Pogroms and Riots

German Press Responses to Anti-Jewish Violence in Germany and Russia (1881-1882)

• Author(s): Sonja Weinberg,
• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Pages: 243
• ISBN_10: 3631602146
  ISBN_13: 9783631602140
  
• Language: en
• Categories: History / Europe / Germany , History / Russia / General , History / Modern / General , Political Science / General , Religion / General , Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social , Social Science / Ethnic Studies / General , Social Science / Sociology / General , Social Science / Discrimination ,

Description:... The years 1881-82 witnessed almost simultaneous waves of pogroms in eastern Germany (western Prussia, Pomerania, and Posen) and southern Russia; in both countries, the pogroms followed periods of reforms that improved in some way the situation of the Jews. Examines the responses of four mainstream newspapers - the conservative Protestant "Neue Preussische Zeitung" (known as the "Kreuzzeitung"), the Catholic "Germania", the semi-official "Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung", and the Jewish "Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums". With the exception of the "AZJ", the papers indirectly justified and decriminalized the violence, which was a type of covert expression of opposition to Jewish emancipation and to the growing role of Jews in society. The "AZJ" tended to depict the pogroms, both in Russia and Germany, as planned and organized from above rather than as spontaneous popular outbreaks. The conservative non-Jewish papers, while deploring collective violence, discussed the extermination of the Jews as a possible option for the solution of the "Jewish question". Thus, they prepared the transformation of the seemingly "civilized" pre-1918 antisemitism into the post-1918 antisemitism that included violence both in word and deed.