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Offenders or Victims?

German Jews and the Causes of Modern Catholic Antisemitism

Olaf Blaschke author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:University of Nebraska Press

Published:1st Dec '09

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Offenders or Victims? cover

An examination of the tensions between Catholics and Jews in Germany and its causes

Some scholars allege that the Jews' own conduct was the main cause of the hatred directed toward them in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Olaf Blaschke takes up this provocative question by considering the tensions between German Catholicism and Judaism in the period of the Kulturkämpfe.Antisemitism is generally thought to derive from chimerical images of Jews, who became the victims of these projections. Some scholars, however, allege that the Jews’ own conduct was the main cause of the hatred directed toward them in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Olaf Blaschke takes up this provocative question by considering the tensions between German Catholicism and Judaism in the period of the Kulturkämpfe. Did Catholic resentments merely construct “their” secular Jew? Or did their antisemitism in fact derive from their perceptions of the conduct of liberal Jewish “offenders” during a period of social stress? Blaschke’s deeper look at this crucial period of German history, particularly as revealed in the Catholic and Jewish presses, provides new and sometimes surprising insights.

"Blaschke's work is as deeply research as it is valuable and suggestive."—William D. Rubinstein, Journal of Jewish Studies

ISBN: 9780803225220

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 499g

232 pages