The Case of Social Democracy

The meaning and implications of antisemitism as a cultural code in Imperial Germany may be illustrated in various ways. Here I have chosen to address two issues: The first is the case of the Social Democrats, who in the past never hesitated to voice their anti-Jewish sentiments and who by the late nineteenth century became increasingly more cautious in this respect. The second is the case of anti-feminism that was another widely shared attitude in Wilhelmine Germany, but one that was rather a general norm and could therefore never fulfil the complex role of a cultural code.

In the older literature on antisemitism, the position of European Socialism regarding the so-called Jewish Question was commonly examined by collecting the relevant quotes from the writings of various Socialist theorists or from the sayings of the Labor movement's prominent leaders. This method easily produced a series of debasing statements, both about Judaism as a religion and about Jews as individuals or as a group. Yet, such a collection of statements produce only a partial view of the matter. Clearly, Socialism was seriously infected with Jew-hatred from the outset. The harshest indictment was and remained Karl Marx's early essay, Zur Judenfrage (On the Jewish Question), written in 1843 and later often exposed as “the source of the antisemitic tradition in modern Socialism.” The essay reeks of spite to Judaism and the Jews.