To the uninitiated, the imperial German era might well seem like the Golden Age of philosemitism. Rarely have the very terms
“philosemitism,” “philosemite,” and “philosemitic” featured so prominently, pervasively, and persistently in public discourse
as they did in Germany in the four decades or so leading up to the First World War. Yet this almost obsessive interest in
“philosemitism” by no means bears testimony to a deep yearning for relations between non-Jews and Jews that are based on genuine
solidarity, mutual respect, and constructive engagement. For the terms “philosemitism,” “philosemite,” and “philosemitic”
were used well nigh universally not in an affirmative sense but rather with a pejorative intent. In imperial Germany, to be
called a “philosemite” was a bad thing, an accusation against which even many avowed “anti-antisemites” (i.e., opponents of
antisemitism) felt the need to defend themselves.
In a number of respects, imperial Germany confronts us with a highly complex constellation when it comes to the study of relations
between Jews and non-Jews and notions of “philosemitism.” With the emergence of modern political antisemitism proper in the
1870s begins the comparatively short era of self-avowed, overt, and proud antisemitism. Since the Shoah antisemitism generally
no longer dares speak its name. Even those who nurture a strong conscious enmity toward “the Jews” and would condone or actively
participate in measures designed to do them serious harm would today almost invariably deny in public that they are antisemites.
Seen from this vantage point, imperial Germany is well and truly a strange land. Among its inhabitants we find a significant
and vocal minority that publicly identified itself as antisemitic. Yet far from offering us a clear-cut means of identifying
who stood where, this in fact raises more questions than it answers. For the majority who presumably thought of themselves
as not being antisemitic, and the rather less significant and less vocal minority who thought of themselves as being expressly
anti-antisemitic,
both generally subscribed to most of the anti-Jewish stereotypes of the day.
Few anti-antisemites would have denied that the antisemites had a point. The problem with the antisemites, as they saw it,
was that they took matters too far. In short, it is entirely possible that someone who would be considered an antisemite today
would have been regarded as an outspoken anti-antisemite in imperial Germany.
In imperial Germany many sentiments and stereotypes that we today would regard as anti-Jewish would have been considered unproblematic
or even legitimate – that is, unless at least one of two additional conditions were fulfilled. First, those who
explicitly argued that “the Jews” were ultimately responsible for all that was wrong in society and
explicitly suggested that all social maladies could be rectified by curtailing the Jews’ rights or removing them altogether were generally
perceived of as antisemites. In this regard, the crucial issue was not what people thought about Jews but what they thought
should happen to them. It was not people’s perceptions of “the Jewish question,” in other words, but their prescriptions for
its resolution that were considered crucial when distinguishing between antisemites and non-antisemites.
1The second means of drawing this distinction hinged not on the content of remarks about “the Jews.” Instead, the question
was, Who was making the remark about whom and with what intent? As a rule of thumb, anti-Jewish remarks made by one’s political
opponents were considered antisemitic. If one made essentially the same remark oneself, on the other hand, this was obviously
a different matter altogether. One person’s self-evidently non-antisemitic, perfectly legitimate critique of actual “Jewish”
transgressions could well be another person’s antisemitic attempt to exploit that legitimate critique for illegitimate political
ends. Socialists, for instance, argued that popular anti-Jewish sentiment was essentially anticapitalist in motivation. Left
to its own devices, it would serve as an eye opener, allowing people to recognize that they needed to combat capitalism as
a whole and “not just” individual Jewish capitalists. Yet the antisemites, so the Socialists’ argument went, sought to disguise
this fact and instead harnessed popular anti-Jewish sentiment for policies that in fact consolidated the capitalist status
quo. To acknowledge the justification of popular anti-Jewish sentiment as far as it went, as the Socialists did, was perfectly
legitimate; to enlist it for counterrevolutionary purposes, as the organized political antisemites did, was not.
Problematic as these two criteria were, they did at least hinge on the antisemites’ attitudes toward “the Jews.” Probably
more often than not, the terms “antisemite” and “antisemitic” were in fact used simply to denote an individual’s affiliation
or connection with the self-avowed antisemitic movement.
A deputy elected to the Reichstag on an antisemitic ticket was obviously an antisemite. Consequently, so the logic went, everything
he said or did was antisemitic. Needless to say, however, not all his words and actions hinged exclusively or even primarily
on his stance vis-à-vis “the Jews.” He might give speeches in the Reichstag or publish articles on any number of topics or
engage in all sorts of activities that did not involve an expression of his position regarding “the Jews.” Yet among imperial
German Socialists at least, the odds were that all those utterances and activities (including private issues such as adultery
or shady business dealings) would automatically be characterized – and denounced – as “antisemitic.” I have cited a paradigmatic
example illustrating this issue elsewhere.
2 In October 1898, the Socialist
Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung (Dresden), then under the editorship of Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919), published a short piece on the recent congress of the
antisemitic Deutschsoziale Reformpartei. It criticized the antisemites’ veneration of Bismarck and the kaiser, the fact that
they were unable to agree among themselves on an issue as important as the naval bill, and their prescriptions in defense
of small to medium-sized enterprises (
Mittelstandspolitik). While these were indeed all considered standard anti-antisemitic arguments at the time because they questioned the antisemites’
integrity and credibility, not a single word uttered by the antisemites regarding “the Jews” was mentioned in the article.
3 The antisemitic Deutschsoziale Reformpartei nevertheless promptly shot back, its paper, the
Deutsche Wacht, concluding its rant against the Socialist
Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung with the statement that one could have no serious dealings with “a Jewish madam [i.e., Luxemburg] who churns out such tasteful
clichés.”
4 Luxemburg, who generally responded whenever her Jewish background was used against her in public, immediately published a
rejoinder in which she clarified that in this case the article in question had been not by her but “by my perfectly Christian
colleague.”
5 This rejoinder by Luxemburg, in turn, was included in the edition of her collected works published in the GDR in the early
1970s. There, in the editors’ explanation of the background to Luxemburg’s rejoinder, they claim that the initial criticism
formulated in the
Sächsische Arbeiter-Zeitung was “directed especially against the antisemitic stance of the party as well as its support for the imperialist armament
policies.”
6 In short, in keeping with a widespread practice, the editors automatically
assume that any critique of an antisemitic organization would inevitably include a criticism of the antisemites’ stance vis-à-vis
“the Jews,” even though the critique in question failed to touch on this issue.
Or take some of the formulations in the publications of the Zentralverband der Handlungsgehilfen und -gehilfinnen Deutschlands
that I will discuss in more detail toward the end of this essay. Surely with our contemporary sensitivities we would expect
an article with the title “Antisemitic Forgers and Fraudsters” to show how antisemites falsify information about Jews to arrive
at their bizarre claims. Yet in the two articles published under this heading in the
Handlungsgehülfen-Blatt in spring 1904,
7 the emphasis lay on the fact that the Zentralverein’s antisemitic rival organization (the Deutschnationale Handlungsgehilfen-Verband,
DHV) had publicly misquoted a statement in Hamburg’s Socialist paper, the
Hamburger Echo, about the displacement of small shops by large department stores. Apparently, the DHV’s misrepresentation of the paper’s
stance was an
antisemitic forgery simply because it was a forgery undertaken by self-avowed antisemites. On another occasion the
Handlungsgehülfen-Blatt accused one of the leaders of the DHV of being an antisemitic chameleon because he regularly presented himself to different
audiences in different guises, sometimes as a small entrepreneur, sometimes as an artisan, sometimes as a “Christian-national
worker,” and so on.
8 This made him an “
antisemitic chameleon” simply because he was also an antisemite.
In many instances, then, Socialists criticized antisemites without actually taking issue with their antisemitism. Consequently,
it was perfectly possible to be an outspoken anti-antisemite in imperial Germany while concurring with a variety of anti-Jewish
sentiments and stereotypes proudly held by outspoken antisemites.
It is against this backdrop that we need to understand the manifold references to “philosemitism” and “philosemites” in imperial
German public discourse regarding Jewish–non-Jewish relations. Virtually in tandem with the emergence of modern political
antisemitism, the term “philosemitism” was introduced by the antisemites to denounce their opponents. Wolfram Kinzig specifically
credits the supporters of the godfather of respectable antisemitism, imperial Germany’s most prestigious historian of the
day, Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–96), with coining the term, which most likely first appeared in print in an article by
Treitschke, published in December 1880, in which he speaks of the “philosemitic zealotry of the
Fortschrittspartei.”
9Although not equally popular with all antisemites,
10 the term very quickly established itself as a shorthand denoting various forms of opposition to antisemitism. As Kinzig points
out, the proper etymological counterpart to antisemitism would have been “prosemitism.”
11 The term “philosemitism” is even more charged, of course. Its obvious implication was that anybody who could be bothered
to oppose antisemitism actively must be in cahoots with “the Jews.” There could be no neutral ground, no nonexceptionalist
discourse on this issue: one could only be the Jews’ foe or their “friend.” The onus to demonstrate the validity of this contention
by no means lay with the antisemites, and most (non-Jewish) anti-antisemites vigorously objected to being labeled philosemites
quite of their own accord.
One might be tempted to assume that imperial Germany – in a direct reversal of the current state of play – was characterized
by conditions in which antisemitism dared speak its name while “philosemitism” did not. However, the vehemence with which
non-Jewish anti-antisemites sought to assure their readers or listeners that they did not oppose the antisemites because they
liked “the Jews” or wanted to whitewash their many admittedly ghastly characteristics makes this an implausible suggestion.
They appear to have genuinely felt profoundly embarrassed by their own anti-antisemitism.
12 This embarrassment instilled in them the urge to make clear that they too considered “the Jews,” at least in some respects,
a problematic other and that what worried them was not antisemitism’s effect on Jewry but its potential effect on society
as a whole.
This is not to deny that there were, of course, non-Jews in imperial Germany whose relationships with Jews were based on genuine
solidarity, mutual respect, and constructive engagement. Nor, to my knowledge, has anybody ever tried to deny this. Yet mutual
respect and constructive engagement were never the norm and always the exception.
13 Of course these
exceptions deserve our attention, and they deserve to be remembered not least because they can help us nuance the bigger picture.
But whenever we make them our focal point we are brushing against the grain; we are examining the subtext and not the main
plot, exploring what might have been had the exception constituted the norm and what it might take to make the exception of
the past the norm of the future. Yet none of this can change the actual historical record.
14In any case, whatever may or may not have been the norm or the exception in imperial Germany, one point is beyond doubt. Even
to those who did aspire to relations based on mutual respect and constructive engagement between German Jews and non-Jews
it would have seemed virtually inconceivable to think of themselves, let alone publicly present themselves, as “philosemites.”
To be sure, the fact that anti-“philosemitic” rhetoric played a role not only in antisemitic but also in anti-antisemitic
discourse in imperial Germany is, in itself, hardly news. Its significance, however, has been massively underrated. Far from
being considered integral to anti-antisemitic discourse in imperial Germany, the anti-“philosemitic” trope has often been
portrayed as a marginal, not to say obscure, curiosity. Supposedly,
anti-“philosemitism” was a preserve of the Socialists, and even among them it was not generally accepted but really only an
obsession shared by a few exceptionally problematic individuals, foremost among them the prominent party journalist and historian,
Franz Mehring (1846–1919).
15If we take the social democratic
16 rhetoric at its face value, Socialist anti-“philosemitism” hinged on the notion that the “philosemites,” while claiming to
oppose antisemitism out of concern for the Jews, were in fact opposed to antisemitism’s anticapitalist thrust. In the minds
of many Social Democrats, the philosemites’ ostensible defense of Jewry against antisemitism, in other words, was in fact
no more than a pretext for the defense of capitalism. To cite one of Mehring’s classic formulations: “The brutalities committed
against the Jews by antisemitism, in words rather than deeds, should not lead us to lose sight of the brutalities philosemitism
commits, in deeds rather than words, against anyone, be he Jew or Turk, Christian or Pagan, who resists capitalism.” For “philosemitism
opposes antisemitism only to the extent that antisemitism opposes capitalism.”
17The notion that Mehring was a special case whose obsession with “philosemitism” was not shared and was at times even publicly
criticized by his peers is based in large measure on a single proof text, a review article published by Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932)
in the party’s theoretical journal, the
Neue Zeit, in May 1893 under the title “Das Schlagwort und der Antisemitismus [The catchphrase and antisemitism].”
18 The suggestion that Mehring, who would die a founding member of the German Communist Party (KPD), and Bernstein, the conceptual
founding father of revisionism,
19 locked horns over the issue of anti-“philosemitism” has intriguing implications. Many would doubtless feel deeply satisfied
if it could be shown that the future stalwart of “democratic Socialism” was the one who saw through the anti-“philosemitic”
discourse while a man with
protototalitarian predilections like Mehring subscribed to it hook, line, and sinker. Intriguing though this suggestion may
be, it is not borne out by the evidence.
To be sure, in “Das Schlagwort und der Antisemitismus” Bernstein did indeed voice his concern that Socialists might grant
the antisemites “a certain legitimacy”
20 by subscribing to the critique of “philosemitism.” Yet as ever, the devil is in the details. First, Bernstein made it clear
at the very beginning of his review article that the “terminology” he was taking issue with, that is, the juxtaposition of
antisemitism and “philosemitism,” far from being a personal obsession of Mehring’s, was “widely accepted in the Socialist
press.”
21 Second, it really was very much the “terminology” that Bernstein was concerned about and not the logic of the underlying
argument.
He directed his critical remarks in particular measure against those who were the “most frequent” critics of “philosemitism,”
“namely the comrades of Jewish descent who, precisely because they are of Jewish extraction, consider it their special duty
to spare the party any suspicion of aiding and abetting Jewish interests.” Bernstein’s focus at this point is not without
irony for he was, of course, himself a “comrade of Jewish descent,” and he too felt the desire to “spare the party any suspicion
of aiding and abetting Jewish interests.” He expressly called this a “very commendable” intention; his point was merely that
it could be “better and more effectively underscored” by other means. Instead of using the term “philosemitism,” Bernstein
suggested, Socialists should refer to the genuine “other extreme” opposed to antisemitism, which was “pansemitism.” Antisemitism
and pansemitism were polar opposites, Bernstein went on to explain, in just the same way “as slavophobia and panslavism” were.
22What makes this suggestion so remarkable is the fact that it not only leaves unchallenged the bizarre assumption that “philosemitism”
is a socially harmful tendency on a par with antisemitism: it in fact reinforces it. For panslavism was, after all, an actually
existing, self-avowed political and ideological movement that ever since 1848 had been firmly established in the minds of
virtually all progressives, radicals, and Socialists in Europe as a particularly lethal enemy. Bernstein quite clearly analogized
the amorphous collection of anti-antisemitic trends commonly identified with the blanket term “philosemitism” with a recognizably
“reactionary” movement like panslavism. And yet, despite the evident analogy Bernstein drew here, this very same article of
his has generally been interpreted by historians as a “warning against the use of the catchword of philo-Semitism,”
23 one that
supposedly “cautioned the Social Democratic Party against ambiguity of language and attitude in the Jewish question.”
24This assessment seems even more remarkable if we take the line of Bernstein’s argument in this review article as a whole into
consideration. For Bernstein concludes “Das Schlagwort und der Antisemitismus” by tackling what he considers antisemitism’s
worst quality. Far from pressuring Jews into assimilation antisemitism would provoke them into renewed Jewish separatism,
“and it is here, above all,” Bernstein explained, “that the critique of antisemitism has to begin.”
25 Against this background one cannot help wondering about the timing of Bernstein’s review article. It was published in mid-May
1893, six weeks after an event of considerable significance for Jewish–non-Jewish relations in imperial Germany. The Centralverein
deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens [Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith], which soon consolidated
itself as the dominant representative of mainstream Jewry in Germany, was established on March 26, 1893. Perhaps it was this
event that convinced Bernstein that the amorphous phantom “philosemitism” had now become an institutionalized and self-avowed
movement analogous to panslavism and needed to be tackled accordingly. Far from being concerned that the thrust of his peers’
anti-“philosemitism” was misdirected or went too far, his real concern was that it did not go far enough, and his suggestion
that they should focus their justified ire not on “philosemitism” but on “pansemitism” was meant to heighten their vigilance.
At no point did Bernstein mention Mehring in all this. As we saw, he initially noted the, to his mind, widespread but problematic
usage of the term “philosemitism” in the Socialist press but then went on to single out specifically “the comrades of Jewish
descent” as those who were most guilty of this sin. Somewhat ironically, this did not prevent Mehring himself from suspecting
what historians have claimed ever since, all the evidence notwithstanding, namely, that Bernstein’s critique was in fact directed
against him. He raised this issue on June 7, 1893, in a letter to Karl Kautsky (1854–1938),
26 the de facto editor in chief of the
Neue Zeit, who would finally emerge as the uncontested chief ideologue of the Second International after the death of Friedrich Engels
in 1895.
Yet Kautsky, responding on June 12, assured Mehring that “Bernstein’s articles are not directed against you.” In their previous
discussions of the matter, Kautsky reported, Bernstein had mentioned not Mehring but the leader of the Austrian party, Victor
Adler (1852–1918), who was himself of Jewish extraction and “who indeed propagates a stance similar to yours.”
In fact, Adler was perhaps even more emphatic in his notions about “philosemitism.” Why would this be the case? Kautsky apparently
did not consider the possibility that Adler might simply be yet another of those “comrades of Jewish descent” singled out
by Bernstein, “who, precisely because they are of Jewish extraction, consider it their special duty to spare the party any
suspicion of aiding and abetting Jewish interests.” Adler’s vehemence, Kautsky suggested, resulted from the fact that the
Austrian party was faced with even more virulent forms of antisemitism than the German party, and the strength of Austrian
antisemitism had generated a form of “philosemitism” to match. “Nowhere,” Kautsky explained, “has ‘philosemitism’emerged in
such force as a natural response to antisemitism,” as it had in Vienna. He then went on to give a definition of “philosemitism.”
He characterized it as “that school of thought that regards every event and every phenomenon exclusively from the vantage
point of whether it will benefit or harm the Jews.” Kautsky expressly confirmed that “philosemitism in this sense exists”
but also suggested that “the antisemites use the word in a different sense than we do.” He concluded by reassuring Mehring
that the differences between Bernstein’s and Mehring’s take on “philosemitism” “strike me as being primarily of a formal nature.”
27Kautsky neither discerned a substantial difference between the positions of Bernstein and Mehring when it came to their anti-“philosemitism”
nor himself expressed any misgivings about what he considered their essentially identical stance on this matter. To the extent
that Bernstein took issue with the terminology involved (and not with the logic of the underlying argument), he did so precisely
because what he considered to be the wrong terminology was “widely accepted in the Socialist press.”
28 In short, the suggestion that anti-“philosemitism” was one of Mehring’s private obsessions, let alone one that he was publicly
taken to task for, is simply untenable. Instead not only was this opposition to “philosemitism” quite evidently considered
acceptable by his peers, but they in fact subscribed to it themselves.
Not that this anti-“philosemitism” was the sole preserve of the German Socialists, of course. Few episodes illustrate this
as dramatically as the well-known debate about antisemitism and “philosemitism” at the International Socialist Congress in
Brussels in 1891. Abraham Cahan (1860–1951), who would later emerge as one of the most renowned Yiddish-language Socialist
publicists in the United States, attended the congress as the representative of the United Hebrew Trades, a New York–based
Jewish trade union organization. Rather naively, he hoped that the congress would move a strongly worded anti-antisemitic
statement and express its support
for his organization. Victor Adler, along with the leading German Social Democrat and long-standing leader of the parliamentary
party Paul Singer (1844–1911) – one of the few Socialist leaders who maintained his affiliation with the Jewish community
throughout his life – bombarded Cahan with passionate pleas to withdraw his motion. They argued it would make the Second International
vulnerable to the accusation that it had sided with “the Jews” and would thus do it untold harm. Cahan would not relent, and
in the debate that eventually ensued French and Belgian Socialists alike articulated their anti-“philosemitism” with verve
and abandon. Indeed, in the light of the debate it seems almost remarkable that the congress eventually moved a motion condemning
antisemitic and “philosemitic” “incitement” in equal measure rather than directing its ire exclusively against “philosemitism.”
29Singer’s involvement in this episode barely seems to have registered among historians working on the attitudes of German Socialists
toward antisemitism and “the Jews.” Against the backdrop of the conventional assumption that Mehring’s anti-“philosemitism”
was exceptional among German Socialists, it has perhaps seemed more plausible to surmise that Singer’s behavior on this occasion,
rather than being born of genuine conviction, was merely tactical. That he proceeded in tandem with Adler in any case makes
this seem highly unlikely, though, since Adler’s heartfelt anti-“philosemitism” is well documented. Yet as we saw, Mehring’s
anti-“philosemitism” was in fact by no means exceptional within the German party, and this renders the suggestion that Singer’s
attempts to make Cahan withdraw his motion might have been of a purely tactical nature even more implausible. Since the likes
of Mehring, Bernstein, and Kautsky all subscribed to this anti-“philosemitism” and Bernstein, as we saw, felt compelled to
single out “the comrades of Jewish descent” as the most ardent anti-“philosemites,” it is hardly surprising that Singer too
should have been one of them. Even so, his case is perhaps particularly disconcerting because he was arguably the most self-confidently
Jewish member of the party leadership.
On two later occasions (in 1898 and 1899) Bernstein did in fact make affirmative references explicitly to “philosemitism.”
30 This is by any standards so rare an occurrence that it definitely merits closer attention. Are these references to “philosemitism”
indicative of a serious attempt on Bernstein’s part to reclaim the term/concept “philosemitism” for the anti-antisemitic cause?
To gauge the extent to which these later utterances
signify a genuine change vis-à-vis his earlier position, we need to revisit Bernstein’s line of argument in “Das Schlagwort
und der Antisemitismus” for a moment. There Bernstein had in fact drawn a distinction between two different types of “philosemitism.”
One of them, he explained, implied “merely a certain sympathy for the Jews that rules out neither a condemnation of notorious
mistakes nor a repudiation of their presumptuousness where it shows itself.” This form of “philosemitism” Bernstein considered
legitimate. The other, illegitimate type that Bernstein thought ought to be referred to as “pansemitism” amounted to “obsequiousness
towards capitalist money-Jewry, support of Jewish chauvinism, glossing over injustices perpetrated by Jews and loathsome characteristics
developed by Jews.”
31The fact that he was so defensive in explaining the nature of the legitimate form of “philosemitism” (“merely a certain sympathy”) clearly demonstrates that Bernstein by no means perceived of these two forms of “philosemitism” as being
on a par. The illegitimate form that ought really to be called “pansemitism” emerges as the obvious and easily recognizable
reality. The legitimate form of “philosemitism” that does not fall into the trap of becoming “pansemitic,” on the other hand,
would seem to amount to a veritable tightrope act requiring all manner of safeguards to remain viable and avoid collapsing
into “pansemitism.” Bernstein’s line of argument clearly accepts and indeed underscores the basic assumption that the burden
of proof lies not with those who subscribe to the prevalent anti-“philosemitism” but with those who claim that there can be
an alternative and legitimate form of non-“pansemitic” “philosemitism.” In other words, even Bernstein’s very insistence that
such a legitimate form of “philosemitism” is conceivable, far from questioning the prevalent critique of “philosemitism” in
fact presupposed and merely complemented it. This could, of course, be no other way since Bernstein’s line of argument, as
we saw, by presenting “pansemitism” as a phenomenon analogous to “panslavism,” in any case did more to reinforce than subvert
the logic underlying the prevalent anti-“philosemitic” discourse.
It is against this background that we need to understand his two affirmative references to “philosemitism” in 1898 and 1899.
32 The first of these references was made in the context of Bernstein’s fairly protracted feud with the English Socialist Ernest
Belfort Bax (1854–1925). In substantive terms, the controversy between them sprang from the fact that they interpreted the
implications of imperialism differently. Consequently they also evaluated the role and status of the Armenians in the Ottomon
Empire very differently, and it was this issue that brought matters to a head between them. Their exchanges were unusually
vicious, even by the harsh standards that characterized much of the ideological debate among German Social
Democrats and within the Second International more generally, and there was clearly no love lost between the two men. Bax’s
critique of Bernstein repeatedly included remarks that it would be hard not to interpret as allusions to Bernstein’s Jewish
origin. On more than one occasion, Bax referred to the Armenians as “usurers” and “moneylenders.” Although anti-Armenian sentiment
was rife among nineteenth-century European Socialists, Bax’s insinuation that Bernstein supported the Armenians
because they were “usurers” and “moneylenders”
33 does suggest that these remarks were indeed meant to draw attention to Bernstein’s Jewish background. Bernstein initially
kept his cool. Bax eventually proceeded to throw the risk of Anglo-Saxon world domination into particularly sharp relief by
contrasting it to the imagined threat of Jewish world domination. On the one hand, Bax clearly meant to poke fun at the antisemites
for their unfounded obsession with the threat the Jews supposedly posed. On the other hand, to declare that “in the Anglo-Saxon
you are up against ten Jews” obviously only makes sense if there is an actual Jewish threat as well. (Ten times zero, after
all, would only be zero.) Nor is there really any rational explanation for Bax’s remark that “I for my part cannot find the
idea terribly gratifying that control of the world should be divided between two strongly superior ethnic groups like, for
instance, the Anglo-Saxons and the Jews.”
34 Why introduce a tricky analogy like this – between a threat he considers real and one he supposedly considers purely hypothetical
– if not in order to draw Bernstein’s Jewish background into the debate in no matter how tenuous a fashion? Even at this point
Bernstein merely mentioned in passing that Bax had embellished his most recent comments “so very tastefully with moderately
antisemitic remarks.”
35 Bax was outraged. “
I am no antisemite and hate the antisemites,” he explained, and then added: “It goes without saying that I would have thought twice about making these, to my mind, perfectly
harmless remarks had I known that Herr Bernstein was … so damn touchy.”
36 Although Bax had not spelled it out, the thrust of this argument was surely clear enough. Bernstein’s response to Bax’s “perfectly
harmless remarks” had been “so damn touchy” because he was a Jew.
Strangely enough, Bernstein now felt himself to be on the defensive. He explained that he had “made the accusation of moderate
antisemitism”
because Bax had repeatedly drawn “Jewry into the debate in a manner that was not merited by the matter at hand.” Bernstein
had therefore felt compelled to interpret this “as an inappropriate attempt to utilize against me the fact that I am of Jewish
extraction.” There is a strange discrepancy here, though. While the thrust of Bax’s earlier remarks remained ambiguous in
this respect, it was precisely his most recent remark about Bernstein’s “touchiness” that in fact represented his most obvious
attempt to allude to Bernstein’s Jewishness. It ought therefore to have vindicated Bernstein in his assumption that he had
been right all along in interpreting the earlier, more ambiguous remarks in this vein too. Yet in actual fact Bernstein now
beat a hasty retreat and conceded that he had been wrong in accusing Bax of “moderate antisemitism.” It would seem that for
all the weird anti-Jewish ruminations he was willing to take lying down, being accused of that wretched “Jewish” quality of
“touchiness” was the one thing Bernstein could not stomach. He therefore clarified that, wrong as he might have been in this
particular instance, touchiness did not come into it. “Those who are more intimately familiar with me know that I am by no
means touchy in this respect,” he explained. And it was at this juncture that he added, “but I consider it a categorical imperative
to be a ‘philosemite’ in the face of any antisemitism.”
37It is hard to imagine a more defensive backdrop for this remark. Bernstein was retracting his accusation of “moderate antisemitism,”
and his overriding interest was to dispel the suspicion that he had overreacted with excessive “touchiness” born of his Jewish
origin. Grasping at straws he came up with the one alternative to excessive “touchiness” he could think of as a motive explaining
his behavior: reasoned anti-antisemitism or, to put a recognizable label on it, “philosemitism” of the sort that does not
fall into the trap of “pansemitism.” Even then it was a term Bernstein did not feel confident using without placing it in
inverted commas. This whole discussion, we might add, took place in a footnote appended to a text discussing an entirely different
issue. Few readers are likely to have bothered with the footnote at all, and even if they did the odds that they considered
it anything other than an expression of personally motivated petty bickering are slim to say the least. That any reader of
the Neue Zeit could conceivably have understood Bernstein’s remark as an invitation to fundamentally reconsider the prevalent anti-“philosemitic”
discourse is surely an entirely implausible suggestion.
Bernstein’s second affirmative reference to “philosemitism” was in fact a direct reiteration of this very remark that had
been tucked away in a footnote in the
Neue Zeit. It transpired in an interview that Bernstein gave to the
London
Jewish Chronicle. The interviewer concluded their discussion with the following “parting question”: “‘What do you think of the anti-Jewish
attacks of some Socialists?’” Bernstein’s response ran as follows: “Apart from any agitation in this country, where my opinion
might be resented, I have stated a year ago in the
Neue Zeit, that,
although in no way connected with any Jewish movement as such, I think it is my duty to be a ‘philo-Semite’ in all cases where I meet anti-Semitism. As a Social Democrat I fight for all
political reforms Jews can reasonably demand.”
38This reiteration of Bernstein’s previous affirmative reference to “philosemitism” is effectively buried under a succession
of disclaimers. It was not this remark but the preceding disclaimer clarifying Bernstein’s Jewish disaffiliation that appeared
italicized in print: the emphasis thus lay on the disclaimer, not on the affirmative statement itself. The final sentence
was then presumably supposed to clarify what he meant when he called himself a “philo-Semite,” and it too required yet another
disclaimer. “As a Social Democrat” he supported “all political reforms” that Jews “can reasonably demand.” In other words,
provided one did not fall into the trap of Jewish separatism and maintained a clear distinction between Jewish demands that
were reasonable and those that were not one could just about be a reasoned anti-antisemite or what we might, for lack of an
alternative label, call a “philo-Semite.” That all this should have constituted a brave attempt to rescue “philosemitism”
from the claws of the prevalent anti-“philosemitic” discourse and reclaim it for anti-antisemitism is surely not a plausible
suggestion.
How representative of broader attitudes in imperial German society more generally was the Socialist response to antisemitism
in imperial Gemany? Did the liberal spectrum, for instance, take an altogether different or more sophisticated stand on these
matters? I readily concede that more research needs to be undertaken in this direction. Even so, there is significant evidence
that much of the relevant discourse among imperial German Social Democrats was indeed indicative of societal trends more generally.
Mehring himself is an interesting case in point, for we have Mehring’s own word for it that his anti-“philosemitism” predates
his affiliation with Social Democracy and that his defection to the Socialists did not require him to review or adapt his
position on the matter. In other words, he was no less prone to indulge in anti-“philosemitic” rants while writing for liberal
papers as a staunch anti-Socialist in the early 1880s than he was when writing for Socialist publications in the 1890s. Moreover,
he caused Jewish boycott calls against two of the liberal papers for which he worked in the 1880s, once directly with a text
he authored, in the other instance
as the editor responsible for publishing a contentious text by one of his colleagues. Yet in neither case does this seem to
have had negative repercussions for him.
39Or take, as another interesting example for the compatibility of Socialist and liberal anti-antisemitic discourse, the pamphlet
that the erstwhile Social Democratic Party leader, Wilhelm Hasenclever (1837–89), published under a pseudonym (
Wilhelm Revel) early in 1881:
Der Wahrheit die Ehre. Ein Beitrag zur Judenfrage in Deutschland [Calling a spade a spade: A contribution on the Jewish question in Germany]. As Hasenclever saw it, “the Jews” had only themselves
to blame for the recent upsurge in antisemitic activity, and the way in which they and their “friends” (i.e., the “philosemites”)
responded to it only made matters worse. He made repeated references to the “touchiness” of “the Jews,” which he qualified
alternatively as “almost laughable” and “effectively malicious” and considered “one of the worst characteristics of the Jews.”
40 The pamphlet is replete with anti-Jewish stereotypes presented in a deft and vicious manner. Why did Hasenclever publish
this pamphlet under a pseudonym? We might hope and assume he did so because he feared that he was not being anti-antisemitic
enough to pass muster with his comrades. Yet Ludger Heid, the scholar currently on most intimate terms with Hasenclever, suggests
that he used the pseudonym because he feared he was being
too anti-antisemitic for his comrades’ liking.
41 Hasenclever not only did not publish the pamphlet under his own name, though. The pamphlet in fact consists of a series of
slightly revised articles that had previously been published, in December 1880, not in a Socialist paper but “
in einer freisinnigen Zeitung,”
42 that is, a Left-liberal paper. This does not automatically imply, of course, that the editors of the Left-liberal paper in
question shared all or indeed any of Hasenclever’s views. It certainly rules out, however, that they were seriously disquieted
by the sort of anti-Jewish and anti-“philosemitic” mockery and ranting that characterized Hasenclever’s
Der Wahrheit die Ehre.
43The book
Friede der Judenfrage! [Peace to the Jewish question!] offers another instructive example. Hans Schmidkunz, a progressive theoretician of art and
pioneering campaigner for the application of pedagogical principles in university education, published it under a pseudonym
(
Johannes Menzinger) in 1896. Schmidkunz was no Social Democrat, to be sure, but his book is of interest here because none other than Eduard
Bernstein warmly recommended it to the readers of the
Neue Zeit in 1898, calling it “very perceptive.”
44 Not only is this book replete with anti-Jewish stereotypes, but Menzinger/Schmidkunz also emphasized how important it was
to insist on the negative qualities of “the Jews,” “especially
vis-à-vis the blindness of philosemitic rhetoric.”
45As Alan T. Levenson rightly points out, my reseach on this topic has focused (and consciously so) in the first instance not
on “the bottom up” or on “middlebrow actors” but on members of the intellectual party elite who were firmly grounded (at least
at some point in their political biography) in Marxism: most significantly Franz Mehring, Eduard Bernstein, and Karl Kautsky.
One might well ask how representative these leading intellectuals are of the state of mind that prevailed in the party more
generally. The debates that Mehring, Bernstein, and Kautsky became involved in inevitably drew in theoretically far less sophisticated
leaders like August Bebel (1840–1913) and Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900), but also altogether less illustrious “middlebrow
actors” such as Edmund Fischer (1864–1925) or Hans Leuß (1861–1920). Hasenclever too is an interesting case in point, for
despite holding high office in the party he was ideologically rather plain and has rightly been considered a good indicator
of the way matters were seen at the bottom rather than the top of the party. Even so, in order to understand prevalent Socialist
attitudes to Jews and antisemitism it makes sense to focus on the Marxist elite. The likes of Kautsky, Bernstein, and Mehring
prided themselves on their ability to deploy Marxist analysis to see beyond mere appearances and grasp how things “really”
worked. Time and again they insisted on the ideological and mythological nature of social constructs that had taken on the
appearance of natural facts of life but were in fact man-made and resulted from conflicts of interest between competing social
groups. The fact that their myth-busting dynamism seems to have faltered in the face of two of the crudest and most rampant
myths of the day, nationalism and antisemitism, is obviously indicative of a failure on their part. I would argue, though,
that it is also indicative of just how strong these myths were and how widely anti-Jewish sentiments and stereotypes pervaded
imperial German society.
In an important sense one could perhaps say that the sway these sentiments and stereotypes held over society as a whole can
be gauged rather well by looking both at those Socialists who had distanced themselves the most and those who had distanced
themselves the least from mainstream society. The case of the former is instructive because it tells us how strong
the hold of widespread perceptions regarding “the Jews” remained even on those who made a systematic and sustained effort
to transcend the outlook and values that the society into which they had been socialized had instilled in them. The case of
the latter is telling because it offers us a glimpse of the sort of mind-set that prevailed where Socialist ideology had barely
made inroads and can therefore hardly be responsible for problematic attitudes toward “the Jews” that we may come across.
I have begun to extend my research more in this second direction, toward “the bottom up,” in other words, by examining the
anti-antisemitism articulated between the turn of the century and the First World War in the publications of the Zentralverband
der Handlungsgehilfen und -gehilfinnen Deutschlands, the Social Democratic union of shop assistants and commercial employees
(
Handlungsgehilfen).
46As is well known, by far the single largest Handlungsgehilfen organization was the Deutschnationale Handlungsgehilfen-Verband
(DHV), an openly
völkisch and antisemitic organization that propagated the exclusion of both Jewish and female
Handlungsgehilfen from the profession and admitted neither as members.
47 Although “the Jews” were not its only concern, antisemitism was far from incidental to the DHV’s success in organizing the
Handlungsgehilfen and formed an integral part of its attraction. Needless to say, its antifeminist and antiproletarian profile were also important
in securing wide support among the
Handlungsgehilfen, and on all three counts the Zentralverband stood no chance of competing: it wanted the
Handlungsgehilfen to consider themselves workers, propagated equal rights for women, and considered itself an anti-antisemitic organization.
By the turn of the century, and especially after 1903, party-political and especially parliamentary party-political antisemitism
was in decline. Party-political opposition to party-political antisemitism thus moved down the list of Social Democratic priorities.
The Zentralverband, by contrast, presents us with an organization in the Social Democratic orbit that never ceased to stand
on a daily basis in direct opposition to a superior antisemitic organization. Yet contrary to what one might expect, this
exceptional situation and constant confrontation with the DHV do not seem to have rendered the Zentralverband any more sensitive
to the antisemitic threat
or any more acute and inventive in its response to it than the rest of the Socialist movement.
The Zentralverband was indeed vehemently anti-antisemitic. Yet while this anti-antisemitism took issue with virtually everything
under the sun, the one thing it focused on less and less was the DHV’s actual stance vis-à-vis the Jews. The three most persistently
raised issues were, first, that the DHV claimed to represent the employees when in fact all its policies favored the employers;
second, the DHV claimed to be a union when in fact it used the members’ contributions to shore up the party-political antisemitic
movement; third, the personal integrity of many of the DHV’s leaders was questionable. Indeed, arguably the single greatest
anti-antisemitic success the Zentralverband ever achieved involved exposing an antisemitic leader who had placed an advertisement
for a female travel companion and then apparently suggested to a respondent that she should join him and his wife in a ménage
à trois. In short, the Zentralverband’s main issue with the DHV was simply that it was its leading (and much stronger) non-Socialist
competitor. That the DHV’s specific brand of non-Socialism was völkisch and antisemitic was neither here nor there in this context. To be sure, the DHV was routinely referred to as “antisemitic,”
but it was called that simply because it was part of the antisemitic movement. This was a useful shorthand not least because
it placed the DHV squarely in the camp of Social Democracy’s sworn enemies. Yet none of this implies that the Zentralverband
actually considered the DHV’s stance vis-à-vis “the Jews” the reason why one should reject it.
Around the turn of the century the publications of the Zentralverband did still occasionally make critical references to the
DHV’s anti-Jewish orientation, but even then they were few and far between. At the same time the few remarks that did explicitly
refer to Jews or Jewish concerns (real or imagined) were generally anti-Jewish and did not feature in the context of arguments
that even claimed to be anti-antisemitic. Subsequently, while the DHV and its associates were still referred to with some
regularity as “antisemites,” the label “antisemitic” was used less and less frequently (especially after 1908) to describe
their activities and qualities, and by 1914 the antisemites’ stance vis-à-vis “the Jews” had more or less ceased to feature
in the publications of the Zentralverband altogether.
Two concerns were conspicuously absent from the Zentralverband’s anti-antisemitic rhetoric. In keeping with the larger picture
I have drawn so far, the first was genuine concern regarding the antisemites’ anti-Jewish orientation and its impact on Jewry.
Rather more surprising, given my strong emphasis on the centrality of anti-“philosemitism” to anti-antisemitic discourse in
imperial Germany, is the almost total absence of anti-“philosemitic” rhetoric. It might seem only logical that as party-political
antisemitism went into decline around the turn of the century, anti-antisemitism would generally become a less pressing issue
and with it the need for anti-“philosemitic”
vigilance. Yet what makes the case of the Zentralverband so interesting is the fact that, as mentioned, it was competing on
a daily basis with an antisemitic organization much stronger than itself. Yet despite this it does not seem to have been dogged
by the strong anti-“philosemitic” urge to which so many other anti-antisemites had previously succumbed. From where did the
anti-antisemites of the Zentralverband draw the self-confidence required to avoid the embarrassment of anti-antisemitism without
resorting to aggressive anti-“philosemitism”? I would suggest that the source of their self-assuredness lay in the fact that
they had developed the fine art of non-“philosemitic” anti-antisemitism – that is, anti-antisemitism that simply never concerned
itself, critically or otherwise, with the antisemites’ stance vis-à-vis “the Jews” in the first place – to such perfection
that they were well and truly beyond all suspicion of being “philosemites.”
That the publicists of the Zentralverband no longer felt the need to make a song and dance about the dangers of “philosemitism,”
in other words, by no means indicates that “philosemitism” was now considered a less serious threat when and if it reared
its ugly head. Instead it demonstrates just how confident they were that they had succeeded in comprehensively immunizing
their constituency – including indeed many who were themselves of Jewish extraction – against the pitfalls of “philosemitism.”
For them, as for most Socialists and many liberals in imperial Germany, the suggestion that the term “philosemitism” could
be used in a positive rather than a pejorative sense would have seemed as inconceivable as ever.