Offenders or Victims? German Jews and the Causes of Modern Catholic Antisemitism (review)

When coming to grips with the term “Catholic antisemitism,” historians often place themselves on one side of a divide that separates them into two opposing camps. As Olaf Blaschke correctly points out, many of those with close connections to the Church “deny the fact that modern antisemitism [had] also [taken] root in Catholicism, either by playing down anti-Jewish resentment as primarily religious ‘anti-Judaism’ or by claiming that the remarks of Catholic antisemites are mere exceptions” (7). A more recent and noteworthy example of such a view, which Blaschke cites, is the Holy See’s 1998 document “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” which presents National Socialist antisemitism as a prejudice with “roots outside of Christianity” and as an evil equally opposed to the Church. In his extremely important study, Blaschke provides English-language readers with an overview of the research on antisemitism and nineteenth-century Catholicism that he has published in German for almost two decades. Blaschke’s findings contrast strongly with those produced by the Bonn Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, which is sponsored in large part by the German Bishops’ Conference. As a result, Blaschke has continually had to defend his research from caustic attacks by Catholic historians who staunchly defend the role and reputation of the Church.

The main claim that Blaschke challenges is that Jews were either directly or indirectly responsible for the antisemitism inflicted upon them. He points, for example, to Heinz Hürten, professor emeritus at the Catholic University of Eichstätt, who has “admitted that he believed there could be some truth hidden behind antisemitic rhetoric” (19). In contrast to such individuals, Blaschke convincingly proves in his work that Jews did not provoke Catholics to antisemitic acts or ignore Catholic antisemitism when it reared its ugly head. Blaschke begins his study by examining the nature of Catholic antisemitism, arguing that negative comments made by Catholics toward Jews were not merely cases of “anti-Judaism.” He provides evidence that Catholics themselves referred to their negative perceptions of Jews as “antisemitism.” He cites, for example, a reader’s response to the question “Can a Catholic be an antisemite?,” which the Catholic newspaper Gladbacher Merkur posed in 1894: “We, the decisively Catholic, are as convinced of the legitimacy of antisemitism as we are of the truth of the Catholic religion!” (32). According to Blaschke, such thinking was central to the dichotomous Catholic worldview that sharply divided the world into good and evil: the “good Catholic” verses the “evil Jew.” Along similar lines, the historical biblical deicide charge had a modern meaning for Catholics, who relived the crucifixion through Passion plays that not only “carried a timeless message of eternal salvation” (34), but also demonized Jews in the process.

Closely tied to such dualist thought was the link Catholic ultramontanism made between liberalism and Jews. Yet according to Blaschke, the cause of such antisemitism was not fundamentally rooted in any real tensions between Catholics and Jews, but rather in the conflictive confessionalism that divided Catholics and Protestants. In other words, antisemitism arose as the two confessions tried “to overcome the tension between them by turning against a third enemy” (51). To demonstrate this point, Blaschke draws on his research about the Second Denominational Age, a period that spans, he argues, from approximately 1920 to 1970. The implication of his argument is that it was more expedient for Catholics to make Jews the target of their wrath and discontent because attacking Protestant liberals would have made Catholics appear to be somehow less “German.” When making such inferences, Blaschke fails to draw definitive conclusions or explore the role of nationalism in his work. In this regard, he might have examined more carefully the connection between traditional Catholic religious antisemitism and the various other strains of antisemitism found in nineteenth-century Germany.

What Blaschke does reveal, in the end, is that Catholic antisemitism was usually the product of...