Racism - A Short History - George M Fredrickson.pdf - WNLibrary

TWO The Rise of Modern Racism(s)
Despite the barriers, German Jews became increasingly
prosperous during the nineteenth century. The opportunities
in commerce that opened up in the first half of the
century became the launching pad that enabled the next
generation to go to the university (admission was not restricted)
and achieve success in the “free professions” of law
and medicine. Jews also found opportunities in the arts and
journalism, while continuing to be prominent in the business
world, not only in banking and finance but also in
retail trade and light manufacturing. “By 1871,” according
to David Sorkin, “fully 80% of German Jewry qualified as
bourgeois.” 47 But the fact that Jews were overrepresented
in some lucrative or prestigious fields of endeavor and virtually
absent in others provided the raw material for antisemitic
agitation. It is in the context of this asymmetrical pattern
of exclusion and success that “the Jewish question” was
discussed in late-nineteenth-century Germany. Exclusions
from governmental and military service reflected the prejudice
that continued to exist, primarily or at least nominally
on religious grounds. The success in some other areas
aroused anxieties about Jewish power and potential domination
among people who tended to believe that emancipation
had gone too far. Fear of Jewish success became in the
minds of pioneer racists like Wilhelm Marr, who coined
the term “antisemitism” and founded the Anti-Semitic
League, a settled conviction that Jews were well on their
way to establishing their hegemony over those of pure German
descent. Marr’s book The Victory of the Jews over the
Germans, published in 1879, was the first systematic presentation
from a secular perspective of the view that Jews were
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