Dickinson State University
Summer Semester, History 497
Dr. David A. Meier, 422 Stickney

I. Course Overview

History 497: Antisemitism in the Modern World offers an introduction into the history of European Antisemitism from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Appealing to the twenty-five articles in your textbook, students will review the basic popular opinions characterizing popular thought on European Jewry. Modern anti-Semitism, in contrast to earlier forms, was based not on religious practices of the Jews but on the theory that Jews comprised an inferior race. Anti-Semites exploited the fact that Jews had been forced into exile by extolling as "fact" that their "rootlessness" had a genetic basis. A Jew was a Jew not because he or she practiced any particular religion, but because it was a character of his or her blood. While there is evidence that Jews suffered persecution in the past which was secular-based, it was not until the period of the Enlightenment that this form of anti-Semitism became prevalent. Eighteenth Century Enlightenment was based on three assumptions: 1) the entire universe is fully intelligible and governed by natural rather than supernatural forces; 2) the "scientific method" can answer all fundamental questions; and 3) the human race can be "educated" to improve itself, even to overcome limitations of birth and class. During the Enlightenment, there was a rise in nationalistic feelings. People with a shared culture, language, history, race and value systems, bonded together into political, economic, and social entities with distinct continuous geographical boundaries which we refer to today as nations. A nation was a group of people united politically and militarily under a single flag and a single leader to ward off the domination of foreigners. The group had a shared loyalty to the nation. Jews, as outsiders who did not share the common language, culture, religion, and values, were seen as a threat by extremists in the nationalist movement. As such, they became the targets of anti-Semitic persecution.

II. Textbook

Richard S. Levy, Antisemitism in the Modern World. An Anthology of Texts (Lexington: Heath, 1991).

III. Assignments and Grading

There are five assignment sheets attached to this syllabus. The questions listed will constitute the questions discussed in class. Type-written answers to all questions will be submitted by all students before the conclusion of the course. There will be no formal examinations. 

Antisemitism in the Modern World


History 497, Assignment One

Name__________________________

S.S.# ________ _____ _________
 

1. What is J. A. Eisenmenger's central charge against Jews?
2. As a representative of enlightened thought, what are Voltaire's central concerns about the Jews?

(In the graphic to the right, you can see a clear depiction of this attitude; in the graphic, a Jew poisons a Christian water supply by dropping some potion into the well. For additional information, see http://www.igc.apc.org/ddickerson/antisemitism.html, http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7221/antisemitism.htm, and
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html#jewish.)

Extra Credit

Using http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7221/, investigate The Merchant of Venice to determine whether it includes antisemitic elements and, more specifically, whether Shylock is the embodiment or expression of some antisemitic attitude that is pervasive in Elizabethan society.

Bibliography: Medieval and Enlightenment Oppression

Abrahams, Israel. Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. JPS, Philadelphia. (JPS)
Baer, Yitzchak F. History of the Jews in Christian Spain. 2 vols. JPS, Philadelphia. 1961.
    ISBN 0-8276-0115-8, 0-8276-0338-X. (JPS)
Chazan, Robert. In the Year 1096...The First Crusader and the Jews Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society,
    1996. (ISBN 0-8276-0575-7)
Marcus, Jacob R. The Jew In The Medieval World: A Source Book 315-1791 Atheneum, New York. 1979. (JPS)
Po-chia Hsia, R. The Myth of Ritual Murder. Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany New Haven: Yale
    University Press, 1988. (ISBN 0-300-04746-0)
Roth, Cecil. Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew: The Report by Cardinal Lorenzo
    Ganganelli (Pope Clement XIV) Woburn Press, London. 1934.
Trachtenberg, Joshua. The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern
    Anti-Semitism. JPS: Philadelphia, PA. 1983. ISBN 0-8276-0227-8. (JPS) 

Antisemitism in the Modern World


History 497, Assignment Two

Name__________________________

S.S.# ________ _____ _________
 

1. The Prussian state church combined an authoritarian approach in politics with ideals of social betterment. Typical of these attempts was that of the Prussian court preacher Adolf Stöcker. He formed a political party loyal to the Emperor and dedicated to a Christian authoritarianism, not an authoritarianism exercised by the Pope but by the Emperor who, as King of Prussia, was also the head of the state Church. Stöcker's social program included the establishment of a regular ten-hour working day, progressive income and death taxes, high taxes on luxury goods, as well as reform of the stock exchange. All this would restore Christian justice to the Christian state. As for the Jews, Stöcker made three demands of "modern Jewry." Identify them. Philosopher and cultural critic Friedrich Nietzsche broke with his one-time friend Richard Wagner over the issue of Antisemitism. If Nietzsche condemned contemporary visions of the modern, how does Wagner view the modern?
 

2. According to George Mosse, the Jew was conceived as being without the proper ethical roots, without a share in the national consciousness, and incapable of integrating himself with an ideal to acquire proper feeling. In his Bourgeois Society (1854), Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl was concerned with the mobility of the middle classes which he opposed to the rootedness of the land-bound classes, the peasant and the nobility. He thought that the middle classes could be tamed, but the real difficulty lay in what he called the "proletariat." These rootless, unsettled, and therefore useless classes included the migratory worker, the journalist, and above all, the Jew. Rootlessness, the chief evil, led to other undesirable qualities such as the lack of patriotism and the shiftiness which made the young Jew in Dahn's novel betray the Goths who had been good to his family. In this way those phenomena associated with romanticism and the growth of national consciousness laid the groundwork for the Jewish stereotype before racism appeared. The conflict between the peasant ideal and the image of the Jew was significantly symbolized by the reaction to Berthold Auerbach (1812-82), a Jew who was the most important early author of peasant novels in Germany. Though Auerbach's novels were instrumental in popularizing the peasant ideal in popular German thought, Heinrich von Treitschke (1834-96), later in the century, denied any validity to Auerbach's peasantry because he claimed that the author, as a Jew, could not understand or describe the true feelings of the German people. His peasants were, therefore, bound to be artificial. Explain Treitschke's understanding of antisemitism.
 

3. Wilhelm Marr rejects the use of physical violence against Jews. Why? What is some of the evidence that Marr cites to convince his readers that the Jews have already won world mastery?

Antisemitism in the Modern World


History 497 , Assignment Three

Name__________________________

S.S.# ________ _____ _________

1. Though Germany was central in the growth of certain stereotyped images which went into the making of racial thought, this process also affected other countries. The English Fagin was much the same character as Veitel Itzig. In France, where anti-Semitism existed long before the Dreyfus affair, a certain image of Jew emerged before racial thought was fully developed. Here the idea of a Jewish plot to dominate France through economic and political control assumed major importance. Similar to the idea in Germany, it was eventually furthered by the publication of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The fact that these ideas cut across political groups is obvious in France, where anti-Semitism before the last decades of the century came from the left rather than from the right. Proudhon, for example, denounced the universal Jewish conspiracy which he identified with the house of Rothschild. Alphonse Toussenel gave his work the descriptive title of Jews, the Kings of the Era (1845). Even Émile Zola, in his D'Argent (1891), sketched the typical Jewish stereotype in his Banker Gundermann. Edouard Drumont's La France Juive (1886) introduced a full-blown racial doctrine to his countrymen. The documents in the text (Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Henry Ford, Roman Dmowski, and Theodor Fritsch) also make many different claims concerning Jews. Blending these together, develop a composite stereotype of the Jew.

2. The fabricated Protocols of the Elders of Zion is, we are led to believe, written by Jews. What do the actual authors of the document hope to achieve by this stratagem? (For additional information, see http://www.igc.apc.org/ddickerson/protocols.html)

3. This section of the antisemitic anthology is titled: "the radicalization of political antisemitism." In what ways are these readings more radical than those which precede them? 

Antisemitism in the Modern World


History 497, Assignment Four

Name__________________________

S.S.# ________ _____ _________

1. Compare the writings of Istóczy, Drumont, and Bielohlawek. Edouard Drumont in his La France Juive (1886) who first introduced a full-blown racial doctrine to his countrymen. The images he used were identical with those found in Germany. One example will suffice. To him, Shakespeare was the idealistic Aryan who threw himself into the "blue, the dream," while Dumas fils, being half Jewish, could not but have a materialistic view of life. In the wake of the Dreyfus Affair, Theodor Herzl recommended in Der Judenstaat that diplomatic activity be the primary method for attaining the Jewish state and he called for the organized transfer of Jewish communities to the new state. As to which territory the Jews should request, Herzl replied "We shall take what is given us, and what is selected by public opinion." Conscious of Jewish pubic opinion and Jewish philanthropic efforts of the time, Herzl recommended the consideration of Eretz-Israel or Argentina. Ultimately, French fascism failed in the 1930's because it had no definite ideology other than anti-Semitism and a generalized kind of patriotism. The same was the case now. The Poujadist movement made a great deal of noise but it lacked ideological cohesion and in no way can it be compared to the totalitarianism of the fascist movement in other countries, it did not even have the theories of a Maurras to support it. Racism tended to relapse, then, into a traditional anti-Semitism, though the Jewish stereotype still had currency. It has been seen that this was at the basis of racial thought, and as long as it remains alive racial thought cannot be discounted in the West. Nor can nationalism be discounted, in spite of the concern for a united Christian West. France, in the turmoil of losing her empire West Germany, proud of her unique prosperity, still preserved and exalted their national image. Did French antisemitism differ significantly from its Austrian and Hungarian counterparts? Explain.
 

2. Using the five articles in the text, compare and contrast German Antisemitism with its counterparts in France, Austria, and Hungary. 

Antisemitism in the Modern World


History 497, Assignment Five

Name__________________________

S.S.# ________ _____ _________

1. In Mein Kampf Hitler recounts a number of things he learned about Jews. List three or four of his most important discoveries. (For additional information see http://www.h-net.msu.edu/ ~german/gtext/kaiserreich/hitler1.html)

2. Who won the First World War, according to Hitler? Explain.

3. Hitler states that both the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the German Revolution of 1918 were the work of the Jews. Why, according to Hitler, did they engineer these events and what did they particularly fear from Germany and Russia?
 

4. According to George Mosse, the majority of those who collaborated with national socialism were Nazis only in a vague sort of way. They believed in Nazi ideology only because they thought it pointed the way to a better life; they thought little about what Hitler had written in Mein Kampf. Order would be kept, security assured, and the state of the nation would improve. All these things did, in fact, happen. They sailed along on the tide and when it became a storm they were caught. After all, Hitler did not begin to unfold his true program for the Aryan state until 1938 though from the beginning the signs were there for all to read. Most people, including the Jews, preferred to shut their eyes; the terrible things portended were unimaginable. But the horror came; for fascism all action and truth was relevant only to the ideology of the movement--what it demanded had to be done. If so, then what value ought we to place on Hitler's Mein Kampf as a historical document?
 

(For more information on contemporary Antisemitism, see http://bnaibrith.org/randa/ unesco3.html)