Hannah Arendt’s 1936 lectures successful Paris, wherever she had spent the past twelvemonth and a half, were the archetypal signals to the émigré colonisation astatine ample that she inactive had thing to say. They were her effort to present her enactment connected modern antisemitism, which had been announced backmost successful 1934 and was astir complete. She wished to unfastened her enactment for discussion, and successful the process reword oregon amended immoderate of its sections.
The postulation of Arendt’s papers includes a 159-page typed manuscript that was intelligibly intended for publication. The extant typescript, the past conception of which (“The Aristocracy Turns Antisemitic”) notes that it is simply a “personal copy” and lacks a section number, is inactive incomplete; the past leafage of the substance makes notation to a “next chapter.” Someone wrote the years “1937-38” connected the manuscript, which mightiness bespeak that this was a written draught of the lectures. Very fewer texts written aft 1933 are referenced here, truthful it would look that astatine slightest ample parts of the manuscript were planned for inclusion successful the publication task Arendt had mentioned backmost successful 1934.
The chronology is important here. Up to the clip of the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, rather a fewer observers of the developments successful Germany were undecided arsenic to whether the National dictatorship would last. Not Arendt.
Pessimism runs passim the manuscript. Arendt had nary uncertainty that the signifier of antisemitism that had been empowered successful Germany could beryllium lone successful that country. She began her substance with Christian Wilhelm Dohm’s Ueber dice Verbesserung der Juden (On the Civic Improvement of Jews, 1781), and successful the adjacent paragraph she referred backmost to Johann Andreas Eisenmenger’s Entdecktes Judenthum (Judaism Unmasked), published successful 1701, which was regarded adjacent by his Jewish contemporaries arsenic a threatening compendium of each past and medieval lies astir the peril posed by Judaism for the bulk societies successful which Jews lived.
While Dohm’s and Eisenmenger’s books had often been cited and discussed successful tandem, Arendt brought successful a 3rd book, Carl Wilhelm Friedrich Grattenauer’s Wider dice Juden (Against the Jews, 1803), which she associated with the Romantic movement’s intelligence elite: Brentano, Arnim, Kleist, and the influential German Christian Table Society. Arendt past cited Wilhelm Marr’s Sieg des Judentums über das Germanentum (The Victory of Judaism implicit Teutonism, 1869), frankincense lining up each the antisemitic tube dreams that came adjacent to fulfillment. Now that the National Socialists, a “political question whose catchword is ‘antisemitism,’ ” had assumed powerfulness successful 1933, they could recognize the remaining portion of their dream: “the perennial proposition for solving the Jewish question by slaying each the Jews.”
Arendt had nary uncertainty that the signifier of antisemitism that had been empowered successful Germany could beryllium lone successful that country.
Arendt’s investigation of antisemitism besides offers an investigation of Jewish history, due to the fact that she was convinced that these went manus successful hand.
Arendt’s investigation employed connection that would seizure some the disfiguration and configuration of what had taken place. The years of freedom—and a constricted freedom, astatine that—were evidently capable to marque the “Jews from the East” the entity of the German Jews’ arrogance and consciousness of superiority. But successful 1933, wrong a substance of days, they were jerked backmost into reality. The superiority of the German Jews turned retired to beryllium thing but a mirage. Those who remained down wondered what they had done wrong, portion the “Jews successful the East” observed that the German Jews were “hopelessly inferior.”
The twelvemonth 1933, Arendt contended, marked the adjacent of the property of bourgeois emancipation and Jewish liberation, which brought an extremity to a feeling of information successful the West and signaled that the caller consciousness of information successful the East was a tube dream. If specified things could hap successful Germany, it was lone a substance of clip until thing akin occurred elsewhere. For Arendt, the experiences of German Jews served arsenic “an example,” a telephone to different nations to statesman a conflict of annihilation, due to the fact that they would beryllium met by a anemic adversary.
Arendt argued that the “German catastrophe” and the anemic absorption of German Jews and of “world Jewry” shed airy connected the past 150 years, that is, connected the decades of emancipation. This improvement could person taken spot lone successful Germany, a operation of past that had ever been centered connected antisemitism, successful nary request of the aged “ventilation theory,” which held that a scapegoat had to beryllium recovered for nationalist discontent. It was imaginable not to spot this due to the fact that Jewish past was ever conceived arsenic a past of victimization. In the nineteenth century, Arendt explained, 2 forms developed, with the West hoping to merge into “world history,” that is, without the baggage of suffering and without God. The Jews successful the East attempted to conception a “national history” that sought Jewish traces successful idiosyncratic histories portion establishing the beingness of a Jewish radical arsenic a whole. The Western variant, by contrast, had already reached its eventual objective; successful creating a Reform synagogue, it opted to enactment unwanted distinctions successful the past.
But some sides had failed to grasp 1 thing—and this was Arendt’s overarching constituent passim the investigation presented here—that wrong this model, antisemitism was ever regarded arsenic simply an “opinion” held by individuals. This, she argued, was a fatal error. “Our history”—Arendt was ever speaking arsenic a Jew who inserted herself into analyses that extended into the present—could yet fold into the past of the bulk societies that surrounded them. “The Jews were Germans and thing more.” Zionism, she said, was to beryllium credited for putting an extremity to what Kant had termed “dogmatic slumber” for this uncritical acceptance of the authorities of affairs. It had failed wherever it substituted for assimilation, adaptation, and achieving equality the conception of 2 substances: of a fixed “host nation” and of the Jews, some eternal, some immutable. Hence some interpretations were dangerously misleading, due to the fact that some near it to non-Jews to specify Jewish history.
Arendt cited Otto Heller’s publication Der Untergang des Judentums: Die Judenfrage, ihre Kritik, ihre Lösung durch den Sozialismus (The Decline of Judaism: The Jewish Question, Its Critique, Its Solution Through Socialism) to constituent up the melodramatic impasse that Jewish historiography had travel up against arsenic portion of the investigation of the existent situation. Heller, who was calved successful 1897 successful Brno and died of exhaustion successful precocious March 1945 astatine the Ebensee attraction camp, a subcamp of Mauthausen, was not a existent theorist oregon authorization successful the taxable helium chose to constitute about. He had been surviving successful Paris since 1936, and his publication was translated into French, but it ne'er had the relation that Arendt ascribed to it: No 1 regarded it arsenic exemplary, and it did not broaden retired into much wide issues.
Far much momentous was Arendt’s ain investigation of the situation. She recovered it disastrous that the presumption of emancipation, arsenic stipulated by the German bulk society, was regarded not arsenic a crushed for rethinking people’s ain actions, but alternatively arsenic an impetus to accommodate to the existent circumstances. In the end, the German Jews were confronted by the “true representative” of the German people—Hitler—who informed them that they were a “race” to which helium was issuing peculiar regulations and laws.
At this moment, implicit inertia, helplessness, oregon flight seemed to beryllium the lone ways to react, but Zionism offered a strategy for coping with the changing circumstances, a strategy that had begun with Theodor Herzl. The purpose was preserving the “Jewish substance” successful the look of antisemitism, adjacent erstwhile that substance was attacked successful the extreme. In juxtaposing National Socialist and Zionist dogmatics, Arendt concluded that the erstwhile sought to eradicate a populace it considered alien, fundamentally different, and hence incompatible with its values, portion Zionism insisted that Judaism, arsenic the Other, needed to question a mode to thrive arsenic the lone means of securing its substance. Whether successful economical investigation (Herzl) oregon successful “pseudophilosophical profundity” (Martin Buber), the result was what both, successful their antithetic ways, strove to avoid, namely for the substance successful request of rescue to accommodate to the prevailing zeitgeist. Arendt’s decision sounded bitter: “The bankruptcy of the Zionist question caused by the world of Palestine is astatine the aforesaid clip the bankruptcy of the illusion of autonomous, isolated Jewish politics.”
The archetypal section of the manuscript was written earlier her engagement with the Youth Aliyah. But Arendt apt saw that it was imaginable to prosecute successful “Jewish politics,” astatine slightest successful the signifier of a absorption to an existential menace to each Jews, due to the fact that Arendt had argued clip and again that Germany was lone the archetypal signifier successful the past of a caller benignant of antisemitism and the information of annihilation impended.
In the 2nd chapter, “The Classic Land of Antisemitism,” Arendt noted that the developments successful Germany triggered a pan-European alignment of the assorted Judaisms with their circumstantial histories and environments. Hitler’s alleged seizure of powerfulness made each Jews indistinguishable; helium forced each of them into the aforesaid mold, with varying degrees of perceptible consequences. German antisemitism was cosmopolitan and applicable to all, and made enemies of each Jews. The Jews’ top achievement, the top exemplary and the respect they had attained, was present followed by their downfall. Arendt drew an arc from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing to Alfred Rosenberg’s The Myth of the Twentieth Century. Seen retrospectively, they formed a communicative that had the Jews rising to the presumption of coequal quality beings, lone to beryllium denied their humanity.
The important measurement on this way was abstraction, making surviving Jews into a principle, a bearer of traits starring to 1 thing: evil. Equating Jews and evil was regarded arsenic important advancement successful furthering antisemitism without the request for further consequences; that was reserved for aboriginal generations.
For present it sufficed for this process to person go possible, accepted by society, and attained successful a “scholarly” manner. The 3rd chapter, “Antisemitism and Hatred of the Jews,” attempted to grapple with this issue. Arendt insisted that modern antisemitism was rooted successful reversing processes of societal differentiation. “Jews” were facing the information of disappearing arsenic they achieved assimilation and equality nether the law, and lone the instauration of a wide demarcation could forestall full integration. “One could sermon its past [that of modern antisemitism] arsenic a past of associations—quite random associations that incorporate lone a minimum of world erstwhile it comes to Jews, but precise indispensable associations erstwhile viewed from amid the struggles of the period.”
Hitler’s alleged seizure of powerfulness made each Jews indistinguishable; helium forced each of them into the aforesaid mold, with varying degrees of perceptible consequences.
The 4th chapter, “Usurers, Pariahs, Parasites,” reconstructs a humanities improvement utilizing sociological and economical categories. The indispensable constituent is that the 3 designations person go obsolete successful the aftermath of nineteenth-century societal and economical developments, but for that precise crushed are associated with Jews. The Other is not modern; its features are to beryllium regarded arsenic lodged successful an epoch that is implicit and done with. What remains is the pariah, a fig of the present, with “neither rights nor a country…citizens of nary nation.” As specified the Jews spell backmost to being parasites, due to the fact that adjacent refugees person to unrecorded somewhere, and truthful they go a “society extracurricular of society—a caste.” This was the archetypal clip that Arendt brought into play a afloat formulated mentation that aboriginal became famous, though astatine this constituent it lacked the word she aboriginal paired with the pariah, namely the parvenu, successful arguing that the Jewish emancipation gave emergence to lone these 2 types.
Arendt introduced perfect “types” successful the 5th chapter. She was drawn to peculiar humanities figures by the primacy they accorded to accumulating wealthiness arsenic a means of achieving success, to attaining rights, and to gaining civic participation. The champion they could anticipation for was an betterment of their ineligible status. The “court Jews” were acold from having achieved a unafraid presumption successful life, due to the fact that they enjoyed privileges that could beryllium snatched distant astatine immoderate time. The dissolution of the ghettos successful the eighteenth period could beryllium interpreted arsenic tearing down barriers, but present poorness acceptable successful and the affluent separated from those who formerly shared a akin destiny. When the walls came down, the differences betwixt Western and Eastern Jews became adjacent much marked, making it each the easier to instrumentalize contrasts.
The sixth section is devoted to “exceptional Jews,” those whose exclusion gave them thing peculiar to offer, and they intrigued oregon attracted the curiosity of extracurricular groups, particularly among the educated. Arendt regarded this concern arsenic the ground for the emergence of the Jewish salons. The model of accidental unopen close backmost down, a improvement that Arendt explored present by explaining that the close, nary longer simply economical transportation betwixt the aristocracy and the Jews led to caller resentments. From the viewpoint of the bourgeoisie, some Jews and the aristocracy advocated revolutions and extremist change, and frankincense some attacked the presumption quo. Resentment swelled among the aristocrats, who had nary tendency to beryllium grouped with the Judenseite (Jewish side).
According to Arendt, this had far-reaching consequences. Those who were against the authorities were attracted to antisemitism. The confederation of the “exceptional Jews” with the authorities was a favored constituent of onslaught for modern antisemites; aft all, they argued, what benignant of authorities would fleece its ain radical and connection advantages to the beneficiaries of this swindle?
“As agelong arsenic antisemitism cannot found a basal nexus with the large governmental struggles of the clip and arsenic agelong arsenic it is not supported by astatine slightest 1 unified level of society, it remains without governmental value and poses nary menace to Jews.” But if it does succeed, antisemitism goes beyond vague pronouncements and becomes a governmental problem, meaning that it affects nine arsenic a whole, astatine which constituent it becomes unsafe due to the fact that it seeks retired solidarity and gauges however acold it tin go, investigating the limits successful peculiar of the state, which needs to guarantee home stabilization and look to the bully of the authorities arsenic a whole, not immoderate circumstantial idiosyncratic interests. Arendt explains that assimilated Jews afforded antisemites the cleanable accidental to marque their case. Assimilated Jews wished to marque usage of their freedoms portion retaining their identities, and modify societal modernization to conscionable their peculiar needs. At the aforesaid time, they had to guarantee that neither successes nor failures would pull attraction to themselves. Envy and schadenfreude are 2 emotions that are readily associated with aged anti-Jewish stereotypes, and could make dynamics of their own. But it had not reached that constituent rather yet. The functions of Jews and the images that were made of them continued to acquisition changes.
The authorities discovered that reforms had to beryllium beneficial to all, and truthful the governmental ngo had to beryllium implementing acquisition and acculturation arsenic a means of solidifying the nascent bourgeoisie. The extremity needing to beryllium attained was being a Jew, a citizen, and a German each astatine the aforesaid time. The bourgeoisie gradually evolved, and, similar immoderate caller societal stratum, it had to displace existing ones oregon go truthful beardown that others would follow its forms of employment and ways of life. The nobility was the archetypal to beryllium affected, and the bourgeoisie and the Jews seemed to beryllium the beneficiaries of this development. With the 2 pillars of modernity merging into one, antisemitism, successful its modern form, was besides anti-bourgeois.
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From Hannah Arendt: A Life of the Mind by Thomas Meyer, translated by Shelley Frisch. Published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a part of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Meyer, translation copyright © 2026 by Shelley Frisch.
English (US) ·