Antisemitism
Etymology
1879 statute of the Antisemitic League
The origin of "antisemitic" terminologies is found in the responses of Moritz Steinschneider to the views of Ernest Renan.
As Alex Bein writes: "The compound anti-Semitism appears to have been used first by Steinschneider, who challenged Renan on account of his 'anti-Semitic prejudices' i.e., his derogation of the "Semites" as a [race]."[15]
Avner Falk similarly writes: "The German word antisemitisch was first used in 1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider (1816–1907) in the phrase antisemitische Vorurteile (antisemitic prejudices).
Steinschneider used this phrase to characterise the French philosopher Ernest Renan's false ideas about how 'Semitic races' were inferior to 'Aryan races'".[16]
Pseudoscientific theories concerning race, civilization, and "progress" had become quite widespread in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, especially as Prussian nationalistic historian Heinrich von Treitschke did much to promote this form of racism.
He coined the phrase "the Jews are our misfortune" which would later be widely used by Nazis.[17]
According to Avner Falk, Treitschke uses the term "Semitic" almost synonymously with "Jewish", in contrast to Renan's use of it to refer to a whole range of peoples,[18] based generally on linguistic criteria.[19]
According to Jonathan M. Hess, the term was originally used by its authors to "stress the radical difference between their own 'antisemitism' and earlier forms of antagonism toward Jews and Judaism."[20]
Cover page of Marr's The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism, 1880 edition
In 1879, German journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pamphlet, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum. Vom nicht confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet (The Victory of the Jewish Spirit over the Germanic Spirit.
Observed from a non-religious perspective) in which he used the word Semitismus interchangeably with the word Judentum to denote both "Jewry" (the Jews as a collective) and "Jewishness" (the quality of being Jewish, or the Jewish spirit).[21][22][23]
This use of Semitismus was followed by a coining of "Antisemitismus" which was used to indicate opposition to the Jews as a people[citation ^needed] and opposition to the Jewish spirit, which Marr interpreted as infiltrating German culture.
His next pamphlet, Der Weg zum Siege des Germanenthums über das Judenthum (The Way to Victory of the Germanic Spirit over the Jewish Spirit, 1880), presents a development of Marr's ideas further and may present the first published use of the German wordAntisemitismus, "antisemitism".
The pamphlet became very popular, and in the same year Marr founded the Antisemiten-Liga (League of Antisemites),[24] apparently named to follow the "Anti-Kanzler-Liga" (Anti-Chancellor League).[25]
The league was the first German organization committed specifically to combating the alleged threat to Germany and German culture posed by the Jews and their influence and advocating their forced removal from the country.
So far as can be ascertained, the word was first widely printed in 1881, when Marr published Zwanglose Antisemitische Hefte, and Wilhelm Scherer used the term Antisemiten in the January issue of Neue Freie Presse.
The Jewish Encyclopedia reports, "In February 1881, a correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums speaks of 'Anti-Semitism' as a designation which recently came into use ("Allg. Zeit. d. Jud." 1881, p. 138).
On 19 July 1882, the editor says, 'This quite recent Anti-Semitism is hardly three years old.'"[26]
The word "antisemitism" was borrowed into English from German in 1881.
Oxford English Dictionary editor James Murray wrote that it was not included in the first edition because "Anti-Semite and its family were then probably very new in English use, and not thought likely to be more than passing nonce-words...
Would that anti-Semitism had had no more than a fleeting interest!"[27]
The related term "philosemitism" was used by 1881.[28]