The socialist response to antisemitism in imperial Germany

Discusses the attitude of the Social Democratic Party and of the spectrum of labor organizations under the party's sway toward antisemitism and the "Jewish question". Although the SPD was the least anti-Jewish party in Imperial Germany, most of its members and supporters subscribed to the "kernel-of-truth" approach to antisemitism and shared some anti-Jewish stereotypes. The party regarded antisemitism as a transient phenomenon, doomed to disappear in the future together with the social groups which were its bearers. Remarkably, Social Democracy's anti-antisemitism was directed not against Jew-haters, but against those whom the movement defined as antisemites. The latter class of the movement's enemies included those who declared themselves antisemites, who called for a revocation of the Jewish emancipation and blamed the Jews for all social problems, and those of the movement's adversaries (but not supporters) who spoke against Jews. With greater fervor, the party protested against "philosemitism", construed as defense of the Jews and, in the party's view, a veiled defense of capitalism. Argues that Marx's "Zur Judenfrage" (available before 1919 in fragments) was greatly misunderstood by leading social-democratic intellectuals like Wilhelm Liebknecht, Franz Mehring, and August Bebel, and thus failed to influence the party's stance on the "Jewish question". Discusses also the reinstatement of Hans Leuss, a "former" antisemitic member of the Reichstag, in the party leadership in the early 1900s; the evolution of Eduard Bernstein's stance on antisemitism; and a series of anti-antisemitic articles that Rosa Luxemburg published in 1910. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)