Trudy Gold
The Rise of Racial Antisemitism in Germany, Part 1

Trudy Gold - The Rise of Racial Antisemitism in Germany, Part 1

- A couple of weeks ago, I looked at the rise of theological Jew hatred, and I make a huge distinction between the difference of theological hatred, which of course unfortunately, comes in the main, from Christianity. And it is the belief that Christianity superseded Judaism, and also of course, the whole story of the deicide and what it led to, because Christianity became the power religion in the Roman Empire. And of course later on, even after the empire fell, Christianity went on the march. So what it led to was a negative stereotype of the Jew. Even more important, it excluded the Jews from mainstream society. And Jews were therefore pushed into the sort of nooks and crannies of the economy working in areas where Christians didn’t. So for example, they become the money lenders, they become the traders, they become merchants in an area which in a way made them associated with money. So through this, through the notion of the deicide, you have the idea that Jews are rich. Jews are powerful because to kill a God, you have to have great power. And one of the problems is that there is a negative stereotype of the Jew that lasts nearly 1900 years. Now, let’s be very, very careful here. Please don’t think that every Christian hated every Jew. Not at all. And we do know that in various periods of history, there was a great deal of cooperation. There was actually socialisation, for example, in England, in the reign of William Rufus, who was the second Norman King. He is given a really bad time by the Church Chroniclers because we know that Jews came to his court and he talked to them. So the point, and that’s just one little isolated example.

So on a human level, of course there was contact between Jew and Christian. But unfortunately, even though Christianity is a religion of love, and it is a religion of morality, as far as the Jews are concerned, they are, if you like, the Soar. So consequently, this negative stereotype continues right up until the enlightenment. There is not a positive image of a Jew anywhere in European literature until when? Until Lessing writes to play, “The Jews.” It fails, and if you will remember, it fails on the Berlin stage because no one could imagine a Jew, a hero. It’s only later on after the life of Moses Mendelssohn, who becomes known as the Germans, as the Jewish Socrates, that when he writes “Nathan the Wise”, people are prepared to believe that Jews can have heroic propensities. So basically the second point I want to make is the Jews first come into contact with the world of Christendom, with the world of Europe, when because of the ideas of the enlightenment and the ideas of the enlightenment, this extraordinary belief, the age of reason, that if we educate everyone to a certain level, we will understand that there are universal truths. And if you remember the words of Moses Mendelssohn, he actually believed when he was asked to convert, he said, “Why should I? My path is my path. There are many different paths to the truth.” And he quotes the case of a Confucian, “Anyone who lives the moral law, according to the moral law, then no high commandments in the book, in the first book in the Hebrew Bible, will inherit God’s kingdom.” So basically the Jews are first emancipated under the ideas of the Enlightenment and of course the French Revolution.

What they are not prepared for is the rise of a different kind of hatred. Theological hatred is going to transmogrify interracial hatred. And I suppose the first question I want to ask you is this, do we all need to hate? Do we all need a scapegoat? And I’ve said this too many times, when society is relatively even, when people believe they have enough of a portion of the state, when they believe that they can live a reasonable life in the main, we rub along. It’s only when there are economic, social, and political tensions that we look for the scapegoat. And different societies at different times have different scapegoats. There are many victims of what today is called racism. The point about the Jews, and I think I must stress this, Robert Weiss caused anti Judaism the longest hatred because you have a 2000 unbroken tradition of it, which in the 19th century transmogrifies into a racial hatred. And as we’ve already established, there were many Jews living in Berlin who fell in love with German society as they did in Vienna, as they did in Paris. And there was a way out, remember that very cynical quote of the wonderful Heinrich Himmler? What did he say? “Baptism is the passport to European civilization.” The new kind of hatred which emerges in the 19th century. There is no way out. It doesn’t matter whether you are a rabbi, whether you are a convinced communist with no belief in religion, if you have blood, if you have Jewish blood, then you are part of a group.

I’ve often said to you, over the course of my presentations, define Jew for me, what we see happening in Germany and in the Habsburg Empire are more and more in England and in France than in the 19th century. And of course in America. But America was a very different situation because there was no state religion. And also it was a country of immigrants. But in Europe, Jews were defined as citizens of the countries in which they live of the mosaic persuasion. And that is more and more the effort of the bulk of Jewry in the West and in central Europe. Those of course in Eastern Europe, the largest percentage of the Jewish world is still in Eastern Europe. And none of these issues would’ve troubled them. A Jew was a Jew was a Jew. The outside world is hostile. Now I’ve often mentioned to you the Chinese characteristic for Crisis is made up of two separate words. One is danger, one is opportunity. That is the part of the Jew into the modern world. And what I’ve also told, what we’ve also established, and I know you all know this from your reading, whatever you are interested in, there is an extraordinary Jewish success story. Some writers go as far as to say that the Jewish thirst for education, that was the only safety we really ever had, was a thousand year apprenticeship for the great universities of Europe. Because what happens out of all proportion to their numbers, Jews take modernity by the horns and they push it forward. They are in many ways the major beneficiaries of modernity and even more. They’re the ones who invent so many different things in the arts, the sciences, whatever discipline you are interested in, because they are the outsiders. We’re not yet in the 20th and 21st century where you have huge migrations of peoples.

Now, the next point I want to make is this. I was very fortunate that I had an absolutely brilliant professor of history. And she always said to me, “Use your historic imagination. Imagine you were born in 1800 and you died in 1900. Imagine the changes you would’ve seen in your life.” And it’s a good little exercise for us all to think about. Even more so, if you live in the west and you are born in the year 2000 and you make it to 2100, what on earth are our grandchildren going to see in their lives? Now, change? Do people really like change? Just think about them. Just think about the 19th century, the railways, communications, the penny post, every field you want to think about when I had a place in Cornwall before the advent of the trains, it would take you 18 days to go overland down to Cornwall, which was about 320 miles quicker to go by ship. So what I’m saying to you is on a personal level, it’s this huge change. And the point is, and also never forget how small the Jewish population in Europe was. In Germany, in all the German states, it’s under 1% of the population, in Berlin 8%. In England, up until 1880, there were only 60,000 Jews living in England. In Britain, I should say. I beg your pardon. And in France, under a hundred thousand, in the year 1900, you are looking at a tiny percentage of the population. But I want to now read from the brilliant Fritz Stern, because he’s trying to come up with reasons as to why this appalling movement, racial antisemitism broke out in the 19th century. And tragically it is still with us.

This is what he said, “Precisely at the moment of Germany’s modernization, the anachronistic economically declining elements of a modern society were exalted.” He also talks about the sinister side of the vulgarish beliefs by those who felt trapped and frightened by the changes who engulfed them. And he’s talking now about Germany. But the same was true of France. The same was true of the Habsburg empire. Now why have I picked on those three? France, because it couldn’t make up its mind whether it was a republic or monarchy, six changes of government from the Revolution woods absolutely split down the middle, the Habsburg Empire, a huge empire of fifth free different national groups held together by one family, Czech nationalism, Slovakian nationalism, Hungarian nationalism. Why so many nationalisms? Because in the 19th century, it’s a century of the growth of cities, it’s a century of industrialization. These kind of societies need an educated population. The minute you educate people, they begin to think and they begin to think about their origins. And of course, Germany. Germany not finally unified until wars, three wars, war with Denmark, war with Austria, war with France, finally unified in 1871, and then in an incredible hurry to succeed and become the premier power in Europe. But on one level, as I’ve been talking about in the last week or so, the incredible aspects of modernity, but at the same time are people who are resenting the modern world and Stern actually enumerates them who felt displaced, the small shopkeepers, the clerks, minor civil servants, teachers, artisans, craftsmen, people working the countryside. And of course there was this movement, this folkish movement in Vienna and in Germany to go back to a world before industrialization, a world of the people, a world of the countryside.

And don’t forget the Enlightenment gave way to romanticism. I don’t want to depress you too much, but the last conversation I had with my very close friend, professor Robert Wistrich, I dropped him off at the airport before he went back to Israel and we were having an argument about the Enlightenment. He died in 2014, so we are nine years away now. And he drove off, I was about to drive off when he came back and he said, “Wind down the window.” And the last words he ever said to me, “Remember Trudy, the Enlightenment is a blip.” I don’t want to believe that that’s true because I do want to believe that that man can aspire. And the other point about Fritz, another important point about Fritz Stern that he really brings to the fore, don’t forget also the crash of 1873. We’re going to find out. Of course, many of you already know what happened in 1929, but think about 1873, the linked stock markets crashed and it dashed expectations that economic and political unity or capitalism and liberalism would lead to filter down wealth. There wasn’t that up until then a belief, and there were many bank crashes. I mean the Catholic Union Bank in France collapsed. The Panama Canal Company collapsed. Many of the railway companies collapsed. Ordinary folk, lower middle classes, savings, they all lost it. And the dominant theme, according to Fritz Stern, is in this was the need for a revolution that would lead.

And he calls it to the spiritual regeneration of the German people. Now listen to these words very carefully, “The recreation of a mythical Germany of peasants and small town craftsmen who shared a love of tectonic myths and glorification of battle. These new Germans wanted the elimination of class, party, and religion so visible in Berlin.” So the point is, what he’s saying, is there is a dream that’s going to be tied up with race theory. We want to go back to a time in history when our people were great and when were they great. They were the people who destroyed the might of Rome. This is the world of Barbara Rossa. Think Wagner’s operas, “A time beyond good and evil.” to quote Nietzche. Now my final point before I actually get down to looking at, examining some of the characters that tragically we meet in the rise of racial anti-Semitism. This is from , a brilliant historian, “The Western Enlightenment intended to regenerate the Jews by liberating them from superstition, spiritual and politically emancipation. And presupposed severing the national elements within Judaism. Enlightenment of the Jews are way out of the ghetto, but the crisis, the self-image and the self-esteem of the Jews.” Now you see, that’s the other problem. The Jew is liberated and does incredibly well, when? When he’s emancipated from the ghetto. But the price, give up your notion of nationhood. And another important point, German and Austrian and to an extent French, democratic, I’m going to go this far, the French democratic traditions were weak and national identity was insecure. And as a response to that, they are going to seize honour people who are international.

They can say until they’re blue in the face that we are German, we are the real citizens of Vienna, we are Frenchmen. But they would say, “Hold on a minute, you are a Jew. You don’t share the same bloodline as us.” And the the adding to the cocktail of the idea of race, that the world is actually divided into racial groups that are defined by blood is another idea. Social Darwinism, this is where so-called pseudo scientists, took some of Charles Darwin’s ideas and perverted them to apply to different groups. Certain groups by blood are more fitted to survival and more fitted to rule. And you get to what we call the pyramid of the races. And of course in Germany it is going to be the Arian, the Arian group. And funnily enough, this idea was first postulated by a French aristocrat, a diplomat called Count de Gobineau. He in fact believed in the supremacy of the Arian people. And these ideas are another important point. These ideas were very much, they are not gutter up, they are intellectual down. We’re going to see that many of these ideas are born in the universities, some of the most eminent professors and also amongst the aristocracy at the court. So it’s not the people rising up. This is ideas of trying to sort out what we are in the modern world. And do you understand why the Jews are the perfect scapegoat for the futures, for the forces of reaction? Modernism, the modern world for so many people is seen as decadent. Take for example art, modern art, modern music, industrialization. The fact that there was a social breakdown in many of the capitals of Europe last time I talked about the number of illegitimate births. This is all about decadence.

Who is behind modernism? The Jews. And if the Jews are a racial group, if they are really a nation, then of course they’re working against us. And their main idea is of course what? Our main idea is to take over the world. And that’s what unfortunately it’s all going to lead to that. In fact, there is a Jewish plot to take over the world. And that is how you get to the most extraordinary situation where even today the conspiracy theorist, communism was a Jewish invention. Capitalism was a Jewish invention. Neither are true of course, but the point is Karl Marx, who is the symbol of communism, was a self-hating Jew. The grandson of rabbis on both sides brought up as a Christian and completely irreligious and of course the symbol of capitalism, the poor old house of Rothschild. So this is how you get to the conspiracy theories which are still abounding today because, and I still think the main plank that allowed all this to happen was in fact theological hatred because it’s that awful device. If the Jews kill a God, then you can do anything. Now let me reiterate, I am not paranoid, I do not believe that the majority of non-Jews go around thinking that, of course they don’t. And what is even more. But it’s in the culture. What is even more interesting is of course many of these new race movements are loosening the ties of Christianity. Wagner goes back to pagan times. Many of the characters I’m going to talk about are no longer Christian. The later the sent up the century we go, they’re breaking away from Christianity. They want to go back to a time that is beyond good and evil. Do you remember that extraordinary quote of Heinrich Himmler, that I gave you a couple of weeks ago when he says, “When the talisman will, the cross will fall and the hammer of Thor will rise up”?

He spotted this in the 1830s, you know, before anyone was thinking about it, he understood that that which was simmering beneath the surface was far more dangerous in its own way than Christian anti Judaism. So can we come to the first slide if you don’t mind, and I’ve mentioned him before. Here you see Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Now the point about Fichte is he of course, although he came from a peasant background, he was educated by a local landowner. He studies theology at the University of Jena, then he becomes a tutor in Leipzig. He studies the ideas of Kant. Now, remember, Kant is the first male in the coffin of the enlightenment with his critique of pure reason. He becomes the professor of philosophy at Jena, he’s actually dismissed for atheism. He flees to Berlin, and in Berlin he becomes, he’s got a very strong, fantastic personality. He becomes part of the Salon society. He met the Schlegels, he meets Schleiermacher. Do you remember? He is the one who converts Henrietta Hertz to Christianity, and he becomes more and more attracted to the German romantic nationalism. And he is the man who at a time of the French Revolution, and particularly after the defeat of the Prussians, at the Battle of Jena, he becomes violently against the French Revolution. And more than that, he becomes a very strong German nationalist. Up until 1815, never forget that Germany is divided into 360 city states. In 1815, it’s only cleaned up to 36. And that really, really upset many of these nationalists. And this is what he wrote, he writes what is known as the Address to the German nation where he’s rallying them to nationalism and he actually becomes the professor. Remember, the Humboldt University in Berlin is not founded till 1810. He’s going to become the professor of history at the University of Berlin on one level, a University of the Enlightenment.

And the year later he is, he has created rector. And this is what he says about the Jews. “A powerful hostilely disposed nation is infiltrating almost every corner in Europe. This nation is a state, is in a state of perpetual war with all these countries. I am referring to the Jewish nation. It is a people whose most humble member elevates his ancestors higher than we exalt our entire history. The Jewish nation excluded itself from our meals, from our festive toasts, from the sweet heart to heart exchanges by the most binding element of mankind, religion. Does this not record to you the notion of a state within a state, if you give them civic rights in your state, will not other citizens be trodden underfoot?” And this is about the plan to emancipate the Jews in Prussia. The Jews are emancipated in 1812 in Prussia. However, after 1815, when Prussian territory is expanded, they are not emancipated in the new Prussia. But the point is, many of these German nationalists insecure in the nationalism, a dream that is shattered in 1815. They, instead of seeing the Jews as potential citizens of the mosaic persuasion, they see them as a nation within a nation. And this of course is what is going to cause so much complication. Now, can we now go to the next, and remember I’m talking about very, very important individuals. I’m now talking about Jakob Friederich Fries. He studied theology at the Academy of the Moravian Brethren, which is one of the oldest Protestant denominations. It was actually a spinoff from Hussites. In 1806, he becomes professor of philosophy and mathematics at the University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg later at Jena.

And he becomes a very important writer on both philosophy and psychology. He was incredibly successful with his students and he is also very anti-Jewish. And under his influence, German students associations decided not to admit Jews because after 1812 in New Prussia, Jews can go to faculties, different faculties. And what he says, this is what he writes, “We declare war not against the Jews our brothers, but against Judaism.” See, it’s a different kind of Jew hatred here, “Should one we love be stricken by the plague. It is not proper that we wish him deliverance from it. Improving the condition of the Jews in society means rooting up Judaism, destroying the whole lot of deceit for secondhand peddlers and hawkers. Jewry will acquire power through money. The idols stagnant capital of countries is devoured by the Jews like worms gnawing on rotten matter.” Can we come to the next, and look here you see a man called Hartwig von Hundt-Radowsky. And if you remember, he was the character that Himmler spoke about. He was a political writer. Look at his dates, 1759 to 1835. He was incredibly important in the Hep-Hep riots. Remember the riots of 1819, which spread from city to city? He wrote his pamphlet, “The Jewish Mirror” in 1821. But he’d been spewing out anti-Semitism before that. And this is what he wrote, “Of all the nations of the world, none has distinguished himself through vindictiveness, cowardice, arrogance, superstition, deceit, user and thievery like the Jews.” He accuses them of being parasites and planning for world denomination. He sold 10,000 copies in the first week. And another work was dedicated to Rothschild. Later on he actually changed his minds about the Jews.

And he did say Jews could be morally regenerated through reeducation, provided they actually repudiate their religion. It’s interesting that pamphlet did not sell very much. So what I’m trying to establish now is this pattern of Jew hatred, this pattern that is there. Now it’s interesting because the term antisemitism isn’t going to be coined until 1878 by a German journalist called Wilhelm Marr, but the point is it predates the sentient, the actual word. And in fact Moses Hess, can we see the next slide please Judy? Moses Hess, who was a colleague of Karl Marx. He actually wrote, he was a young regalian along with Marx and he actually wrote, “The Germans hate the Jews, not because of their peculiar religion, but because of their peculiar noses. You can’t straighten your crinkly hair.” He spotted that in 1862 and of course he becomes a socialist. Another point about these Jews who turned to socialism, communism is their internationalists in an era of internationalism. I can talk until I’m blue and green in the face that the majority of Jews were never socialists or communist. But as you all know very well, the leadership was, maybe it was because you have these interesting alienated intellectuals on the margins. Karl Marx himself violently turned against his own people. Well, who knows what created his self hatred. In fact, next week Dennis Davis is going to give a presentation on a rethinking of Karl Marx, which I’m really looking forward to. In his left essay on the Jewish question, he writes this, “What is the worldly basis of Judaism? Practical necessity, selfishness.

What is the worldly culture of the Jew? Commerce. Who is his worldly God? Money.” So he himself is completely against what he sees as the Jewish capitalist. He also attacks Jews on a personal level. He attacked the proprietor of the “Daily Telegraph” in London. Moses Levy as a Jew, he attacked Lassalle. He in his writings with Engels, they display violent anti Judaism. And when his wife Jenny died, his son-in-law, Longuet, wrote an obituary in a French newspaper in which he said that Jenny’s family had never wanted her to marry Marx because of his Jewishness, his Jewish background. ‘Cause remember Marx was converted when he was eight. Marx never forgave him and never spoke to him again. He had a huge sore in him with that particular background. Can we go on please. Now Richard and Cosima Wagner. Now Patrick is going to be regaling you with quite a lot about Wagner and Cosima. Suffice to say I am not going to give his biography, I am not going to talk about his music, I’m going to leave that to Patrick. However, one of the problems, and please don’t forget that Wagner becomes one of the most important cultural figures in Germany. He becomes, if you like, the cult of Wagner. And of course here you see him with his second wife, Cosima. Now Cosima Liszt, she of course was the daughter of Franz Liszt. Her antisemitism, if anything was absolutely worse than his and at their court in Bayreuth. It was the fashionable place to be and he had huge contacts and his antisemitism sets the scene on a personal level.

He hated Mendelssohn. He hated Meyerbeer, but this is what he wrote in his pamphlet, “Jewry in music”, “It is in particular the sensuous manifestation of the Jewish speech that revolts us, culture was unsuccessful in eradicating the peculiar stubbornness of the Jewish nature with respect of the characteristics of the submitting manner of expression. Despite 2000 years of intercourse with European nations, our ear perceives, especially the hissing, the shrill sounding buzzing and grunting tonal expression of the Jewish way of speech as thoroughly foreign and unpleasant. In addition, the arbitrary twisting of words and phrase constructions, which is totally uncharacteristic our national language, gives this total expression the character of a completely insufferable, confused babbling in listening to what our attention involuntarily dwells on this revolting hub of the Jewish speech that on what is contained in it.” I mean he’s absolutely spewing out the most horrific insult and the fact that Meyerbeer was so kind to him and helped him financially. And this is a letter of Wagner to Liszt, “Send me the money even if it’s from the most Jewish of Jews.” Look, he was a man of strong passions. He was also a man of very intemperate views. Yes, he was a genius. I’m going to read one or two other things. “Since it is here merely in respective art and especially of music that we want to explain the popular dislike of this Jewish nature.

When we strove for emancipation of the Jews, we were the champions of an abstract principle.” He was part of the 1848 revolutions by the way, “Stimulated by general idea, not real sympathy. For always felt instinctively repelled by any contact with them. We have no need to first substitute the be-Jewing of modern art.” Look, the majority of the gallery owners in Berlin and Vienna of course were Jewish and in Paris. “The Jew who as everyone knows, has a God alter himself, strikes us primarily by his outward appearance, which no matter to what European nationality he belongs has something disagreeable foreign to that nationality. Instinctively we have nothing in common with a man who looks like that, we cannot hold him capable of any sort of artistic utterance of human essence. The Jews in who is innately the unacceptable of presenting himself artistically through his outward appearance and speech and least of all through singing, has nevertheless become in the widest sense to reach the rulers of public taste in music.” This is how he’s having a go at Meyerbeer and of course a French grand opera. “From the turning point in our evolution where money was less and less disguised was raised to the patent of nobility.” Now ironically, a man who was part of his circle, the extraordinary Friedrich Nietzche, who unfortunately is somehow tied up in anti-Semitism, oh, he himself was not, but unfortunately his papers were taken over by his sister, who was herself a terrible antisemite and married to an antisemite. He has this bad reputation, but I think it’s worth reading to you some of Nietzsche’s pronouncements on the Jews because I think it’s very interesting, here you have one of the greatest philosophers of the modern era looking at the Jews. “What does Europe owe to the Jews?”

This comes from his book, “Beyond Good and Evil”, “Many things, good and bad and above all, one thing of the nature, both of the best and the worst. The grand style and morality, the fearful and majesty of infinite demands of infinite signification, the whole romanticism and sublimity of moral questionables. And consequently just the most attractive ensnaring and exquisite element in those allurements to life in the after sheen of which the sky of our European culture in its evening sky now glows, perhaps glows out for this. We artists amongst the spectators and philosophers are grateful to the Jews.” He also said, “I want all anti-Semites shocked.” This is something else you wrote in “Beyond Good and Evil.” “The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strangest, toughest and purest race at present living in Europe, they know how to succeed even under the worst conditions by means of virtue of some sort, owing above all to a resolute faith, which does not need to be ashamed before modern ideas. It is certain that the Jews, if they desired or if they were driven to it as the anti-Semite seem to wish could have the ascendancy. Nay, the supremacy over Europe that they are not working and planning for, that as and is equally certain. Meanwhile, they wish and desire even somewhat opportunity to be absorbed by Europe. They long to be finally second settled,” let me repeat this. “They long to be finally settled, authorised and respected somewhere and wished to put to an end the nomadic life of the wandering Jew.

People have wished to make them contemptible for nearly 20th centuries and refused them access to all honourable positions and dignities. They have never ceased to believe in themselves, qualified for the highest functions, their manner of honouring their parents and children. The rationality of their marriages distinguishes them amongst all Europeans. Besides this, they have been able to create for themselves a sense of power and eternal vengeance from the very trades that were left to them. On the day when the Jews will be able to exhibit to us as their own work, such Jews and golden vessels as no European nation with its shorter and less profound experience can or could produce, when Israel will have changed its eternal vengeance into an eternal benediction for Europe. So Jehovah may rejoice in his chosen people and all of us will rejoice with him.” And of course this is the cynicism, the double bind of Nietzche, but I think you’ll find that very interesting. So let me just conclude. “What does Europe owe the Jews? Many good things, good and bad, above all, one thing of the nature of both of the best and the worst. The grand style in morality, the fearfulness and majesty of infinite demands.” So fascinating that the philosopher who has been so perverted by so many individuals, he himself that that’s such isolated man. He himself looked at the Jewish story and marvelled at it because, and but I think you can understand for this as so many so-called important intellectuals in Germany were so anti-Jewish. I think that helps you understand why so many Jews who fall in love with Germany, they so much want to be part of it. How do they deal with this terrible anti-Semitism? And when I mentioned Moses Hess before, it’s fascinating because out of this milia, he himself is going to turn to Jewish nationalism. He’s going to say in the end, having flirted with socialism.

You know, when he was, he actually died and was buried in Germany and on his tombstone, “Here lies Moses Hess, the founding father of social democracy.” When he was later interred and he re-interred in Kibbutz Kinneret, in Israel, he now lies alongside the founding fathers of Zionism. So he was the man. His reaction was, and it was really a soul reaction at this time, 1862, was to say the whole emancipation process has failed. He was the double outsider, come from a religious background Moses Hess, became an international socialist. A friend of Karl Marx, although Marx mocked him, he used to call him Rabbi Hess. He, in the end, the double bind, he believed that the only answer was the fact that the Jews are really a nation. So you see how this terrible tension is coming out so strongly in these kind of individuals. Can we turn now to Wilhelm Marr? Here you see Wagner, this is a cartoon. This is a cartoon from a German newspaper. Later on Wagner triumphant pulled by soldier with Wagner obsessed Jews following in his train. Don’t forget that his great conductor was a Jew. Herman Levy, the son of a rabbi and Jews worshipped Wagner. Even today, the whole issue of whether one plays Wagner, it’s still a big bone of contention, isn’t it? Although it’s very important to state that Wagner was never played in the camps. Hitler once said, “To understand national socialism, you should listen to Wagner.” However, did Hitler really love Wagner? Patrick will tell you that his tastes were far more pedestrian.

He preferred the Merry Widow, Franz Lehar, which is for him a bit of a problem. So it’s a complicated story and because I have to lighten it a bit, I know I’m sure I’ve quoted you before, good old Woody Allen on Wagner, he said, “Whenever I listen to Wagner, I invade Poland.” Anyway, one needs somehow to lighten the darkness. Before we get on to Wilhelm Marr, can we see the next slide please? Here we have Wilhelm Marr. He was the son of an actor and a stage director. He joined his father in Vienna where he was working at the Berg Theatre after the failure of the revolution of 1848. Like many other young men, he became a proponent of the idea of German unification. He later becomes a journalist. He married, ironically, all his wives, he had three of them. They all had Jewish antecedents and he becomes a very important journalist in Germany. The first indication of his Jew hatred is in 1848 where he is influenced by the student movements, which developed out of the frustration amongst German students, the failure of the Congress of Vienna to create a unified Germany. And he goes on to actually reject assimilation as a means to becoming German. And in 1879 he founded the League of Anti-Semite and he advocated the removal of Jews from Germany. In 1879 he writes his pamphlet, “The Victory of Judaism over German”, which is actually very, very important. Can you go on please? I want you to see that is the Congress of Berlin.

Now the congress of Berlin was of course the Congress. Remember by this time Germany is unified, the stock market has crashed. Bismarck is chancellor and it’s Bismarck and Israeli who settled the peace of Europe And this is when he writes his famous pamphlet, which sells 300,000 copies in its first edition. It begins like this, “There is no stopping them, Jewry’s control of society and politics as well its practical domination of religious and ecclesiastical thought is still heading in the prime of its development. I will hand all the peoples over to you.” He says, “France is thoroughly Judaized.” It is not a pretentious prophecy, but the deepest inner conviction, which I here utter. Your generation will not pass before there will be absolutely no public office, even the highest one, which the Jews will not have usurped, yes, through the Jewish nation, Germany will become a world power, A western new Palestine. And this will not happen through violent revolution, but through the compliance of the people.“ You’ve got to remember, he’s looking at Bly Schroeder, Bismarck had said the Jews are the champagne in German society. He’s looking at Henry St. Strasberg, he’s looking at the preponderance of a small number of Jews in capitalism and a small number of Jews in communism. The majority of Jews in Berlin at this time are in Germany, are middle class. We haven’t yet had the influx from Eastern Europe and they’re going to be poor. And he says this, "We should not reproach the Jewish nation. It fought against the western world for 1800 years and finally conquered and subjugated it. We were vanquished and it’s entirely proper that the victor shouts via victus. German culture has proved itself ineffective and powerless against this foreign power. State, church, Catholicism, Protestantism all brought low before the Jewish tribunal.

That is the daily press controlled by the Jews.” Now the reality was the two most important press Barons were born Jewish. So what? But that’s not the point. If you begin to believe that Jews are a race, they are an international race linking one to another. The Jews were late in their assault on Germany, but once they started, there was no stopping them. Talks about Judaized France and then going to the Congress of Berlin. “Poor in England, the Semite did. Israeli, a German hater, holds in his vest pocket the key to war and peace in the Orient.” Remember what Bismarck said about Israeli at the Congress of Berlin? “The outer you that is the man.” He says this, “Who derived the real benefit at the Congress from the spilled blood of the Orient? Jewry, the Israelite universal was the first in line. Romania was forced to open its doors and gates to destructive Semitism. Jewry did not yet dare to make the same demand of Russia. That demand will come soon.” And then he goes on to say, “Can we deny the fact? No, the historical fact that Israel became the leading social political superpower in the 19th century lies before us. It is already notorious to what extent we lack the physical and intellectual strength to Judaize ourselves. The raw, brutal but completely unconscious protest against the real Judaism of society with social democracy. It side, however, with the Jews, because Jewry had taken its ranks after all, the founder of German social democracy, LaSalle was a Semite.” Why are we so surprised? Now this is important. Antisemitism always gives the Jews power.

It’s very important that you take this on. It’s not about the Jews at the bottom of the racial pile. No, the Jew is the only group capable of destroying. “Why are we so surprised? We have amongst us a flexible, tenacious, intelligent foreign tribe that knows how to bring abstract reality into play in many different ways. Not individual Jews, but the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness of over part the world. All this is the consequence of a cultural history so unique in its way, so grand that everyday polemics can achieve nothing against it. With the entire force of its armies, the proud Roman empire did not achieve that which anti-Semitism had achieved in the West and particularly in Germany.” I think I’m going to stop there if you don’t mind, Judy, if we could make a note of that because I think these characters so that you understand how it really does develop. And of course today what I find absolutely extraordinary is that after the show, one would’ve thought that that was the obvious notion of powerlessness. But again, it’s been twisted and most of the hatred is geared now towards the Jews as a nation and to the Jewish nation. I’ll be talking more about that at another time. I know this is a tough one to take, but I happen to believe that knowledge does give you freedom and power and if you know where it comes from, I think it’s easier to deal with. And I think one of the things that I find so depressing is that we are still sticking plasters over this terrible illness rather than dealing with it. And my thought is the only way we can really deal with it is get Jewish history into school syllabus. There’s no point in them finding out about Jewish victims of the Shoah because they’ve been de-Judaized. We need to tell the story of the Jews anyway, their end of the sermon.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: “It’s my understanding that Jews are not a race. Am I wrong?”

A: Susan. The whole theory of race is balderdash. I am telling you the story because that’s what a lot of people believe. There is no such thing as pure race. You maybe could have made a case for, you’d have to geographically isolate for a thousand years. Maybe the Eskimos, maybe the Mauris, maybe the Aborigines before they were colonised. But certainly the whole theory of race is crazy.

This is Maxine, “Henri Tajfel, Professor of Psychology and Holocaust survivor initiated research into the human propensity to see in groups and out groups. It turns out that we need very minor prompts to see each other in these terms. The antidote seems to be a shared goal.” Good eye, it’s very interesting, Maxine. Yeah, it it is fascinating.

Q: “What do we need an attack from outer space?” “Racial antisemitism of the blood was a feature of the Spanish crown and inquisition.”

A: Yes, yes. That is interesting because there are so many people had converted in Spain that they were secretly marrying other conversos that they introduced the blood laws.

Yes, Jeffrey, “Jew is an ethno religious identity. The ethno element is the very word Jew. It harks back, does it not Judea?” add the strong moral imperative preached by many Jews and we have the key ingredient to Jew hatred. This is exacerbated by Jewish wealth with a common belief that all modern wealth, not just in Jews but in non-Jews. So we’re all loved down 40 from the start. Well, that’s very negative, Jeffrey. Look, we could spend three sessions dealing with the word Jew, couldn’t we? I always say this to non-Jewish friends, the word English or the word British identify for me. Let’s discuss it. The word Jew is so much more complicated.

Q: What about eugenics?

A: Yes, that’s something else that is very, very dangerous because that is a spinoff science. Of course it is eugenics and eugenics in the end decided who would live and who would die. I mean those terrible sterilisation experiments in the southern states and also in Sweden. You know, we got a problem here. You know, we got a real problem when people think in terms of blood and race and that their group is better than anyone else’s and that their group has an enemy.

Q: When did British public schools remove the 10% quota?

A: Some schools, Christian schools had it. It’s complicated, isn’t it? Now, I don’t believe there is any Jewish quota, but what is interesting is the majority of Jewish parents in Britain are sending their kids to Jewish schools, 70%. And there’s so many reasons behind that. They give this simplistic an analogy. Often men hate the few truly powerful women because they hold power.

Q: Do these Christians, you discussed hate Jews simply because of few hold power?

A: You see the point is, I don’t believe Jews ever did have power. I think some of the very wealthy had great influence, but power rests in an army and in a state. If you want the greatest example of powerlessness in history, think the Shoah, they even managed to murder a Rothschild. And I’m saying that with total cynicism because that Rothschild was actually a Catholic, but they were so key to kill a Rothschild. You know, I mean it is extraordinary, but this is the absolute antithesis to the age of reason. Please don’t look for any logic in anything I’m talking about here. You won’t find it. I’m not pretending to give you an analytical essay on racism because racism is absolute Balderdash, if I may use that phrase, you know to hate someone because you think they come from a different blood. As far as I know, you know that line of Shakespeare, “When you prick us, do we not bleed?” All of us bleed and I think we all bleed red blood aristocrats do not bleed blue blood. And it’s all these old constructs. The need to feel superior. Yes, sure. When times are hard, look, one of the reasons that the Arian myth spread so much. You take the poor and the dispossessed, not so much the poor, you take the dispossessed, take the word poor away. You tell them they’re lords of the earth and they’re going to feel good about themselves.

Monty’s making a political comment. “European anti-Semitism led design isn’t the state of Israel and the right of return. I’m not forgetting the holocaust. Now the right of return is large Jews from the diaspora to settle in the occupied West Ben. And a way in which we have condemned in non-Jews.” Monty, that is an argument that we can have, but not here, not in a history presentation. I feel very strongly that I try to keep us together as a group and I know I have my own views, we all have our own views. I don’t really want to comment on these kind of things except in a private capacity. Look, there was a dream of a dream state. Was that ever really possible? It is a tragic aria that for classical traditional hope, it as an alien within the host nation was a major cause of anti-Jewish emotions, while modern anti-Semitism de-legitimizes Jews as a nation. Yeah, yep, yep. It doesn’t de-legitimize Jews as a nation. It de-legitimizes the Jewish state. It’s so complex, isn’t it? I remember having this conversation at a supper party with Robert Wistrich and the audience. It wasn’t an audience, it was a supper party, but by the end of the evening it was an audience and somebody said, “Can you say something positive?” And he said, “Yeah, they like us in China and they like us in Hindu, India.” And what’s the irony of China? As I’ve said to you many times, we assimilate.

Q: Arlene, “Isn’t it ironic that Christian Europe forced Jews into trades like bankers and merchants? Yet when they succeeded in limited fields, they were vilified. I grew up in the 1950s and a Christian neighbourhood in New York City. Blatant antisemitism was taught in the churches. When I was six years old, my Italian six year old boyfriend told a nun I was not a Christ killer and he intended to marry me. The man made him so hard on his cheekbone that the scar never went away.”

A: Oh, Arlene, that’s so awful. Ayi, ayi, ayi.

“I also grew up a Catholic in Quebec City, Canada, and I always told that Jesus has been crucified on accountable sins and there were just no Jewish boys to date then.” “It would seem that European intellectualism played a major role being the catalyst, substantiate the hatred of Jews.” Oh yes that’s a very important point, Rob. It’s not a gutter movement up. Never forget that Adolf Hitler saw himself as a pseudo philosopher and artist.

Q: Where did Marr want the Jews to go?

A: He just wanted them to disappear. Thank you.

It’s difficult to wrap your arms around my beloved grandfather joining the army in the first World War, a proud German and then disaster. Susan, when I look at German Jews in World War I, the bulk of them was so pro German. In fact, there was a petition put together by a German Jew. It’s called the “Petition of 93”. The top intellectuals in Germany signed it, many of them Nobel Prize winners, some Jews, some Gentiles, they fell in love with Germany. Please don’t forget, despite everything I’m saying to you, by 1871 the Jews are emancipated in Germany by 1900. Yes, there is an anti-Semitic Kaiser. Yes, there’s anti-Semitism, but they’ve still never had it so good. They can go to the opera, they can go to the first night at the theatre and they can revel in German culture and they are people of the enlightenment and people of optimism. They believed it would disappear and if it hadn’t been for the first World War, and if it hadn’t been for the collapse of Germany in Weimar, it might have disappeared. Look 45% into marriage. In 1945 there was a liberal Germany too that Germany of Gerta and Shila did not disappear. Look, we live in a society where some turn to the light and some turn to the darkness. If we could spend more time understanding psychology, I mean this is always what Wendy says. The answer’s got to be in psychology. We don’t know enough yet. Will we ever know? What we do have is incredible toys, but we don’t know.

Q: Why do you think the social conduct of race a new idea rather than religion?

A: Look, many of these characters who religion was beginning to lose its hold. Not with all, but it was losing its hold. Certainly with Wagner’s circle with many and race is about blood, so that’s why Monica.

Rita, “The whole history of race is bold.” Thank you, thank you.

Q: Where does Jewish religion fit in? Faggy, how do you define Jew?

A: For some it is defined through Judaism. For others it’s defined through culturally. it’s defined culturally. For others, the end of the Eastern Mediterranean and some in the diaspora is defined nationally, but certainly at this period, Jews in the West were defining, the majority of them were defining themselves as German Jews of German citizenship and Jewish religion. And that was brought being worn quite lightly. Same in France. When we look at England, it’s fascinating. I mean, Lord Rothschild, he was president of JFS in 1898. Loads of Eastern European Jews coming to England, sending their children to JFC. He begs them not to send their children to Hader, let them play football, let them become Englishmen of the Jewish religion.

Q: What does it mean to be a Jew?

A: You are back to that old conundrum. What does it mean to be a Jew? My mother used to say it’s simple, it’s cardiac, you just feel it.

This is from David Rappaport, “The USSR from 1917s revolution could have spread communism to western Europe, could have spread to France and UK if the USA and Western Europe had not haunted it. This explains why many western nations feared immigration.”

Oh sure, yeah. Jews were seen in the forefront of communism. That’s very much important point, Sharon.

Q: Jennifer, “There’s no Jewish race, no such thing as Jewish blood. We are self-declared Jewish identity to descend from the maternal line. I suppose my question is, given the Shoah, would it have been better to have eliminated any deciding factor except choice?”

A: You know, the problem, Jennifer, choice doesn’t depend on what we want. It also unfortunately depends on the outside. I can say until I’m blue in the face that anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem. It’s actually a problem of the anti-Semites. But it doesn’t make it go away, does it?

It’s having 70% of children in Jewish school is a good idea. When people meet Jews, they find they really are lovely people. Judith, it’s a very complex question. This Jewish schools, I totally agree with you. It would make a great debate. Let’s think about it.

Q: Shelly, “How can people believe in different races when blood transfusion and organ donations have nothing to do with religions?”

A: Shelly, you are being very, very problematic because you are being rational. Race theory is not rational, okay? You see we are not creatures of the enlightenment, just are we like to think we are the age of reason, but we are creatures of emotions and feelings and when we feel hurt or dispossessed, it’s so much easier to blame someone else. And certainly at this period of history, the Jew is the perfect scapegoat. Today we have many scapegoats. I think one of the problems for Jewish people, and I am saying this is many of the other victim groups see us as perpetrators. No wonder, thank God for Jewish humour. That’s all I can say.

This is George, “Having you been raised in Western Europe, it seems that anti-Semitism was prime and directed towards Jews from Eastern Europe who looked, talk and behaved differently.” That was one branch of anti-Semitism, but it was also geared towards the wealthy Jews of Berlin. It was also geared towards communists. If you didn’t like modern art, it was geared to Jewish gallery owners. If you didn’t like modern music, it was geared to Schoenberg,. who converted. He reconverted. He went to into a synagogue in Paris in 1933 when Hitler came to power.

Oh, Jennifer thanks me for introducing her to Robert Wistrich and Stefan Zweig. Isn’t Stefan Zweig absolutely wonderful? “The World of Yesterday,” has got to be one of the great books.

Q: Yes James, you are being logical again he’s asking, “Can we describe the Jews of the race?”

A: Of course we can’t. But the point is it’s not about logic, is it? This is what anti-Semite believe.

This is from Marcel, “Today from Jonathan Greenman Blatt, his excellency. Dr. Ali Al Nuaimi, the Chairman of the new Manara Centre, is delighted to point partner with ADL to promote peace deals with all form of hate, including anti-Semitism. Many Middle East universities are taking part. First semester to begin this August.” Now that Marcel is a very, very good turning point. Now, can I also say Islam does not have the deicide? It’s more grafted on. I’ve got much more hope for the world of Islam actually. I’m not completely clear about whether Bismarck was or was not an anti-Semite. No, I don’t think Bismarck was an anti-Semite. He was a very strong conservative who believed in autocracy and he believed in the state. He said that the Jews were the champagne in German society. But he also said, “Even though I’m opposed to anti-Semitic agitation, I’m going to do nothing to stop it because of its courageous stand against liberalism and socialism.” He was a total pragmatist and I’m going to be talking about that in the next session. Professor Henry Slansky said, “How could a SOB like Wagner could write such beautiful music is a classic example of the Odyssey.”

Oh, that’s lovely, Frank. Yeah, that’s the problem, isn’t it? The beauty of the music, you know that that takes us down another alley because when someone is a genius in the world of literature, the world of music, the world of art, Canalito we know murdered, Caravaggio. Beg pardon, Caravaggio. He committed two murders. We stopped looking at his art? I mean, I don’t know. I wish I knew the answer. We have to make our own decisions on this. Thank you.

Q: I find it, this is from Deborah, “I find it very on ironic that some of the antisemitism, for example, Poland is reflected in slogans, 'Jews who don’t belong here go to Israel.’ But in some of the Muslim countries, it expresses, ‘Jews who don’t belong here, Go back to where you came from. Go back to Poland.’ So where exactly are we supposed to go?”

A: You’re looking for logic, Sandra. Thank you Sandra, my friend who shares with me a great desire to improve the teaching of Jewish history, and she said the need to widen the teaching of Jewish history in schools, knowledge is power. If they understood Jewish history better, I think we could make a breakthrough. I really believe that. At the moment, all we do is put sticking plasters on. It’s like you’ve got to get to the root. Total, totally in agreements, my friend. The American black anti-Semitic community. Be careful, not all American blacks are anti-Semite. There is an element of it. Just as in certain Jewish communities, there is racism. We’ve got to admit this. We are not perfect either.

Q: After the killing of the Jewish doctors by Stalin did Jewish identity with Russian come?

A: Stalin wasn’t killed by Jewish doctors. I’m going to tell the story of Stalin and antisemitism on the left. I promise you. Stalin had a stroke and nobody was prepared to go for a doctor. They were so frightened. Stalin had imprisoned a lot of Jewish doctors. He was one of the first supporters of the state of Israel. But when Golda came to Russia in 1949, as the first Israeli ambassador, 50,000 young Russians came out to see her when nationalism was dead in Russia. He realised he had a problem with the Jews, try and get inside the mind of Stalin. But he was not killed by Jewish doctors. He was killed. He died because no one had the courage to send for a doctor. Many people of Jewish birth were attracted to the communist revolution. Yes, because the whites were so violently anti-Semitic and the Zars were so violently anti-Semitic, but the bulk of them were never communists.

Oh, the film “1864”, lots of the topics are including the remarkable series available on PBS. Thank you, Jennifer. I seem to say, you said that education is not the answer. Nobody, I never said that. I said a certain kind of education. I think the right kind of education. We got to think. What I meant was when I said education wasn’t the answer. What I meant by that is that a high academic education is no bar to prejudice. That’s all I meant. Just because you have numerous doctorates, just because you’re a professor doesn’t mean that you have empathy. And that doesn’t mean that you have a strong moral compass. I believe a certain kind of education is important and that’s what we got. You know, at my age now, having been in education most of my working life, I’d like to tear up all the syllabus. And this idea is also shared, by the way, by most of my colleagues, including William Tyler. We just want to start all over again and say, how do we create model citizens? How do you create empathy? And unfortunately, there is so much wrong with the education system from country to country to country. Now, when I said education, I meant that just because you’ve got numerous PhDs and just because you are a professor, most of the characters I’ve mentioned today are professors. Look the rector of Berlin University, and next week I’m going to talk about Von , who was the professor of history at University of Berlin. And the whole of the general staff went to hear him talk about the Jews being our misfortune. So it’s that kind of education I meant.

Q: “Can you explain how education can counter anti-Semitism?”

A: If they’ve got to see the Jews as people, they’ve got to understand our history. They’ve got to understand how we went into trade, how we became merchants, how we became international, that we were expelled from our country. That the Hebrew Bible, which they call the New Testament, that we have a code of morality is just basics. They don’t know if you the where do Jews appear on the school syllabus in England, in Britain? Key stage three, age 13 to 14, History, four lessons on the Holocaust okay. And certain A-level syllabus. The Arab Israeli conflict dates 48 to 1967, okay?

Q: Elaine, “We were taught nothing about the facts around antisemitism. How we can expect people to understand when we don’t understand in itself?”

A: Elaine, a very, very important point. We must study Jewish history. I think one of the things that Wendy has facilitated and what I think is extraordinary about Wendy, once the website is up and do you know how many hundreds of hours of tape there will be? And of course there are so many books. I’m hoping we’re having a meeting in London and next week, and I’m hoping that we can between us come up with the help of a lot of other people, come up with all sorts of ideas. But look, if you are studying with us regularly, start teaching your children. My kids both took an A Level in modern Jewish history and I must admit it did stand them in good stead. It doesn’t exist anymore. But the syllabus is under my bed.

Bobby’s saying, “Teaching Jewish history high repudiating the Judafication of it.” Of course, of course. Okay, I think I stopped there. Thank you, Judy. God bless.

• [Judy] Thank you everybody. Take care, bye-bye.