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Court Preacher Adolf Stöcker Introduces Antisemitism to the Christian Social Workers’ Party (September 19, 1879)

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The question now is what ought to happen. We think that Jews and Christians must work together so that the right relationship exists between them. There is no other way. Here and there a hatred against Jews, which is contrary to the Gospels, is beginning to blaze forth. If modern Jewry continues as before to employ the power of the press and of capital to ruin the nation, then a catastrophe is ultimately unavoidable. Israel must give up the desire to be master in Germany. It must renounce the presumption that Judaism will be the religion of the future, since it is so completely of the past. And may foolish Christians no longer strengthen the nation in its darkness. Jewish orthodoxy with its circumcision has outlived itself. Reform Judaism is not even a Jewish religion. When Israel has recognized this, it will properly give up its so-called mission and cease trying to rob the nations that have given it domicile and citizenship of their Christianity. The Jewish press must become more tolerant, as a first condition of a better relationship. The social maladies that Jewry brought with it must be cured by wise legislation. It will not be easy to place Jewish capital under the necessary limitations. Only organic legislation can achieve this. Abolition of the mortgage system in real estate [with a pension system taking its place; animalistic guilds that make business operations difficult for an untrained capitalist;] a change in the credit system that frees the businessman from the arbitrary power of big capital; change in the stock-market system; reinstitution of the denominational census so that the disproportion between Jewish wealth and Christian work can be established; limitation of the appointment of Jewish judges to their proportion of the total population; dismissal of Jewish teachers from our primary schools so as to strengthen the Christian-German spirit: these are the means with which to combat the excessive growth of Jewish influence upon German life. Either we will succeed in this and restore Germany to blessedness, or the cancer from which we suffer will continue to eat away at us. Our future will then be imperiled, our German spirit will be Jewified, and German economic life will be impoverished. Return to a more Germanic legal system and economy. Return to Christian faith. Thus shall our slogan ring. Then all will do their duty and God will help.




Source of English translation: Richard S. Levy, Antisemitism in the Modern World. An Anthology of Texts. Lexington, Mass., and Toronto: D.C. Heath, 1991, pp. 58-66.

Source of original German text: Adolf Stöcker, [“Unsere Forderungen an das moderne Judentum”] [“Our Demands of Modern Jewry”], in Das moderne Judenthum in Deutschland, besonders in Berlin. Zwei Reden in der christlich-socialen Arbeiterpartei [Modern Jewry in Germany, Particularly in Berlin. Two Speeches to the Christian Social Workers’ Party], 2nd ed. Berlin: Wiegandt und Grieben, 1880, pp. 4-20.

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