The Archduke General Joseph Ferdinand today voiced his opinion that although the Jews are “dangerous” when they discard their religious views, they can be absorbed by a German state often to the advantage of the state.
Writing in the Neuen Wiener Journal, the Archduke said: “It is a German privilege to absorb foreign influences and yet always remain itself, in the same way as it is the peculiarity of the Jews not to assimilate. There we may find the cause which now makes Germany think that it must contend with the Jews in a manner as if the Jews were indeed a disruptive alien substance that imperils its own life.
“We Austrians condemn this state of affairs from a different point of view, for the reason that we respect the ideas and distinctiveness of all peoples. And I believe that the Jews can be good Austrians, because it is the privilege of Austria to offer a wide framework to all peoples and nations. The high-standing Jew has experienced the blessings of Christian ethics as have for instance the heathen to whom Christianity was carried.
“The Jew becomes dangerous only when he is no longer rooted in religion, when he has become disloyal to his traditions; then he seeks to destroy all that is associated with tradition, and that Jew becomes a Bolshevik.”
“These expressions are in the old Austrian tradition,” the Zionist Stimme comments, “and stand high above the usual scribbling. It should be remembered, however, that the Christian ethics are the spiritual possession of the Jewish Old Testament. Also Jewish ethics are available not only to high-standing Jews, but all people. Another thing, we shall not discuss here whether it is only lack of religion that produces Bolshevism. If that is true, then it is not only the irreligious Jew who is dangerous, but equally the irreligious Christian.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
