Antisemitism in the Weimar Republic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Wein ◽  
Martin Ulmer
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Party Press ◽  
The Right

Antisemitism was an integral part of the Weimar Republic’s political culture and was widespread in society. During the 1920s, hostility towards Jews was often radical and militant, complemented by their increasing exclusion in everyday life. Right-wing anti-democrats weaponized antisemitic conspiracy myths against the Weimar Republic, defamed as the ‘Jew Republic’. In Reich and state parliaments and in the party press, antisemites attempted to charge public discourses with antisemitism and, in doing so, change the unwritten rules of what could and could not be said. Dwindling republican forces largely underestimated the looming danger. The defence organizations of the German Jews, from the early 1930s, had hardly any chance against the superior numbers of the right-wing extremist movement under the leadership of the Nazi party.

Struggle, 1924–1929

2019 ◽  
pp. 169-210
Author(s):  
Philipp Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
Great War ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Direct Contrast ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Great War

This chapter describes the twin pulls felt by the German Right between 1924 and 1929: pragmatic adjustment and ideological purity. Which path the Right and its projects would ultimately take would necessarily impact questions of Jewish inclusion in right-wing circles. But Jews were by no means only bystanders in this process. Instead they actively participated in renegotiating the Right’s political positions in the Weimar Republic. Through renewed attempts at agricultural settlements, in the defense of Germandom in the East, at shared commemorations of the fallen of the Great War, or in party politics, conservative German Jews were active, though increasingly curtailed by antisemitism, in trying to devise new notions of national belonging and community that could be in direct contrast to the republican ideals of Weimar.

Descent, 1929–1935

2019 ◽  
pp. 211-252
Author(s):  
Philipp Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Critical Importance ◽  
Class Model ◽  
German Jews ◽  
The Right

In the last years of the Weimar Republic, beginning with the onset of recession in 1929, right-leaning German Jews faced an existential question: where would they fit into this reconfigured political space? For those Jews whose political identity placed them on the Right, the decline of the DVP and DNVP was of critical importance. They perceived class—or, more precisely, the working class model of Marxism—to be a threat on the order of antisemitism. The question for them was whether there would be room for German Jews in a Right that hailed a Volk based on racial descent. The chapter describes the attempts of German Jews on the Right to define and defend their place in the German Volk, or in other instances their turning away from their previous right-wing allegiances and toward alternative categories of belonging.

Turmoil, 1918–1924

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-168
Author(s):  
Philipp Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
First World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
World War ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Right ◽  
First World

This chapter describes the ways in which right-wing Jews, whether they described themselves as “royalist,” “nationally minded” (nationalgesinnt), or “conservative,” attempted to make sense of the political and social changes around them following Germany’s defeat in the First World War and amid revolution at home. None of them were mere bystanders but active participants in their environment. The extent to which they could remain integrated into the Right in the years between 1918/1919 and 1924, on what terms, and in which parts of it, reflects the wider development of social and political circles they moved in, and thus the development of the wider Right, in the first five years of the Weimar Republic. It traces the rise of new concepts of belonging, namely the community of the trenches and the people’s community.

scholarly journals A Republican Potential: The Rise and Fall of the German Democratic Party in Hof-an-der-Saale, 1918–1920

2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-492
Author(s):  
Alex Burkhardt
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
The Right

AbstractIn January 1919, the Bürgertum of the Bavarian town of Hof voted overwhelmingly for the left-liberal German Democratic Party (Deutsche Demokratische Partei, DDP). But the following summer, in the Reichstag elections of June 1920, the Democrats sustained significant losses against the right-wing nationalist Bavarian Middle Party (Bayerische Mittelpartei, BMP). This article explores the rise and fall of the DDP in Hof by showing that a pro-republican politics initially proved popular among the local Bürgertum, until its credibility was undermined and ultimately destroyed by a series of devastating crises: the Bavarian Räterepublik of April 1919, the publication of the Versailles Treaty a month later, and the revolutionary and counterrevolutionary convulsions triggered by the Kapp Putsch in March 1920. This article concludes that political violence and a burgeoning confrontation between bürgerliche and socialist milieus were the key factors in explaining the eclipse of left-liberalism in Hof during the first years of the Weimar Republic.

Campaigning Against Bolshevism: Catholic Action in Late Weimar Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 550-573
Author(s):  
Klaus Große Kracht
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Catholic Action ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
Fertile Soil ◽  
The Right

Under the banner of ‘Catholic Action’, Pius XI called the laity during the interwar period to struggle for a worldwide ‘re-Christianization of society’. Whatever this meant in detail, a religious frontline against communism was an essential part of the papal programme. Catholic anti-communism was not just a reaction to anticlerical communist ideas, however; rather, it accompanied the development of communist and socialist parties in Europe from the very beginning. As I will show in this article through the example of the diocese of Berlin, this papal anti-communism fell on fertile soil in the Catholic milieu of the Weimar Republic, and especially so within Catholic Action. At the head of Catholic Action in Berlin was Erich Klausener, who would later become a prominent victim of the so-called Night of the Long Knives (30 June 1934), when Hitler had a number of his political opponents on both the right and left executed. As we shall see, though, the activists of Catholic Action saw their political enemy less in the ascendant Nazi Party and more in communist propaganda, which they tried to defeat with all the means at their disposal.

scholarly journals HUGENBERG CONTRA ERZBERGER: CRITICISM OF THE FINANCIAL REFORM OF THE REICHSMINISTER IN THE WEIMAR NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

2021 ◽  
Vol 01 (05) ◽  
pp. 128-140
Author(s):  
A.A. Tyrygin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Financial Reform ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Tax System ◽  
National Assembly ◽  
People's Party ◽  
Political Speeches ◽  
The Right ◽  
Shed Light

The article deals with the criticism of the financial reform of Reich Minister Matthias Erzberger in the Weimar National Assembly from the right-wing parties that expressed the interests of big proprietors and the industrial elite. Erzberger, seeking to create a centralized tax system, has come across consistent criticism from the leader of the radical wing of the German National People's Party faction Alfred Hugenberg, a Pan-German, experienced financier and former head of the Friedrich Krupp AG concern. The Hugenberg's criticism, who was seeking to make a political career, were the draft laws on socialization and emergency tax, submitted to the deputies of the National Assembly. The campaign against Erzberger, accompanied by sharp attacks and widespread public condemnation, ended with the rejection of part of the Reich Minister's law drafts and the subsequent resignation. The analysis of the published political speeches of Hugenberg and materials from periodicals shed light on the specifics of parliamentary discussions, allowing to reveal the arguments of the right against the continuation of democratization of the Weimar Republic in the early years of its existence.

scholarly journals Octave Mirbeau and the Changing Nature of Right-Wing Political Culture: France, 1870–1914

1998 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-135
Author(s):  
Sharif Gemie
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Dreyfus Affair ◽  
The Right

Octave Mirbeau was a committed supporter of right-wing politics in the 1870s, and a committed opponent of the right wing during the Dreyfus Affair. This paper examines the reasons for his political change of heart, and discusses his changing analyses of right-wing political culture. Mirbeau's ideas are compared with those of some of his contemporaries, such as Blum, Peguy and Sorel.

Journalists and Freedom of Expression in the Twentieth Century

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Volker R. Berghahn
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
German History ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Underground Resistance ◽  
The Right

This introductory chapter briefly reviews the lives of the three journalists under discussion—Marion Countess Dönhoff, Paul Sethe, and Hans Zehrer—and places them within the context of German history under the shadow of World War II. It shows that the three journalists were all anti-Nazis in the Weimar Republic who had been enjoying liberal press freedoms under Article 118 of the Constitution. According to this article, “every German” had “the right, within the limits of general laws, to express his opinions freely.” Their freedom became threatened when from 1930 onward they witnessed the rise of Nazism and then Adolf Hitler's seizure of power in January 1933. Sethe, Zehrer, and Dönhoff (though she was not yet a journalist) continued to keep their distance from the regime thereafter. Unlike millions of other Germans, they never became members of the Nazi Party, nor did they emigrate or join the early underground resistance. Instead, this chapter argues that these three journalists went into “inner emigration.”

scholarly journals ‘No Sense of Reality’

2018 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-239
Author(s):  
Kirk Niergarth
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
International Comparison ◽  
National Government ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Sense Of Reality ◽  
The Right ◽  
Insight Into

In 1936 George Drew, future Premier of Ontario, was greatly concerned that a false and very dangerous impression of the Russian experiment in government was being spread in Ontario. So he traveled to Russia in 1937 where he confirmed his preconceived ideas with first-hand observation. For him, toleration of domestic communism could lead either to the horrors of Stalin’s USSR or to the fascism of Hitler or Mussolini. Canada’s best option, he felt, was to follow Britain in ending partisan politics and establishing a “National Government.” Thus, in the 1930s, he worked, unsuccessfully, to create coalition governments in Toronto and Ottawa. This article concludes that the lens through which Drew viewed the USSR can be reversed to gain insight into the Canadian political culture of which he was a part. The right-wing solutions that Drew advocated were conveyed to the public through international comparison and analogy based on Drew’s eye-witness account of his European tour.

Nazistowski mord na Żydach w prasie polskich komunistów (1942–1944).

2006 ◽  
pp. 54-75
Author(s):  
Klaus Peter Friedrich
Keyword(s):  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Social Democrats ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Polish Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Right

Facing the decisive struggle between Nazism and Soviet communism for dominance in Europe, in 1942/43 Polish communists sojourning in the USSR espoused anti-German concepts of the political right. Their aim was an ethnic Polish ‘national communism’. Meanwhile, the Polish Workers’ Party in the occupied country advocated a maximum intensification of civilian resistance and partisan struggle. In this context, commentaries on the Nazi judeocide were an important element in their endeavors to influence the prevailing mood in the country: The underground communist press often pointed to the fate of the murdered Jews as a warning in order to make it clear to the Polish population where a deficient lack of resistance could lead. However, an agreed, unconditional Polish and Jewish armed resistance did not come about. At the same time, the communist press constantly expanded its demagogic confrontation with Polish “reactionaries” and accused them of shared responsibility for the Nazi murder of the Jews, while the Polish government (in London) was attacked for its failure. This antagonism was intensified in the fierce dispute between the Polish and Soviet governments after the rift which followed revelations about the Katyn massacre. Now the communist propaganda image of the enemy came to the fore in respect to the government and its representatives in occupied Poland. It viewed the government-in-exile as being allied with the “reactionaries,” indifferent to the murder of the Jews, and thus acting ultimately on behalf of Nazi German policy. The communists denounced the real and supposed antisemitism of their adversaries more and more bluntly. In view of their political isolation, they coupled them together, in an undifferentiated manner, extending from the right-wing radical ONR to the social democrats and the other parties represented in the underground parliament loyal to the London based Polish government. Thereby communist propaganda tried to discredit their opponents and to justify the need for a new start in a post-war Poland whose fate should be shaped by the revolutionary left. They were thus paving the way for the ultimate communist takeover

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