Does Herr Slaje think that he is dealing with idiots? Rejoinder to Walter Slaje, “Indologists and Contemporary History. Eli Franco on Erich Frauwallner as a Political Subject”

Judaism, or anti-Semitism; pp. 720-21), he very often used viilkisch and nationalist terms that were associated with the Nazi anti-Jewish policies in those years. In the new version of his fifth volume in particular, antiliberal, anticapitalist and romantic, nationalist expressions (pp. 669-70) were used frequently. But all to no purpose: even the new version, and the many articles Schnabel wrote in those years could not persuade the Nazi censor to lift the ban on his book, or restore his academic position.

1999

been, if not entirely overlooked, then misunderstood and misrepresented. In the 1870s, the professor of medicine, liberal politician, and anthropologist, Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902), directed a study ofthe skin, hair, and eye color of 6,758,827 German school children, a study that marked"Jews" and "Germans" as racially different and trained a generation of Germans to perceive these differences both as real and as of political significance. Historians have been virtually unanimous in viewing this study as a blow against anti-Semitism, as a demonstration that there was neither a Jewish nor a German "race."1 This interpretation has survived, I believe, because it supports and rests on a commonly held conception of racism as primarily an intellectual phenomenon, as a set of more-or-less explicit propositions held in the minds of 1. The only historian to recognize that Virchow believed the study proved Germany to be racially "Aryan" is Leon Poliakov. See Poliakov, The Aryan Myth:A History of Racist and Nationalist Ideas in Europe (London, 1974), 264-66. George L. Mosse also recognized the equivocal nature of this study, although he did not discuss Virchow's own conclusions about the German and Jewish races. See Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (NewYork, 1978), 90-93. Otherwise, historians have generally coordinated their presentation of the school survey with Virchow's well-known liberalism and opposition to anti-Semitism, and assumed that Virchow's study disproved the existence of German and Jewish "races." The earliest presentation of the study as a blow against racial notions 409 This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Thu, 30 May 2013 08:22:21 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 410 ANTI-SEMITISM AS SKILL individuals. Virchow, a well-known opponent of political anti-Semitism, was never motivated by hostility to Jews in conducting this research. Indeed, he understood his focus on Jews as simply a race (rather than as a religion or a cul? ture) to indicate that the study was not anti-Semitic.2 Paradoxically, the study that Virchow designed and oversaw may have unintentionally provided an important practical basis for German racial anti-Semitism. By considering anti-Semitism as a set of skills rather than a philosophy, as hands-on practical knowl? edge more akin to riding a bicycle than to philosophical exposition, I hope to offer a new explanation of both Virchow s study of race and the place of that study in German history. Virchow was an outspoken foe of anti-Semitism, which makes his racial study of Germans a particularly troubling irony.3 A liberal physician, Virchow fought on the barricades in Berlin in 1848 and went to Frankfurt where he participated in attempts to draft a constitution for a unified German nation.4 In 1856, after an eight-year exile at the University of Wiirzburg, he returned to Berlin as a professor of pathology and soon became one of the most famous medical scientists in the world. He distinguished himself as an opponent of philosophi? cal concerns in medicine and as an advocate of more empirical clinical and laboratory practices. Virchow represented the Progressive Party in the Prussian House of Deputies from 1862 until his death in 1902. His role as an opponent of anti-Semitism increased in the later nineteenth century, as hostility to Jews emerged as a major political force in Germany. In 1880 he won an electoral contest against the anti-Semitic court preacher Adolf Stoecker to gain a seat in the Reichstag, which he held until 1893. Virchow's opposition to anti-Semitism 2.

A Response to Roberto Calasso, Indian Classics: The Big New Vision; http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/sep/24/indian-classics-big-new-vision/.

The German Quarterly, 2012

Donahue rebukes Schlink for justifying his novel with the testimony of older American Jews. Donahue further claims that in his novel and pronouncements Schlink is propagating a revisionist agenda, characterized by a confusion of victim and perpetrator.

German Studies Review, 2018

Journal of Religion in Europe 6:1 , 2013

2008