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symbolically expressed the readiness of the whole organization

to adopt a radical stance on the ‘Jewish question’, distance themselves from

traditional conservative views, and fall into line behind the National Socialists.

There were two political organizations in particular that paved the way for their

move into the National Socialist camp with an ‘Aryan clause’, the German

National[ist] People’s Party (DNVP) and the ‘Stahlhelm’—the so-called Steel

Helmet Veterans’ Organization, which would join with the NSDAP in 1931 to

form the Harzburg Front and become partners in Hitler’s government in 1933.

The DNVP took the decision to exclude Jewish members in 1924 and (for

formal reasons) again in 1926. 65 This decision was in line with the ideas of the right wing of the Party that used the Party’s cooperation with democratic forces in

parliament and coalition governments (in 1925 and 1927) to accuse the leadership

of abandoning its fundamental opposition to the Weimar Republic and of bring-

ing it too close to the state that it disliked. With the election of Alfred Hugenberg

in 1928 the right wing of the Party prevailed and determined on an alliance with

the NSDAP. 66 Hugenberg was himself relatively restrained about making anti-Semitic statements, probably because of his interests as the head of a group of

press companies, but it is clear that the exclusion of Jewish members was a

precondition for the Nazi-friendly line of development that the Party took. In

the Steel Helmet Veterans’ Organization the völkisch wing under the Deputy

Leader, Theodor Duesterberg, gradually succeeded in taking over and bringing

about a political alliance with the DNVP and the NSDAP. 67 These forces managed to engineer the exclusion of Jewish members in 1924 and ensured that thereafter

the organization routinely took an anti-Semitic stance.

The strong influence of völkisch forces on attitudes to the ‘Jewish question’ was

also felt in the ‘Reichslandbund’ or National Rural League, the successor to the

strongly anti-Semitic pre-First World War Farmers’ League. The RLB’s propa-

ganda shifted in 1924–5 towards the extensive use of anti-Semitic stereotypes

under pressure from völkisch forces. These were attempting to depict the particu-

lar burdens on agriculture, following currency stabilization in 1924, as a conspir-

acy on the part of international Jewry to force it into subjugation. This way of

seeing things was adopted to a large extent by the RLB. 68

The German National Association of Commercial Employees (DHV) had

more than 300,000 members at the end of the 1920s and it undertook a lively

programme of anti-Semitic propaganda and education. Under the intellectual

leadership of the publicist Wilhelm Stapel, the Association propagated a völk-

isch-cultural brand of anti-Semitism and stressed the essential incompatibility of

being both German and Jewish. 69

Anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic

21

Thus the Weimar Republic saw a large number of middle-class associations take

steps to exclude their Jewish members, and it is remarkable that the anti-Semitic

forces managed to implement this process of exclusion precisely during the most

stable period of the Republic, at a time, therefore, when such associations were

recovering from the years of inflation and consolidating themselves. For instance,

the ‘Jewish question’—the demand by völkisch members of the association that an

‘Aryan clause’ be inserted into the constitution—played a major role from the

early 1920s onwards at the annual general meetings of the German-Austrian

Alpine Club, which was probably the most important of all German leisure and

tourist organizations. Important branches such as Berlin and Breslau did in fact

succeed in banning Jewish members. 70

However, discussions about the introduction of an ‘Aryan clause’ were held in

German gymnastic associations (the German League of Gymnasts did not

accept Jewish members), in the German Academy, in the Association for

Germans Abroad, and other organizations where the anti-Semitic forces did

not prevail. 71

Scattered references to the exclusion of Jews from local associations can be

found throughout the literature on regional history, but the question of how far

this represented a consistent pattern is an important area that still requires further

research—and in the light of the importance of such associations in Germany and

their close connections with local politics this omission is all the more scandalous.

Students took a leading role in the spread of radical anti-Semitic ideas in

German society. At the beginning of the 1920s almost all the student bodies had

ceased to accept Jewish members. The Deutscher Hochschulring, an umbrella

organization of student associations (DHR), refounded in 1920, saw itself as

particularly völkisch and anti-Semitic and quickly became a powerful force in

most of the country’s universities, the general student councils, and within the

German National Student Union. This dominant role found expression above all

in the huge influence the DHR had on getting the student body to adopt radical

anti-Semitic positions. 72 This occurred for the first time in 1922 when the DHR

was able to push through a constitutional amendment according to which the

association sanctioned the practice of its members, the German and Austrian

student organizations, of not accepting any students of Jewish origin at all. 73

Five years later the University Circle caused another conflict linked to the

‘Jewish question’. It was sparked by the fact that the majority of state-

recognized and state-supported student associations accepted Jews into their

ranks provided they were German citizens, but did not accept Jews classed as

‘Germans from abroad’, such as those from Danzig or territories ceded to

Poland. When the Prussian Minister of Culture demanded that this practice

be changed, in a vote taken in 1927 the majority of the student representa-

tives voted against, which eventually led to the dissolution of the student

organizations. 74

22

Historical Background

At the end of the 1920s the leading political role amongst student organizations

was taken over by the National Socialist League of German Students. After 1929 it

ensured that the student associations in a number of universities decided to

demand that the number of Jewish students be limited to the proportion of Jewish

members of the population in the area of the Reich. 75 Violence against Jewish students and professors was a daily occurrence in German universities towards the

end of the Weimar Republic. 76

Radical anti-Semitic positions also spread within the two principal Christian

confessions where they reinforced what were already fairly strong anti-Semitic

prejudices that had been formed on confessional or religious grounds.

Within the Protestant Church a group known as the ‘German Christians’ had

formed from the early 1920s onwards, rejecting the Jewish roots of Christianity—

most notably the Old Testament and the Jewish ancestry of Jesus himself—and

attempting