As coincidence would have it, one of the first examples alerting us to the vagaries of anti-antisemitic discourse among Imperial German Socialists sprung from an incident in 1898 that involved Rosa Luxemburg. It is by no means a coincidence, though, that our discussion concludes with a slightly more systematic glance at her stance on antisemitism and ‘the Jewish Question’. Luxemburg was a staunch assimilationist and in large measure shared in the consensus communis of the bulk of her peers, comrades and contemporaries. Yet, on at least one occasion, she discussed these issues in a manner that clearly questioned and transcended this consensus communis and, in so doing, set herself apart from most of her peers. Luxemburg made the relevant remarks not in the context of her work within the German party but against the backdrop of a dispute involving the Polish party among whose leaders she was, the SDKPiL [Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania].

Our lead question throughout this book has been this: assuming somebody socialised in Imperial Germany who had imbibed the prevalent preconceptions regarding ‘the Jews’ had become interested in Social Democracy, to what extent and in what ways (if any) would the encounter with Socialism have challenged those preconceptions? For this issue, Luxemburg's comments in the autumn of 1910, made in a Polish context and for a Polish audience, are obviously neither here nor there.