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Commentary on Christians and Anti-Semitism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Jonathan Sperber
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, Columbia

Extract

Anti-Semitism is the darkest and ugliest side of a modern German history that has had more than its share of dark and ugly sides. There is a strong and intellectually by no means illegitimate temptation to see the entire history of German anti-Semitism as a one-way street leading straight to the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question.” Yet such a teleological approach to anti-Semistism does not do justice to the complexity of the past, does not highlight what Karl Schleunes has called “the twisted road to Auschwitz.” The excellent thematic articles in this issue all take up this complexity, their authors demonstrating a subtle and sensitive approach toward understanding anti-Semitic attitudes and behavior. One could go further and say that the whole is more than the sum of the parts, that several themes running through all the individual contributions describe and characterize a one hundred year history of Catholic anti-Semitism in Germany. I have identified four such themes and will discuss their changes and variations, both over time and in the different handling of them by the authors.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1994

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References

1. Harris, James, The People Speak! Anti-Semitism and Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria (Ann Arbor, 1994).Google Scholar

2. Herzog does note that Enlightenment attitudes were found among adherents of both confessions, but it is clear from her account that they were far more prevalent among Protestants.