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dealing in detail with the Jewish participation in therapid payment of the enormous French War indemnity, scandals first revealed by Lasker. The agitation gradually had given an unprecedented impulse to industrial and swelled, its growth being helped by the sensitiveness and financial activity throughout the empire. Money became cacoeihes scribendi of the Jews themselves, who contributed cheap and speculation became universal. A company two pamphlets and a much larger proportion of newsmania set in which was favoured by the Government, who paper articles for every one supplied by their opponents granted railway and other concessions with a prodigal (Jacobs, Bibliog. Jew. Question, p. xi.). Up to 1879, hand The inevitable result of this state of things was however, it was more of a literary than a political agitation, first indicated by Jewish politicians and economists. On and was generally regarded only as an ephemeral craze the 14th January 1873, Edward Lasker called the atten- or a passing spasm of popular passion. tion of the Prussian Diet to the dangers of the situation, Towards the end of 1879 it spread with sudden fury while his colleague, Ludwig Bamberger, in an able article over the whole of Germany. This outburst, at a moment in the Preussischen Jahrbucher, condemned the policy when no new financial scandals or other illustrations of which had permitted the milliards to glut the country Semitic demoralization and domination were before the instead of being paid on a plan which would have public, has never been fully explained. It is impossible facilitated their gradual digestion by the economic doubt, however, that the secret springs of the new machinery of the nation. Deeply impressed by the to agitation were more or less directly supplied by Prince gravity of the impending crisis, Lasker instituted a search- Bismarck himself. Since 1877 the relations between the ing inquiry, with the result that he discovered a series ol chancellor and the National Liberals had gradually become grave company scandals in which financial promoters and strained. The deficit in the budget had compelled the aristocratic directors were chiefly involved. Undeterred Government to think of new taxes, and in order to canj by the fact that the leading spirit in these abuses, Bethel them through the Beichstag the support of the National Henry Strousberg, was a Jew, Lasker presented the had been solicited. Until then the National results of his inquiry to the Diet on the 7th lebruary Liberals Liberals had faithfully supported the chancellor in nursing 1873, in a speech of great power and full of sensational disclosures. The dramatic results of this speech need the consolidation of the new empire, but the great dream not be dwelt upon here (for details see Blum, Deutsche of its leaders, especially of Lasker and Bamberger, who Reich zur Zeit Bismarcks, pp. 153-181). It must suffice had learnt their politics in England, was to obtain a constitutional and economic regime similar to that of the to say that in the following May the great Vienna British Isles. The organization of German unity was now “ Krach ” occurred, and the colossal bubble of speculation burst, bringing with it all the ruin foretold by Lasker completed, and they regarded the new overtures of Prince and Bamberger. From the position occupied by the Bismarck as an opportunity for pressing their constitutional Jews in the commercial class, and especially in the demands. These were refused, the Reichstag was dissolved, financial section of that class, it was inevitable that a and Prince Bismarck boldly came forward with a new fiscal considerable number of them should figure in the policy, a combination of protection and state socialism. scandals which followed. At this moment an obscure Lasker and Bamberger thereupon led a powerful secession Hamburg journalist, Wilhelm Marr, who as far back as of National Liberals into opposition, and the chancellor 1862 had printed a still-born tract against the Jews was compelled to seek a new majority among the ultia(Judenspiegel), published a sensational pamphlet entitled Conservatives and the Roman Catholic Centre. ThU Per Sieg des Judenthuvis ilber das Germanenthum (“The was the beginning of the famous “journey to Canossa.” Victory of Judaism over Germanism”)- The book fell Bismarck did not hide his mortification. c He began to upon fruitful soil. It applied to the nascent controversy recognize in anti-Semitism a means of dishing the a theory of nationality which, under the great sponsor- Judaized liberals, and to his creatures who assisted him ship of Hegel, had seized on the minds of the German in his press campaigns he dropped significant hints in this youth, and to which the stirring events of 1870 had already sense (Busch, Bismarck, ii. 453-54, iii. 16). He even given a deep practical significance. The state, according spoke of a new Kulturkampf against the Jews (ibid. ii. p. to the Hegelians, should be national, and the nation should 484). How these hints were acted upon has not been be a unit comprising individuals speaking the same revealed, but it is sufficiently instructive to notice that language and of the same racial origin. Heterogeneous the final breach with the National Liberals took place in elements might be absorbed, but if they could not be July 1879, and that it was immediately followed by a. reduced to the national type they should be eliminated. violent revival of the anti-Semitic agitation. Marr s This was the pseudo-scientific note of the new anti- pamphlet was reprinted, and within a few months ran Semitism, the theory which differentiated it from the old through nine further editions. The historian Treitschkt religious Jew-hatred and sought to give it a rational gave the sanction of his great name to the movement. place in modern thought. Marr’s pamphlet, which re- The Conservative and Ultramontane press rang with the viewed the facts of the Jewish social concentration, with- sins of the Jews. In October an anti-Semitic league out noticing their essentially transitional character, proved was founded in Berlin and Dresden (for statutes of the the pioneer of this teaching. It was, however, in the league see Nineteenth Century, February 1881, p. 344). The leadership of the agitation was now definitely aspassions of party politics that the new crusade found its chief sources of vitality. The enemies of the bourgeoisie sumed by a man who combined with social influence, at once saw that the movement was calculated to discredit oratorical power, and inexhaustible energy, a definite and weaken the school of Manchester Liberalism, then in scheme of social regeneration and an organization for the ascendant. Agrarian capitalism, which had been carrying it out. This man was Adolf Stoecker (b. 183o), dethroned by industrial capitalism in 1848, and had one of the Court Preachers. He had embraced the docburnt its fingers in 1873, seized the opportunity of pay- trines of Christian Socialism which the Roman Catholics, ing off old scores. The clericals, smarting under the under the guidance of Archbishop Ketteler, had adopted Kulturkampf which was supported by the whole body from the teachings of the Jew Lassalle (Nitti, Catholic of Jewish liberalism, joined heartily in the new cry. In Socialism, pp. 94-96, 122, 127), and he had formed a 1876 another sensational pamphlet was published, Otto society called “The Christian Social Working-man’s G lagan’s Der Boer sen und Grundergeschwindel in Berlin Union.” He was also a conspicuous member of the (“The Bourses and the Company Swindles in Berlin”), Prussian Diet, where he sat and voted with the Conserva-
