The situation as regards the position represented by the frequently mentioned historian* is both different and worse. It is precisely in his chosen polemics – which fell on such fertile ground here – that he fails to prove his worth as a historian. For what he says about the difference between Portuguese and German Jews – about the outstanding efficiency and performance of today’s Portuguese Jews, about the Polish heritage of German Jews – is unhistorical; also unhistorical is his claim that the German nation is a Christian nation; illogical is his distinction between the Christian state, which he rejects, and the Christian people, to whom he believes the Germans belong. But this designation does not take the religious point of view into account – and even includes non-believers. Incidentally, how can one explain the fact that the historian in question sees fit to make such satisfactory references to French and English Jews?
Because they have, for many decades, enjoyed the rights we were granted only relatively recently.
Thus, as even advocates of his position admit, the kind of arrangements one wishes to challenge in the transitional phase in which we find ourselves here have proven themselves over a longer period in those places.
As distorted and refutable as his claims may be – we must be clear with ourselves about one thing: They are not the claims of a single person but express the mood of many people who can only view life – at least the life of the Jews – from a bureaucratic perspective. The Christian-Germanic state and Aryan pride have played a role in many academic writings. I scarcely need to recall the authors, poets, and composers still alive today who added prefaces and individual tracts against the Jews to their works, one because a Jewish composer** had reverently honored the manes of his brother through an overture to his tragedy Struensee, thus creating competition for a drama by the same name written subsequently by the plaintiff; the other one – well, everyone can read this in “Jews in Music.” A third author of cultural studies finds this and that objectionable about us; a fourth one, also an historian, and a well-known one at that, doubts our ability to organize politically; then the list continues with physicians, men of science who make negative remarks about Jewish physicians, nursing, and students. Anyone who wants to take the effort, year in and year out, to compile all the hostile statements that have been made against Jews in writing (and in academic works at that), in journals, that have been expressed by the educated in educated circles, and at social gatherings – this person will end up with a very extensive collection of shadowgraphs on the cultural history of humanity. The Götterdämmerung of humanity is still a long way off, however. The disciples of Lessing, Alexander von Humboldt, and Schleiden are few and far between – a lot of antipathy toward us remains rooted in educated circles. The frequently mentioned historian, who recently thought he heard reverse “hep-hep” shouting, has, as he himself admits, expressed his aversion toward the Jewish character for a decade already – namely in his lectures. His three most recent essays are not a novelty for him, and in this respect they are not astonishing. The only thing that endowed them with significance and the advantage of manifold refutation was the fact that they had to be regarded as the expression of a prevailing mood in educated circles. They were the outlet through which the existing ill humor poured forth.
* Heinrich von Treitschke – trans.
** G. Meyerbeer – trans.
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