“The Jews — The Kings of Our Age,” by Dr. Otto Böckel

“The Jews — The Kings of Our Age”[1]
Dr. Otto Böckel
Translated by Alexander Jacob

Otto Böckel (1859–1923) was a German anti-Semitic politician who was moved by the plight of the German peasants of Hesse to enter politics in 1887 as an independent member of the Reichstag. Like Eugen Dühring — who published a seminal work on the Jewish Question in 1881, Die Judenfrage[2] — Böckel was against all exploitative groups, Jewish or Junker and championed the peasants against their capitalist oppressors. Like Dühring too, Böckel considered the Jews distinct from the Germans in race rather than in religion and maintained that the Jewish Question was an existential question on which hinged the survival of one or the other race.  In the nineties, he formed an anti-Semitic party called Antisemitische Volkspartei, which later merged with Oswald Zimmerman’s Deutsche Reformpartei, in 1893. However, opposition from other anti-Semitic factions, including that of the Lutheran theologian Adolf Stoecker and his Christlich-soziale Partei, led to a weakening of his parliamentary position and he eventually left politics in 1912.

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Respected attendees!

In my last talk, which I held on 28 December of last year here in the Bockbrauerei, I explained that the Jewish Question is an existential question for the German nation, that it was about whether the German nation would remain free, prosperous and happy in the future or whether Jewry would, bit by bit, in a slow but certain progression, undermine our national welfare and therewith the foundational pillars of our national existence. The Jewish Question stands above the political parties; it is a national question which affects every German regardless of religion or party affiliation. Whether conservative, liberal, progressive or ultramontane, all are threatened by the Jews. It was a great mistake of the anti-Semitic movement that it allowed itself to be dragged down to the swamp of parties; the decline of the anti-Semitic movement — so often stressed by the Jews — dates from the day that anti-Semitism got roped in by the Conservatives. This mistake we should rectify today, we must preach anti-Semitism free of any party orientation; every German has an interest in the Jewish Question, and only through the cooperation of men of all parties can it be solved in a legitimate manner.

How a solution of the Jewish Question is to be imagined has been the subject of much debate. Of course, such burning questions are not solved in one stroke. But the way to the solution is, nevertheless, quite discoverable. Every solution of the Jewish Question must begin with the fact that it should be recognised legally in the constitution that:

There are in Germany two different nations: Germans and Jews. The former are the masters of the land, the latter are guests, who may indeed possess a right to hospitality but never a right to be masters.

Who then made Germany arable, who cleared the primeval forests, who drove out the bears and wolves? Did our forefathers, the ancient Germans, not do that? If the Jews had had to cut down the primeval forests and shoot the wolves, the primeval forests would still have been standing in Germany and the wolves would have still dwelt in packs in our forests.

What our people developed through the sweat of their brow should also remain their own and no foreign tribe may drive the German from his native soil. Germany for the Germans, that is the slogan of anti-Semitism. We do not want any hatred of Jews but protection of Germans; never should the property of the Germans be expropriated by Jews, never should entire streets, entire cities and villages fall victim to the Jews, as is the case, for example, in Hesse, Alsace, and even here in Berlin. If the land registers — these silent proofs of Jewish power — could speak, they would utter a loud declaration of the Judaization of German land. The exploitation of our rural people has already reached a fabulous height.

Some examples: In the district courts of Gelnhausen and Meerholz, 227 forced auctions of housing properties were pending from 1 January 1880 to the present date. If one adds to this also the public auctions of the district courts of Wächtersbach, Birstein, Bieber and Orb, there must have been, in the Gelnhausen district alone, in this time-period, the really hair-raising number of 450 public auctions. The prosecuting party consisted 99% of Jews, while 1% was made up of public commercial treasuries and German money-lenders. Furthermore, in the Frankenberg district in Hesse, from 1877 to 1882, in 17 communities, 36 auctions have been noted. Of the auctioneers 17 were Jews and only 3 Germans. In addition, it must be observed that, given such a progress of property butchering, in around 15 years in the Frankenberg district there will be only a very small number of peasants left who are not financial slaves of the Jewish butchering of property. So, we have come so far already in the highly civilized nineteenth century that slavery — which has been repealed in Africa and America with streams of blood — can be quite freely introduced again into the middle of the German fatherland by Jews. Is that not a slap in the face of our much-praised civilization? When will the Germans have some of the tolerance that they have had twelve times for the foreign Jews for their own flesh and blood, for the German peasant class ruined by the Jews?

But do not think that it looks pathetic only In Hesse. It looks more or less similar everywhere in Germany. None other than the officious Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung wrote the following in 1880 about the Jews in Posen:

Just as in a factory, the public auction machine works throughout the year allocating the personal possessions of the rural folk to the Jews.

Yes, such an admission on the part of a newspaper that in its time made a stand against the anti-Semites is doubly valuable. In Upper Silesia, the Jews, according to the report of the liberal Kölnische Zeitung of May 1886, rule the entire trade to such an extent that in some places it is very difficult to do any shopping on Saturdays. The Jews have all the liquor bars in their hands there. Under such circumstances one can well understand that hunger typhus and delirium tremens is rampant in Upper Silesia. The Jews are also to blame for the hunger typhus and the misery that are to be found in Spessart, as Father Frank publicly proclaimed in the Bavarian chamber in 1880. How great the debt has grown in the Saar emerges from the well-established fact that a single Jewish firm, the H. Brothers in Saarlouis, as a consequence of the law “On the sale and mortgaging of property within the Rhine law,” in the period from 1 July 1885 to the present date in 1886, earned over 2,000,000 marks purchase price privileges. Consider, gentlemen, that that was done by a single ordinary Jewish firm, and now calculate the debt of our peasant class in relation to thousands of similar Jewish firms!

In the area around Trier, the Jews have already become exuberant to such an extent that they could openly boast that they were killing the Peasants’ Union founded for the protection of the peasants. In West Prussia, the Jews are, as the Secretary General Dr. Demmler testifies, already prevalent, extraordinarily strong, and have become the “fundamental malady of the peasant class.” Faced with such conditions, who does not recall the saying of Prince Bismarck, who in 1847 said in the state parliament during the discussion of the Jewish emancipation:

I know a place where the Jewish population is very numerous in the country, where there are peasants who call nothing on their entire property their own; from their bed to their oven-fork all furniture belongs to the Jew and the peasant pays a daily rent for every single thing. The corn in the field and in the barn belongs to the Jew and the Jew sells bread, seeds, and fodder to the peasant with razor sharpness. Of a similar Christian usury I have never heard, at least in my experience.

Another example, of how it is in southern Germany. In 1835, the Jews in Hohenzollern petitioned for their civil rights. The provincial deputies deliberated on it. In the course of the debate a speaker expressed the following: “The haggling business of the Jews weighs in a corrupting manner on the province. In the village, in the huts of the poor and the simple folk, the work-instrument and cow, the field and the pasture, the pan and the pot, the hood and the jacket, often belong to the Jew and he does not stop making the peasant with his house and field, harrow and plough, wife and child subject to him through interest.” If the Jews are emancipated, said another speaker, “then in a short time the entire princely house of the Hohenzollerns would belong to the Chosen People and the poor goyim be their slaves.” These are sad images of the Judaization of land in Germany.

Where will it end if it continues in this way? From where will the defense troops come to defend the fatherland when our peasant sinks more and more into a day-labourer or emigrates in order to escape from the Jew? The peasantry are the foundational pillar of a healthy state structure; woe to the state that leaves its peasants defenceless to exploitation by the Jews! It is infuriating when one must watch how the Jew, who just 20 years ago peddled goatskins as a poor panhandler, today, as a rich haggler, holds on a Sunday morning a day of hearing for his indebted peasants in order to inform them whether he will just auction them off or whether he will still be merciful. It is infuriating when such scenes occur in the middle of the German fatherland!

Yes, gentlemen, if you would see how the poor victims of the Jew come to the day of hearing of this person, how they bow down their heads, how the Jew shouts at them, how many of them depart therefrom in tears, then your heart will beat in shame and rage at how deep already the German people have sunk into misery. If you wish to study the Jewish Question, you must go to the court house into which the Jew leads his peasants; how often I have seen the poor victims creep to the local court with lowered head next to the grimacing Jew.

Yes, gentlemen, this sight made me an anti-Semite, I then said to myself: ‘How low, how low indeed, our people have fallen! Is there then nobody, nobody who has the courage to intervene on behalf of the poor people who have fallen to the Jew?’ I looked around myself and saw nobody. Some perhaps made fists in their pockets, but the Jews are too powerful, they are feared. Cowardice is a widespread vice.

Then I jumped into the movement, without any consideration of career or future. It was in autumn 1883 when I became acquainted, in a really drastic case, with the misery that the Jews bring upon our people. A formerly well-off peasant was fully impoverished by a Jew; a few days after the auctioning of the peasant’s possessions, the Jew was found murdered. The peasant was brought before the jury in Marburg but acquitted. The proceedings uncovered a frightful image of Jewish usury. I followed the trial with great excitement; on the day on which the verdict was uttered I too was among the expectant crowd. I shall never forget the moment when the acquitted victim of the Jew emerged from the door of the court building. A hundred “Bravos” shook the air, the mass of people were beside themselves with joy. Then, in this thrilling hour, I swore to myself: “This cannot go on further; you must intervene against the activities of the Jews with your whole life. The people are panting for a liberator:” From this moment onwards I have been an anti-Semitic agitator, the image of the poor peasant robbed by the Jew impels me forward; whether the enemy be numerous, whether the dirt and the hatred be so great, I must fight and will fight to the last drop of my blood, to my last breath.

We want to fight, but only on an honest, legal path; we abjure every brutal violence and dissociate ourselves expressly from anyone who undertakes to solve the Jewish Question in an illegal manner. We know only too well that nothing hurts our cause more than illegal riots. That is precisely what the Jews want so that they may obtain a certain semblance of truth for the old meaningless phrase “Jew baiting.” Who knows how many of those abhorrent riots against the possessions of the Jews originated directly or indirectly from paid agents provocateurs of the Jews themselves. We cannot emphasize too often the legality of our agitation.

Equally as often must we emphasize that we seek to solve the Jewish Question totally only as a racial question, never as a religious question. The Jewish Question has nothing to do with the religion of the Jews; what the Jew believes is a matter of indifference; whether he is a Reform Jew, Orthodox or baptised Jew, that is a matter of complete indifference for us anti-Semites. The Jews are a tenacious, ancient race distant from ours that cannot be extirpated from the world either through baptism or miscegenation. Baptism is for the Jew only a passport to enter into the higher classes in order to be able to work so much more energetically for the interests of his race. Through baptism the Jew becomes only more dangerous.

What the Jews themselves think of baptism they express very openly; so, for example, the Jew Singer in Vienna clearly says in his work Should the Jews become Christians?,[3] “The Jew who lets himself be converted is a hypocrite.” More characteristically does the orthodox Israelit appearing in Mainz illustrate the view of the Jews regarding baptism: At the time of the Napoleonic campaign a German Jew came as a soldier to Spain; now, there are in Spain, where the Jewish religion is not tolerated in public, many secret Jews (they are called novos christianos)[4] who say outwardly that they are Christian but secretly celebrate the Jewish rituals, are circumcised, etc. Our Jewish soldier now came accidentally to such a secret Jew in his cantonment. The host was very ill and was dying. They called for a priest. Suddenly, when the priest entered the barrack room with a raised crucifix, the dying man cried out: “Stay away, I am a Jew.” The priest then threw the cross onto the ground and cried out: “I am also a Jew.”  And the Jewish German soldier embraced both his racial comrades and cried out: “I am also a Jew.” And the three Jews (two dishonest and one honest) embraced one another and were glad that they had found one another in such a miraculous way.

That is a little piece that may show us what one may think of the baptism of the Jews. Woe to the people who think that they can get rid of the Jewish Question through baptism; it can then easily happen as in Portugal, where the entire national character has been corrupted and enervated by the creeping Jewry. The Portuguese, once a warlike and seafaring nation, have, in the judgement of competent travellers like Willkomm,[5] etc., become roguish and Jewish, their national character has been corrupted by the admixed Jewry. How far things have gone in Portugal is demonstrated by an anecdote that the elder D’Israeli, [6] the English Jew, narrates in his work Geist des Judenthums (Stuttgart, 1836, 218): The Portuguese nation is seventy five percent made up of Jews. Under the government of Pombal,[7] King Joseph was persuaded to renew that badge of the Jews, the yellow hat, to designate the many novos christianos among his subjects. The edict was prepared; the next morning the minister appeared before His Majesty with three yellow hats, one he offered to the king, the second he gave the Great Inquisitor and the third he intended for his own head. “I follow the orders of His Majesty,” he said, “and give this badge to those whose blood has been stained with Jewish blood.”

That is what happens in countries where one deals with the Jewish Question from a religious standpoint. The Jews are a race, and indeed a very ancient one. On the Egyptian pyramids we find portrayed, among other labourers, also some Jews (the Jews, as is well-known, had to work as laborers in Egypt) and these Jews on the thousand-year old pyramids look exactly like our present-day Jews in Germany. That is perhaps the best proof of the persistence of the Jewish race.

It is a fact recognised by many medical authorities that the bodily structure of the Jews is different from that of the Germans. Dr. G. Schulz, curator of the anatomical museum in St. Petersburg, compiled a report on the measurements of individuals from different nations for the determination of the proportions of the human body. In St. Petersburg, the focal point of the most extensive monarchy on earth, he had excellent opportunity for comparative bodily measurements: he accurately measured Russians, Jews, Circassians,[8] Latvians, negroes and Chuvashians.[9] The result showed, that among these different nations, the Jews represented not just a deviation and distinctiveness in individual proportions, but that they stand at the extreme limit in the chief proportions of height and width, the proportion of the trunk to the limbs, of the head and neck to the rest of the body, and represented an exceptional distinctiveness. Even Professor Virchow,[10] the famous natural scientific researcher, spoke at the grave of Ludwig Löwe of a Jewish race and therewith provided the most valuable endorsement for us anti-Semites.

The key to the Jewish Question lies in the circumstance that the Jews are a foreign race that thinks differently, feels differently, acts differently than us and consequently must quite naturally be placed in another legal category. We cannot confound the concept of race with “humanity”: blood is not water, nations and statesmen who do not deal with the racial conditions rooted in Nature are destroyed by this failure of understanding.

One such failure of understanding was the Jewish emancipation. People thought that they would be able to silently assume that a Jew was, or could become, a German. Statesmanly cleverness and foresight were subordinated to more general observations and created in this way pathetic conditions which a clever politician could have foreseen. Even the very free-thinking tribune Hecker[11] was an opponent of Jewish emancipation and he called it nonsense! Today we have to suffer badly on account of the mistake of the Jewish emancipation. The consequence of that liberal enthusiasm for the Jews plagues the German nation like a rheumatism and it is high time to take care that it does not become a gout. The number of Jews increases in a really abnormal manner. In 1774, in Berlin, there were altogether 3953 Jews, in 1813 there existed there still only 2825, in 1858 there were already 15,491 and in the census of 1 December 1880, 53,949 Jews were counted, that is, 4.81 percent. Today, in 1886, we may suppose around 60,000. The number of Jews has thus increased roughly seventeen times from 1780 to 1880. Consider that, if the present-day Berlin Jewry increases again seventeen times in a century, this would give, in Berlin alone, for 1980, the total sum of 923,132 Jews, thus almost one million Jews in Berlin in 1980. In Köln there were, according to an article of the liberal Kölner Zeitung, in 1833, 60,000 Germans and 356 Jews; fifty years later, in 1882, the civilian population of Köln amounted to 138,614 Germans and Jews; the Christians thus increased in 50 years around twofold, the Jews around fifteen times. We may calculate further on the basis of these figures. If Köln increases further under the same conditions, its population will amount in 50 years to 300,000 Germans and 80,000 Jews and, 50 years after, to 700,000 Germans and 1,200,000 Jews.

Do you perhaps understand now that the Jewish Question is an existential question for us Germans? The Kölner Volkszeitung recently wrote the following: “I am not an anti-Semite and would gladly let every Jew live; but if the influence of the Jews increases in the same way as in the last ninety years, I don’t know what will become of Köln.”

In Hesse there are cities and towns which have 10–20 percent Jews, for example, Niedenstein (Fritzlar district) with 21.71 percent Jews, Felsberg (Melsungen district) with 17.50 percent Jews, Schlüchtern with 13.98 percent Jews, etc. As striking is the multiplicative capacity of the Jews abroad. Thus the Jewish population of Vienna has, in comparison to the Christian, increased similarly strongly, 7 times in eleven years, and in Prague 8 times. In Bucharest, the Romanian population was represented in terms of births up to 20 percent, the Catholic up to 16 percent, and the Jewish 47 percent.

Parallel to the capacity of physical multiplication of the Jews runs the rapid growth of Jewish wealth. So we have, for example, according to the official tax registers in Frankfurt am Rhein, a city in which, among 150,000 inhabitants there are around 16,000 Jews, altogether 53 Jewish millionaires and only 48 German millionaires.

In the hands of the Jewish millionaires there are 235 million marks, whereas the Germans represent only 88 million. Given such figures, perhaps nobody asks any more, “Where has our money gone?” but “Whence do those Jewish millions come if not from the sweat of the German people?” They were not earned by the sweat of the hands, no Jewish millionaire saved his millions as a manual labourer or acquired them as a peasant with a plough; all this infinite wealth was taken from the mouths of the working German people. Everybody knows about the wealth of Rothschild. Rothschild possesses in Bohemia alone seven times as much land as the entire imperial family. All sixty aristocratic families of Bohemia taken together have only four times as much land in Bohemia as Rothschild alone, and all that only since 37 years ago. If one adds to that the possessions of Rothschild in Lower Austria, Moravia, Silesia, Hungary, etc., and, further, those in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, America, etc., then one must ask oneself: “Are the Jew not the kings of our age?”

The Ferrières Castle in France, which belongs to Rothschild, and excels in splendour and opulence all royal castles in the world, is surrounded by a complex of 100,000 joch, all of which belongs to Rothschild. The entire lands belonging to this single castle of Rothschild are twice as much as the entire land possessions of all the religious orders of all of France. But, apart from Rothschild, there are further, in France, a number of Jewish bankers each of whom possesses more than 50,000 joch of land. Similarly, all the significant vineyards of France belong to Rothschild. Alongside Rothschild, Baron Hirsch, especially, shines in Paris as a financial magnate. This financier became a millionaire especially through the lotteries. The high society of Paris frequent this Croesus. When Baron Hirsch once stood at the top of his famous stairway and saw the counts, princes and marquis climbing up, he said to his son: “Look at all these people, in twenty years they will all be our sons-in-law, or our gatekeepers.”

The wealth of the Jews constantly increases. In Hungary, where not a single Jew possessed land before 1862, half of the Nyitra County belongs to the Jew Popper, and the former owners of this land have mostly emigrated. This Popper, who began as a poor Jew, died as the patron of 54 Catholic churches. Recently, a Jew called Deutsch bought near Fünfkirchen an estate of 200,000 joch. The other big Jews, Königswarter, Wodianer, Springer, Tedesko, etc., have in the 27 years in which they have been allowed to acquire landed property, bought up so much land in Hungary that they have a quarter of the electorate in their lands. In Galicia, 80 percent of the entire land, thus 4/5, belongs to the Jews and only a fifth to the local people. In Romania, 2/3 of the land is in debt to the Jews; the Jews there are just waiting for their emancipation to take possession of the entire land in a short time. So far have they already come, the poor “persecuted Jews.” Informed people claim that the wealth of the Rothschild house is 20,000 million [marks]; at 5 percent interest this produces in interest in one year of 1,000,000,000 guilders, in one day more than 2,500,000 guilders. So, if Rothschild wishes to consume just the interests, he has every day 2,500,000 guilders to spend.

A bureaucrat who has a yearly salary of 1000 florins must therefore live and work 2500 years long if he wished to earn as much salary as the Rothschild house has to consume daily just in interest. The wealth of the Rothschilds grows rapidly. Each of the two Frankfurt Rothschilds has a yearly income of around 10 million; of this each spends 1¹/2 million and sets aside thus 8¹/2 million again as capital. Where should such a hoarding of Jewish millions lead? Shouldn’t universal impoverishment be the natural consequence?

The financial power of the Rotschilds is assertive. When, recently, bankrupt Egypt took a loan from Rothschild, 6 great powers had to vouch for bankrupt Egypt; among these powers was also Germany! Out of this Egyptian loan the Rothschild house soon, as may be proven, earned within a short time 6,100,000 marks, thus a net gain of at least 3 million marks. The power of this Jewish international house already makes itself felt in world history. The Parisian Rothschilds are, as is well-known, the closest friends of the Orléans; the Baroness Alphonse de Rothschild held as recently as 2 July 1886 a glamorous dinner in honour of the Duke of Chartres. It is an open secret that the Parisian Rothschild protects the Orléans. But the Orléans are, for Germany, war. But there are Rothschilds not only in Paris, they have seats also in London and Vienna. The imperial Austrian state is in debt to the Rothschild house. Now imagine the political constellations in the case of a war between France and Russia on the one side and Germany and Austria on the other. The result is therefore very simple; the Finanz und Handelsblatt, certainly a competent, non-partisan organ, describes the consequences in this way:

Supposing the case that France were to find that the time had come to declare war against Germany, then it lies in the powerful hands of the Rothschilds to drive the Austrian state allied with us immediately into bankruptcy and to destroy it financially if it did not comply with the political dictates of the Rothschilds. Nothing else is required for such a catastrophe than to quickly place on the market the Rothschilds’ possession of Austrian credit stocks, bring them down from 500 to half or less, and add to it a couple of hundred million Austrian and Hungarian annuities. Now imagine the effect of such an operation, which is simple in itself. For, even the unpaid billions in other annuities and other funds, industrial shares, bonds, etc. follow forthwith thereupon, and the howling and the fury of the all-shattering countermine will take care of the rest. This business with these credit shares and their all-powerful influence has already been allowed to go too far. We have already long ago pointed to this quite uniquely forged Rothschild weapon and it is apparent, rather late, to everybody’s eyes upon what a dangerous mine Europe stands and who has the fuse for its ignition in his hands.

Now, who has the fuse in his hands? The Jew Rothschild has in his hands the fuse for the ignition of the mine dug under the ground of Europe by the stock-exchange Jews!

Yes, gentlemen, that is how serious the Jewish Question is. These innocent persecuted Jews vilely hounded by us anti-Semites, they rule world-history, they have the fate of entire nations already in their hands. Is it not touching when these Jews who have entire states in their hands play out the old farce of Tolerance against anti-Semitism? We poor anti-Semites “hound” the Jewish people, to whom it is a matter of indifference to smash entire states through stock-exchange manoeuvres. If it should come to war with France and Russia and Germany is isolated through the Rothschilds’ maneuver and squeezed between two buffers, then we will indeed see if the Berlin stock-exchange Jews will be as patriotic as in 1870 when they received the North German war loan with contemptuous laughter. Then perhaps the damage that the Jewish foundations have effected on our national well-being will make itself felt and only then will the German people notice what a hole the Jewish butchers have made in their defensive power.

In 1862, the French Jew Crémieux[12] — the same man who set a price on the head of the German Kaiser in 1870 and whose death was honoured by the Jews of Berlin in the big synagogue — issued an appeal for the founding of the Alliance Israélite.[13] In this appeal it says:

Our nationality is the religion of our fathers; we recognize no other.
The Jewish doctrine must one day fill the entire world.
The work is great and sacred, success is certain.
Catholicism, our hundred-year old enemy, is defeated, struck on the head.
The net that Israel throws over the earth will extend every day and the sublime prophecies of our holy books will be fulfilled.
The day approaches when Jerusalem will become the house of prayer for our united peoples, where the flag of Jewish monotheism blows on the most distance coasts.
Let us use all opportunities. Our power is great, let us learn to use it. What do we have to fear? The day is not far off when the wealth of the earth will belong exclusively to the Jews.

This Jewish union, which was founded with this appeal, numbers today 30,000 members, it has at its disposal every year over hundred thousand marks. Here in Berlin walk thousands of members of that union that seeks to use every opportunity. Yes, we have thrown out the Jesuits, but the Jewish Jesuits, who are thousand times worse, they grow and prosper among us like sands on the shore. Where should that lead to if a stop is not put to it finally? If I go through the most populated streets of Berlin, for example, Friedrichstraße, Leipzigstraße, etc., where almost 90% of all houses have fallen to the Jews, if I see entire stretches of land and villages in the province in bondage to the Jews, if I glance at our influential press, our literature, under the Jewish influence, if I see our grammar schools overflowing with Jews, if I consider the enormous influence of Jewish money on the stock-exchange, I can say only one thing: Germany is to be saved from the Jews either today or never. Consider, Germans, that you stand in the eleventh hour; confronted with the Jewish Question, all party discord must cease. Men of all parties must coalesce into a large German national party, as we have done in Hesse, especially in order to enter parliament.

In parliament, the Jewish Question must be discussed repeatedly until the German people learn to view the repeal of the Jewish emancipation no longer as “intolerance,” as “persecution delirium,” but as a pressing necessity for our own rescue. We in Hesse will show the way, in the parliamentary elections of autumn 1887 we will place pure and genuine anti-Semites in seven electoral districts. We must, and shall, break through in some districts. Support us in Berlin in this difficult battle for the whole of Germany. When we have won in Hesse, then the liberation of Berlin from the Jewish yoke will follow. In conclusion, let me shout out to you the assurance that we will not falter in Hesse and will hold the flag high. You too must stand united in Berlin, our cause is not yet lost, just be united, united, united!

[1] Talk held at the public meeting of the German Anti-Semitic Union in the Bockbrauerei, Berlin, on 4 October 1886.

[2] See my English edition of this work, Eugen Dühring, The Jewish Question as a racial, moral and cultural question, with a world-historical answer, London: Ostara Publications, 2017.

[3] Isidore Singer, Sollen die Juden Christen werden? (Hansebooks, 2016; orig. pub.: 1884). [All footnotes are by the translator.]

[4] New Christians

[5] Heinz Moritz Willkomm (1821–1895) was a German botanist who wrote a work on his travels in Iberia, Zwei Jahre in Spanien und Portugal, 1847.

[6] Isaac D’Israeli (1766–1848) was a writer and father of Benjamin Disraeli. His book Genius of Judaism was published in 1833.

[7] Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, Marquis of Pombal (1699–1782) was a Portuguese liberal statesman who served as the powerful chief minister of King Joseph I.

[8] People of the region of Circassia, in the North Caucasus.

[9] A Turkic ethnic group of Russia.

[10] Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) was a celebrated German physician and pathologist.

[11] Friedrich Hecker (1811–1881) was a German lawyer and one of the principal Liberal agitators during the 1848 Revolution.

[12] Adolphe Crémieux (1796–1880) was a French Jewish lawyer and politician who served as Minister of Justice during the Second Republic and the Third Republic. He was a Freemason and fervent defender of the Jews. He served as president of the Alliance Israélite Universelle from 1863 to 1867 and from 1868 to 1880.

[13] The Alliance Israélite Universelle was established in Paris in 1860 as an international organization for the promotion of the rights and welfare of Jews around the world.