Albert Lindemann. Anti-Semitism before the Holocaust. Harlow, England: Longman, 2000. xx + 144 pp. $ 12.95, paper, ISBN 978-0-582-36964-1.

Reviewed by John Abbott

Published on H- (May, 2000)

Albert Lindemann's new work, Anti-Semitism posits a prior Jewish action. Whether the setting is before the Holocaust, ofers a popularly written Hellenistic Alexandria or nineteenth-century survey of Jew-hatred through the ages. With a text , the author sees recurring patterns of Jew‐ of just over one hundred pages, a short selection ish behavior -- separation, wealth, arrogance -- of primary documents, time lines, and glossary, that usually invited a disproportionate and preju‐ the book has been designed to meet a variety of dicial response. And while he acknowledges that undergraduate teaching needs. Surely the au‐ fantasy, stereotyping, and bigotry played a role in thor's robust exposition and provocative argu‐ the traditions of Jew-hatred, his greater interest ments will generate plenty of classroom contro‐ lies in demonstrating the ways in which real expe‐ versy. riences replenished and reinforced these tradi‐ For the most part, this new book is a popular‐ tions. In his view, this approach is crucial in order ized version of the author's 1997 study, Esau's properly to "understand" the antisemites. Such Tears. As in that work, Lindemann issues sharp understanding, he says, is quite diferent from the challenge to current academic fashion, which he "uncompromising moral condemnation" charac‐ sees as having embraced a simplistic notion of an‐ teristic of the feld. And such understanding, he tisemitism, as "a single entity with constant suggests, is essential if we are to "remedy" anti‐ traits," in which Jews are viewed as "passive and semitism efectively (pp. 3-4). thus wholly innocent victims." (pp. 4,7) In opposi‐ Unfortunately, Lindemann's survey, far from tion, he ofers a history of antisemitism full of va‐ ofering remedy, seems destined mainly to com‐ riety and paradoxes, in which Jews are neither pound the problem. This is one seriously imbal‐ passive nor innocent. anced book. Its treatment of other scholarly ap‐ Indeed, Lindemann's exposition seems guided proaches relies upon caricature and straw men. by a kind of inverted Newtonian principle: for [1] Its overview of Jewish-gentile relations is se‐ nearly every anti-Jewish reaction in history, he lective and tendentious. While Lindemann care‐ H-Net Reviews fully qualifes, softens, and contextualizes the his‐ But this notion of plausibility is easily abused; tory of anti-Jewish prejudice, he shows little hesi‐ at most it refers to the subjective realm of appear‐ tation in making defamatory generalizations ances, and is hardly to be confused with truth or about Jews, especially when voices such as the veracity. Surely what passed for plausible in the "noted Jewish author" Koestler and "cele‐ antisemitic imagination was privileged by excep‐ brated Jewish philosopher" Baruch Spinoza are tionally low standards of proof, fed by a selective on hand to deliver them. In his tour d'horizon of and capricious curiosity, and sustained by a history's leading antisemitic fgures, the author all chronic suspension of critical thinking. None of too often substitutes shallow polemic (e.g. Tre‐ this is acknowledged by Lindemann's book, which itschke, Stoecker, and Marr were no Nazis) for his‐ is far more interested in ratifying the plausibility torical insight (but what then was their signif‐ of antisemitic perceptions than in critically exam‐ cance?). Even his bid to understand the anti‐ ining them. The result is a consistent indiference semites yields no real illumination; indeed, given to the ways in which prejudice and ideology -- and the importance Lindemann attaches to this con‐ increasingly the organized activities of the anti‐ cern, it is striking how little attention he devotes semites themselves -- framed and informed public to the internal workings of antisemitic belief sys‐ perceptions. tems, or to the rhetorical conceits and imagery When economic hardships mounted during that drove them. Instead, he fxates upon the al‐ the Great Depression of the latter nineteenth cen‐ leged plausibility of anti-Jewish perceptions. tury, for example, "it was hardly surprising that Readers should not be blamed if they fnd his ar‐ those who were unhappy about these develop‐ guments uncomfortably akin to rationalization. ments were inclined to denounce them as the Lindemann's notion of "plausibility" is crucial fault of Jews" (p. 52). Wilhelm Marr's The Victory to his interpretation of antisemitism, and to his of Jewry over Germandom "struck a chord be‐ empathetic reconstructions of anti-Jewish percep‐ cause of the economic difculties and other ten‐ tions throughout history. The argument that some sions in German society, some of which were re‐ antisemitic cliches enjoyed a limited plausibility is lated to the rise of the Jews" (p. 60). We are given in itself neither wrong nor malicious, and histori‐ to understand the success of Karl Lueger's anti‐ ans have long recognized that certain of the anti‐ semitic politics in turn-of-the-century in semites' lurid= generalizations overlapped with a supposedly self-evident terms: in this city, "where far more mundane social reality. It should be Jewish numbers had increased about thirty times news to no one that Jews tended to be more ur‐ since the early part of the century, and where the ban, middle class, and commercial than their gen‐ Rothschilds were a large, much-discussed pres‐ tile counterparts, and that they fgured promi‐ ence, attacks on Jews were an irresistible political nently in the great social and cultural transforma‐ temptation" (p. 70). tions of nineteenth and twentieth-century Europe. Much the same approach disfgures the au‐ That Jews were thus to some degree "over-repre‐ thor's discussion of and its after‐ sented" in the arts and professions, in journalism math. Lindemann rightly stresses the importance and fnance, and in liberal and leftist politics is of this period in intensifying and radicalizing Eu‐ inarguable. For many Europeans, especially those ropean antisemitism, pointing especially to the already disposed to anti-Jewish prejudice and role of the Bolshevik revolution, and the failed scapegoating, this alone was often enough to ren‐ revolutions in Central Europe during 1918/19, in der plausible the malicious mythologies of Jewish setting the stage for the more hysterical and vio‐ control and conspiracy. lent antisemitic ideas and movements that fol‐

2 H-Net Reviews lowed. All the more upsetting, then, that his ac‐ bland interpolations imply. Their beliefs -- and count of these episodes is so misleading, specula‐ they do seem to have been true believers -- em‐ tive, and strangely apologetic. braced a wide range of fantasy and fabrication. As In his discussion of the Russian revolution, one of them declared at trial, Rathenau was "one for example, Lindemann claims that, although of the three hundred Elders of Zion," and his poli‐ most were not Jewish," the perception cy of fulflling the terms of the Versailles Treaty of a "peculiar connection" between Bolshevism was dictated by international Jewry's predatory and Jewishness gained credence due to the large designs against the German nation.[2] numbers of "jewifed non-Jews" -- Lenin, Dz‐ The killers also believed, among other things, erzhinksy, and Kalinin are identifed as such -- in that Rathenau's sister had married the Soviet the Bolshevik government (pp. 80-2). Indeed, Lin‐ agent Karl Radek --the kind of far-fetched, esoter‐ demann maintains that "most Jewish revolution‐ ic, and wholly spurious detail that was far from aries themselves" believed in such a connection, incidental to the teeming antisemitic milieu of the though he does not tell us how he arrived at this time. The manic absorption of Germany's out‐ remarkable conclusion; he certainly cannot be raged nationalists and rightists in piling on such talking about Russia's Bundists or Zionists, who dubious facts, their relentless "exposure" of the di‐ were heavily suppressed during the revolution's abolical connections between Jews, Freemasons, early years. Bolsheviks, and fnanciers, was in direct propor‐ The point of this distorted interpretation, it tion to their furious denial that Germany had lost seems, is somehow to render more plausible the the war. This fateful connection, of antisemitic fantasies and lies about "Jewish " that scapegoating and nationalist indignation, had not fueled so much rightist reaction in Europe after happened spontaneously. It was actively promot‐ 1917. Indeed, Lindemann puts the brightest possi‐ ed by powerful antisemitic voices in and around ble spin on this reaction, so that even the assassi‐ Germany's elite -- by the Pan-German League, for nation of Walter Rathenau in 1922 is given an example, whose vice-president declared, in Octo‐ oddly sympathetic hearing. It was not so much ber 1918, that Jews would henceforth be made to "utter irrationality" that drove the German Right serve as the "lightning rod for all the discontent of to its murderous hatred of Rathenau, but rather the masses." But none of this, running contrary as "his great wealth and many fnancial connec‐ it does to Lindemann's thesis, seems to have at‐ tions." Most of all, it was Rathenau's role in direct‐ tracted his interest. ing Germany's wartime economy that had gained Lindemann closes out his survey with a dis‐ him so many enemies: as Lindemann dutifully ex‐ cussion of Adolf Hitler. He rightly stresses Hitler's plains, among the large frms favored by his poli‐ historical singularity, and endorses the couplet, cies "were a disproportionate number led by "No Hitler, no Holocaust." Yet he stretches this Jews." Thus Rathenau and his high-placed Jewish creditable proposition to excessive length, so that friends came to be hated by "those Germans the wider angles of history are replaced with the whose lives were ruined by the confict" (p. 78). narrow focus of biography. The net efect, espe‐ There is so much wrong here one hardly cially given Lindemann's absorption in the mys‐ knows where to begin. Sufce to say that, in pas‐ teries of Hitler's pre-1919 career, is one of exag‐ sages such as these, Lindemann's professed aim, gerated ambiguity and uncertainty, by which the to examine "the interplay of fantasy and reality in connections and continuities between and antisemitism," collapses. Rathenau's killers were its antisemitic predecessors dissolve into clouds of no garden variety populists, as Lindemann's vaporous speculation.

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As to when and how Hitler developed his an‐ as the prominent Catholic politician Georg Heim, tisemitic world view, Lindemann holds that pursued a separatist diplomacy of their own, hop‐ "much evidence points to the year 1919 itself, ing thereby to gain special Allied consideration when Hitler, in despair over Germany's defeat, for Bavarian interests. personally observed Communist revolutionaries By late 1918, 's bid for a separate in Bavaria, predominantly led by Jews" (89f.). The peace was in tatters, as the Allied stance against reference, of course, is to the short-lived Bavarian Germany hardened. The result was a progressive Soviet Republic of April 1919. Leaving aside the envenoming of Bavarian politics -- and a sudden fact that the Republic's communist leaders were public interest in tracing the genealogy of the rev‐ by no means "predominantly" Jewish, this asser‐ olution's leaders. Already at the end of November, tion, if true, would seem to support Lindemann"s Heim was publicly rebuking Eisner for his foreign point that behind most antisemitic reactions -- policy, speaking pointedly of the "corrosive Jewish even Hitler's --lurked real events and plausible spirit" behind Marxism, and exaggerating the Jew‐ causes.[3] But in fact no evidence whatsoever ish character of Eisner's provisional regime. links Hitler's antisemitic "conversion" to this By January, Heim and other right-of-center episode.[4] fgures had begun shifting the blame for Bavaria's Lindemann is on more solid footing when he woes away from the war, and onto the revolution suggests that Hitler's early career as beer itself. The substitution was a crucial one, and hall frebrand impelled him onto a spiraling path would gain force through ceaseless repetition in of antisemitic extremism. But this explanation, political meetings and newspaper articles across entailing a reciprocal radicalization of speaker Bavaria over the following year. The meaning of and audience, begs a number of questions, not this substitution was lost on no one: if the war least that of the audience itself. How is it that had been the fault of Germany's established elites, Bavaria, which before 1914 was in some respects the revolution was the fault -- as it became in‐ less overtly antisemitic than many other German creasingly fashionable to claim -- of "the Jews." regions, became the vessel for such rabid and For politicians such as Heim, who had long used widespread anti-Jewish sentiment? The question anti-Jewish language in appealing to their con‐ is worth brief examination, if only because it stituents' sense of social victimization, placing points to sources and ends of antisemitic politics Jews at the center of a new language of national which have been given no place in Lindemann's victimization was an easy and natural step. conceptualization.[5] To construe Bavaria's escalating antisemitism It should be born in mind that, in November over 1919 merely as an "interplay between fact 1918, Bavaria had had a revolution, and that, in and fantasy" a la Lindemann is to miss a critical its initial phases, the revolutionary government, point. Jewish participation in Bavaria's revolving headed by the Independent Socialist Kurt Eisner, revolutionary regimes may have enhanced the enjoyed considerable assent from a war-weary plausibility of some antisemitic perceptions. But Bavarian populace, and sections of Bavaria's polit‐ the basic impulse, the overriding need, to vilify ical class as well. Bavarian support for Eisner's ex‐ and blame the Jews came from somewhere else: periment largely hinged upon his diplomatic bid the necessity of political leaders to abruptly dis‐ to break away from the Prussian north in suing own an orphaned revolution, the desire of many for a separate peace. This, it was widely believed, of the revolution's initial supporters to break with would gain Bavaria lenient treatment from the Al‐ the ambiguous legacy of their own actions, the lies. Even political leaders opposed to Eisner, such need for Bavarians to quickly reinvent themselves

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-- in the face of criticism over their failed sepa‐ [3]. A few revolutionists of Jewish descent ratist ventures -- as unblemished German patriots. played a role in the afairs of the Soviet, or Coun‐ Whatever the dubious plausibility of their claims cil, Republic between April 13 and May 3, 1919: to have been victimized by Jewish revolutionary Eugen Levine, Towia Axelrod, and (less directly) outsiders, the sharp rise in Bavarian anti‐ the anarchist Ernst Toller. The charge that the semitism, and the headlong fight into anti-Jewish Communist leader Max Levien was Jewish -- wide‐ fantasy, was at its core deeply and self-servingly ly circulated within Bavaria and in some scholar‐ dishonest. ly literature for decades afterward -- is in fact en‐ And it is this dishonesty, presenting itself tirely without foundation. Nor was the comman‐ through outright fabrications like the Protocols of der of the "Red Army," Rudolf Egelhofer, whose the Elders of Zion or the more subtle dynamics of force of several thousand desperate workers and collective denial and selective amnesia, that so soldiers was the Republic's main support, Jewish. conspicuously runs through the history of anti‐ To hold that this ragtag group be seen as "predom‐ semitism, and is so conspicuously lacking in Lin‐ inantly" Jewish is largely to recycle, however un‐ demann's book. But then the whole thrust of his wittingly, the mythology of the German right. On argument, stressing as it does the eternal plausi‐ Levien, see Dirk Walter, Antisemitische Kriminali‐ bility of antisemitic perception, has been to ban‐ taet und Gewalt (Bonn, 1999), p. 269, n. 10; on the ish dishonesty and fabrication from the discus‐ role of Jews in the Munich events, see Werner sion. They should be brought back in. Angress, "Juden im politischen Leben der Revolu‐ tionszeit," in Werner E. Mosse (ed.), Deutsches Ju‐ What then of Lindemann's "remedies" for an‐ dentum in Krieg und Revolution 1916-1923 (Tue‐ tisemitism? In his view, the only reason for non- bingen, 1971), pp. 137-316, esp. 162, 242. Jews to oppose Jew-hatred is that they might con‐ sider the presence of Jews benefcial (pp. 11, 102). [4]. Lindemann's position appears based upon This attempt to reduce the argument against anti‐ John Lukacs' ill-informed and wholly speculative semitism to a sliding cost-beneft scale seems both arguments in The Hitler of History (New York, mechanistic and uncharitable. Might it also be 1998), esp. p. 60. Cf. the more authoritative ac‐ that people, Jewish and gentile alike, fnd anti‐ count of Hitler's activities during this period by semitism repugnant precisely because it is a vi‐ Ian Kershaw, Hitler. 1889-1936: Hubris (New York, cious lie? And that people oppose antisemites be‐ 1999), esp. pp. 109-125. In assessing the impact of cause they try to play the majority for fools even anti-Bolshevism on Hitler's early antisemitism, it as they subject a minority to persecution? is worth noting that his frst public speeches skirt‐ ed that issue, focusing instead on the chimera of Pace Lindemann, antisemitism is not just "Jewish capitalism" -- the Jews as war profteers, about the Jews, and neither is the opposition to it. speculators, and racketeers, and so forth. See Notes Eberhard Jaeckel and Axel Kuhn (eds.), Hitler. [1]. Lindemann's injudicious evaluation of the Saemtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905-1924 (Stuttgart, historiography of antisemitism is well handled in 1980), p. 88f. Alan Steinweis's H-Antisemitism review of Esau's [5]. The following draws upon Allan Mitchell, Tears from October 1997. Revolution in Bavaria 1918-1919. The Eisner [2]. Martin Sabrow, Der Rathenaumord: Regime and the Soviet Republic (Princeton, N.J., Rekonstruktion einer Verschwoerung gegen die 1965), and Martin Geyer, _Verkehrte Welt. Revolu‐ Republik von Weimar (Munich, 1994), here p. 114. tion, Infation und Moderne, Muenchen 1914-1924 (Goettingen, 1998).

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Citation: John Abbott. Review of Lindemann, Albert. Anti-Semitism before the Holocaust. H- Antisemitism, H-Net Reviews. May, 2000.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=4109

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