Paul Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany (1949)
 |
| Adolf Stoecker (1835-1909) |
Stoecker was a Protestant minister who was recognized as a "court minister," which was an official position within the Imperial court. It was unusual for someone in that position to actively engage in politics, but Stoecker did. He founded the Christian Social Workers Party (Christlich-Soziale Arbeiterpartei) in 1878, which became the Christian Social Party (Christlich-Soziale Partei) in 1881, after it became clear to him that his notions of conservative reform had little resonance among urban industrial workers, which had been a large part of his intent in founding the Party.
Though Stoecker advocated reforms aimed at ameliorating the social conditions of workers, his politics were very much on the conservative side. The Christian Social Party worked closely with the Conservatives, and Stoecker himself served in the German Parliament (Reichstag) as a Conservative from 1880-1893 and then again from 1898-1908. His original political strategy, encouraged and tolerated to greater and lesser degrees over time by Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm I, was to use anti-Semitism to draw votes away from the SPD in order to strengthen the clout of the Conservatives. Massing writes that "as long as Stoecker wooed the industrial population, anti-Semitism was not in the foreground of his agitation though it certainly was inherent in the orthodox Protestant concept of the Christian state" which he advocated. After a notable lack of success in drawing working-class voters in Berlin elections of 1878, Stoecker accepted that his constituency was largely middle class and began to emphasize anti-Semitic appeals. Massing includes in an appendix an 1879 speech of Stoecker's, "What We Demand of Modern Jewry" which elaborated his anti-Semitic themes.
Stoecker's influence rise and fell depending on whether Bismarck needed an alliance with the liberals in the Reichstag; the liberals opposed Stoecker’s anti-Semitism. Although he served in the Reichstag until 1908, the year before his death, his influence on the Conservative Party after 1895 had become negligible.
Stoecker relied on traditional Christian anti-Semitic themes, which included not only religion but accusations of various conspiracies and bad acts in business and social life. But Stoecker rejected the pseudoscientific racial anti-Semitism promoted by the likes of Hermann Ahlwardt.
Or rather, sometimes he did. The distinction between the more traditional-religious and pseudoscientific-racial anti-Semites is not one of relative benevolence, and not much so of ideological framing. Both drew on anti-Semitic traditions of the past, and both used similar characterizations of the alleged threat presented by the Jews. For instance, in "What We Demand of Modern Jewry" Stoecker said this:
The Jews are and remain a people within a people, a state within a state, a separate tribe within a foreign race. All immigrants are eventually absorbed by the people among whom they live - all save the Jews. They pit their Unbroken Semitic character against Teutonic nature, their rigid cult of law or their hatred of Christians against Christianity. We cannot condemn them for this; as long as they are Jews, they are bound to act in this way. But we must, in all candor, state the necessity of protecting ourselves against the dangers of such an intermingling. There are 45,000 Jews in Berlin alone, as many as there are in all of France, in all of England. That is too many. If they had a real bond with us, there would be nothing wrong with this figure. But this half of a hundred thousand lives by itself, in easy circumstances, with increasing power, equipped with a very profitable mind, and without any concern for our Christian-German interests. Therein lies the real danger. [my emphasis] (pp. 285-6)The more practical distinction between the Stoecker anti-Semites and the "racial" kind was one of party allegiances, political programs and target constituencies. And as Massing points out, whereas for Stoecker and the Conservatives, anti-Semitism was a useful tool of political agitation in seeking votes, the racial anti-Semites tended toward the fanatical:
In every mass movement two types of agitators may be distinguished, the missionary and the racketeer. The preponderance of the one or the other type is relevant for evaluating the movement's dynamic power. In German racism the anti-Semitic fanatics far outweighed the racketeers to whom Jew-baiting was one way of making a living. There was a high proportion of elementary and high school teachers among its leaders (Henrici, Bernhard and Paul Förster, Jungfer, Bruhn, Schwarzschulz, Dühring, Ahlwardt, Holtz, Hentig, etc.) some of whom paid with the loss of their positions for the tenacity of their opinions. As a political career racial anti-Semitism in the Kaiserreich had little to offer in terms of spoil. Unlike Stoecker, whose movement was generously subsidized by Conservative friends, the racists were always short of funds and income. Prior to 1906, Reichstag members were not paid either a salary or a per diem allowance. There was little if any remuneration in lecturing. Anti-Semitic mass meetings were usually free of charge and organizers passed the hat around to get reimbursed for their expenses. A semblance of a paying anti-Semitic show was once staged in Berlin. An anti-Semitic schoolteacher, Wilhelm Bruhn, got hold of a mentally deranged aristocrat, one Count Pückler, whom he exhibited in popular meetings for a small admittance fee. The Count threatened to drive all the Jews out of Germany as he had driven them out of his Junker domain at the head of a "flail-guard" of peasant boys, and his performance attracted big crowds of entertainment-seekers who enjoyed the megalomaniac's antics. Eventually Pückler was institutionalized. This one celebrated exception where anti-Semitism was offered as commercial divertissement only serves to underscore the general rule that German anti-Semitism was taken with deadly seriousness by its partisans. [my emphasis in bold] (p. 100-1)But those partisans tended to be educated urban men. Their voting strength, to the extent it existed, was primarily among peasants. Massing argues that for them, "the Jews" didn’t represent so much a racial or religious characteristic so much as an image of everything they found oppressive and frustrating about existing society. Of course, the fact that they responded to "the Jews" as a bogeyman for those conditions had to do with a much longer history of Christian anti-Semitism. Massing writes:
One thing is certain. The peasants who voted for Boeckel and Ahlwardt were not enraptured by notions of race superiority. They were concerned with more sober matters, such as cheaper industrial goods, cheaper government, cheaper credit, feed, and Schnaps. Their anti-Semitism telescoped many elements of discontent, and they lumped together as "Jews" a host of foes whom they thus could abuse in violent language without fear of punishment. Disgruntled peasants saw "Jews" everywhere - in Berlin, in the government, in the legislature, in subversive Social Democracy; at the stock exchange, in the press, in the Conservative Party, and even at the Royal and Imperial Courts. The racial agitators' success with the rural population was due in part to the aggressiveness with which they put forth demands for economic remedies, but perhaps even more to the fury and bluster that distinguished their oratory, to the emotional gratifications which their violent invective provided for the rural audience. The most noticeable gains of radical anti-Semitism among peasants and farm hands were made when the agrarian depression was at its worst. They were largely lost again when "the Jews" gave less cause for discontent, an indication that the reactions of the peasants depended on other factors than a permanent body of racial doctrine. (p. 101)The advocacy of racial anti-Semitism, though, had promoted a prejudice that later and more successful advocates of peusdoscientific racial anti-Semitism would effectively exploit.
Continued in Part 3
Tags: anti-semitism, deutsche politik, frankfurt school, frankfurter schule, german politics, paul massing, rehearsal for destruction
No comments:
Post a Comment