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The Final Solution . The Christian Legacy. By the Fourth Gospel, John, the Jews are regarded as the bitter enemies of Christianity. By the Fourth Century, for Christian theologians, the Jew was a monster. Saint John of Chrysostom: “God hates them, and so also should all good Christians.”
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The Christian Legacy • By the Fourth Gospel, John, the Jews are regarded as the bitter enemies of Christianity. • By the Fourth Century, for Christian theologians, the Jew was a monster. • Saint John of Chrysostom: “God hates them, and so also should all good Christians.” • Saint Gregory of Nyssa called the Jews “ murderers of the Lord, assassins of the Prophets, rebels and detesters of God.” They are “companions of the devil, a race of vipers, informers… demons…enemies of all that is beautiful.” • Saint Augustine declared the Jews the instrument of Satan. • John Weiss: Accompanied by pogrom and massacre, the cry that “the Jews” killed Christ has rung down through centuries.
Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation • Martin Luther: I cannot convert the Jews. Our Lord Christ Himself did not succeed in doing so; but I can close their mouths so that there will be nothing for them to do but lie upon the ground. • Luther’s anti-Semitism was more obscene than even Hitler’s Mein Kampf. And his violent religiosity struck a powerful chord in the souls of millions of peasants and artisans of northern Germany, a chord echoing down to the twentieth century. • The Catholic hierarchy counseled against the massacre of Jews, but Luther had no patience with centuries of doctrinal evasions in the interests of social peace. • In 1543, Luther published his famous and oft-cited “The Jews and Their Lies,” a vicious tract accusing the Jews of planning to dominate the world. They were a “plague and pestilence.”
The Push Against The Enlightenment • Napoleon’s cannons might blast open ghetto walls, but they could not conquer the German mind. German intellectuals, with some exceptions, rejected his tyranny and his Enlightenment ideals. Reaffirming the Christian world view in philosophy, they retained Christian hostility toward Judaism and Jews. • Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Hegel, and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the philosophers of German Idealism, accepted Newtonian principles as valid only for science; they rejected the philosophes’ attempt to use them to transform man and society. • For Fichte, even converted, the Jews could never be Germans. They would always be all that was un-German: cosmopolitan, soulless traders, exploiters unable to participate in a moral social order. • Fichte: “A mighty state stretches across almost all the nations of Europe, hostile in intent and in constant strife with all others…this is Jewry.” They could never be loyal to any other nation. “To protect ourselves against them I see no other way than to conquer for them their promised land and ship them all there.”
19th and Early 20th Century Anti-Semitism I • Otto Glagau, 1876, organizer of anti-Semitic groups: “Today the social question is essentially the Jewish question. All other explanations of our economic troubles are fraudulent cover-ups.” • Catholic journal Germania, 1876: Accused “Jewish” liberals in the Reichstag of seeking to rob the church of its legitimate rights because of their ancient battle against Christ. • Pope Pius IX: “The Jews are “ the enemies of Jesus, they have no other God but their money.” • Heinrich von Treitschke is the classic example of the prestige that anti-Semitism gained among many German academics. Treitschke denounced the “arrogant” Jewish press for attacking German institutions and even Christianity.
19th and Early 20th Century Anti-Semitism II • Racist extremism is most strongly revealed by those 19th Century Germans and Austrians who formed the Volkist movement…… Volkists sought purity of doctrine, rejecting Christianity as Jewish……. For Volkists, all Jews, regardless of class or public stance, were part of a conspiracy of blood. • Given the racism of Austro-Germans, Hitler’s anti-Semitism was scarcely unique. He was not even the most extreme racist among the Nazis, many of whom complained as late as 1937 that he was too easy on the Jews. • Those who study the Nazis often see them as unique, not understanding that their anti-Semitism was a symptom as well as the cause of the forces that would destroy the Jews.
Discussion Questions • Given what you know about the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages, how influential might their intolerant attitude have been throughout German society? • Martin Luther emphasized the importance of embracing Jesus. He was Germany’s first “national hero.” How might these facts have spelled doom for Germany’s Jewish population? • Had Enlightenment ideas been embraced in Germany, how might they have helped break down some of the intolerant and stereotypical notions of Jews? • How might institutional bigotry ( preached by academics and churches) lead to an apathetic attitude among a population? • Could the Holocaust have happened in Germany without Hitler?
