A. George Petre, British Envoy to Württemberg, to the Earl of Granville, No. 17, Stuttgart (March 28, 1873)

[Received 31 March by messenger. For: The Queen / Gladstone / Circulate; G[ranville]]

Serious anti-Semitic riots in Stuttgart; Social Democrats blamed

Rather serious riots, originating in a most trivial cause, occurred here the day before yesterday and were not quelled without the intervention of the military. A Soldier had an altercation with a Jewish clothesman[1] as to the price of some article of wearing apparel which he wished to purchase; from words they came to blows, and the Jew called in the Police, who appear to have assisted him not only in ejecting but in maltreating the soldier, although it turned out afterwards that the latter was not seriously hurt.

A report spread like wildfire through the town that a Jew and the Police had murdered a Soldier, and towards evening excited crowds assembled in the quarter of the Town where the occurrence took place, smashed the shop windows of several Jewish dealers in clothes, and pelted and assaulted the Police[.]

The same scenes took place on the following evening, when the Police were even more seriously attacked and used their drawn swords freely against their assailants. The Authorities were alarmed, and no less than a battalion of infantry and two squadrons of Cavalry were called out in aid of the Police.

To an ordinary observer this seemed to be rather an unnecessary display of military force, but at all events it succeeded in restoring tranquility, which has not since been disturbed or is likely to be.

It is thought that social-democrats, who have very numerous adherents here amongst the working classes, have had something to do with fomenting these riots.

B. George Strachey, British Envoy to Saxony, to the Earl of Derby, No. 7, Dresden (February 9, 1877)

[Received 12 February. For: The Queen / Lord Beaconsfield / Circulate; D[erby]]

Account of violent pamphlet against Prince Bismarck and the Berlin “Grounders”

The continued intensity of the economic crisis in Germany has afforded plausible arguments to the “Enemies of the Empire.” Prince Bismarck has been charged with following, on National Liberal instigation, a system which has divided the 5 Milliards amongst a clique of jobbers and founders, ruined trade and enterprise, impoverished Germany, upset the monetary circulation, and brought the Empire to the edge of bankruptcy. It might seem, at first sight, a waste of time to notice the ignorant, or malicious calumnies of Agrarians, Protectionists, and other reactionary Politicians, who thus select for attack the particular part of the Prince’s administration which has been the most beneficial to Germany, and where his personal initiative and interference have notoriously been so little felt. But the accusations of this kind derive importance from the fact that owing to the very low economical intelligence of the Germans, they have been believed far and wide, and that their acceptance as true is one of the main reasons why the Extreme Parties were so largely reinforced at the late elections.

Dr. R[udolf] Meyer, the well known “Christian Socialist,” and political writer, has just brought out a bitter and powerful pamphlet against the Reichsanzler, which is being rapidly sold, and is said to be producing a considerable effect in Germany. Leaving aside Dr. Meyer’s descriptions and statistics of Bismarckian “Grounding” I will give a slight outline of his impeachment.

Bismarck is destitute of knowledge in political economy, finance, &c and is neither a Free Trader nor a Protectionist. It has been his object to introduce at Berlin an intimation of that Caesarian-St. Simonism which he saw flourishing in Paris under Napoleon III. Just as the French Emperor set up his Lesseps, Pereires and Foulds,[2] with their Credits-Foncier and Mobilier and the various satellites of these, so Bismarck inaugurated his “Patriotic Money-powers.” The feeble [Rudolf von] Delbrück had no other principle but “laisser faire”: [Otto von] Camphausen is altogether incompetent. They are “His Ministers,” and by “his favor” they have renounced the old Hohenzollern traditions for a system calculated to ruin Germany by a set of bloodsuckers. The money of the nation has been spent and invested, the currency has been submitted to a sham reform, vast speculative undertakings have been floated and supported, to benefit the bankers Delbrück, [Gerson] Bleichröder and [Adolph von] Hansemann. This clique of swindlers is supported by a league of National Liberal politicians, amongst whom [Johannes] Miquel and [Rudolf von] Benningsen are prominent, a circumstance which helped to draw Bismarck into the “Culture-Fight” [Kulturkampf], while his St. Simonian leanings led him into groundings which throw some light on his transactions with [Ferdinand] Lassalle and the Berlin Socialists. The Discount Society, the Land Credit Company, the Rumanian Railways, the St. Gothard tunnel, and a number of rotten railroads, have been called into life by official agency. The scandalous investments of the Guelf (“Reptile”), Invalid, Fortress, and Provincial, Funds, which have already entailed the loss of millions of public money, were planned to enrich the clique. When the Crash came, the first care of the Government was, not to help respectable houses and interests, but to save their swindling associates. The “Political grounders” are still, after the exposure of the misdeed, high in favour, so that the foreign Ambassadors, for instance, stoop to dine with Bleichröder in order to curry favor with Bismarck.

The Reichskanzler is not personally dishonest, but though his own hands may be clean, he lives in such intimacy with thieves as has been seen on the part of no other European Minister. For the corruption of Germany, which may almost be compared with that of France under Louis XV, Bismarck has to answer. By bad exercise of power he has reduced the Germans to such a state of servility as is only to be matched in the fable of Gessler’s Hat.[3] If the Government of the Empire had been in other hands, there would have been no Grounding, and no Culture-Fight, nor would Palaces and huts have been plunged into ruin. While Prince Bismarck is the sole mighty Idol, Germany will be sacrificed to the Empire, the Empire to the Chancellor, and the Chancellor to Jews and Grounders. So that for the political guidance of the Germany there remains this one rule —— “to get rid of the present system and its head.”

Dr. Meyer,[4] as Your Lordship will observe, exonerates the Reichskanzler from personal corruptibility. But the whole pamphlet practically asserts the libel which particular words may repudiate. Few of Dr. Meyer’s readers will believe, that a man of Prince Bismarck’s high powers and energy could become the unconscious tool of a band of Grounders and jobbers.

C. George Strachey to the Marquess of Salisbury, No. 30, Dresden (December 20, 1879)

[Received 24 December by Berlin. For: The Queen / Lord Beaconsfield; S[alisbury], 26 December]

Anti-Semitic agitation in Dresden

The anti-Jewish agitation, which in some parts of Germany has attained considerable proportions, has extended to Dresden.

The new “Kulturkampf” is not undeserving of Your Lordship’s attention. All its’ authors disclaim vulgar, confessional, intolerance. Some of them affect to call their Propaganda a mere forlorn attempt to initiate a resistance to the “Conquest of Germany by Jewry.” It is, of course, absurd to describe the German Jews as a dominant race in a country where, however complete their Emancipation may be on paper, they are, as a rule practically shut out from all but the lower

ranks of military, civil, and municipal, place, and, unless they are Rothschilds or Oppenheims, are exposed, except perhaps in Berlin, to ignominious social treatment.

But though no Jew can rise in a public office, or command an Army Corps or a Regiment, or be Burgomaster of Dresden or Berlin, Germany is exceptionally exposed to Semitic influences. The Jews are powerful because they have been persecuted. The jealousy with which most of the trades, handicrafts, and avocations were guarded against them drove the Jews into particular branches of industry in which their energy and talents, and inherited commercial knowledge

have given them such advantages over all rivals.

Their intellectual greatness is less conspicuous than it was. But if they have lately had no Börne, Heine, Mendelssohn, or Meyerbeer, through their Laskers and Bambergers they have made their mark on the recent German political evolution, and have, in some respects, been its’ leaders.[5] Many of the principal newspapers are now their property. Their contingent to the editorial and contributing staff of the National-Liberal & semi-official press is almost numerous enough to justify the assertion, lately made, that ten years hence there will not be an uncircumcised journalist in the Empire.[6] In this and other ways the Jews have been able to put forth a strength much in excess of the power naturally available for a minority so numerically weak, and, in spite of the progress of enlightenment, so profoundly obnoxious to popular suspicion and dislike.

The setting in of the Conservative reaction afforded an obvious opportunity for an anti-Semitic crusade. The new propaganda has partly the character of an attack on the National-Liberal

system. Clamours against Manchester doctrines, or for a return to the restrictions on labour, or for sharper penal laws, or against Monometallism,[7] Usury, the Stock-Exchange, and the “Golden International,”[8] were suitably pointed by insinuations or tirades against the Jews. A “Judenhetze”[9] once started, might reckon on the support of the Ultramontane press, which was glad to make reprisals for the part taken by Jewish journalists against the Catholics in the “Kulturkampf.” And high Protestant feeling, aroused by the virulent Jewish libels on Lutheran dignitaries, doctrine and practice, could not fail to swell the cry.

The campaign may be said to have opened with a pamphlet of W. Marr entitled “Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum.”[10] The sale of this extremely dull work has been enormous. The author pretends to write as a Pessimist whose only objective is to show in a

“document of despair” how completely Germany has been subjugated by Jewry. According to this Jeremiad, the mischief is done. Remedies or palliatives are of no avail. All that remains for the Deutschtum is melancholy acquiescence in the inevitable: the “finis Germaniae”[11] has arrived, and the only possible commentary on the catastrophe is “Vaevictis.”[12]

This poor irony has been almost more successful than the Drapier or Peter Plymley.[13] It appears to have inspired the exclusion of Herr Lasker from the Prussian Landtag. The National-Liberal leader lost his election at Breslau owing to an agreement that no votes should be given to a Jew.[14]

About this time an “Anti-Semitic league” was formed in Berlin,[15] and similar societies have been organized in Breslau, Munich, Nuremberg, Vienna, Pesth, and other German and Hungarian towns. The first Article of the Statutes of the Berlin league invites all non-Jewish Germans of whatever confessions, parties, or conditions, – “to oppose by all permissible means the dispossession of the Germanism by Jewry, to drive back the Semites to a position corresponding with their numerical strength, to deliver the Deutschtum from the weight of Jewish influence which oppresses them in social, political and religious respects, and to ensure for the children of the Germans their full right to offices and dignities in the German fatherland.”

Article 2 invites subscribers to come forward and “save their common German fatherland from complete Judification, and to make it a supportable residence for the posterity of the ancient inhabitants of the same.”

I do not know whether the formation of this league preceded or followed the delivery of two lectures (afterwards printed and sold enormously) by the Prussian Court Chaplain Stöcker, an influential patron of the Berlin “Christian-Socialists.”[16] The reverend gentleman is a powerful controversialist, and, unlike Marr, he takes an optimist view of the situation, which he calls dangerous not desperate. He tries to demonstrate statistically, that the Jews of Berlin form an imperium in imperio,[17] which, for its’ concentrated strength, wealth, culture, command of the press, and influence on education and policy, has no parallel elsewhere, and has become a serious peril to Germany. He proposes an organic reform which shall purify capital by imposing severe restrictions on Usury, Mortgages, Credit, and Stock-Exchange speculation, and elevate work by restoring the Guilds. Helped by such carnal weapons, Germany and Christianity may yet be born again, and break the bondage of Mammon and the Talmud. If Mr. Stöcker’s language against “the school of Satan” is occasionally strong, his justification by the Hebrew principle of “a tooth for a tooth” is complete. He has been personally subjected to Israelitish insolence, and his extracts from the Berlin “Tageblatt” and “Börsen Courier” convict his adversaries of controversial indecencies such as religious minorities have seldom ventured to perpetrate.[18]

Of the supplementary literature pro et contra which has appeared in Berlin, Dresden, &c I need not speak. It is described as amounting to “floods”, and must be very remunerative, for Marr, besides accompanying, his first “Trumpet-blast” by some new works of like character, has found it worth while to start a vituperative anti-Jewish monthly called the “German watch.”[19]

The Saxon phase of the Propaganda was not likely to be very acute. While Berlin alone has over 45,000 Jews, and Prussia 350,000, this Kingdom has only 5,000, a number much below the normal German proportion. With one unimportant exception[20] no Jew is here before the public, and there is no sensible Semitic antagonism against Christian political or commercial interests. But a “Reform-Union”[21] lately founded in Dresden for reactionary purposes thought that the persecution or repression of the Hebrews, was an object to which their activity ought to be directed. As this function, however, was not mentioned in the Society’s programme, it seemed proper to discharge it in an indirect manner. Accordingly the case was explained to Herr Marr, who at once came to Dresden,[22] and lectured on his favorite topic under the auspices of the “Reform Union.” Herr Marr had changed his tactics, for he now described the Semitic infectionas curable by some peculiar remedies of his own. For instance – Jews are not to serve in the Army, but to pay a blood tax for which the Judenthum in the aggregate is to be responsible. The “Mosaic man” to be removed from all official posts of every description. All Bills owing to Jews to be paid ready money, so that dealings with them shall not fall under regular commercial legislation. Jew newspapers not to publish articles on the religious and political affairs of Christians. Jews not to hold land unless for cultivation by Hebrew labourers. Jewish capitalists to undergo forced loans, and Stock-Exchange transactions to be taxed. These ideas may be thought amazing. Perhaps they are less so than the fact that in 1879, in the so-called “Elbe-Florence,” a large and intelligent audience listened to them with patience, and, apparently, without astonishment dissent. The leading Dresden journal reproduced the lecture with seeming approbation, and again denounced with appropriate insults and invectives [Eduard] Lasker, [Gerson] Bleichröder, the “Golden International,” Monometallism, and Free Trade.

It is characteristic of German statesmanship that Herr [Hermann] von Nostitz-Wallwitz [Saxony's Minister of the Interior] avows a certain sympathy with this movement. He speaks with regret of the good old “Ghetto,” or “Jewry,” principle, maintained here in full vigour up to the year 1867 [sic],[23] which prohibited the residence of Jews in this kingdom except in Dresden and Leipzig. This, said the Minister, was an excellent rule, for it prevented those acquisitions of property by Jewish owners which had been found so mischievous elsewhere.

One of the last incidents of the question was the publication in an unexpected quarter of an article by the (Saxon) Professor Treitschke. In the December number of the “Prussian Review” this eloquent essayist and historian, while affecting to rebuke as “hateful and brutal,” certain excesses of the anti-Semitic propaganda, argues that it is not altogether indefensible, and practically pronounces in its’ favour.[24] The movement, he says, “runs strong and deep;” it is

the “natural reaction of German popular feeling against a foreign element,” the result of the gulf between western and Semitic life which has subsisted ever since Tacitus spoke of the “odium generis humani.”[25]

Another National-Liberal organ, the Leipzig “Im neuen Reich” has just followed suit in an article[26] which says that this Propaganda is rapidly growing, that it is has extended to America, that it is founded on deep and bitter antipathies of race, and that it suggests an impartial

reconsideration, unbiased by narrow Manchester formulas, of the entire modern economic system adopted by the German Liberals, and popularized by their political allies the Jews.[27]

D. George Strachey to the Earl of Granville, No. 41, Dresden (December 6, 1880)

In my Despatch No. 30, of December 20, 1879, I gave an account of the anti-Semitic agitation in Germany, and shewed how it was that the movement had not extended to this Kingdom.

The recrudescence of the question in Prussia has had some slight echo in Leipzig, were the majority of the students at the University appear to sympathize with Professor Treitschke and the persecution party.

Herr von Nostitz-Wallwitz betrays, as he did a year ago, a certain approval of the Hetze. He does not wish the Jews of Saxony to be baited, for there is no Semitic element to speak of in the local press, and, owing to the prevalence here of the “Ghetto” principle down to 1866, the Jews are neither numerous nor influential. However His Excellency is not favorable to the seed of Abraham and he lately avowed to me that in his capacity of Minister of the Interior he should not think it desirable to name a Jew to one of the higher administrative posts, or even to a superior clerkship. On my observing that the reserve of the Prussian Government in the recent debate was very like the virtual encouragement of Agrarian murder by the Irish Land-League, Herr von Nostitz said that he entirely approved of their negative attitude, because anything like an official rebuke to the Stöcker party would have acted as a premium on Jewish insolence which, in Berlin, already passed all bounds. “But then,” said His Excellency “you know I am very reactionary” – a description not really applicable to him, except perhaps in the religious order of ideas.

The tone of the public journals is very similar. The semi-official “Journal” has treated the “Hetze” historically, in a dry, objective tone, which, under the circumstances of the case, is equivalent to sympathy. The anti-Semitic sentiments of the “Dresdner Nachrichten” are more openly avowed, but the hostility of that paper is a mere commercial and protectionist hatred, directed against the “Golden International,” which it explains, makes money dear, lends at usurious rates, and impoverishes Germany by excessive importations of foreign goods.

E. George Strachey to the Earl of Granville, No. 28, Dresden (June 18, 1882)

The “Free Conservative” Member in the Reichstag for the Circle [electoral district] of Meissen, Professor [Gustav] Richter, lately resigned the seat, which he had occupied for 8 years, on nomination to Government employment.

Three candidates offered for the vacancy: a Conservative, a Social Democrat who had unsuccessfully opposed the ex-member at the last general election, and a Progressist, Herr [Eduard] Kämpffer, who is an architect and home owner.

At a first election neither of the Candidates obtained an absolute majority. At the casting [runoff] election the Progressist, with 7000 votes, defeated the Conservative by a majority of 550, the aggregate poll being somewhat under three-fourths of the registered constituency, shewing an electoral participation above the German average. The successful candidate appears to have received a certain support from the Social-Democrats who, as a rule, treat the Progressists with rancorous hostility. It is a sign of the times that the violent repulsion between the two parties should in this instance have been overcome.

All the vials of Conservative wrath are being poured on the local authors of the coalition, which has cost the Conservatives one of their strongholds, and on Herr Eugen Richter, whose personal interposition in favor of his partisan is bitterly resented on account of his being a Prussian. The Conservative “Dresdner-Nachrichten” – a journal whose unsurpassed fertility in political vituperation, calumny, and falsehoods, I have often had occasion to exemplify – has been discussing the election with its’ usual amenities of language. The Liberals are foreigners, – Berlin Talmudists, – apostles of the Golden-Calf, – agents of the international Hebrew banking-league, – swindlers who make money sucking the blood Manchester vampires who prey on the working man, and suck his blood by usury, stock-jobbing, and writing down figures at a desk and the free-int[ernationa]l usurers & capitalists who ruin the working man.

The fundamental note of such tirades is characteristic of the Conservative press. The monied classes of Germany belong, as a rule, to one grade or other of the liberal party, and it is the practice of the Conservatives and [antisemitic] “Reformers” to describe mercantile and banking business as comparatively degrading, and dishonorable in its’ gains – an idea which even Prince Bismarck has condescended to countenance.

F. William Nassau Jocelyn to the Marquess of Salisbury, No. 64, Darmstadt (November 8, 1890)

The Public feeling against the Jews which has assumed such formidable proportions in some parts of Germany, has not failed to shew itself in the Grand Duchy of Hesse, and more especially so in the Province of Upper Hesse and the towns of Giessen and Mayence where on the occasion of the last Election for the Diet an Antisemitic member was returned for each constituency.[28]

In Upper Hesse the Cattle trade is almost entirely in Jewish hands, and no doubt the hostility against them which has now assumed a very aggravated form, was to some extent owing to the usurious terms exacted and the hard bargains driven by the Jews with the farmer in selling cattle – much exclusive dealing being employed on both sides, and the Jews, being in the minority, suffering severely from the continued and increasing bitterness of their opponents.

Matters at length reached such a stage, that an application was made to the Grand Duke by a Deputation from the three Provinces of the Grand Duchy and headed by the Chief Rabbi[29] of Mayence [i.e. Mainz], recounting in glowing, and, as I am informed not altogether justifiable terms, their wrongs, and imploring His Royal Highness to extend His protection to the exercise of their lawful rights and occupations.

The Deputation was received by The Grand Duke, and the written petition of its Members taken into consideration.

The Minister of Justice, Monsieur Finger received orders, on the first Instant to address to them the Reply of which I have the honor to enclose herewith a Copy and a translation.

This Answer, while expressing His Royal Highness[’s] horror and detestation of the treatment received by one portion of His Subjects at the hands of another, and the Royal injunction that such proceedings should speedily cease, does not fail, as will be observed, to admonish the petitioners to be more careful in future not to give cause for complaint to those who are so ready to use it as justifying a fresh attack and persecution.

The Document has been criticized by the Press much in accordance with the Principles upheld by each journal, but the qualification attached to the Grand Ducal censure of the Antisemitic party throwing some of the blame upon their opponents, has, tho’ in general approved, not been very palatable to the Jewish part of the community.

Monsieur Finger informed me that the Petition, as presented to the Grand Duke, has been withheld from publication owing to its somewhat exaggerated statements and intemperate language.

G. George Strachey to the Earl of Rosebery, No. 39, Dresden (December 10, 1892)

Today’s [Dresdner] “Nachrichten” remarks that Rector [Hermann] Ahlwardt is probably the most popular, and Judge [Georg Robert] Brausewetter the best hated, man in the Empire. This is the natural exaggeration of an anti-Semitic organ: the nation is not sunk so low that, for instance, a plebiscite would declare in favour of “The Headmaster of all the Germans.” What is true is, that the monomania of Ahlwardt infects, in one shape or other, almost the entire Conservative electorate, where jealousy of the Jews as unbelievers, as capitalists controlling the Stock Exchange, as middlemen intruding between producer and purchaser, as liberal journalists and parliamentary leaders, is not without ramifications in the National-Liberal party. In this Kingdom, the ignorant unintelligent classes – I mean the entire Aristocracy and gentry, and Court, (the Royal Family excluded) – with the military and civil services, and no small number of traders and peasant proprietors, are in complete sympathy with the “Jew-Baiter.” Allowance being made for the comparative humanity of 19th Century feelings and ideals, the temper of the Anti-Semites of the New Germany towards “the uncircumcised dog” may be said to be that of the contemporaries of Richard the 1st and Simon de Montfort. In the social circles to which I properly belong here, approval of the “Jew-Baiter” is absolutely universal: I have just heard from a representative of the very highest local official enlightenment the opinion that, after all, “there is probably something in it.”