A scientific exposition and defence of antisemitism lasting about two hours, delivered by Dr. Stappel, a German Nationalist, who is the editor of the periodical “Das deutsche Volkstum”, was the feature of to-day’s session of the Conference meeting here under the auspices of the International Student Service to discuss the problem of antisemitism at the Universities.
He repudiated, Dr. Stappel said, the ideas of Liberalism and the principles of equality as a basic theory of State. He saw the State not as an institution whose purpose is the welfare of the people. In his view, the State has a deeper, psychic meaning, based on the conception of glory, which he understood in a metaphysical sense. Politically, the state was not identical with the economic State. That was where he differed from the Socialists and from Jews like Rathenau, he said, to whom politics mean a future economic order.
He would deal with the question of the Jews in political life not from the moral, nor from the historical, nor from the psychological point of view, he proceeded, but from the biological. Every people has a plasma, he said. The plasmatic capacity of peoples varies. There are peoples who have a strongly differentiated plasma, and peoples who have a less differentiated plasma. The Germans are less differentiated with regard to plasma, while the Jews are highly differentiated, and it is difficult for a highly differentiated people and a less plasmatically differentiated people to live together. He thought that this was the reason why antisemitism was so strong in Germany, and not so strong in France, because the French, too, are a plasmatically differentiated people like the Jews. In the political field, the Jews, he said, are loyal adherents of Liberalism, and are everywhere supporters of Socialism. They fight against neo-Conservatism and nationalism. The Jews also lack the unquestioning, naive attitude of devotion to the State.
He was not there to suggest a solution of the Jewish problem, he said. What was important was to recognise the existence of the difficulties. Germany’s task was the creation of a great Central Europe, in which Germany would be dominant. England has its Empire, he said. Italy is engaged in forming a Mediterranean Empire. The Pan-European movement was based on the efforts of France to create a unified Europe in which Paris would be the centre. The question that had to be faced was how did the Jews stand towards these problems and what were they doing in regard to the changes which were taking place in the German people. The German people is seeking new forms in Conservative nationalism, he said, and there is no place in this for conceptions that are Jewish.
Dealing with the Jewish parties in Germany, Dr. Stappel said that there was the German National group headed by Dr. Naumann, which denies altogether its ties with other Jews. It was shameless, he said, to demand that people should surrender their nationality. The Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith, as he saw it, considers the Jews not merely as a synagogue congregation, but as a people. The Zionits, alone, were honest enough, however, to admit that the Jews are living in exile.
The Jews, he complained, have inclinations towards pacifism, and in that alone they are, in his view, anti-German. Pacifism is good only for the possessors, and Germany to-day is among the dispossessed. There is another trouble with the Jews, he concluded, and that is that the Jews have ties in all countries. There are Jews in all places, and they can use these connections for spreading news or for political manipulations.
HEAD OF GERMAN STUDENT MOVEMENT SAYS HE ACCEPTS ANTISEMITISM BUT IS OPPOSED TO ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE: PURELY A SPIRITUAL FIGHT WHICH MUST BE CARRIED ON WITH SPIRITUAL WEAPONS
Herr Schmadel, another German delegate, who has been for many years the head of the entire German Student Movement, said that antisemitism had not appeared in the German Universities until the ‘eighties of last century. At that time the Jews had begun to invade all branches of German cultural life, and this had caused a natural reaction among the German people, which was seeking to maintain the purity of German national life. He did not complain, he said, of the Jewish Nationalists in Germany, the Zionists, nor yet of the Jewish assimilationists. The first did not want to become absorbed in Germanism, while the other tried to become completely assimilated. They could be absorbed into German national life, however, only if they completely surrendered {SPAN}? irnational{/SPAN} Jewish connections.
Although he accepted antisemitism, Herr Schmadel said, he was an opponent of every form of antisemitic violence, and he condemned the attacks which were made on Jewish students. The fight is a spiritual fight, he said, and it must be carried on with spiritual weapons.
Asked why German students refuse to give the Jews satisfaction by fighting duels with them to enable them to wipe out insults offered them, Herr Schmadel replied that the Jews must not regard this as an insult, because the duel was a purely German custom, and only Germans could therefore fight duels.
JEWS WHO HAVE GROWN UP IN GERMAN CULTURE HAVE RIGHT TO RECOGNISE THEMSELVES AS PART OF GERMAN PEOPLE SAYS DR. BRODNITZ LEADER OF YOUTH SECTION OF GERMAN CITIZENS OF JEWISH FAITH: SAYS HE SPEAKS FOR THOSE JEWS WHO ARE CALLED ASSIMILATIONISTS ALTHOUGH HE DOES NOT LIKE NAME: MINISTERIAL DIRECTOR DR. HERMANN BADT SPEAKING AS ZIONIST FOR PAST 25 YEARS AND HIGH PRUSSIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL SAYS HE NEVER FOUND ANY CONFLICT BETWEEN HIS DUTIES AS GERMAN AND AS JEW: QUOTES ALSO LORD READING SIR HERBERT SAMUEL AND LORD MELCHETT AS JEWS WHO RECONCILED BEING JEWS WITH HIGH POSITIONS IN BRITISH EMPIRE
Dr. Friedrich Brodnitz, the son of Dr. Julius Brodnitz, the President of the Central Union of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith and himself a member of its Board and leader of its youth section, said that he was speaking there to express the point of view of that section of Jews who are grouped around the Central Union of German Citizens of Jewish Faith and who are called assimilationists, although he did not like the name. Tracing
As for Herr Schmadel saying that he accepted antisemitism, but was opposed to antisemitic violence, Dr. Brodnitz pointed out that antisemitic violence was the child of antisemitic theories. The biological method could be applied to animals, he said, but not to human people. Despite all the differences among the Jews, he went on, there was one idea which united them all, and that was pacifism, the belief that the problem of the peoples could be solved by peaceful means.
Dr.Hermann Badt, who was the next speaker, argued that the biological method did not lend itself to objective scientific analysis. How could they demonstrate, he asked, whether the plasma of a people was differentiated or not? Why were the Germans not differentiated and why were the French differentiated. He thought the historical method was much more successful. He repudiated the idea that one could not be a loyal and equal member of the German State if one was a Jew and felt that one was a Jew. He quoted his own personal experience in support of his belief. He had been a Zionist for the past 25 years and for the whole of that time he was also a Prussian State official, and he had never experienced any conflict between his duties as a German citizen and as a Jew. He quoted also Lord Reading, Lord Melchett and Sir Herbert Samuel to show that one could be a Jew and yet adorn the highest positions in the British Empire.
Dr. Badt in conclusion explained the aim and meaning of Zionism and its achievements, and he paid a tribute to the new type of Jew who is being evolved in Palestine, the best proof, he said, that there was no justification of the theory of a plasmatic differentiation of the Jewish people.
Professor Bovet, the chairman of the Conference, speaking in the debate which followed, criticised the conception of the State that had been put forward by Dr. Stappel, saying that it was elevating patriotism into a kind of religion, into a new form of idolatry.
Dr. Stappel, who then replied to the debate, said that he had come to the Conference in order to explain his view, which was the view of the whole of the German youth, and he went away, feeling that he had been repudiated by all the Jews at the Conference. He would report that to his friends in Germany.
Dr. Hermann Badt rose again to defend the idea of the League of Nations and of human brotherhood. Not only the Jews at the Conference, he remarked, but also the non-Jews who had spoken in the debate, had repudiated the views which Dr. Stappel had put forward.
JEWISH UNIVERSITY PROBLEM IS A MODERN PROBLEM MR. JAMES PARKES ORGANISER OF CONFERENCE SAYS: IN MIDDLE AGES JEWS HAD THEIR RABBINICAL SEMINARIES WHERE THEY OBTAINED MUCH WIDER EDUCATION THAN WAS AFFORDED AT CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITIES: TROUBLE IS THAT WHOLE JEWISH PEOPLE ARE BLAMED FOR FAULTES OF JEWISH INDIVIDUALS
The Jewish University problem is a modem problem, Mr. James W. Parkes, the head of the cultural section of the International Students’ Service, explained in an address to the Conference. In the Middle Ages, he said, the Jews did not attend Christian Universitiesities. They had their own Rabbinical High Schools in which they could obtain a much wider education.
Dealing with the numerous accusations brought by the antisemites against the Jews, Mr. Parkes said that the great trouble, in his opinion, was that the entire Jewish people were blamed, when there was perhaps justification in certain cases, for the charges brought against Jewish individuals or small groups of Jews, who, he said, are as much a danger to the Jews themselves as to the non-Jews.
In tracing the historical reasons which had brought it about that the Jews were concentrated in certain occupations and referring particularly to the over-production of intellectuals among the Jews, Mr. Parkes pointed out that the Jews themselves ar now endeavouring to bring about a change of the vocational structure of Jewish life.
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