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The Specter of “Godless Jewry”: Secularism and the “Jewish Question” in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Todd H. Weir
Todd H. Weir*
Affiliation:
Queen's University Belfast
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Extract

When asked to provide his own “solution to the Jewish Question” for a 1907 survey, the journalist and philosopher Fritz Mauthner responded, “I do not know how to give an answer to your question, because I do not know which Jewish question you mean. The Jewish question is posed differently by every questioner, differently at every time, differently at every location.” While untypical for its time, Mauthner's viewpoint is shared by many scholars who write today—not one but a myriad of “Jewish Questions” proliferated in nineteenth-century Germany and, indeed, across the globe. The dramas they framed could be transposed onto many stages, because talk about the purported virtues and vices of Jews had the remarkable ability to latch onto and thereby produce meaning for a wide range of public debates. By plumbing this excess of meaning, scholars have teased out some of the key dynamics and antinomies of modern political thought. No longer focusing solely on conservative antisemitism, they have examined the role of the “Jewish Question” in other political movements, such as liberalism and socialism, and in the conceptual elaboration of the state, civil society, and the nation. Cast in ambivalent roles at once powerful and vulnerable, familiar and foreign, the figure of the Jew acted as a lightning rod for imagining such collectivities. Opposing parties shared common assumptions, such as the tacit understanding that integration into the nation, state, or civil society required a self-transformation of Jews, something historians have referred to as the “emancipation contract.” Generally speaking, it was the terms of this contract rather than its form that divided liberals from conservatives, philo- from antisemites, and Jews from non-Jews in the nineteenth-century. Accordingly, scholars now increasingly approach the “Jewish Question” not merely as an example of prejudice, but rather as a framework through which multiple parties elaborated their positions.

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Central European History , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 815 - 849
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Copyright © Central European History Society of the American Historical Association 2014 

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References

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30 Olaf Blaschke noted that antisemitism proved useful to Catholics “in order to compensate the compressed experience of secularization” in the Kulturkampf. Blaschke, Olaf, Katholizismus und Antisemitismus im deutschen Kaiserreich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1997)Google Scholar, 56. Yuri Slezkine argued that secularism became identified with Jews, in part, because of Jewish prominence in its support: Slezkine, Yuri, The Jewish Century (Princeton, NJ, and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004)Google Scholar, 63.

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32 The Catholic priest, Father Eduard Müller, faced off against Berlin secularists in the 1869 controversy of the foundation of a “monastery” in Moabit. He also used his Berliner St. Bonifaciuskalendar to publicize antisemititic views. On Müller, see Anderson, Margaret L., “The Kulturkampf and the Course of German History,” Central European History 19 (1986): 82–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Blaschke, Katholizismus und Antisemitismus, 252.

33 From Stoecker's articles of 1870 and 1876 in the Neue Evangelische Kirchenzeitung, as cited in Engelmann, Hans, Kirche am Abgrund. Adolf Stoecker und seine antijüdische Bewegung (Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1984)Google Scholar, 25, 75.

34 Cited in von Oertzen, Dietrich, Adolf Stoecker. Lebensbild und Zeitgeschichte (Berlin: Verlag der Vaterländischen Verlags- und Kunstanstalt, 1910), 130–31Google Scholar. On the importance of secularism to Stoecker's antisemitism, see Engelmann, Kirche am Abgrund, and Greschat, Martin, “Protestantischer Antisemitismus in Wilhelminischer Zeit—Das Beispiel des Hofpredigers Adolf Stoecker,” in Antisemitismus, ed. Brakelmann, Günter and Rosowski, Martin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), 27–51Google Scholar.

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36 In 1880, Stoecker called “modern Judaism [. . .] an extinct form of religion, [. . .] that has lost its divine course,” and that chased the “idol of gold.” Cited in Ginzel, Günther, “Vom religiösen zum rassischen Judenhaß,” in Antisemitismus. Erscheinungsform der Judenfeindschaft gestern und heute, ed. Ginzel, Günther (Bielefeld: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1991)Google Scholar, 154. In a private letter to Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1880, Stoecker insisted that he was “not attacking the Jews, but rather the irreverent, godless, usurious, deceitful Jewry [Judentum], which is, in fact, the misfortune of our people.” Cited in Oertzen, Stoecker, 219.

37 Police report of April 28, 1885, Landesarchiv Berlin (hereafter LAB) A. Pr. Br. 030, tit. 95, no. 15072, 26.

38 Immanuel Hirsch, Die gegenwärtige geistige Lage im Spiegel philosophischer und theologischer Besinnung, 24. I am grateful to Robert Erikson for this translation.

39 The trope of “godless Jewry” is also found among those antisemites who identified as “freethinkers,” such as Wilhelm Marr. “The Jew,” he wrote, had, “no ideal religion, [. . .] just a business contract with Jehovah.” Another leading völkisch thinker who briefly captured the imagination of many German socialists was Eugen Dühring, who wanted to form an “anti-religion” that would replace Christianity and take up battle with Jewish spirit. This “anti-religion” was decidedly not that of Free Religion, which he accused of being a tool of Jewish interests. Heil, Johannes, “Antisemitismus, Kulturkampf und Konfession—Die antisemitischen ‘Kulturen’ Frankreichs und Deutschlands im Vergleich,” in Katholischer Antisemitismus im 19. Jahrhundert. Ursachen und Traditionen im internationalen Vergleich, ed. Blaschke, Olaf and Mattioli, Aram (Zurich: Orell Füssli, 2000)Google Scholar, 210, 215, 217. Dühring, Eugen, Die Judenfrage als Racen-, Sitten- und Culturfrage (Karlsruhe and Leipzig: H. Reuther, 1881), 147–48Google Scholar.

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45 Manuel Joël, “Offener Brief an Herrn Heinrich von Treitschke,” in Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit, 18–19.

46 Hermann Cohen, “Ein Bekenntniss in der Judenfrage,” in Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit, 127. The Jewish-Protestant “synthesis” and connections of ethics, philosophy, religion and national unity continued to inform Cohen's work up until the very end of his life. Bach, Hans, The German Jew: A Synthesis of Judaism and Western Civilization, 1730–1930 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 194–201Google Scholar.

47 Zimmermann, Moshe, “Aufkommen und Diskreditierung des Begriffs Antisemitismus”, in Das Unrechtsregime. Internationale Forschung über den Nationalsozialismus, ed. Büttner, Ursula (Hamburg: Christians, 1986), 59–77Google Scholar; Engelmann, Kirche am Abgrund, 78.

48 The 1880 article “Zur Judenfrage,” AELKZ, as cited in Heinrichs, Wolfgang, Das Judenbild im Protestantismus des Deutschen Kaiserreichs. Ein Beitrag zur Mentalitätsgeschichte des deutschen Bürgertums in der Krise der Moderne (Cologne: Rheinland-Verl., 2000)Google Scholar, 59.

49 Anonymous (Quidde, Ludwig), Die Antisemitenagitation und die deutsche Studentenschaft (Göttingen: Peppmüller, 1881)Google Scholar, 3, 6.

50 Uffa Jensen has shown that non-Jews generally did not respond in print to Treitschke's accusations until the autumn of 1880. Free Religionists proved to be an exception to this rule. Jensen, Doppelgänger, 269–316. Some of the brochures published by Free Religious preachers during the Antisemitism controversy include Johannes Ronge, Offenes Sendschreiben, January 16, 1881; Theodor Hofferichter, Für die Semiten. Vortrag gehalten am 28. November 1880 vor der freireligiösen Gemeinde zu Breslau, Breslau, 1880; Andreas Reichenbach, Die moderne Judenhetze. Nach einem öffentlichen Vortrage, Breslau, 1879, and Andreas Reichenbach, Nach der Hatz. Kritische Betrachtung der letzten Judenhetze in Deutschland als der neuesten Krankheitserscheinung des deutschen Volkes, Zurich, 1881; Karl Scholl, Das Judenthum und die Religion der Humanität. Vortrag zum 33. Stiftungsfest der freireligiösen Gemeinde in Mannheim am 17. August 1879, Leipzig, 1879, Karl Scholl, Das Judentum und seine Weltmission, Leipzig, 1880 and Karl Scholl, Jesus von Nazareth, auch ein Semite, 3rd ed., Leipzig, 1881. Leading philosemites, such as the pacifist Bertha von Suttner, ethicist Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, and Democrat Ludwig Quidde, had a lifelong affinity to organized secularism. Levenson, Alan, Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism: Defenses of Jews and Judaism in Germany, 1871–1932 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 21–43Google Scholar.

51 The police report stated that the Free Religious Congregation's Jewish leaders feared that Albert Kalthoff, a radical Protestant minister and leader of the Protestant Reform Association, might upstage the Free Religious and become the champion of Berlin's liberal Jews. LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15042, unpaginated, police report of Nov. 30, 1879. Kalthoff's biography was to take a decidedly secularist turn and in 1906, shortly before his death, he became the chairman of the German Monist League.

52 Police report of November 28, 1880, LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15043, 286.

53 LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15043, 286.

54 In 1847 Julius Rupp's dissident congregation in Königsberg met in the local synagogue. In Breslau cooperation between left-liberal Jews and Free Religious (represented by the preacher Theodor Hofferichter) took place in the large popular scientific Humboldt-Verein and in the successful efforts to found the Johanneum, a nondenominational Gymnasium. Joskowicz, “Anticlerical Alliances,” 212–218; van Rahden, Till, Jews and other Germans: Civil Society, Religious Diversity, and Urban Politics in Breslau, 1860–1925, trans. Brainard, Marcus (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008)Google Scholar, 322.

55 LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15043, 286, police report of Nov. 28, 1880; no. 15042, unpaginated, police report of Oct. 12, 1879.

56 Schaefer had already expressed his hope that Jewish congregations would join the Union of Free Religious Congregations in 1870. Schaefer, G. S., Die Grundsätze der freireligiösen Gemeinde. Als Entwurf der allgemeinen öffentlichen Kritik, insbesondere der freireligiösen Gemeinde zu Berlin übergeben (Berlin: Self-published, 1870), 9Google Scholar.

57 LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15043, 286, police report of Nov. 28, 1880.

58 LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15043, 279, police report of Nov. 16, 1880.

59 Die Morgenröte der Reformation des 19. Jahrhunderts. Sonntagsblatt für Freunde der religiösen Reform, Offenbach, vol. 4, nos. 25 and 26 (July 19, 1881).

60 Clark, Christopher, The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia 1728–1941 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar, 281.

61 Dagmar Herzog, Intimacy.

62 Anonymous, Gedanken des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts zur unausbleichlichen Lösung der sozialen, politischen und religiösen Frage von einem Juden, seiner Geburt und orthodoxen Erziehung nach mit einem Vorwort von G. S. Schäfer, Lehrer der fr. Gemeinde (Berlin: Rubenow, 1885)Google Scholar.

63 Ibid., I, II.

64 Cited in Toury, Jacob, Die politischen Orientierungen der Juden in Deutschland. Von Jena bis Weimar (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1966)Google Scholar, 73.

65 Anonymous, Gedanken, II.

66 In her analysis of the central role that fraternal and romantic love between Jews and non-Jews played in the philosemitic imaginary of religious dissenters of the 1840s, Dagmar Herzog showed that this merging took place within the liberal logic of assimilation, in which the specifically Jewish identity was to be eliminated. Herzog, Intimacy, 54–84.

67 Tschirn, Zur 60jährigen Geschichte der freireligiösen Bewegung (Gottesberg: Hensels, 1904), 94Google Scholar.

68 Using the example of German freemasonry, Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann has offered a functional explanation of switch from inclusionary to exclusionary treatment of Jews in liberal society of the late 1870s and 1880s. He argues that bourgeois philosemitism fell victim to the success of bourgeois universalism: “the more purportedly universal human values of bourgeois culture were actually disseminated in the course of the nineteenth century—and the Jews, for example, became ‘bourgeois’—the more the moral language of universality was redefined by the Protestant bourgeoisie in order to render it capable of distinction again.” Hoffmann, Stefan-Ludwig, “Brothers or Strangers? Jews and Freemasons in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” German History 18, no. 2 (2000): 146Google Scholar.

69 Theodor Mommsen, “Auch ein Wort über unser Judenthum,” in Der Berliner Antisemitismusstreit, 227.

70 These estimates are based on membership lists turned over to the police. LAB A. Pr. Br. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15041.

71 Jacobson also stated that “the new edifice can rise up ever stronger and more world dominating” if it is built “on the ground of a general human moral system separated from Mosaic law and prepared for the world by Jesus.” Kampe, Ferdinand, Geschichte der religiösen Bewegung der neueren Zeit (Leipzig: Franz Wagner 1860)Google Scholar, vol. 4, 32.

72 Cited in Friess, Horace, Felix Adler and Ethical Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981)Google Scholar, 37. See also Radest, Howard, “Ethical Culture,” in The Encyclopaedia of Unbelief, Vol.1, ed. Stein, Gordon (New York: Prometheus Books, 1985), 169–174Google Scholar.

73 Police actively investigated mixed marriages during the repression of the Free Religious movement in the 1850s. In some cases these marriages were nullified and any children declared bastards. In 1870, a Jewish-dissident couple from Ratibor had been able to overturn a court ruling barring their marriage. The Free Religious press celebrated this decision: “Simple reason makes clear: if dissidents have the right to civil marriage, and if Jews are compelled to civil marriage, then it is self-evident that Jews and dissidents can conclude marriages among themselves.” This opened the way for marriages of Jews and Christians. Christians merely had to leave the church to marry Jews, “even if a hundred pastors or rabbis shake their heads.” Uhlich's Sonntagsblatt, vol. 21, no. 44 (Oct. 30, 1870): 176.

74 In early 1863 two Protestants from prominent Jewish families joined the Berlin Free Religious Congregation: Cäcilia Bab, nee Mendelsohn, and the chemist Dr. Gustav Jacobson, who was a parliamentary candidate for the Nationalverein. LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15041, 17. On Jacobson, see Toury, Politischen Orientierungen, 59.

75 See police reports and the lists of new members sent to police between the 1860s and 1880s. LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, nos. 15041–48.

76 The expulsion of Russian Jews from Berlin began in 1881 and continued up until the early 1900s. In spring and summer 1884, for instance, 667 Russians, primarily Jews, were expelled from Berlin. Some 4,000 more Russian Jews were expelled in the early 1900s. See Schorsch, Ismar, Jewish Reactions to German Antisemitism, 1870–1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972)Google Scholar, 163. Estimates of the total number of Jews expelled from Prussia between 1880 and 1888 vary from 10,000 to 20,000. Wertheimer, Jack, Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, 48.

77 Paletschek, Sylvia, Frauen und Dissens. Frauen im Deutschkatholizismus und in den freien Gemeinden 1841–1852 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990)Google Scholar, 43. Falkson's struggle for official recognition of his marriage to a Christian was an important political event for Königsberg's prerevolutionary left. Toury, Politischen Orientierungen, 53.

78 The drop in conversions of Jews to Free Religion coincides with an overall drop in Austritte from the Jewish congregations of Berlin. Peter Honigmann has shown that after a peak following the 1873 May Law that eased church-leaving, the number of converts and Austritte in Berlin dropped as a percentage of the Jewish population and did not climb again until the late 1880s. Honigmann, Peter, Die Austritte aus der jüdischen Gemeinde Berlin 1873–1941. Statistische Auswertung und Interpretation (Frankfurt am Main: 1988)Google Scholar, 78.

79 Brandes, Georg, Berlin als deutsche Reichshauptstadt. Erinnerungen aus den Jahren 1877–1883, trans. Urban-Halle, Peter (Berlin: Colloquium Verlag, 1989)Google Scholar, 394.

80 As a language philosopher, Mauthner was also aware of the contradiction between personal Bekenntnis and public Konfession. A Bekenntnis to a religion based on a dogma was not compatible with modern culture. He asked “[w]hich confession has a dogma broad enough for one [. . .] who has lost his old faith through science?” And he answered that a belief system acceptable to an educated individual would necessarily fail to attract an entire nation, because “the greater the content of a category the smaller is its reach! That is an old axiom of logic. And only a faith that can be expressed in the shortest definition can unite the greatest number of confessors.” Mauthner, Fritz, “An Theodor Mommsen,” in Der neue Ahasver. Roman aus Jung-Berlin (Dresden and Leipzig: Heinrich Minden, 1882)Google Scholar, 9.

81 LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15130, 4, 10.

82 The initial membership list turned over the police contained the names of twenty-five merchants, seven newspaper editors, five students, six women without occupations, three writers with university degrees, two medical doctors, two bankers, one factory owner, and one Inspektor. The Jewish identity of most of these individuals is suggested by last names. Among Berlin newspaper editors were Rudolf Elcho (Berliner Volkszeitung), Max Schonau, Ferdinand Gilles, Hugo Polke, G. Lewinstein, Lina Morgenstern (Hausfrauen-Zeitung), Hardwig Köhler-Kegel, (Deutschen Arbeiter-Auslandes). Georg Ledebour (Volkszeitung) joined in 1883. LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15130, 10.

83 Menschenthum, no. 10 (1881): 70. This formulation came in a statement by editor August Specht, who cofounded the German Freethought League with the materialist Ludwig Büchner.

84 Nordau, Max, Die conventionellen Lügen der Kulturmenschheit, vol. 14 (Leipzig: B. Elischer Nachf., 1889), 35Google Scholar.

85 “Glossen zu einer Kulturkampf-Debatte im preußischen Abgeordnetenhaus,” Menschenthum 9, no. 27 (July 4, 1880): 109–111Google Scholar.

86 Several articles appeared in Menschenthum in 1880 and 1881 that conformed to Schaefer's philosemitism. They saw in antisemitism an attack on “freedom of thought” and “modern progress.” While condemning the “Judenhetze,” one writer cautioned readers not to be blind to the many shortcomings of the Jews, “which do not appear sympathetic to the Germanic spirit and temperament.” Fritz Schütz, the former editor of Menschenthum who had since emigrated to the United States, reported on his disputation with a Reformed rabbi in Milwaukee, in which the rabbi finally confessed not to believe in God. The fact that he still prayed was, for Schütz, proof of the external nature of the Jewish religion with its obedience to empty laws. A. Naumann, “Der Echte Ring,” Oct. 10–17, 1880, 194–195; Anonymous, “Zur Judenhetze,” April 17, 1881; Schütz, “Reformjudenthum,” Feb. 6, 1881, 61–62.

87 See, for example, Herbst, Edgar, “Bedenken gegen den Austritt aus der Religionsgemeinschaft unter den Juden,” Das monistische Jahrhundert 2, no. 41 (Jan. 10, 1914): 1166–1169Google Scholar.

88 Krech, Volkhard, “From Historicism to Functionalism: The Rise of Scientific Approaches to Religions around 1900 and their Socio-Cultural Context,” Numen 47, no. 3 (2000): 252–253Google Scholar.

89 Some Jewish freethinkers, such as Max Nordau, were ardent advocates of this worldview, and others sought to establish a Jewish pedigree in its production, most often by holding up Spinoza's substance theory as the first concrete expression of philosophical monism. Freethinkers Waldeck Manasse, Jakob Stern, and Benno Borchardt wrote and lectured on Spinoza. Alexander Bragin made Spinoza the focal point of an entire freigeistig tradition of Jewish thought with ancient origins: “The fire once lit did not extinguish; it smoldered throughout the entire post-Talmudic era, it sparked up in Abraham Ibn Ezra, and become a blinding flame in the person of Baruch Spinoza.” Bragin, Alexander, Die freireligiösen Strömungen im alten Judenthume. Ein Beitrag zur jüdischen Religionsphilosophie (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1896), 79Google Scholar. A former rabbi, Jakob Stern (1843–1911) found a bridge between Judaism and atheism in Spinoza's substance theory, of which he was the SPD's foremost scholar. Stern, Jakob and Jestrabek, Heiner, Vom Rabbiner zum Atheisten: ausgewählte religionskritische Schriften (Aschaffenburg; Berlin: IBDK-Verl., 1997)Google Scholar. On Spinoza's influence in secularist circles, see Matysik, Tracie, Reforming the Moral Subject: Ethics and Sexuality in Central Europe, 1890–1930 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 188–193Google Scholar.

90 Loewenthal, Wilhelm, Die confessionslose Religion (Berlin: Elwin Staude, 1877), XIVGoogle Scholar.

91 The contest was advertised internationally, and contestants were allowed to submit essays in English, French, Italian, or German. The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art (1882): 141.

92 Police report on meeting of Dec. 2, 1881, LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15130, 26.

93 Nordau, Max, Degeneration (New York: D. Appleton, 1895), 338Google Scholar.

94 Loewenthal, Wilhelm, Grundzüge einer Hygiene des Unterrichts (Weisbaden: J. F. Bergmann, 1887), 103Google Scholar.

95 Against such contextual aspects of the Jewish contribution to secular philosophies, David Biale has stressed the deep historical roots of secularism in medieval and early modern Jewish thought. Biale, David, “Not in the Heavens: The Premodern Roots of Jewish Secularism,” Religion Compass 2, no. 3 (2008): 340–364Google Scholar.

96 Police extract, Berlin, May 24, 1882, LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15130, 87. Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers, 171.

97 One of the Jewish settlers later recalled the impression that Loewenthal made during his mission to Argentina: “I shall never forget the figure cut by that tall, stately Jew with mesmerizing black eyes, whose gaze none of us could bear for more than an instant.” Astro, Alan, Yiddish South of the Border (University of New Mexico Press, 2003)Google Scholar, 19. Had he not died suddenly in 1894 at the age of 44, it is plausible that Loewenthal might have moved, as his friend Nordau did, in a secular Zionist direction.

98 LAB A Pr. Br. Rep. 030, Tit. 95, no. 15130, 225.

99 von Gizycki, Georg, Grundzüge der Moral. Gekrönte Preisschrift (Leipzig: Wilhelm Friedrich Königliche Buchhandlung, 1883)Google Scholar. Gizycki's 1875 dissertation reveals his early interest in the philosophical consequences of natural science: von Giyzcki, Georg, Versuch über die philosophischen Consequenzen der Goethe-Lamarck-Darwin'schen Evolutionstheorie. Inaugural-Dissertation (Berlin: Carl Lindow, 1875)Google Scholar. For a history of debates over ethics that begins with the founding of the DGEK, see Matysik, Reforming.

100 Foerster, Wilhelm, Lebenserinnerungen und Lebenshoffnungen (1832 bis 1910) (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1911)Google Scholar, 226. Both Foerster and Gizycki had connections to the secularist scene. Foerster remembered that his father “was a warm supporter of the ‘lichtfreundlich’ movement.” Foerster, Lebenserinnerungen, 13. Among the prominent Jewish founders of the DGEK were Hermann Cohen, Max Hirsch, and Samuel Kristeller. Kristeller helped organize Jewish opposition to antisemitism in the form of the “Jewish Committee of December 1, 1880” and became the president of the Gemeindebund, which Ismar Schorsch called the “first successful attempt to create a national organization” of German Jewry. Schorsch, Jewish Reactions, 61.

101 As Marjorie Lamberti noted, the intended prohibition of the nonconfessional schools (Simultanschulen) favored by secularists and dissidents would have affected Jews in particular, as the bill foresaw dividing all schools between the two major Christian confessions. Most Jewish parents were not in favor of adding seperate Jewish confessional schools to the bill, as this would have meant the segregation of their children. Lamberti, Marjorie, Jewish Activism in Imperial Germany: The Struggle for Civic Equality (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1978)Google Scholar, 126. In 1891 91.2 percent of all Catholic children and 95.6 percent of all evangelical, but only 31.2 percent of all Jewish children received instruction in a public school of their own confession. The push for greater clerical influence over the schools was in keeping with the Cabinet Order of May 1, 1889, which expressed the new emperor's wish to “make the elementary schools useful in counteracting the spread of socialist and communist ideas.” Lamberti, Marjorie, State, Society, and the Elementary School in Imperial Germany (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, 96, 157.

102 Mitteilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für ethische Kultur 1, no. 1 (Nov. 20, 1892): 5.

103 Ibid., 8–10.

104 Ibid., 22.

105 Ibid., 20.

106 Ibid., 21, 28–29.

107 Participants in the discussion included, [G. S.?] Schaefer, Engel, Obert von Gizycki, Schriftsteller Stern, Prof. Löw, S. Kristeller, Sanitäts-Rat Zimmermann, Dr. Lütgenau, Dr. Max Hirsch, Dr. Albert Levy, and Jaffe. Mitteilungen 1, no. 2 (March 2, 1893): 48–49.

108 Allgemeine Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchenzeitung, October 28, 1892. The article suggested that the liberal Jewish leadership of the DGEK had initially used the reputation of prominent non-Jewish figures as figureheads and subsequently discarded them. See the comments by DGEK cofounder on such antisemitic argumentation in Tönnies, Ferdinand, Nietzsche-Narren in der “Zukunft” und in der “Gegenwart,” vol. 1, “Ethische Cultur” und ihr Geleite (Berlin: Ferd. Däumlers Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1893), 32Google Scholar. On antisemitic inflections of the animal rights debate in the early DGEK, see Matysik, Reforming, 35–38.

109 On the third meeting day, Foerster said, “we want to ethicize the churches. That will not happen quickly, we are the weak ones at present, and they have more power than ever. We do not want to allow ourselves to be drawn into enmity and also not forget what religion contributed and still contributes to cultural development.” Mitteilungen 1, no. 1: 22, 23.

110 The phrase “above the parties” was key trope of German political discourse and was regularly invoked by the monarchy, the churches, and the liberal parties. For historian James Sheehan, its use by liberals reflected distaste for partisan politics that contributed to the weakness of the democracy in Imperial Germany. See Sheehan, James, German Liberalism in the 19th Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)Google Scholar.

111 Hermann Cohen assured Treitschke that German Jews would continue to rid themselves of the “negative peculiarities” of their people. Cited in Pulzer, Peter, Jews and the German State: The Political History of a Minority, 1848–1933 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)Google Scholar, 100. In the mid-1880s, Mauthner had penned a novel set in his native Bohemia that described the heroic struggle of a sole Protestant German against the onslaught of crude, Catholic Czech nationalists. Between the fronts Mauthner placed an ambivalent turncoat in the form of the Jewish pub owner who speaks German but claims to be Czech when it suits him. Mauthner, Fritz, Der letzte Deutsche von Blatna (Berlin: Ullstein, n.d.)Google Scholar.

112 Mufti, a scholar interested in modern Muslim critics of the secularism of the “Hindu” Indian state, sees himself working in a critical tradition that stands on the shoulders of Jewish thinkers from Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno to Heinrich Heine and Moses Mendelssohn. Mufti, Enlightenment in the Colony, 89.

113 Privatweg, no. 2 (August 1918): 33.

114 Nordau, Die conventionellen Lügen, 34.

115 Die Fackel, no. 14 (August 1899): 16–17.