Aside from the Jews refusing to convert to Christianity, another excuse used to justify excluding them from German society was that they constituted a separate nation or even a state. According to German historian Friedrich Rühs, “The Jews are in the nature of a nation; they have compatriots [Landsleute] throughout the world, with whom they are bound by origin, outlook, duty, faith, language, and inclination. Together with them, they constitute a single unity, and they are necessarily obliged to be closer and more devoted to them than to the nation in whose midst they live and which will remain alien to them forever.”
The question of whether the Jews should be viewed as part of a separate sociological group, regardless of whether or not they persisted in belonging to their religion, had precipitated a social and political battle for more than a generation, historian Jacob Katz said.
Manufactured a Stereotype
Polemicists like Rühs, Katz said, used anti-Jewish ideologies to advance their case by manufacturing a stereotype of the Jews, whom they claimed were incapable of severing their connection to their religious way of life except through baptism. Anything less than conversion to Christianity would be artificial, and thus, they would remain the “same eternal Jew.”
To Christians, Jewish traits—their stubbornness, greediness, materialism, absolute commitment to their fellow Jews, and heartless indifference to anyone not Jewish—were “unalterable in the eyes of Christian tradition and the collective consciousness of most of the European peoples,” Katz said.
The Jew as an alien is a frequent subject in anti-Jewish denunciations. “The Jew does not truly belong to the country in which he lives, for as the Jew from Poland is not a Pole, the Jew from England is not an Englishman, and the Jew from Sweden is not a Swede, so the Jew from Germany cannot be a German and the Jew from Prussia a Prussian…. The Jews are an alien people, they are nothing but guests in the lands of their dispersion….”
‘Sterilization of Judaism’
Philosopher Jacob Friedrich Fries of Heidelberg University used the term “caste” and “a state within a state” to describe the position of the Jewish community in Germany, Kartz said. Fries envisaged the demise of the Jewish people would occur as a result of them being absorbed into the German community. Assimilation did not have to occur by converting to Christianity. Jews could free themselves by shedding their customs, rituals and laws and the “inferior morality” found in them. This could be accomplished through an intentional effort to adapt to German culture. Children would be educated in Christian schools, while their rabbis would attend German universities. They would publicly disavow their commitment to the morally corrupting teachings of the Talmud, which they would abandon for “a wise morality of love of the homeland and universal love of mankind.” In other words, citizenship would be earned not by accepting Christianity but by sterilizing Judaism.
Christianity and the State
The differences espoused by Fires, the secular, and Rühs, the Christian, reflected their divergent views on the role of Christianity and the state. Fries believed in complete nationalism without the Church as a partner, although he did incorporate “Christian emotionalism and rhetoric in the new nationalism,” Katz said. Even if this involved nothing more than verbal and emotive characteristics, it was sufficient to exclude Jews from becoming part of the German nation. In reality, antisemitism without a Christian component was more destructive and lethal, Katz notes.
Warnings of Pogroms
Rühs expected, with some level of conviction, the day when Jews would embrace Christianity, but Fries expressed frustration with the Jews’ failure to renounce their religion. At times, his impatience sounded like warnings of pogroms or the removal of Jews from Germany. He portrays them as exploiters and concludes: “This scandal will not come to an end without dreadful acts of violence if our governments do not halt the evil quickly and with great force.”
At another time, Fries made it clear that “if our Jews do not wean themselves completely from the abomination of their ceremonies, rituals, and rabbinate, and do not adopt, in theory and in practice, ways of understanding and honesty to such an extent as to be able to merge with Christians in one civil society, then it would be right to announce their loss of all civic rights among us, to withdraw protection from them, as in those days in Spain, and to expel them from the country.”
Even if Fries and other threats were not construed as an endorsement to punish or evict the Jews, these sentiments demonstrate the very hostile environment, Katz said, in which the Jews were forced to live in Germany. “Doubt was cast on the Jew’s right to exist so long as he was a Jew, and the doubts received variegated ideological support from intellectuals of weight and authority.”
Enmity Against Jews
Pervasive antagonism against Jews in Germany was fostered particularly in areas where their position was actively being reevaluated. Specifically, this occurred in districts where Jews had acquired positions during the French occupation of the city in 1806 and where now there were attempts to evict them. The city of Frankfurt was a perfect example, Katz said.
In 1817, Jews rented hundreds of houses or stores outside the Judengasse, where Jewish merchants began competing in fields of commerce that had previously been blocked to them. Complaints by their Christian competitors, Katz said, were not only directed to the current evident harm but also to the long-term danger the Jews posed: “Within a few years, most of the Christian residents will become beggars,” one of them predicted. Frankfurt would become a Jewish city, and the “offspring of the Christian offspring will be happy if the Jewish merchants employ them as caretakers in their warehouses.” Any hope that moral considerations might influence their “lust” for affluence was futile: “Their own advantage is the only motive and also the only purpose of all their actions.”
Frustration with the Jews of Frankfurt was so great that one writer wondered how practical it would be “to put an end to the unfortunate Jewish presence in the whole of Europe.” How could this be accomplished? The rulers in power “will start negotiations with the Turks to restore to the scattered Palestinians their ancient, promised land where they could once again become the true chosen people of God.”
The Failure to Return to Zion
In “Our Demands of Modern Jewry,” Adolf Stöcker (1835-1909), a leading antisemite and a Lutheran theologian who founded the Christian Social Party (Christlichsoziale Arbeiterpartei) (CSAP), delivered a speech on Sept. 19, 1879, in which he said Jews misinterpreted what emancipation meant for them. They should have understood their place in Germany was as strangers to be tolerated, and therefore should have acted accordingly.
He then mocked German Jews for not returning to Zion: “The old prayers in which the Jews yearn for God and Zion are moving.” He quoted from the Musaf prayer, which states, “Because of our sins we have been driven from our country and exiled from our soil; we cannot fulfill our duties in your chosen dwelling and in your great and sacred temple in which your name is involved…. Let us gather together from the far ends of the world. Lead us to Zion, your city, with rejoicing, and to Jerusalem, your sacred temple, with everlasting jubilation.”
He continues, “But those who play a role in modern Jewry know nothing of this; they prefer to live in the Jerusalemerstrasse rather than in the streets of Jerusalem. A devout Christian once pitied a Jewish brother for not having a high priest and a temple. His reply was, “Our temple is the synagogue, and our high priest is the Herr Oberrabiner.”
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*This article, under a different title, was first published in The Jewish Link, on Dec. 4, 2025
Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society, a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and on the advisory board of the National Christian Leadership Conference of Israel (NCLCI). He has an MA and PhD in contemporary Jewish history from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.