From Antisemitic Peripheries to Antisemitic Centres: The Place of Antisemitism in Modern German History

Abstract

German antisemitism in the late nineteenth century had its own special character, which can be explained as ‘antisemitic peripheries’ or provincial antisemitism. The starting-point of this argument is the complexity of nine-teenth-century German society and this article examines the place of antisemitism in a uniquely German phenomenon: the mass of cultural, social and political divisions which existed in German society in the second half of the nineteenth century. This can undoubtedly serve as a background to nazi antisemitism, but does not explain it fully.