KB Der Konitzer Blutmord vor dem Berliner Gericht
LA Landratamt
ML Der Prozeß gegen Moritz Lewy
MP Der Prozeß gegen Masloff und Genossen
MVAA Mitteilungen aus dem Verein zur Abwehr des Antisemitismus
SZ Staatsbürgerzeitung
XK Der Xantener Knabenmord vor dem Schwurgericht zu Cleve
PROLOGUE
1. MVAA 11, 11 (13 March 1901), 102.
2. This is what his childhood friend Stanislaw in Samotschin, in the province of Posen, told him. Ernst Toller, Eine Jugend in Deutschland (Hamburg, 1963), 17.
3. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 30, Advocate Appelbaum to CVdSjG, 10 June 1900; IdR 6, 5 (1900), 259; JP 31, 24 (1900), 243.
4. DZ 42, 271 (13 June 1900).
5. Peter Gay, Freud, jews, and Other Germans: Masters and Victims in Modernist Culture (New York, 1978), 9.
6. Margaret Lavinia Anderson, Practicing Democracy: Elections and Political Culture in Imperial Germany (Princeton, 2000).
7. Burtin Feldman, The Nobel Prize: A History of Genius, Controversy, and Prestige (New York, 2000), 398–400.
8. Charlotte Schoell-Glass, Aby Warburg und der Antisemitismus (Frankfurt am Main, 1998), 17–18, 91–92, 94–101.
9. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996), 15.
10. Despite its prominence, the Konitz affair has until recently escaped the scrutiny of modern historians of anti-Semitism. But see now Christoph Nonn, “Zwischenfall in Konitz: Antisemitismus und Nationalismus im preußischen Osten um 1900,” Historische Zeitschrift 266, 2 (1998), 387–418, whose methods and conclusions are very different from my own. See also, for a narrative account of the events, Bernhard Vogt, “Die ‘Atmosphäre eines Narrenhauses’: Eine Ritualmordlegende um die Ermordung des Schülers Ernst Winter in Konitz,” in Zur Geschichte und Kultur der Juden in Ost- und Westpreußen, ed. Michael Brocke, Margret Heitmann, and Harald Lordick (Hildesheim, 2000), 545–78.
11. Shulamit Volkov, “The Social and Political Foundations of Late 19th Century Anti-Semitism,” in Sozialgeschichte Heute, ed. Hans-Ulrich Wehler (Göttingen, 1974), 427.
12. For the history of German anti-Semitism, this is a remarkable state of affairs, especially given the importance of community studies to understanding phenomena that are in some ways similar. For example, there is no work on communal anti-Semitism that can match Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, Mass., 1974). But see now the essays in Werner Bergmann, Christhard Hoffmann, and Helmut Walser Smith, eds., “Exclusionary Violence”: anti-Semitic Riots in Modern Germany (Ann Arbor, 2002). For a remarkable local study on a different topic, but one in which many of the same communal pressures operate, see David Blackbourn, Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in a Nineteenth-Century German Village (New York, 1994).
13. To gauge the state of the field, see the introduction to Bergmann, Hoffmann, and Smith, eds., “Exclusionary Violence,” and the literature cited there.
14. On the methods of microhistory, see Giovanni Levi, “On Microhistory,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke (University Park, Pa., 1992), 93–113; Edward Muir, “Introduction: Observing Trifles,” in Microhistory and the Lost Peoples of Europe, ed. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (Baltimore, 1991), xxi; Jacques Revel, “Microanalysis and the Construction of the Social,” in Histories: French Constructions of the Past, ed. Jacques Revel and Lynn Hunt (New York, 1995), 491–502; and, for a slightly different tradition, but with overlapping concerns, Alf Lüdtke, ed., Alltagsgeschichte: Zur Rekonstruktion historischer Erfahrungen und Lebensweisen (Frankfurt am Main, 1989).
15. Eva Hoffmann, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of the Polish Jews (London, 1988), 16.
CHAPTER ONE: MURDER AND RETRIBUTION
1. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 46, Horn, 16 June 1900.
2. For temperature readings in March and April, as well as lunar position and snowfalls, see Der Prozeß gegen Masloff und Genossen (Konitz, 25.10–10.11. 1900) nach stenographischer Aufnahme (Berlin, 1900), 127–30 (hereafter MP). For a sense of the state of vegetation, see also photographs in Kazimierza Lemanczyka and Hanny Rzaski, Chojnice Miasto i Ludzie na Starej Fotografii (Chojnice, 1998).
3. SZ 36, 423 (10 Sept. 1900).
4. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 13, Settegast, 31 March 1900.
5. See his statement in the Israelski trial, the stenographic record of which is reprinted in MVAA 10, 37 (12 Sept. 1900), 290–92.
6. MVAA 10, 14 (4 April 1900), 105; Der Konitzer Blutmord vor dem Berliner Gericht: Die Verhandlungen des Pressprozesses gegen die “Staatsbürgerzeitung” vor der II. Strafkammer des Königl. Landgerichts I (Berlin, 1902), 8 (hereafter KB).
7. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, Settegast, 26 June 1900.
8. MVAA 10, 14 (4 April 1900), 105; KB, 8.
9. Bruno Borowka, Aus Sage und Geschichte von Konitz (Konitz, 1919), 101–2.
10. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 14, Settegast, 31 March 1900.
11. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 133, Konferenz zur Winterschen Mordsache, 24 May 1900.
12. MVAA 10, 37 (12 Sept. 1900), 290–92. Pictures of Winter’s family can be found in Der Blutmord in Konitz, with an intro. by Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg, 8th ed. (Berlin, 1901), 10.
13. Der Prozeß gegen Moritz Lewy (Konitz, 13.–16. Februar 1901) nach stenographischer Aufnahme (Berlin, 1901), 257 (hereafter ML).
14. DZ, 42, 247 (20 May 1900).
15. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 133, Konferenz zur Winterschen Mordsache, 24 May 1900.
16. Die Gutachten der Sachverständigen über den Konitzer Mord, ed. CVdSjG (Berlin, 1903), 9.
17. Ibid., 19–20.
18. Ibid., 6–9.
19. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 14, Settegast, 31 March 1900.
20. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 8, Konitz, 31 March 1900.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Ibid., 12 Konitzer Tageblatt, 29 March 1900. (The warning was dated 27 March 1900.)
25. SZ, 36, 144, Beilage (27 March 1900).
26. MP, 180. The photograph was developed at the end of March, and sales began on 12 April.
27. DZ, 42, 179 (18 April 1900); SZ, 36, 179 (18 April 1900).
28. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 18, Settegast, 10 June 1900; GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 45, Wulff, 2 May 1900.
29. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 90, LA Konitz, 18 April 1900; IdR 6, 4 (1900), 214–15. The provincial court (Landgericht) found the evidence against Israelski insufficient. See GStAPK, I/84a (2.5.1) Nr. 16775, Staatsanwaltschaft Konitz, 10 Sept. 1900. A Stenographic record of the Israelski trail is printed in MVAA 10, 37 (12 Sept. 1900), 290–92.
30. MVAA 10, 37 (12 Sept. 1900), 290–92.
31. MVAA 10, 36 (5 Sept. 1900), 290.
32. MVAA 10, 37 (12 Sept. 1900), 290–92; MVAA 10, 17 (25 April 1900), 129.
33. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 142, Kommittee zur Winterschen Mordsache, Konitz, 24 May 1900.
34. IdR 6, 4 (1900), 214–15.
35. Cited in Michael A. Meyer, ed., German-Jewish History in Modern Times, 4 vols. (New York, 1996–98), 3:3, 153.
36. Ibid., 7.
37. Ibid., 11, 15.
38. Ibid., 15–16.
39. Steven Lowenstein estimates that at the end of World War I the majority of German Jews fell into one of these two categories. See his contribution in ibid., 153.
40. Ibid., 103.
41. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 96, general secretary of the CVdSjG, Alphonse Lewy, to the Prussian minister of the interior, 21 April 1900.
42. Ibid., 31, telegram from Schlochau, 23 April 1900.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid., 33, telegram from Schlochau, 24 April 1
900.
45. MVAA 10, 19 (9 May 1900), 145.
46. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 25, DZ, 23 April 1900.
47. Ibid., 94, LA Flatow, 23 April 1900.
48. Ibid., 87, LA Konitz, 23 April 1900.
49. MVAA 10, 18 (2 May 1900), 138.
50. MVAA 10, 15 (11 April 1900), 115; MVAA 10, 17 (25 April 1900), 130.
51. DZ, 42, 157 (3 April 1900).
52. DZ, 42, 217 (10 May 1900).
53. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 69, Magistrat der Stadt Konitz, 27 April 1900.
54. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 50, Wulff, 2 May 1900.
55. MVAA 10, 18 (2 May 1900), 137; MVAA 11, 3 (16 Jan. 1901), 20.
56. IdR 16, 5 (May 1900), 259.
57. MVAA 12, 42 (15 Oct. 1902), 323.
58. SZ, 36, 137 (22 March 1900); SZ, 36, 198 (29 April 1900).
59. GStAPK, Rep. 14/181, Nr. 31519, 13; Oberregierungsrat Gyzicki, Konitz, 28 April 1900.
60. Moshe Zimmermann, Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Anti-Semitism (NewYork, 1986), 92–93, 112–13.
61. Cited in German-Jewish History in Modern Times, 3: 206.
62. Ibid., 207.
63. Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, vol. 3 (Princeton, 1990), 50–51.
64. On the expulsions, see Helmut Neubach, Die Ausweisung von Polen und Juden aus Preussen 1885/6 (Wiesbaden, 1967), esp. 120–39. For its context within anti-Jewish politics, see Jack Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany (Oxford, 1987), 47–49.
65. BLHA, Rep. 30, Tit. 94, Nr. 8749, bl. 91, 108, 116, 129.
66. Richard S. Levy, The Downfall of the Anti-Semitic Political Parties in Imperial Germany (New Haven, 1975), 192–94.
67. Stephen Wilson, Ideology and Experience: Antisemitism in France at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair (East Brunswick, N.J., 1982), 106–24.
68. MVAA 10, 36 (5 Sept. 1900), 282.
69. Cited in Hermann L. Strack, The Jew and Human Sacrifice, trans. Henry Blanchamp (New York, 1909), 230.
70. To this day, Leopold Hilsner has still not been cleared, despite a recent appeal to President Václav Havel of the Czech Republic.
71. On Polna, see the excellent essay by Georg R. Schroubek, “Der ‘Ritualmord’ von Polna: Traditioneller und moderner Wahnglaube,” in Antisemitismus und jüdische Geschichte: Studien zu Ehren von Herbert A. Strauss, ed. Rainer Erb and Michael Schmidt (Berlin, 1987), 149–71.
72. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 251, Regierungspräsident Marienwerder, 31 May 1900.
73. On Hammer, see Die evangelischen General-Kirchen- und Schulvisitationen in Ost- und Westpreußen, 1853 bis 1944, ed. Iselin Gundermann and Walther Hubatsch (Göttingen, 1970), 229. See also GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 148; DZ, 3 June 1900. The text of Hammer’s oration is reprinted in SZ 36, 245 (28 May 1900).
74. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 159, chief of police in Berlin to Prussian minister of the interior, 18 May 1900.
75. He is not listed in Das Bürgerbuch der Stadt Konitz von 1550 1850, ed. Elisabeth Kloß (Danzig, 1927), 72–86. But, according to ML, 2, his son Moritz was born in Konitz on 9 Dec. 1871. Adolph Lewy is listed as a resident of the Danzigerstrasse in the 1885 census. See Archiv Panstwowe w Bydgoszcz/Akta Miasta Chojnice, 1675/161.
76. Dietz Bering, Der Name als Stigma: Antisemitismus im Deutschen Alltag, 1812–1933 (Stuttgart, 1987), 55.
77. In 1812, the official gazette of the West Prussian district of Marienwerder published a list of some 2, 300 Jewish names. See General-Verzeichniß sämmtlicher in dem Departement der königlichen Regierung von Westpreußen vorhandenen Juden welchen das Staatsbürger-Recht ertheilt worden (Marienwerder, 1812).
78. Peter Letkemann, “Zur Geschichte der Juden in Konitz im 19. Jahrhundert,” Beiträge zur Geschichte Westpreußens 9 (1985), 108.
79. Ibid., 113. For an account emphasizing the poverty of the Jews in the early nineteenth Century, see Kazimierez Wajda, “Die Juden im südlichen Westpreußen (Regierungsbezirk Marienwerder) im 19. Jahrhundert: Zahl und soziale Schichtung,” in Zur Geschichte und Kultur der Juden in Ost- und Westpreußen (Hildesheim, 2000), 347.
80. Das Bürgerbuch der Stadt Konitz von 1550–1850, 72–86. For the period until 1850, we can say with certainty that the Jews of Konitz came from the surrounding area. Of the sixty Jewish men who moved to Konitz and, as heads of households, applied to be Citizens of the town, only seven were not from the immediate area.
81. In 1843, there were 288 Jews in Konitz; in 1871, 497; in 1885, 563. See Letkemann, “Zur Geschichte der Juden in Konitz,” 113.
82. Of 169 marriages between 1873 and 1876 in the town of Konitz, only one involved a Christian and a Jew. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Family Library, film no. 1189050, Konitz, Standesamt, Zivilregister, 1877. In West Prussia between 1880 and 1900, 151 Jews converted to Protestantism. On migration, see Max Aschkewitz, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Westpreussen (Marburg, 1967), 178–80. Between 1885, at its height, and 1910, the Jewish population of Konitz County declined from 563 to 256, or 55 percent.
83. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 18, Settegast, 10 June 1900.
84. Ibid., 18–19, Settegast, 10 June 1900.
85. MP, 331.
86. Gustav Sutor, Der Konitzer Mord und seine Folgen (Berlin, 1900), 14.
87. SZ, 229 (17 May 1900).
88. KB, 13.
89. MVAA 11, 51 (18 Dec. 1901), 424.
90. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 78, Berliner Zeitung, 30 May 1900. Borowka, Aus Sage und Geschichte von Konitz, 104.
91. KB. 9–10, 17, 21.
92. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16777, 85, Schweigger, 17 July 1901; ibid., Nr. 16776, 291–92, von Kracht, 26 March 1901.
93. Ibid., Nr. 16776, 68, Lantz, 17 Dec. 1900.
94. Ibid., Nr. 16777, 91, Schweigger, 17 July 1901.
95. Ibid., 87, Schweigger, 17 July 1901.
96. Ibid., Nr. 16774, 107, Settegast, 30 May 1900.
97. Ibid., Inspector Wehn, 3 July 1900.
98. Ibid., 294, Settegast, 4 July 1900; ibid., Nr. 16777, 89, Schweigger, 17 July 1901.
99. Ibid., Nr. 16777, 85–86, Schweigger, 17 July 1901.
100. Ibid., Nr. 16774, 108, Settegast, 30 May 1900.
101. MVAA 12, 42 (15 October 1902), 323.
102. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 206, LA Konitz, 29 May 1900.
103. IdR 6, 6–7 (1900), 399.
104. On the Konitzer Tageblatt, see MVAA 10, 27 (4 April 1900), 212–13; MVAA 11, 13 (27 March 1901), 115.
105. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 206, LA Konitz, 29 May 1900; MP, 591–92.
106. Ibid., 210, LA Konitz, 30 May 1900.
107. Ibid., 191–93, LA Konitz, 31 May 1900.
108. Ibid., 222, LA Konitz, 4 June 1900.
109. Ibid. See also GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 30, Advocate Appelbaum to CVdSjG, 10 June 1900.
110. MVAA 10, 23 (6 June 1900), 176.
111. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 214, “An unsere Mitbürger,” 1 June 1900.
112. Ibid., 216, Polizeiverwaltung Konitz, “Warnung,” 1 June 1900.
113. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 134, Settegast, 10 June 1900.
114. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 191–93, LA Konitz, 31 May 1900.
115. Ibid.
116. Ibid., Bd. 2, 30, Advocate Appelbaum to CVdSjG, 10 June 1900.
117. Ibid., 105, LA Konitz, 11 June 1900.
118. Ibid.
119. Ibid., Bd. 1, 254, LA Konitz, 8 June 1900.
120. Ibid., 270, LA Konitz, 9 June 1900.
121. Ibid.
122. Ibid., 254, LA Konitz, 8 June 1900.
123. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 139–40, Settegast, 10 June 1900.
124. MVAA 10, 24 (13 June 1900), 186, citing SZ, 8 June 1900.
125. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 261, Zedlitz, 6 June 1900. The parents had n
otified the police, however, and the boys were soon found wandering around in Tuchel and Frankenhagen. Ibid., 270, LA Konitz, 9 June 1900; ibid., 263, LA Konitz, 7 June 1900.
126. DZ, 42, 271 (13 June 1900).
127. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 2, report of LA Konitz, probably 10 June 1900.
128. Ibid.
129. Ibid., 1–6, report of LA Konitz, probably 10 June 1900.
130. Ibid., 30, Advocate Appelbaum to CVdSjG, 10 June 1900. GStAPK, Rep. I/81a, Nr. 16775. 136, 21 Aug. 1900.
131. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 5, report LA Konitz, probably 10 June 1900.
132. Ibid., 30, Advocate Appelbaum to CVdSjG, 10 June 1900.
133. On the parallel demonstration, which also included the usual assaults on Jewish property, see ibid., 74, LA Tuchel, 11 June 1900.
134. Berliner Neueste Nachrichten, 12 June 1900.
135. JP 31, 24 (1900), 243–44.
136. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 116, LA Berent, 12 June 1900; ibid., 121, Regierungspräsident Bromberg, 18 June 1900.
137. On Hammerstein, see ibid., 63, Regierungspräsident Marienwerder, 12 June 1900, and JP 31, 26 (1900), 264–65; on Janowitz, JP 31, 25 (1900), 258.
138. IdR 6, 9 (1900), 461, 471. Krajetski received four years in jail for assault.
139. JP 31, 26 (1900), 265.
140. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 42, LA Konitz, 14June 1900. For the same statement a week later, see ibid., 150, LA Konitz, 22 June 1900.
CHAPTER TWO: THE BUTCHER’S TALE AND OTHER STORIES
1. Cited by Jan Romein, The Watershed of Two Eras: Europe in 1900, trans. Arnold J. Pomerans (Middletown, Conn., 1978), 111–12.
2. Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin 1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1996), 53–59.
3. Wer ist’s, ed. Hermann A. L. Degener, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1908), 176.
4. For the classic distinction between “living for” and “living from” politics, see Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 5th ed., ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tübingen, 1976), 829–30.
5. IdR 7, 11 (1901), 78, 87.
6. MP, 590.
7. For train timetables to Konitz, see DZ, 42, 451, Beilage (26 Sept. 1900).
8. Max Weber, Die Lage der Landarbeiter im ostelbischen Deutschland: 1892, ed. Martin Riesebrodt, vol. 1, pt. 3, of Max Weber Gesammtausgabe, ed. Horst Baier et al. (Tübingen, 1984), 324.
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