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The Rise of Political Antisemitism in Europe. Political History as Cultural History (1879-1914).
Edited by Werner Bergmann and Ulrich Wyrwa
The essential difference between the traditional religious hostility towards Jews and Antisemitism, which emerged in the course of the great transformation of the world by industrialisation und democratisation, was not so much its racial aspect, but the fact that Antisemitism became a political and social movement. This movement made its appearance in the political sphere, formed an intentional community, and created its own political networks. It made use of modern media to agitate politically against the Jews, and attempted, through spectacular actions, to imbue the whole society with their Antisemitic attitudes.
In this issue of Quest, the political aspects of this new Antisemitic social movement will be presented from a European comparative perspective. The chronological focus involves the formative phase of the Antisemitic movement from the invention of the term Antisemitism in 1879 until the First World War.
Methodologically it will pick up the current debates in the historical sciences regarding a new understanding of political history as cultural history. It will ask in which way this cultural diversification of political history can be useful for research on Antisemitism. Therefore it will not be asking about political parties or political ideas, topics of a conventional political history, but instead about public debates, communication processes, and the political impact of language, the outcome of speech-acts or the role of rituals, symbols and signs.
This new perspective on political history as cultural history allows a new understanding of what is political regarding the emergence and development of Antisemitism, as well as an explanation for the way in which social, economic or moral issues have been transformed into political issues. Furthermore this new approach gives rise to a deeper understanding of the processes through which Jews have been used as scapegoats for social conflicts, economic upheavals, cultural distortions and socio-moral crises. Finally it can explain in which way the religious tradition of Judeophobia has been used to legitimize the new Antisemitic aggression.
Next to the methodological focus on the cultural perspectives of political history, the scientific interest of this issue is related to the European dimensions of the new political and social movement against the Jews. The main question is, if and in which way Antisemitism has been a European phenomenon, or if this political movement must be termed as a European movement, a question of European politics.
This issue of QUEST has come out of a conference, organized on behalf of the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin in spring 2010 by Werner Bergmann and Ulrich Wyrwa. It is part of a European research project regarding the making of Antisemitism in Europe from 1879 to 1914.
After the methodological introduction by the organisers, and a comprehensive presentation of political Antisemitism in Europe by Victor Karady, the papers will be focused on five issues. First, parliamentary debates regarding the Jews will be discussed through the example of Rumania (Silvia Marton, Iulia Onac) and Germany (Christoph Jahr). Second, public debates and the role of Antisemitic mass media in Bulgaria (Veselina Kulenska), Congress Poland (Maciej Moszyński) and Great Britain (Susanne Terwey) will be presented. In the third chapter, Antisemitism will be discussed in different political cultures, both within the national contexts of France (Damien Guilaume) and Russia (Theodore R. Weeks), and within urban and rural areas, as in Swedish Göteborg (Christoph Leiska), Slovakian Upper Hungary (Miloslav Szabó) and rural Lithuania (Klaus Richter). The fourth part is dedicated to Antisemitism in political Catholicism, with papers on Croatia-Slavonia (Marija Vulesica), Habsburg Galicia (Tim Buchen) and Italy (Ulrich Wyrwa). In the last chapter, the politics of Anti-Jewish violence will be analysed using the examples of the Russian Pogroms of 1905 (Stefan Wiese) and the ritual murder riots in Greek Korfu in 1891 (Maria Margaroni). Finally, Reinhard Rürup, in his concluding remarks, presents a comparative European perspective on political Antisemitism from the 1870s until the First World War.
La sezione italiana di Quest sarà online entro breve!
The italian section of Quest will be soon online!
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