Racial anti-Semitism Research Articles

HYSTERIA, HEREDITY AND ANTI-SEMITISM: FREUD'S QUIET REBELLION

In this paper, the author examines two episodes in Freud's early professional life which, she suggests, played a crucial role in the development of psychoanalysis. As a result of these episodes, Freud's warm relationship with Jean-Martin Charcot cooled markedly and his more intimate relationship with Josef Breuer broke down altogether. While Freud never referred to the circumstances surrounding these rifts, the author proposes that both cases had, at their core, issues surrounding scientific theories of the time about innate Jewish tendencies to neuropathic disease and hysteria, theories which played an important role in the development of racial anti-Semitism. She proposes that these theories contributed in important respects to Freud's historic leap from the prevailing theory of heredity as the primary cause of hysteria to one of a sexual aetiology.

Nationalism, Reform Judaism and the Hebrew Prayer Book

ABSTRACT. The Hebrew prayer book (siddur), the oldest of which dates from the ninth century, frequently expresses Jewish chosenness and hopes for the gathering of the exiles and the return to the Land of Israel. In nineteenth-century German Reform prayer books, such references to Jewish nationalism were altered or eliminated. In an age of growing European nationalism, this attempt to ‘de-nationalise’ Jewish identity was virtually unique. Responding to accusations that Jewish citizenship in the modern nation-state was incompatible with Judaism, Reform rabbis, who were engaged in the struggle for Jewish emancipation, claimed that patriotic loyalty to the German fatherland must supersede Jewish national identity. This article discusses the offending nationalist content of the siddur and the historical context in which it was suppressed. It concludes that the German reformers, by drawing attention to the nationalist potential of traditional Judaism, indirectly prepared the way for the rise of Jewish nationalism in reaction to racial anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth century.

Fragments of Jewish Identity

It has sometimes been suggested that works on psychoanalysis, rather than being shelved in psychology sections in bookshops and libraries, should instead be listed under Studies. This is not quite as whimsical as it might seem: not only have psychoanalysts often been Jewish, but those who are not are frequently thought of as if they were. In addition, it can be argued that psychoanalysis is heavily indebted to, and informed by, Jewish perspectives, attitudes, ethics, and methodological approaches. Starting as it did with Freud, its origins were deeply embedded in the secular culture of the late nineteenth century, at a time in Europe when and other identities were being debated and undergoing radical change (Yerushalmi 1991). Anti-Semitism was a powerful political and cultural force, science was struggling with religion, romanticism was having its nostalgic last gasp, and the revolutionary movements of the twentieth century in politics, science, and the arts were being born. The Jews were both inside and outside Western society: newly emancipated and able to claim influential positions, yet still victims of social exclusion, anti-Semitic populism, and new forms of racial anti-Semitism that were gradually replacing the old Christian anti-Judaism.

Richard Wagners Das Judentum in der Musik: Eine kritische Dokumentation als Beitrag zur Geschichte Antisemitismus (review)

Frankfurt a.M.: Insel Verlag, 2000. 380 pp. DM 19.90. Richard Wagner's antisemitism is undeniable, even though many of those who admire and love his music would prefer to hide or hush up this fact. Is this antisemitism understandable in psychological terms? According to Otto Weiniger's Geschlecht und Charakter (1903), hate like love is a form of projection: Whoever hates Jewish nature hates it first of all in himself; he persecutes it in others primarily in an effort to disconnect himself from this Jewishness. In this way, for at least a while, by locating it in another human being, he believes he is free of it. According to Weiniger, this projection applies in no small measure to Wagner. It turns out that Wagner's contemporaries accused him -- particularly through caricature and satire -- of a putative racial (blutmassiges) or spiritual closeness to Jewishness. Through his Jew-hatred Wagner thus tried to ward off these accusations. Gustav Freytag in his work Der Streit um das Judentum in der Musik (1869) maintains that if one examines inner meaning of Wagner's pamphlet -- Das Judentum in der Musik -- in period from 1850 through 1869, he himself comes across as the biggest Jew. From a critical viewpoint Freytag's work is quite opposed to Wagner and far removed from any tinge of It is one of many contemporary documents -- most of which are not easily accessible -- now reprinted in Jens Malte Fischer's collection. Fischer's aim is to make a contribution to history of antisemitism. In a comprehensive and down-to-earth fashion he examines first of all sources of pamphlet. In 1850, spurred on by friend Theodor Uhlig, Wagner started a campaign directed against Meyerbeer, one which reflected current controversies. Fischer considers this an early antisemitic phase, one that still excluded a fully formed racial premise in its arguments, but one ready to utilize commonly held perceptions of Jewishness. Fischer judges anonymous first edition of Wagner's pamphlet with a notable mildness, especially because he only utilizes arguments that were widespread through political spectrum of his time. The actual fall (into racial antisemitism) Fischer notes first in Wagner's persecution mania and conspiracy phobia that characterized second edition of his anti-Jewish polemic. In 1869 this piece burst maliciously into a situation where development of Jews in Germany had been relatively peaceful. In contrast to almost ineffectual first edition, this one had disastrous consequences. …

The Discourse on Yiddish in German: From the Enlightenment to the Second Empire (review)

by Jeffrey A. Grossman. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000. 258 pp. $59.00.From German Enlightenment to last third of nineteenth century, Jeffrey Grossmann traces views on Yiddish and East European Jewish culture held by German professionals, scholars, intellectuals and politicians as well as by who, following vision of German Enlightenment, adopted German language and considered emancipation and eventual assimilation if not desideratum, at least inevitable and destiny of Central European Jewry. Grossman's engaging and informative work succeeds in establishing the genealogy of image of Yiddish across range of texts, genres, institutions, and disciplines in context of a changing Germany. The study is inspired by growing interest in things Jewish in post-Shoah world, validity and motivation of which Grossman explores briefly. In recent years Yiddish language and Yiddish literature in translation have enjoyed remarkable popularity both in German-speaking countries and in United States, renouveau that inspired in part Grossman's in-depth examination of function of Yiddish within German and German Jewish culture over past centuries.The issues of religious and racial antisemitism, utilitarian interest in Yiddish on part of Christian missionaries and criminologists, and derogatory representation of speakers of Yiddish in German literature and theater as well as scholarly, but nonetheless biased, discussions on Jewish languages by Herder and Humboldt are central issues in Grossman's study. Concurrently author sketches origins and development of Yiddish alongside and embedded in German culture and explores interaction between German and Yiddish, German-Jewish and traditional Jewish culture, i.e., Yiddish-internal issues that involve construction and reconstruction of Jewish identity in response to changing social and political paradigms during century of transitions. This interrelationship has been briefly addressed in earlier works, e.g., Jacobs and Lorenz's recent article If I were King of Jews (not referenced by Grossman), but clearly study at hand exceeds framework set by earlier scholarship on linguistic/cultural interactions.Grossman explores German discourse on Yiddish in conjunction with decisive historical events and developments. The demise of Holy Roman Empire and ensuing concepts of nationhood and nation state called for new paradigms to configure statehood and language. Grossman's analysis of Herder's and Humboldt's theories of language shows that already existing association between Yiddish, other supposedly corrupted languages such as Romani, and jargon of underworld, Rotwelsch, now confirmed by academics, received scientific approval. …

Literarischer Antisemitismus: Untersuchungen zu Gustav Freytag und anderen burgerlichen Schriftstellern des 19. Jahrhunderts (review)

Reviewed by: Literarischer Antisemitismus: Untersuchungen zu Gustav Freytag und anderen bürgerlichen Schriftstellern des 19. Jahrhunderts Klaus L. Berghahn Literarischer Antisemitismus: Untersuchungen zu Gustav Freytag und anderen bürgerlichen Schriftstellern des 19. Jahrhunderts, by Martin Gubser. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 1998. 327 pp. DM 68.00. The controversies surrounding German novelists of the nineteenth century, when it comes to the “Jewish Question,” are all too familiar; they surface with predictable regularity at conferences on German-Jewish literature and history. Were many novelists of German Realism antisemites, or were their novels merely the result of the poetic truth of their critical realism? Is it possible to separate the intention of an author from the later antisemitic reception of his work, as some scholars argue? Or can one distinguish between the artistic value of a novel and other antisemitic utterances of an author? Are there not well-known cases where an author clearly presents stereotypical Jewish characters in his novels, but is otherwise a tolerant liberal who would even defend Jews against any defamation? A case in point is Gustav Freytag, an almost forgotten popular novelist of the nineteenth century, who wrote Soll und Haben (1855), which has become—next to Raabe’s Hungerpastor—the paradigm for such discussions. To overcome this uncertainty or undecidedness once and for all is the intention of Martin Gubser’s dissertation (Fribourg, 1995). There is no question for Gubser of how to situate Freytag in this debate: As a journalist of the Grenzbote he was an antisemite, his novel Soll und Haben unmistakably demonstrated it, and only in his later years did he seem to have been an advocate of Jewish emancipation. Freytag thus becomes an exemplary case of literary antisemitism of the nineteenth century. To prove all this, Gubser has to cover a lot of ground: First, nothing less will do than to write a history of the Prussian Jews and their struggle for emancipation in the nineteenth century; second, he has to define antisemitism and to tell its history from the Christian crusades to Martin Luther up to Wilhelm Marr’s racial antisemitism (1096–1879); third, he has also to define what literary antisemitism is and how it is represented through genres, language, and argumentation. Thus, more than well prepared, he can make Gustav Freytag a test case in the second half of his dissertation. The result, after so much preparation, cannot surprise: Freytag is a literary antisemite. Gubser is, of course, not the first to discover this, but he does it with so much didacticism and so deductively that [End Page 136] one is overwhelmed by the evidence, especially in the case of Soll und Haben, which is perhaps the best chapter of the book. This would almost be enough to characterize this book and recommend it to readers who need all the information they can get to understand German literary antisemitism in the nineteenth century. There are a few things, however, which bothered this reviewer. As a teacher of German-Jewish culture I am tempted to recommend the book for its richness of information; as a literary historian I am a bit surprised by its simpli fications; and as a literary critic I am disturbed by its style. I don’t want to argue about Gubser’s short history of Jewish emancipation in Prussia since 1812, which one can find much better described in many other books, but I would strongly disagree with his characterization of Moses Mendelssohn or the Haskalah as forerunners on the slippery road of assimilation. The dialectic of emancipation and assimilation in nineteenth- century Germany is well known, but reading Gubser’s history of antisemitism in Germany one has the impression that there were hardly any voices opposed to it. The same is true for his history of literary antisemitism in the nineteenth century. He quotes the well-known examples, like Clemens Brentano (Gockel und Hinkel),Wilhelm Hauff (Jud Süss), Wilhelm Raabe (Hungerpastor), Karl Immermann (Die Epigonen) Wilhelm Busch (Die fromme Helene, Plisch und Plum), Felix Dahn (Kampf um Rom), and Freytag of course, but again the book leaves the reader with the impression that German literature from Romanticism to Realism was entirely antisemitic. (Not to mention...

Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust (review)

Reviewed by: Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust Donald L. Niewyk Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust, edited by Robert P. Ericksen and Susannah Heschel. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999. 223 pp. $22.00 (p). The German churches, once hailed for their “struggle” against control by the Nazi state, today are more commonly vilified for their capitulation to Nazi policies, including the persecution of racial minorities and political dissenters. The eight essays in this anthology document the intrusion of racial antisemitism into key Protestant and [End Page 147] Catholic institutions during the Third Reich, and they make it clear that this dogma was built upon traditional anti-Jewish sentiments that long predated Hitler. For the most part the authors summarize arguments that they have advanced previously at greater length. Hence this volume will prove valuable chiefly to readers approaching the subject for the first time, including undergraduates in religious history courses. The synthesis of National Socialism and Christianity advanced by the predom inantly Protestant “German Christian Movement” epitomizes church susceptibility to notions of blood racism. Doris L. Bergen shows that the Movement adopted an explicitly völkisch ideology in its efforts to establish a new, racially pure Volkskirche. Its members, styling themselves “the Storm Troopers of Christ” and asserting that Jesus was an Aryan, could neither dominate the entire structure of the Evangelical Church nor even maintain internal unity. And yet, Bergen argues, they were anything but marginal, since the state assured their control of most regional churches and theological faculties. Robert P. Ericksen explores the careers of three influential Protestant theologians who legitimized Nazism to the faithful. Paul Althaus, Emanuel Hirsch, and Gerhard Kittel may have differed among themselves about the place of the Old Testament in Christian thought, but all worked tirelessly to reconcile the churches with the Nazi state on the basis of an anti-Jewish theology. That was also the goal of the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, founded at Eisenach in 1939 by the Thuringian Church and directed by Jena theologian Walter Grundmann. Susannah Heschel’s analysis of the Institute’s propaganda demonstrates a sustained attack on Jews and Judaism that far exceeded the demands of self defense and political opportunism. In fact, it may have been influenced by the need to establish the uniqueness of Jesus on a racial basis at a time when some theologians were beginning to acknowledge that his teachings were anything but unique. As for the Confessing Church, that segment of German Protestantism that opposed extreme racism, Shelly Baranowski maintains that it was, at best, ambivalent about the Jews. Traditional antisemitism combined with cultural pessimism to soften its responses to state policies and mute any open condemnation of racial persecution. Baranowski implies that Hitler’s desire for a harmonious Germany might have caused him to back off in the face of opposition from the churches, but there are reasons to doubt that this would have been true in the case of the deportations of the German Jews. In what many readers will find the most controversial essay in the anthology, Kenneth C. Barnes extends elements of this condemnation of the Confessing Church to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Although Barnes acknowledges Bonhoeffer’s eventual break with the cautious policies of the Church, he judges his words and actions “small, tentative, restrained, and ambivalent” (p. 128). No examination of the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany can ignore relations with the Vatican, and Günter Lewy reasserts his well-known indictment of Pius XII for indifference and passivity during the Holocaust. Lewy argues that the Pope’s attitude both reflected and reinforced the Church’s traditional hostility toward the Jews, and that [End Page 148] in Germany ordinary Catholics, accustomed to that hostility, would not have understood a defense of the Jews by their spiritual leaders even if one had been forthcoming, partic ularly once the war began. An appreciation of the power of nationalism among German Catholics likewise informs Michael B. Lukens’ exploration of churchmen who sought a positive accommodation with the Nazi regime because they shared elements of its ideology and wanted to avoid internal divisions and apostasy. His exemplar, the Church historian Joseph Lortz, was...

Johann David Michaelis and the Colonial Imaginary: Orientalism and the Emergence of Racial Antisemitism in Eighteenth-Century Germany

L'article traite des racines de l'antisemitisme dans l'orientalisme theologique de la fin du XVIIIeme siecle en Allemagne, lie a la politique, chez Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791). L'A. etudie le concept de race meridionale chez Michaelis, sa polemique contre l'emancipation juive et son lien au colonialisme.

Johann David Michaelis and the Colonial Imaginary: Orientalism and the Emergence of Racial Antisemitism in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Johann David Michaelis and the Colonial Imaginary: Orientalism and the Emergence of Racial Antisemitism in Eighteenth-Century Germany

Anti-Semitism as Skill: Rudolf Virchow'sSchulstatistikand the Racial Composition of Germany

Oneof the major events in the history of German anti-Semitism has been, if not entirely overlooked, then misunderstood and misrepresented. In the 1870s, the professor of medicine, liberal politician, and anthropologist, Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), directed a study of the skin, hair, and eye color of 6,758,827 German school children, a study that marked “Jews” and “Germans” as racially different and trained a generation of Germans to perceive these differences both as real and as of political significance. Historians have been virtually unanimous in viewing this study as a blow against anti-Semitism, as a demonstration that there was neither a Jewish nor a German “race.” This interpretation has survived, I believe, because it supports and rests on a commonly held conception of racism as primarily an intellectual phenomenon, as a set of more-or-less explicit propositions held in the minds of individuals. Virchow, a well-known opponent of political anti-Semitism, was never motivated by hostility to Jews in conducting this research. Indeed, he understood his focus on Jews as simply a race (rather than as a religion or a culture) to indicate that the study was not anti-Semitic. Paradoxically, the study that Virchow designed and oversaw may have unintentionally provided an important practical basis for German racial anti-Semitism. By considering anti-Semitism as a set of skills rather than a philosophy, as hands-on practical knowledge more akin to riding a bicycle than to philosophical exposition, I hope to offer a new explanation of both Virchow's study of race and the place of that study in German history.

“PERMANENTLY BLACKED”: JULIA FRANKAU’S JEWISH RACE

IF THERE IS to be a challenge to the increasingly prevalent impulse to recover Anglo-Jewish texts from the silences of the archives, the challenge will undoubtedly arise in relation to the novels of Julia Frankau.1 Frankau’s late Victorian novels on Jewish subjects, Dr. Phillips: A Maida Vale Idyll (1887) and Pigs in Clover (1903), explore and authorize a particular set of attitudes known as “Jewish self-hatred,” and, I will argue, legitimate these attitudes by recourse to an idiosyncratic form of scientific racism. Moreover, as I will demonstrate, these texts have served as spurs to the production of racial anti-Semitism. In such a case, what does it mean to recover the text? For what purposes does one revive interest in a self-hating work that has a history of generating dangerous consequences?

Prussianism, Nazism, and Romanticism in the Thought of Victor Klemperer

The recent publication of Victor Klemperer's Tagebucher, 1933-1945, as well as his other diaries and memoirs, has forced us to re-evaluate work of this half-forgotten scholar.1 Klemperer, a professional philologist of Jewish origins, was able to survive era without leaving Germany largely because his wife was an Aryan. Deeply patriotic, he was increasingly tortured by question of just how closely German culture he had always championed might be related to Nazism he despised. While Klemperer originally believed that National Socialism was nothing more than a mixture of undeutsch foreign doctrines crabbed together by a fraudulent government, he eventually decided that it was a German phenomenon after all. In analysis of Language entitled LTI (Lingua Tertii Imperii) which he developed in his diaries and published in 1947, Klemperer thus attempted to formulate a coherent explanation of relationship between German culture and National Socialism by linking them both to Romanticism.2 But while characterization of Germanic culture as Romantic foreshadowed theories of a plethora of post-war historians, it was also flawed. Ironically, Klemperer's own writings contain elements of a more radical if controversial characterization of National Socialism. I. Nazism as Romanticism? Michael Nerlich has called Victor Klemperer of last if last representatives of French in a National Socialist Germany increasingly under spell of Romanticism.3 It was from perspective of Enlightenment that Klemperer asked central question which has continued to haunt modern historians from Meinecke to Goldhagen; namely, how could Germans of Goethe's time have mutated into those of Hitler's Reich.4 To answer this question, Klemperer believed, it was necessary to trace history of German antisemitism. As early as 1933 he had already noted that the fate of Hitler movement lies without question in Jewish affairs (liegt fraglos in der Judensache).5 In LTI, Klemperer went on to argue that constituted central and in every respect decisive factor in Nazism. Not only was Jew-hatred Nazi Party's most effective means of propaganda, its most effective and popular means of concretizing race doctrine, but it was actually for German masses identical with race itself.6 While conceding that antisemitism had been too common a feature in history to blame it on Germans alone, Klemperer also argued that German antisemitism of period was unique in three ways. In first place, its sheer virulence was atavistic, harking back to Medieval times. In second place, it arrived not in garb of past, but in that of most extreme modernity (sondern in hochster Modernitat). Finally, it was racial rather than religious, and thus irrevocable. 7 What appeared to be a return to Spanish doctrine of Limpieza de Sangre was now clothed in language of zoology. This emphasis on racial antisemitism only set Nazism apart from earlier forms of Jew hatred, but from other forms of fascism. Klemperer thus noted that although Italian fascism sought to restore Roman state, it never taught that the inhabitants of reconquered domains would stand lower in zoological scale than descendants of Romulus.8 But if antisemitism was unique, in what way was it particularly German? Klemperer attempted to answer this question by more or less distinguishing between general traits on one hand and specific doctrines on other. In course of his experiences under Nazism, he came to believe that general traits of Germans included a proto-Romantic tendency toward a megalomaniac universalism, a Grenzenlosigkeit which manifested itself in taking things beyond their conventional limits, a Grundeigenschaft der Masslosigkeit.9 In this context, Hitlerism exhibited a characteristically Romantic rejection of conventional boundaries, with its messianic pretensions and its fanatic agenda of die ganze Welt oder Nichts. …

German Question -- Jewish Question: Revolutionary Antisemitism from Kant to Wagner

In this compelling narrative of antisemitism in German thought, Paul proposes a fresh view of the topic. Beginning with an examination of the attitudes of Martin Luther, he challenges distinctions between theologically derived (medieval) and secular, racial (modern) antisemitism, arguing that there is an unbroken chain of antisemitic feeling between the two periods. Rose persuasively demonstrates that for almost all [German revolutionary thinkers of the right and left], the German Question was ensnarled in the Jewish Question, and that a deep kinship between left and right was expressed in the loaded opposition between Deutschtum and Judentum.--Robert Alter, New Republic The suggestion of the title of Paul Rose's imposing book that Kant, the patron saint of liberal humanitarianism, was in fact the initiator of an important, and perhaps the crucial, strand in German antisemitism may come as something of a shock. But for this and for a number of other, more comprehensive, propositions, Paul Lawrence has assembled a powerful, if rather single-minded case.--Anthony Quinton, New York Review of Books An intensely interesting, learned, and combative book.--Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Times Literary Supplement

Die deutsche Einheit und das Problem des Antisemitismus

The article deals with the German-Jewish discourse focussing on the decade before the unification of the two German states, and the period of unification itself. In spite of various German attempts at normalization and reconciliation and the endeavor to „step out of Hitler's shadow, the Nazi past is still present. But the presence of the past has antagonistic character insofar as the historical consciousness of the German political mainstream and of the Jewish survivors and their children drift apart. For most Germans the past of the Third Reich and the Holocaust has been substituted by another past: the decades of communist rule in East Germany. At the same time, the taboo on anti-Semitism which characterized the immediate postwar period, is fading away. Anti-Semitic sentiment and attitudes come to the fore in the political and cultural spheres whilst right-wing extremism perpetuates traditional racial anti-Semitism. The unification and the revival of German nationalism prove to be catalysts of renewed anti-Jewish attitudes.

Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner.

In this compelling narrative of antisemitism in German thought, Paul proposes a fresh view of the topic. Beginning with an examination of the attitudes of Martin Luther, he challenges distinctions between theologically derived (medieval) and secular, racial (modern) antisemitism, arguing that there is an unbroken chain of antisemitic feeling between the two periods. Rose persuasively demonstrates that for almost all [German revolutionary thinkers of the right and left], the German Question was ensnarled in the Jewish Question, and that a deep kinship between left and right was expressed in the loaded opposition between Deutschtum and Judentum.--Robert Alter, New Republic The suggestion of the title of Paul Rose's imposing book that Kant, the patron saint of liberal humanitarianism, was in fact the initiator of an important, and perhaps the crucial, strand in German antisemitism may come as something of a shock. But for this and for a number of other, more comprehensive, propositions, Paul Lawrence has assembled a powerful, if rather single-minded case.--Anthony Quinton, New York Review of Books An intensely interesting, learned, and combative book.--Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Times Literary Supplement

Between Redemption and Perdition: Modern Antisemitism and Jewish Identity

Originally published in 1990, this book focuses on the challenge to Jewish identity posed by the conflicting forces of enlightenment, emancipation, modern political antisemitism, and secular ideologies like Zionism, nationalism, and socialism. At the heart of his discussion stands the intense, tortured, and ultimately tragic encounter of Jews with Germans and Austrians. He also deals at length with the new problems of Jewish cultural and political identity posed by the existence of the state of Israel and its embattled position among the nations. In the course of the analysis the book looks at the tragedy of assimilation in central Europe, with the optimistic dream of Enlightenment and Bildung coming to a climax in the nightmare of racial antisemitism and the Holocaust. He explores the ambivalent relationship of the Jews with the European Left, showing how many Jewish intellectuals found a new political home in radical and socialist movements, though these movements often retained negative stereotypes of Jews and Judaism and exhibited a fierce opposition to the maintenance of any separate Jewish identity. The role of Zionism is discussed and the more recent challenges to its legitimacy examined.

Historical Antecedents: Why the Holocaust?

There are many antecedents to the Holocaust. Antisemitism, the necessary precursor to the Holocaust, has a long history and was usually based on political, economic, religious, or social prejudice. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Jew sought desparately to identify himself with the European Christian community. Many Jews accepted assimilation and conversion in order to gain admission into European society. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, however, a violent racial antisemitism appeared that rejected assimilation as a solution to the "Jewish problem." The ten sions among the Jews themselves—liberals versus orthodox and Zionists versus assimilationists—the economic crises, the need to find a scapegoat for national humiliation, the identifica tion of Jews with Marxists and the swing to the political right helped prepare for the outbreak of violent racial antisemitism which led to the Holocaust. With Hitler ideological anti semitism captured a state. Given the monopoly of political power which Hitler quickly acquired, the deep antisemitic roots in every European state, the indifference with which the world witnessed the increasing persecution in Germany, and the intimidation which the Nazis so successfully employed against the German people, the Holocaust in hindsight seemed inevitable.

The Origins and Development of Racial Anti-Semitism in Fascist Italy

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Origins and Development of Racial Anti-Semitism in Fascist ItalyGene BernardiniGene Bernardini Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 49, Number 3Sep., 1977 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/241596 Views: 122Total views on this site Citations: 6Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1977 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Valerio Antonelli, Raffaele D'Alessio, Stephen P. Walker Operationalizing expulsion. Jewish accountants in Fascist Italy, 1938–1943, Critical Perspectives on Accounting 1 (Apr 2022): 102462.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2022.102462Luca Michelini, Terenzio Maccabelli Economics and Anti-Semitism: The Case of Maffeo Pantaleoni, History of Political Economy 47, no.11 (Mar 2015): 91–118.https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-2847327Giulia Barrera Mussolini's colonial race laws and state-settler relations in Africa Orientale Italiana (1935-41), Journal of Modern Italian Studies 8, no.33 (Nov 2010): 425–443.https://doi.org/10.1080/09585170320000113770Maria Sophia Quine An Italian Social Revolution?, (Jan 2002): 289–302.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403919793_11Neil MacMaster ‘Black Jew ‐ white Negro’ anti‐Semitism and the construction of cross‐racial stereotypes, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 6, no.44 (Dec 2007): 65–82.https://doi.org/10.1080/13537110008428612Andrew M. Canepa Half‐hearted cynicism, Patterns of Prejudice 13, no.55 (May 2010): 18–27.https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.1979.9969540

The New French Law Against Racial Discrimination and Anti-Semitism

Great efforts have been made during the last decade to combat all forms of racial discrimination and anti-semitism, by legislation as well as on the social plain. On an international level, special conventions have been adopted, and some countries such as the United States, Great Britain, and Austria have, in addition, adopted special provisions to deal with their own specific problems. The growing number of foreigners who now come to work (Arabs, Africans, Portuguese, Italians, Greeks, Turks etc.) in Western Europe, have aggravated the ever present tradition of racism and anti-semitism, and have produced new forms of racial discrimination. In 1972, France widened the legislation which had been initiated in 1939. A number of cases have already been decided by French courts applying the 1972 law and in this article we will discuss its practical application.

Schopenhauer interprete dell'Occidente (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 263 comprehends in itself the whole perspectivity of significations which become explicit in the phenomenological stages, the logical categories, the various structures of artistic and religious representation or in the sense of historical epoques (Lakebrink, pp. 4, 102, 275, 497). Thought, in its phenomenological elevating of itself, is passing through the various regions of empirical things comprehending them and, through them, comprehending itself. Consequently, for Hegel, Logic proves to be the translucent dimension in which thought inherently reflected in itself explicates and determines itself. The question of self-determination and, in a more profound sense, of liberty as raised by Lakebrink returns here as the very centre of the ~,ryo~ and is developed through the whole sequence of categories. Hegel, however, treats this problem and all aspects related to it on the level of absolute self-reflection which has absorbed the depth and irrational facticity of being into pure logical structures. Against this claim and its dissipation of individual integrity (cf. Enc., w95), Lakebrink insists on the analectical method as a comprehensive view based on the irreducible but mutually transparent variety of things, ~6 t~vg~,oyov cuvop~tv (Arist. Met. IX. 6. 1048a 37). Lakebrink interprets Hegel's philosophy exclusively in a retrospective manner, and in this respect he succeeds in disclosing the various aspects of an underlying continuity between Hegel and the predominant theories of the tradition. One has, however , to point out the reverse side as well: that in the shadow of Hegel's gigantic system , and at last in its collapse, with Marx, Kierkegaard and the phenomenological movement a new and more cautious type of thinking arose whose access to reality is marked by a profound suspicion of the sole dominance of logic. KLAUS HEDWIG Louvain Schopenhauer interprete dell'Occidente. By Giuseppe Riconda. (Biblioteca di filosofia Mursia. Milano: U. Mursia and C. Pp. 267. Lire 4,200.) The object of this "investigation" which appeared in the collection directed by Professor Luigi Pareyson is to show that Arthur Schopenhauer was not a "drserteur de l'Europe" as Max Scheler said, but an authentic Occidental thinker. This is shown by a confrontation with those predecessors of his whom he considers as important precursors of his own philosophical system, although, as the author shows, Schopenbauer did not conceive their philosophy as it is usually understood. Schopen,hauer prided himself especially that he was an authentic successor of Kant and that Kant's philosophy was basically identical with that of Plato in antiquity. He also mentions some pre-Socratic thinkers, and in a more polemical mood Spinoza, considering his pantheism as a crypto-atheism and .his "optimism" as an Old Testament heritage. Riconda does not mention the latter point. He also skips the fact that Schopenhauer was an admirer of the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernun/t of Kant and thought that Kant spoiled it in the second edition especially by inserting a "Refutation of Idealism." The influence of Voltaire on Schopenhauer is only pointed to in a footnote although Voltaire's derisive attacks on she "optimism" of Leibniz and on the Old Testament--the latter of which carry with them as they do still more clearly in Schopenhauer a flavor of racial antisemitism--were very well known to Schopenhauer. A considerable part of the study is devoted to Schopenhauer's presentation of the three "pessimistic" religions: Christianity, Bra~hmanism and Buddhism, all of which manifest the need for "redemption" and were considered by Schopenhauer as a confirmation of his basic assumptions. This concerns especially the Indian religions. 264 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Riconda also uses profusely the text of Schopenhauer's juvenile writings, published in 1966 by Arthur Hiabscher, to explain the genesis of the system of Schopcnhauer. But he glosses over the fact that the voluntarism and the aesthetics of Schopenhauer are strongly influenced by Fichte and Schelling. Schopenhauer vituperated Hegel as a "charlatan," but it so happens that only three thinkers were honored in Germany by the foundation of philosophical societies bearing their names; Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer. The latter deeply affected intellectual life in general, for instance the composer Richard Wagner, the dramatist Friedrich Hebbcl and last, not least, Friedrich Nietzsche. Riconda...