Words and Actions: Rethinking the Social History of German Antisemitism, Breslau, 1870–1914 Till van Rahden (Universita ¨t zu Ko ¨ln) ‘Words have power. The proverb says: “A blow passes, but a word remains.”’ 1 Since the 1970s social historians’ analysis of German antisemitism had been dominated by socioeconomic interpretations. The scholarship undertaken in this vein, most prominently that of Hans Rosenberg, had argued that antisemitism resulted from crises in society at large. As late as 1978 the social historian Dirk Blasius advised his colleagues ‘to correlate the so-called “Jewish Ques- tion” with the overall development of modern, capitalist societies’. 2 Blasius’s 1 Isaac Bashevis Singer, ‘Henne Fire’, The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer (New York, 1983), pp. 240–9, quotation: p. 248. Drafts of this article were presented at the conference ‘Rethinking German Anti-Semitism, 1870–1933’ organized by the Richard Koebner Center, Hebrew University, and seminars at the University of Buffalo, SUNY, Georgetown University, and the University of California at Berkeley. I have profited immensely from the questions and critical comments raised on these occasions. I owe a special debt to John W. Boyer, David Gerber, Jeffrey Herf, Jacques Kornberg, Richard Levy, Rebecca Manley and James Retallack for their stimulating criticism, careful editing and insightful comments. Readers may contact the author at Till.van-Rahdenuni-koeln.de. 2 Hans Rosenberg, Große Depression und Bismarckzeit (Berlin, 1967), pp. 88–117, esp. 94–6; Dirk Blasius, ‘“Judenfrage” und Gesellschaftsgeschichte’, Neue Politische Literatur, 23 (1978), pp. 17–33, quotation: p. 17; on Rosenberg see James F. Harris, The People Speak! Anti-Semitism and Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Bavaria (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1994), pp. 220–1; in Harris’s view the ‘Great Depression’ and the ‘Struggle of Civilizations’ were ‘catalytic agents rather than causal’ (p. 223). For further examples of the socio-economic interpretations of anti- semitism see also: Reinhard Ru ¨rup, ‘Die Emanzipation der Juden in Baden’, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus (Frankfurt/Main, 1987), pp. 64 and 82–3; Rainer Wirtz, ‘Widersetzlichkeiten, Excesse, Crawalle, Tumulte und Skandale:’ Soziale Bewegung und gewalthafter Protest in Baden 1815–1848 (Frankfurt/Main, 1981), esp. pp. 60–87, 130–45, 232–8; and Eleonore Sterling, ‘Anti- Jewish Riots in Germany in 1819: A Displacement of Social Protest’, Historia Judaica, 12 (1950), pp. 105–42. For an important and eminently readable summary of older social history on antisemitism, itself providing many examples for the socioeconomic or functionalist interpret- ation of antisemitism, see: Helmut Berding, Moderner Antisemitismus in Deutschland (Frankfurt/Main, 1988), esp. pp. 69, 73–7, 91–2, 120 and 123; equally stimulating is: John W. Boyer, Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian-Social Movement 1848–1897 (Chicago 1981), pp. 41, 51, 58, 70, 104; ‘appeals to cultural hatred’ such as antisemi- tism, Boyer argues, ‘often had a strongly rational core’ (p. 51). German History Vol. 18 No. 4 0266-3554(00)GH208OA  2000 The German History Society