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No. 8.

Vienna, 25 February 1898.

Second Year.

As a considerable number of subscriptions expire at the end of this month, those concerned are reminded to renew in good time, so that no interruption may occur in the delivery of the paper. The Administration.

Jewish Centre.

By O. Erter.

Nonne dixisse eum minacius quam facturum esse putatis?
Cit., Phil. 3,21.

It is but an episode, yet one so instructive that we should be committing a sinful omission were we to pass it over in silence. Assimilated Jews, or Jews eager for assimilation, in the German Empire have at last come to feel it as an ill-usage that neither in the German Reichstag nor in the Prussian House of Deputies does a single Liberal Jewish deputy sit; and they have given vent to this sense of injury in an appeal to the Liberal factions, which culminated in the threat to form a Jewish Centre party. The fact that the Liberal Jews in Germany and in Prussia have for a considerable time had no representative in the parliaments is true; but the threat to constitute a Jewish Centre party is, as matters stand, a little grotesque, wherefore it was dismissed by the Liberal addressees partly with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders, partly with ironical bonhomie. And there the matter rested; the valiant malcontents took care not to repeat their pronunciamento, and for the Liberal factions the necessity thus fell away of working themselves up any further over Jewish covetousness. Basta!

Yet there is more in this matter than an ephemeral interest of the moment; it casts a wan light upon the so-called emancipation with which the Jews in Germany have brought things to such a glorious pass, and it therefore deserves to be discussed from another standpoint than the narrow one of factional politics. Here one must hold fast to the self-evident premise that only the Liberal parties can be in question when complaint is raised over the elimination of the Jews from the representative bodies; for it was never expected of the Conservatives, the Free Conservatives, and the Ultramontanes that they should admit Jews among their parliamentary representatives. A Jew was indeed once the luminary of the Conservatives, but it was the baptised Jew Stahl. The National Liberals, too, do not come into consideration, for they have gradually slid down toward the agrarian-antisemitic side, even if with some bashfulness they still hide their nakedness behind the Liberal fig-leaf; a Lasker would to-day no longer have any place among them. There remain, then, only the two Radical factions, the People's Party and the Union, at which the threat of erecting a Jewish Centre party could have been aimed; but these have all they can do to maintain their own existence, and their leaders, the two hostile brothers Richter and Rickert, though not indeed suspected of apostasy from Liberalism, are certainly aware that they would be staking their last plank of rescue were they to take it into their heads to burden the Radical list of candidates with Jewish names. We are not informed whether Ludwig Bamberger, when five years ago he renounced a Reichstag seat and withdrew from the leadership of the Radical Union, was taking account of the mood of the electors; but we surmise that this shrewd and eloquent man was even then under no illusion, and got out of the way of ostracism rather than let himself be flung aside by it.

Here now would be offered the best occasion for all manner of sentimental retrospects and reflections; for in fact Jews — baptised and unbaptised — during the first thirty years of parliamentary life in Germany played a very considerable and very honourable part as representatives of the people. Gabriel Rießer was Vice-President of the Frankfort Parliament, and Eduard Simson, as spokesman of the Frankfort deputation, offered the German imperial crown to the King of Prussia; he was also the first President of the newly created German Reichstag. Of Eduard Lasker the National Liberals, when they were still liberal, were very proud, and Ludwig Bamberger sat in the carriage at Bismarck's side when, after the French war, the latter drove through the streets of Mainz. The outward semblance of emancipation dazzled even the finest circles among the German Jews, so that they held for an eternal possession what was but the alms of a fleeting current of the times. Now that this is past, and of the supposed emancipation little more remains than a tiny remnant of doubtful toleration, there begins gradually to dawn among the German Jews the insight,