The Maccabaean

ANTI-SEMITISM and anti-Semitic outbreaks are not appearances of the very latest German history. The hatred of the Jew, or, as the Germans themselves call it, “Risches,” has always existed among the masses of the people and has always been a factor of great importance in German history. What is. in the ascendant in the latest economical and political development of Germany is only the organization of these individual feelings into a social movement, their transformation into an organized social power, which exercises a steady influence upon German politics. The revolution of 1848, which destroyed the feudal system of society, with its privileges on one hand and restrictions on the other hand, and established the political and juridical equality of men, also brought the emancipation of the Jews. There were at that time many anti-Semites, who exerted themselves to prevent the enfranchisement of the Jews and who warned the assembly against the “terrible results” that would come in consequence of the emancipation, as did, for instance, Professor Ignaz Döllinger, but in general liberal principles on the Jewish question found an overwhelming majority and the emancipation was enacted. Of course, it was not a result of a psychological revolution among the Germans, a total disappearance of their anti-Semitic feelings—it was merely the result of the establishment of a new system of production and exchange of material commodities.

Since movable property gained the upper hand and industry and commerce came to the front, it was natural that the Jews, as townmen and traders of old, should be regarded as a useful element in the economic development of the country, and should therefore be freed from their national bondage. Here we have a new variation, a revolutionary one, of the old story, which has repeated itself so many times in the Jewish life of the Middle Ages, that when the Jews were needful to some countries for the purpose of development in commerce and industry, they were endowed with rights, and even privileges, notwithstanding that they were hated and despised by the people.

Just as natural was, therefore, the turning point in the relations of liberal German society towards the Jews that was marked by the seventies, the real period of the beginning of the anti-Semitic movement. Jewish capital had reached the highest point of activity. Wealthy Jews governed the most qualified branches of German trade: the banking-houses, the companies, the big warehouses, and especially the stock companies (Aktiengesellschaften), were called into existence by speculating financiers, mainly by Jews. While there were founded in Prussia for the period 1790-1870 only about 300 companies, the two years of 1871 and 1872 were marked by the foundation of 780 And as these speculations have been "investigated" and found to