THE GEOGRAPHY OF HATE: HOW ANTI-SEMITISM IN INTERWAR GERMANY
WAS INFLUENCED BY THE MEDIEVAL MASS MURDER OF JEWS
Violence against Jews – and signs of anti-semitic sentiment – in interwar Germany
were much more common in those towns that had also seen pogroms in the Middle
Ages. That is the central finding of new research by Professors Hans-Joachim Voth
and Nico Voigtländer, presented at the Royal Economic Society’s 2011 annual
conference.
Their study examines geographical variation in levels of anti-semitism in interwar
Germany and its roots in the fourteenth century. The findings suggest that a cultural
trait can persist over very long periods, particularly in small towns where most people
married within the same locality for generations.
The study focuses on pogroms against Jews that occurred during the Black Death
(1348-50). Since the Jews were blamed for the plague (having allegedly poisoned the
wells), many towns and cities burned their Jewish populations. The case of Basle is
paradigmatic: on 9 January 1349, approximately 600 Jews were gathered in a wooden
house, specially constructed for the purpose, on an island in the river Rhine. There they
were burned.
Looking at Weimar Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, Voigtländer and Voth examine
whether towns that had burned their Jewish populations in the fourteenth century were
more likely to display signs of anti-semitism.
They use a variety of indicators, from votes for the Nazi Party, attacks on synagogues
and deportations to letters to an anti-semitic newspaper – Der Stürmer, known for its
grotesque cartoons of ‘evil’ Jews, often shown drinking the blood of Christian children
or taking advantage of innocent Christian maidens.
The research finds consistently strong effects. For example, towns that committed
pogroms in the fourteenth century voted 50% more for the Nazi Party than towns
without a history of medieval violence.
The findings are striking since they suggest that a cultural trait – in this case, antisemitism – can persist over very long periods. This is all the more surprising since Jews
largely vanished from Germany after the Middle Ages. The authors point to the
persistence of passion plays and the anti-semitic writings of Martin Luther as causes of
the long-run persistence of race hatred.
They also emphasise just how small was the average town in their study: a typical town
probably had no more than 20,000 inhabitants in the 1920s, and no more than 1,0002,000 in the Middle Ages. Mobility was low, and most people married within the same
locality for generations.
ENDS
‘Persecution Perpetuated: Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany’
by Nico Voigtlaender (UCLA) and Hans-Joachim Voth (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)