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No. 15. — Vienna, 11 April 1902. — 6th Year

The Jews in Denmark.

By Joseph Michaelsen (Copenhagen.)

The Jews of Denmark, some 4000 in number and nearly all resident in Copenhagen, live on the whole in happy circumstances. The political and civil equality which was long ago granted them they have used to win prosperity and culture. The excessive riches that one meets here and there among the Jews of Europe and America will be sought here in vain; on the other hand, neither does one find here the deep gulf that elsewhere divides Jew from Jew. Social equality, too, has been carried through — that is to say, so far as the latent racial antipathy will permit. I say "latent," for open antisemitism has had to halt before our shores, and there is no soil here for Jew-hatred and Jew-baiting. Religion places no obstacle in the way of the Danish Jews; the orthodox are in a great minority, just as is the case among their Christian fellow-citizens, and it therefore arouses no remark when a Jew such as Hermann Trier is at one and the same time President of the Chamber of Deputies and Chairman of the Copenhagen Municipal Council. Or when Mr. Marcus Rubin, as has happened in these very days, is entrusted with one of the very highest administrative offices. It should perhaps be added, however, that both these gentlemen are very distinguished and exceedingly well-qualified men, and in that respect were without rivals of equal standing. If no Jew has hitherto held a judicial office, the reason lies in the most praiseworthy tact which distinguishes the Jews here, an acquisition due precisely to their relatively high culture, which stands at least on the level of that of their Christian fellow-citizens, however high this may be. For the Danes are a highly cultivated people. No peasants and no workmen in other lands will be able to measure themselves, in point of civilisation, against the free Danish peasantry and the working class here. A peasant is now Minister of Agriculture, and there are among our organised workmen men who could enter the Council of State without further preparation and conduct a ministry, for instance the Ministry of Commerce, with success.

It follows from what has been said above that the Danish Jews frequently take the first rank in wholesale trade as in large industry, in literature and in science, notably in jurisprudence and in medicine, and can point in these fields to men who have won a European name, nay, world-wide fame; I need only mention here the name of Georg Brandes.

What I have said of the Jews here in intellectual respects holds good also with regard to morals. Christian and Jew stand here on an entirely equal footing. But if I am to believe our Mr. Moses Melchior, as I am much inclined to do, this moral equality is not sufficient. He demands more. He says: In order to be able to lay claim, by right of justice, to social equality with their Christian fellow-citizens, the Jews must be better than these.

Mr. Melchior has here, without knowing it, given expression to the secret thought of Zionism, and no one is more entitled to do so than he. For Mr. Moses Melchior is a man as highly deserving as he is respected; he is a member of the Chamber of Commerce here as well as of the Maritime and Commercial Court, and stands at the head of a large inherited oversea trading-house and shipping firm. What is more: his heart is as rich as his house, and it is therefore of significance that this man has in recent days drawn near to Zionism, in just recognition of the great things which this uprising, at once ideal and practical, has accomplished in so short a time.

I have reason to hope that Mr. Moses Melchior will not remain the only one of our prominent Jews who is ready to further Zionism with counsel and deed, but that several will follow his example and draw with them a greater number of our hitherto indifferent brethren. For indifferent they are, as I have said. This follows already from their situation, on the whole a happy one, and more particularly from their imperfect knowledge of their unhappy brethren on the one hand and of Zionism on the other. Here, therefore, is room for