Coining Anti-Semitism

There was no such thing as “semitism” when Wilhelm Marr, a German journalist/political organizer, coined the term “antisemitism” to mean prejudice against Jews. When Marr founded “The Anti-Semitic League” in 1879, why didn't he use the obvious term, “Anti-Jewish?”

According to his biographer, Moshe Zimmerman, ”The Patriarch of Antisemitism,” wanted to distinguish his point of view from that of a rival faction who hated Jews on religious grounds (for killing Jesus, etc.). Marr hated their political and economic power. He was an atheist.

Marr was born in 1819. His father was a famous actor, the first to play Goethe's Mefisto. Wilhelm spent two years with a secret revolutionary group called “Young Germany in Switzerland,” whose members included Heinrich Heine. He wrote to his father, “The time is ripe to share Rothschilds' property among 3,333,333 poor weavers.” In 1845, based in Hamburg, he published a book about his experience in Switzerland that sold well and established his reputation. He also edited and published abridged versions of books by Bruno Bauer (“The Jewish Question”) and Ludwig Feuerbach (“The Essence of Christianism”). In Cologne, Marr's contemporary Karl Marx, was writing piercing critiques of these books.

According to Zimmermann (chairman of the history department at Hebrew University, Jerusalem), “Marr, like Marx, would eventually arrive at the conclusion that the emancipation of the Jews would be their liberation from the spirit of haggling, or the liberation of the world from this spirit.”

In 1847 Marr published a newspaper called Mephistopheles. He admired Louis Blanc, a French socialist, and called for a “universal European republic.” To his disappointment, the revolution of 1848 did not succeed in creating a German republic. He ran for office in Hamburg and lost. His chief rivals in electoral politics were Jews named Wolffson and Riesser.

In 1852 Marr emigrated to Central America, intending to be a merchant, then found a niche settling German immigrants in Costa Rica (as indentured servants). He came back in 1859 with some capital and in 1862 got elected to the Hamburg parliament. He published a book called “Der Jugenspiegel” that refers to “a racial difference between the Germans and the Orientals.” His surprising solution was intermarriage, and he practiced what he preached, marrying a Jewish woman and two who were half-Jewish. His fourth and final wife was a shiksa.

In 1863 he retired to his villa and wrote a 598-page account of his time in North America. This book, according to Zimmermann, “did not lack a haughty attitude towards the black and red races.” Marr noted that most of the slave ships had embarked from Boston.

A socialist movement led by Ferdinand Lasalle was gaining momentum in Hamburg. In a pamphlet attacking “Lasalle the Messiah,” Marr wrote,

“the intervention of a state on behalf of the workers is foolishness… The state has absolutely no right to prefer these individuals over others… The individualistic feelings of freedom within me rebel against any form of guardianship.”

For two years Marr edited a political weekly promoting the annexation of Hamburg by Prussia. “In 1866 he began to edit a Sunday newspaper, Der Kosmopolit. This was his swan song as a publisher and editor; during the following 10 years, he would wander from newspaper to newspaper and from place to place, as a feuillotinist. He went in 1867 to Italy and Switzerland, later publishing a book, the Council of Trent, which was a general attack on the church. The book includes an attack on the press, which Marr accused of promoting 'Orientalism.'

Marr published an anonymous pamphlet in 1867, “The New Trinity,” which foresaw Russia, France, and Germany overseeing separate spheres of influence, each of which opposed and excluded “Asianism.” A decade later, when he published his magnum opus, The Victory of Judaism over Germanism, “the word 'Asianism' would be replaced by 'Semitism,'“ Zimmerman writes, “and the horrible product would stand completed.”

The Victory of Judaism Over Germanism was widely read, but Marr's “Anti-Semitic League” remained small compared to groups led by Adolf Stoecker, Theodor Frisch, and others who raised and made money for their cause. “The charge which Marr now repeatedly brought,” Zimmerman writes, “was that anti-Semitism had become a business.” In a final testament, Marr regretted having collaborated with the conservative monarchy and the church, instead of taking joint action with the workers to advance the cause of Social Democracy.