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the adjectives ‘German national[ist]’, or deutschvölkisch, gave

an indication of their fundamentally anti-Semitic position. 17

Amongst these organizations several were fairly substantial. With some

200,000 members in the early 1920s, the ‘Young German Order’ (Jungdeutscher

Orden) represented one of the most important nationalist and radical anti-Semitic

organizations of the Weimar years. 18 It rejected the use of anti-Semitic violence and hate campaigns as being ‘anti-Semitic rowdyism’ but its leadership left no

room for doubt that the Young German Order—which naturally had no Jewish

members—desired a form of state, known as the ‘Young German State’, in which

14

Historical Background

‘the Jewish question would be solved in a völkisch manner’. Given the nature of the

slogans common in such nationalist circles, this could only be interpreted as a call

for excluding Jews from German citizenship. 19

The elitist ‘German League’ (Deutschbund) formed in 1894 was one of the co-

founders of the ‘German People’s Defence and Offence League’ and was char-

acterized by hard-line racist anti-Semitism. In its constitution for 1921 it pledged

to ‘cultivate pure Germanness in all areas of life’ and it saw its principal

function as exercising a nationalist influence on other right-wing organizations.

In 1925 its membership was greater than 3,000, but in 1930 the entire leadership

of the ‘German League’ joined the NSDAP. 20

The ‘Pan-German League’ (Alldeutscher Verband or AdV) had some 50,000

members at its high point in 1922 and its constitution from the same year declared

its aims as ‘combating all forces that inhibit or harm the völkisch development of

the German people, in particular the Jewish domination of almost all public,

economic, and cultural fields’. In 1924 the AdV excluded Jews from membership. 21

Further such organizations included the ‘Tannenberg League’, founded in 1925 by

General Ludendorff—an umbrella organization for radical right-wing youth and

defence associations which together claimed some 30,000–40,000 members22—

and the 10,000-strong ‘Viking League’ founded in 1923 by the militia leader

Hermann Ehrhardt. 23

At the beginning of the 1920s a Central Office for Patriotic Associations was

founded in order to coordinate the diverse activities of these nationalistic bodies.

In 1922 its Secretary, Wilhelm Schultz-Oldendorf, identified ‘dealing with the

Jewish question’ as one of its main tasks, 24 but in 1928 its functions were taken over by the Central German National Office (Deutschvölkische Hauptstelle)

which operated as an umbrella organization for a total of twenty-five nationalist

groups. 25 Less central, but still associated with the völkisch movement, were elements of the Gymnasts’ Movement, the Movement for Life Reform, and

various occult and theosophical groups. They were all united by the firm convic-

tion that the Jews represented a ‘foreign body’ within the German people and had

to be excluded at all costs—indeed that the nationalist regeneration for which they

all strove could only be achieved by ‘cleansing’ Germany of everything Jewish.

Seen as a whole, these various organizations from different areas of public life

constituted a substantial socio-cultural movement. 26

The wave of anti-Semitism that began after the First World War and which was

propelled by agitators from these various groups reached its high point in the

assassination of the Foreign Minister, Walther Rathenau, in June 1922 and the

numerous attacks and violent assaults on Jews that took place in connection with

the Hitler Putsch of November 1923. However, both events make it plain that anti-

Semitic violence could be restrained using state-sponsored counter-measures: the

Rathenau assassination led to the disbandment of the ‘German People’s Defence

and Offence League’, and after the forced end of the Hitler Putsch and the

Anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic

15

dissolution of the NSDAP the overall level of anti-Semitic violence diminished

noticeably.

When the NSDAP was refounded in 1925 it maintained its staunchly anti-

Semitic stance. The ‘Fundamental Guidelines for the Re-establishment of the

National Socialist Workers’ Party’ published in February of that year contain

the following statement: ‘The energy of the whole movement is to be directed

against the worst enemy of the German people: Judaism and Marxism. ’27 By 1928

and the appearance of his ‘Second Book’, Hitler himself had succeeded in devel-

oping out of the vague conglomeration of racial right-wing ideas that most

strongly influenced his thinking a more fully developed world-view in which

anti-Semitism held a central position: it was the linchpin for all the various

ideological clichés that made up his so-called Weltanschauung. 28

A list of such announcements could easily be compiled. The NSDAP group in

the Thuringian regional parliament put together a package of seven draft laws in

1926 that to some extent moved beyond the anti-Semitic demands of the NSDAP

Party Programme. They included demands for the dismissal of Jewish teachers,

the expulsion of Jewish schoolchildren and students from their educational

institutions, and the imposition of bans to prevent Jewish doctors, judges, lawyers,

and cattle-traders exercising their trades and professions. 29 During the debate on the referendum on the expropriation of former royal houses in April 1926 the

NSDAP presented a draft for a law on the ‘Expropriation of Banking and Stock-

Market Royalty and other Parasites on the People’, which included provision for

seizing the assets of ‘Eastern Jews and other Alien Races who have joined the

Reich since 1 August 1914’ in their entirety. 30 Two months later the NSDAP group introduced a resolution demanding in addition that the regional government

seize, without compensation, the assets of ‘those large-scale Jewish concerns

(such as Mosse and Ullstein) that have significant public influence’. 31

In 1928 deputies from the National German Freedom Movement in the

Prussian parliament and NSDAP members of the Reichstag submitted requests

aiming at the introduction of Alien Law for Jews. 32 In January 1928 the National Socialist member of parliament Wilhelm Frick called for the ‘exclusion of Jews

from the administration of justice in Germany’. 33 During budget discussions in March 1928 the National Socialist member Count Reventlow invoked the whole

NSDAP group in calling for a law that ‘would prohibit all further Jewish

immigration, expel all Jews who had entered Germany since 1914, and place

those remaining under Alien Law, whilst reserving the right to expel them

subsequently, and exclude them from all the rights associated with German

citizenship’. 34

In March 1930 the NSDAP group in the Reichstag submitted a draft law

according to which anyone ‘who contributes towards, or threatens to contribute

towards the racial degradation and subversion of the German people by misce-

genation with members of the Jewish “blood community” . . . should be punished

16

Historical Background

with imprisonment on the grounds of racial treason’.