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania.1 No country, not even the western democracies, was without anti-Semitic movements, and literally millions of distraught Jews, if given the option and the means, would have emigrated to Palestine and elsewhere. Not so widely known, however, is the fate of the small Jewish community in Spain during the tragic Spanish Civil War (1936 1939). The origin of this remarkable community, rebuilt anew only after its abolition under the Spanish Inquisition in 1834, has been told elsewhere and needs not to be repeated here.2 The existence of a Jewish population in Spain is an inextricable aspect of this article. In it the author will identify and interpret the reactions of Jews in the United States to the Spanish Civil War as reflected by the Jewish press. The insights gathered by this study will serve to explain the overwhelming pro-Loyalist position taken by the American Jew ish press and its difference from the Catholic position on the

Sigmund Freud and the Politics of Marginality

Relying heavily upon Freud's greatest work, The Interpretation of Dreams, Professors Carl Schorske and William McGrath have attempted to increase our understanding of the origins of psychoanalysis. Both authors feel that the key to Freud's discoveries lies in his reaction to the sociopolitical realities of late nineteenth-century Vienna, and while the articles differ somewhat in emphasis their arguments are sufficiently similar so that they can be treated together. To Schorske and McGrath psychoanalysis had its origins in Freud's decision to give up his initial desire to mount a direct political (even revolutionary) attack on the inequities of the existing society for a “counter-political” psychology which enabled him to adjust to the existing political situation and even achieve a measure of scientific success. As a youth Freud had radical political aspirations and was even active in radical political organizations. However, the hopelessness of the liberal position in Vienna and the rise of anti-Semitic popular movements led Freud to believe that direct political action would not be successful. By reducing political conflict to father-son conflict Freud, like other liberals, would ignore the reality of the political and learn to live (albeit imperfectly) in a world which he could not influence. A career in science could bring recognition and at least partial acceptance, and thus a minimum of satisfaction at least.