Meine Herren! Everything that the so-called anti-Semites now are striving for, as the goal of their boldest desires, used to be valid law only ten years ago in a small part of Germany: the exclusion of the Jews from public offices, the inability to acquire real estate, exclusion from certain towns and businesses. — All that was valid in a part of Germany, but this part goes by the name of — Mecklenburg! [1]


From olden times, Mecklenburg was the ideal of Junkerdom, but Mecklenburg also had the peculiarity that it had the most emigrants and the most children out of wedlock.


I recall the petition covered with numerous names from inhabitants of Mecklenburg of all denominations that came to the Reichstag in 1867, namely to enforce also in that state the equal civil liberties that were already in force everywhere else. We owe to this proposal the law that was passed by the Reichstag in 1869 and which decreed the equality of all denominations by force of the federal law. [2] In those days even the Mecklenburg Junkers [3] dared not oppose this law, in those days it was understood by itself that even in Mecklenburg civil equality should rule. And those who had objections to make, being doubtful about the power of the Reich to meddle with religious legislation of the states, like Representative Windhorst [4] did at the same time stress explicitly that it was no more admissable to derive different rights for citizens from their religious denominations.

That’s how it was said in those days. What lies between 1869 and today? Firstly, there lies the great national war. [5] Can the reason be found in it for the recent change of opinion?


Of course: No! If the Jews before that time, something I deny, had been foreign to us other Germans, then they were inextricably chained to us by blood and iron! [6]


Did they not stand before the enemy in one line with everybody else, everyone at their posts? Did anyone ask in the hail of bullets: Who is a Jew and who is a Christian and did not everyone to his powers stand up  for the good of the fatherland?


Can we reproach the Jews because of that time, is not a great number of them adorned as well by the Iron Cross [7], the common sign of patriotism?


Among the Jewish physicians of Berlin, there are 32 who are adorned by the Iron Cross, a proportional number which at least is not lower than that of Christian physicians. And if there were any need for some miniature pictures, I can only say, that of two of our Jewish parliamentary comrades, one has gained on the battlefield the Iron Cross and the Red Eagle Order with Swords [8] in the hail of bullets and the other has lost his son before the enemy as a volunteer with the husars.

And what do we see now as an outrageous phenomenon? Young people [9] who have not even lived through the great time with a political consciousness like we have — because they were still in 6th and 5th grade


— Young people, who have not yet proved what they are worth, force their way to the fore and dare to hurl at the Jewish cavaliers of the Iron Cross and at the fathers who have given their sons to Germany that they do not belong to the German nation?!!


Where human beings become so petty, it is becoming to remind them of that great time. In those days, the German nation was not only praised as the most valiant, but also as the most ethical, as the most educated, and as the most dexterous. Nowadays the opposite is claimed. Since she cannot compete economically, we raise high tariffs. [10] Her ability of dealing in bills of exchange is disputed so she shall not like small children harm herself with a knife because of inaptitude or recklessness. As if the nation had sunk into dissipation, attacks are mounted on pubs, popular theaters are restricted in their operation, times for pubs are shortened by the police and even a law against alcoholism is brought to the Reichstag. [11] Of course, this seems to me to be directed less against the Jews than against the Christian Full-Germans. [12]


In 1870, the Germans valiantly fought before the enemy, nowadays the belief is you are a valiant German if you clobber the Jews out and then in your meetings among yourselves you tell all kinds of silly stories about them which are not worthy of a German man, not of any grown-up man!


Nowadays it is seen as the act of an hero if you drink more than the Jews, and as an educated nation you reproach the Jews for sending so many children to higher education. [13] And after you have worked all those valiant deeds, then you sing: ,,Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles!" [14]


Truly! Our friend Hoffmann von Fallersleben has been saved by a kind fate from experiencing this abuse of his magnificent song. Since, that's something I admit openly, if this is supposed to be German, if this is supposed to be Christian, then I want to be anywhere else in the world but in Christian Germany!


If the Germans really cannot stand that every 84th of them is a Jew and they are afraid that exactly this one overpowers the other 83, then this really means to lower Germanness to the dishonor of the German name.


One day, it will not be the smallest leaf of laurel in the wreath of our Crown Prince [15] that already at the first stirrings of this movement, something that our deceased colleague Wulffsheim [16] overheard with his own ears and which has also been confirmed otherwise as trustworthy — he declared to the president of the Jewish corporation of Berlin [17] that this movement is a disgrace for the German nation!


Those who are honest admirers of our old heroic Kaiser must be filled with true sorrow that the very time of his glorious rule is polluted by phenomena, such as the Social Democratic excesses and the even uglier movement of the anti-Semites.


Both movements can be explained to a certain extent by economic conditions. The depressed business conditions are not viewed as caused by “general causes”, but are blamed on the government. They are not explained by a thirty year period of wars that Europe has been embroiled in, and by the armed peace which sucks at the peoples' marrow, but by specific legal provisions, and in the end it is blamed on specific persons.

Three years ago, it was supposed to be the freetraders who as members of the Cobden Club had sold Germany to England. Now despite of all the new tariffs it is still the same. Now the Jews are to blame who when in the Middle Ages a plague erupted were always said to have poisened the wells and to have put contagious matter on church benches. During the founders’ time there was a competition between Jews and Christians to make money and among the latter very highly placed persons. What distinguished the Jews was that at least they did not try to cloak their establishments in the mantle of patriotism.


It was a Jew, however, Lasker, who at a time when the crash had not yet occurred — afterwards it was convenient to reproach the founders — attacked the founders behind the government benches and exposed them. Quite a few businessmen now nurture themselves dismally. If it goes well, it is: live and let live. You cannot blame anyone for looking on their competitors with suspicion. But such a confusion and bias engendered by the conditions of the time should not be made the basis of legislation and does not give it the stamp of Christian-German consciousness. It confers honor on the German craftsmen, workers, and businessmen that this movement, which is supposed to be in their interest, did not arise from their circles,


just like the corn tariff propaganda did not arise from peasant circles. It arose from young people who do not earn anything at all, but live out of their parents' pockets. Furthermore, from people who in positions of trust as officials obtain their salaries from the public coffers and often cannot have any idea of how a businessman sometimes feels who struggles to earn his daily bread and to pay the obligatory taxes!


Such people who call themselves “educated” have put Jew baiting into action. Indeed, here it shows again that superior mental culture if it is not aligned with a culture of the heart and true religiosity — not a religiosity that has God on its lips, but the devil in its heart — often only leads to nothing more than barbarity in a more refined form!


I have certainly always been an energetic opponent of Social Democracy, but one thing I must say: the last Socialist is an honorable character compared to the leaders of this most recent movement


and I can imagine that the leaders of Social Democracy look down on this movement with disdain. Social Democracy has preached hatred and envy, has set passions loose, but only against certain economic and outward conditions. This movement, however, calls for exceptional legislation against human beings as such, against their descent, even against the properties of their bodies.

They don’t desire special legislation, but equality in their sense. Where will this movement lead? When at one time in Altona word was given out: “We only buy from Social Democrats”, Bebel appeared in the Reichstag and disavowed such mingling of political antagonisms with business and social dealings.

These anti-Semites in Berlin campaign against buying from Jews. If only these petty people had some logic left and could proclaim at the same time: Do not sell to Jews! Do not let the products of your Christian-German industriousness go to Jews!


Or do they want to make in this case a profit despite of their Christian Germandom?


To be consistent, they must not cede the products of their Christian-German work to Jews. Yes, I say, if I as a high school teacher felt forced in my consciousness to speak out against the legal equality of the Jews, my very same consciousness would make it an honorary duty to lay down a position I have with a school that rests on the equality of all denominations. I would not take Jewish school fees if I campaigned against education based on equality.


More than the disciplinary judge, everyone should make their own conscience the judge in this regard. Indeed, in this movement it holds true what Moltke once said of the Socialists: the better are surpassed and superceded by the worse. Treitschke is surpassed by his students, Stöcker by Henrici


and Henrici is surpassed by someone else again.
 

I cannot think of him as worse than Henrici.


Stöcker now disarms, he was the mildest in the movement, so he said one of these days in Kassel. A child, no angel is so pure — that’s what Zelle already said.


If Stöcker disarms with regard to Jew baiting what remains yet of this man that is notable at all? No exceptional laws does he want anymore, so he says now, only by way of administrative decisions he wants to restrict the advancement of judges, the approval of teachers and such things.

So the law and the sworn constitution are to be upheld, but by stealth to be passed over by administrative decisions, and likewise for civil equality before the law. Jews are not advanced, one does not dare to say that it happens because they are Jews. That's just that petty and wretched system that already existed in Prussia in the 1850s, but that was done away with when the current Kaiser began his reign.


Does anything improve in this way? Jews are told to not only pursue trading. Now that they apply for honorary public offices, which do not yield any money, still it is not right, and they are meant to be excluded. No matter what, the Jew is burnt.


When the Socialist movement was in full swing, it was said, business conditions would improve as soon as the 'little state of siege' would have ended their propaganda. Now we have the 'little state of siege' against the Socialists. But is the current movement a means to improve business conditions?


Has the Christmas business been more favorable this time?


Businessmen have told me that this propaganda has worsened business conditions in a certain direction.


Well, then it is the very duty of the businessmen, of the craftsmen, of the workers of Berlin to end this nonsense, a nonsense that is pursued by those who do not earn anything at all and pay no taxes, that is directed by those who because they live from public coffers have no understanding of how hard it is for a businessman to get by nowadays.


Internally the movement does not have a goal, it must have been caused by external causes. A meeting yesterday called the movement an election maneuver. I would like to call what has happened over the past weeks a 'quarterly maneuver'. You don’t squander your powder for election maneuvers this early. It is about supplying new subscribers for the next quarter to shady papers and to a paper paid for by the Junkers.

Other conscious leaders may indeed go after election maneuvers. This Jew baiting, too, is a form of how the Reaction fights against Liberalism. The cities are the home of Liberalism. If they succeed in splitting the urban citizenry, then they break Liberalism. It almost seems as if the anti-Semitic movement is meant to succede the Socialist movement in the rear of Liberalism. This movement also everywhere resembles the first stirrings of Socialism in Berlin.


Some also found Lassalle quite interesting, like some find the activity of the anti-Semites against the Liberals interesting nowadays. We will soon apprehend what the core of the matter is. In this politically mixed meeting I do not want to dwell more closely on what I think about it. All parties may struggle against each other. If, however, they really want to be considered supportive of the public order, they always have to remain conscious that they serve the one fatherland, are citizens of the same nation and only are to compete over how it is to be organized in the best way. Those who instead of inciting a noble competition incite raw passions, those who deny their opponents that they belong to the nation go beyond the confines of the party struggle, they are condemned if not by law, but by public morality!


Since we believe that also other parties acknowledge the same limits, we have invited the electors of all parties to this meeting. The Progressives are called the fellow travelers of the Jews. We as a party are neither friends nor opponents of the Jews as such, but we defend all those who are meant to be hurt in their equal rights, and as the accusation of being fellow travelers of the Socialists did not hold us back from fighting against the special situation of the Socialists, so being called fellow travelers of the Jews will not hold us back from standing up for the equal rights of the Jews.


Standing firm both to those above and to those below, we stand on the same ground that until recently was common ground to all parties without any objections. Still at the European Congress in Berlin in the summer of 1878, it was Chancellor Prince Bismarck who together with the other leading statesmen advocated that the accession of half-civilized states, such as Romania or Serbia, to the league of nations was made dependent on recognizing in those countries the principle of equal rights for all denominations.

This movement clutches the coat-tails of Prince Bismarck nonetheless, and even when he rejects them and at times has his press reproach them for their transgressions, it still continues to cling to him and call upon him like noisy children surrounding their father.

Even so, I think I cannot conclude in a better way than by reminding you of the words Prince Bismarck spoke in the Reichstag on February 9, 1876 when a similar movement, in part supported by the same persons and the same press as the anti-Semitic movement — I remind you of the articles about the so-called Bleichröder era — slandered and attacked him personally.

He said: “We all can do much against slander as long as we have a sense of honor and decency, a Christian standpoint and tradition. We all who use a Christian standpoint not only as a poster child for political purposes, if we all stand together in a league against depravity and go after it in our own house and place it under a ban unanimously, we will achieve more than we would by calling in the judiciary.”


In this vein, let us also fight against the depravity of this movement in a league without party distinction and let us feel united in this resolution — drawing on the New Year’s Address of the city councillors to the Kaiser and his reply — that only if all powers of national life, before which no distinction of denominations is justified, work peacefully and peaceably together, the welfare of the German Reich and her individual citizens can prosper.