A History of Zionism by Walter Laqueur

reasons for not giving in to the forces of unreason. The rapprochement with German civilisation had come a long way; Ludwig Bamberger, the liberal politician, in a book published in the year of crisis stressed that the symbiosis, the identification of the Jews with the Germans, had been closer than with any other people. They had been thoroughly Germanicised well beyond Germany’s borders; through the medium of language they had accepted German culture, and through culture, the German national spirit. He and his friends thought there was obviously some affinity in the national character which attracted Jews so strongly to Germany and to the German spirit * . Raphael Loewenfels, in a pamphlet published in 1893, put the case in even blunter terms: were educated Jews not nearer to enlightened Protestants than to the fanatics who believed in the wisdom of the Talmud? Were they not closer to German Catholics than to French Jewry? Whoever still used in his prayers the old formula ‘Next year in Jerusalem’, Loewenfels maintained, should go where his heart drew him. But no educated Jew would be willing to leave his beloved fatherland for a country where in time immemorial his forefathers had lived. This was not just the belief of an individual; it expressed the convictions of a great many Jews. In the year this pamphlet was published, the Central Association (Zentralverein) of German Citizens of Jewish Persuasion was founded, to become later on by far the strongest organisation of German Jewry. The first point in its programme stressed its attachment to Germany: the ties between them and Jews abroad were similar to those between German Catholics and Protestants and their co-religionists in other countries. The Zentralverein stressed the need for Jewish pride and consciousness and rejected the extreme and undignified forms of assimilationism which had proved both ineffective and dangerous, while asserting that for German Jews there was no future but on German soil; in the modern world there were few if any totally homogeneous nations; everywhere different religions and nationalities existed side by side. Despite the particularities setting them apart from the rest, the Zentralverein thought that there was every reason to believe that there would be an honourable place for Jews in the broader framework of the German nation. It is tempting in retrospect to dismiss all this as so much wishful thinking. But the spirit of the age was still basically optimistic, and it was commonly assumed that the appeal of anti-semitism was bound to be restricted to the backward sections of society, in particular to those who had suffered from the consequences of industrialisation. The reaction against the Enlightenment and liberalism, the new cult of violence, and anti-humanism, were thought to be transient cultural maladies. Growing prosperity would help to restore both sanity and social stability. There were more than a few straws in the wind which seemed to justify such optimism: the antisemites, divided into several factions, lost much of their political influence after 1895, though they continued to exist as small sects bitterly fighting each other. The emergence of the new antisemitism had shown that there were grave problems and strains that had been ignored, or at any rate underrated, but there seemed to be no good reason to give up hope.
    Nor was there any reason why German and Austrian Jews should regard their own position with special concern. In Russia and Rumania the situation was incomparably worse; from 1881 on eastern Europe was plagued by a series of pogroms. Even in France, which had a smaller Jewish community than Germany, their position was far more precarious. The French antisemitic movement predated Marr, Stöcker, and Dühring; it was more articulate and its influence more widespread. It was, in fact, the pioneer of modern anti-Jewish ideology; the German and Russian antisemites frequently imported their ideas from Paris. Later