The Butcher's Tale

by Helmut Walser Smith

  6. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 87, LA Konitz, 23 April 1900. See, e.g., the story in Gazetta Grudzionska 7, 83 (12 July 1900), which is based on an article in the Danziger Allgemeine Zeitung. A copy of the Gazetta can be found in the main library of the University of Torun. For its circulation, see Fritz Schultz, Die politische Tagespresse Westpreußens (Deutsch Krone, 1913), 27.

  7. On the Neustettin uprisings, see the excellent article by Christhard Hoffmann, “Political Culture and Violence against Minorities: The anti-Semitic Riots in Pomerania and West Prussia,” in Bergmann, Hoffmann, and Smith, eds., “Exclusionary Violence,” 67–92.

  8. JP 12, 31 (4 Aug. 1881), Beilage; AZJ 45, 31 (2 Aug. 1881), 509.

  9. JP 12, 32 (11 Aug. 1881), 344.

  10. Ibid., 343–44.

  11. JP 12, 33 (18 Aug. 1881), 350–51; AZJ 45, 35 (30 Aug. 1881), 570.

  12. AZJ 45, 35 (30 Aug. 1881), 575.

  13. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 42, LA Konitz, 25 April 1900.

  14. Ibid., 105.

  15. Ibid.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Archiv Panstwowe w Bydgoszcz/Akta Starostwo Powiatowe w Chojnicach, 1773–1919, Landratsamt 960 (den Bürgerverein Konitz), Jahresbericht 1902; GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 261, DZ, 27 June 1900. See also ibid., 163, Zedlitz, 30 June 1900.

  18. DZ, 97, 28 (June 1900); GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 163, Zedlitz, 30 June 1900.

  19. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, “Brothers or Strangers? Jews and Freemasons in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” German History 18, 2 (2000), 152, 157–59.

  20. Mitglieder-Verzeichniss der … St. Johannis-Loge … im Orient zu Konitz für das Maurerjahr 1899/1900 (Konitz, 1900). A copy of this document can be found in the Staatsbibliothek Berlin (West).

  21. For a list of local organizations, see Addressbuch der Stadt Konitz (Konitz, 1908), 30–32.

  22. On the public sphere, and the argument for a wider conception of it, see Geoff Eley, “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century,” in Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory, ed. Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner (Princeton, 1994), 297–335.

  23. Bruno Borowka, Aus Sage und Geschichte von Konitz (Konitz, 1919), 106; SZ, 23 May 1900.

  24. Richard S. Levy, “Continuities and Discontinuities of Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Germany, 1819–1938,” in Bergmann, Hoffmann, and Smith, eds., “Exclusionary Violence,” 199.

  25. On this poverty and its place in violent ritual, see Thomas Lindenberger and Alf Lüdtke, “Physische Gewalt—eine Kontinuität der Moderne,” Physische Gewalt: Studien zur Geschichte der Neuzeit, ed. Thomas Lindenberger and Alf Lüdtke (Frankfurt am Main, 1995), 22–27.

  26. David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, 1996), 201.

  27. The text is translated in H. J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation, and Commentary (St. Louis, 1937), 236–96.

  28. E. Valentine Daniel, “The Limits of Culture,” in In Near Ruins: Cultural Theory at the End of the Century, ed. Nicholas B. Dirks (Minneapolis, 1998), 69.

  29. Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven, 1999), 50.

  30. Germania Judaica, vol. 2, Von 1238 bis zur Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts, ed. Zvi Averni (Tübingen, 1968), 665–66.

  31. Rubin, Gentile Tales, 72.

  32. JP 25 (2 June 1900), 258.

  33. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 194, Konitzer Tageblatt, 31 May 1900.

  34. In this sense, they showed a family resemblance to the grain rioters famously described by E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth-Century,” Past and Present, no. 50 (1971): 76–136.

  35. Victor Turner, “Social Dramas and Ritual Metaphors,” in Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, 1974), 23–59. Another model for this temporal structure derives from Arnold van Gennep’s analysis of rites of passage and is subdivided into separation rites, transition rites, and rites of incorporation. Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffe (Chicago, 1960), 10–11. For the argument that these ritual structures, and in particular van Gennep’s, underlie all theater performance, see Richard Schechner, Between Theater and Anthropology (Philadelphia, 1985), 20.

  36. Turner, “Social Dramas and Ritual Metaphors,” 23–59.

  37. On Deggendorf, see Friedrich Lotter, “Hostienfrevelvorwurf und Blutverfälschung bei den Judenverfolgungen von 1298 (‘Rintfleisch’) und 1336–1338 (‘Armleder’),” in Fälschungen im Mittelalter, ed. Monumenta Germaniae Historica (Hanover, 1988), 533–83.

  38. Germania Judaica, 2:144, n. 4; 2:144, n. 4, 666.

  39. Ibid., 840.

  40. Ibid., 604.

  41. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 222, LAKonitz, 4 June 1900. See also ibid., Bd. 2, 30, Advocate Appelbaum to CVdSjG, 10 June 1900.

  42. Manfred Gailus, Strasse und Brot: Sozialer Protest in den deutschen Staaten unter besonderer Berücksichtigung Preußens, 1847–1849 (Göttingen, 1990), 114; Thomas Lindenberger, “Die ‘verdiente Tracht Prögel’: Ein kurzes Kapitel über das Lynchen im wilhelminischen Berlin,” in Lindenberger and Lüdtke, eds., Physische Gewalt, 197–98, n. 25.

  43. On the ritual of lynching, and especially its sacrificial content, see Orlando Patterson, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries (New York, 1999), 169–232; and Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South (New York, 1999), 199–240. For the differences between small- and large-scale lynching, see W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880 1930 (Urbana, 1993).

  44. Anton Blok, “The Enigma of Senseless Violence,” in Meanings of Violence, ed. Göran Aijmer and Jon Abbink (Oxford, 2000), 31.

  45. Henry J. Kellermann, “From Imperial to National-Socialist Germany: Recollections of a German-Jewish Youth Leader,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 39 (1994), 310.

  46. See now William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge, 2001).

  47. Philip G. Zimbardo et al., “Reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment: Genesis, Transformations, Consequences,” in Obedience to Authority: Current Perspectives on the Milgram Paradigm, ed. Thomas Blass (Mahwah, N.J., 2000), 193–238.

  48. Here I follow Maurice Bloch, “Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority,” in Bloch, Ritual, History and Power: Selected Papers in Anthropology (London, 1989), 19–45.

  49. Ibid., 27.

  50. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (New York, 1965), 108. Austin famously divided the use of speech, or more precisely speech acts, into three categories: locutionary acts, where words refer to things; illocutionary acts, where words bring about an immediate and specific effect; and perlocutionary acts, where words initiate a set of possible consequences.

  51. MP, 429.

  52. Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York, 1997), 9.

  53. Toni Morrison, Lecture and Speech of Acceptance, upon the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature (New York, 1994), 16.

  54. Butler, Excitable Speech, 52–65.

  55. MVAA 13, 41 (19 Oct. 1903), 324.

  56. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 38–51.

  57. Ibid.

  58. The distribution of these cases, as well as the range of sentences, was as follows:

  The statistics are from M. Horwitz, “Konitz,” Im deutschen Reich 7, 1 (1901), 571–605.

  59. MVAA 10, 31 (1 Aug. 1900), 245; SZ 347 (27 July 1900); DZ 349 (28 July 1900).

  60. MVAA 10, 50 (12 Dec. 1900), 393–94.

  61. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16777, 111–14, Verein zur Aufklärung des Konitzer Mordes, 4 March 1901.

/>   62. Ibid., Nr. 16776, 37–48, Konitz, 20 Dec. 1900. Significantly, the signature of the Polish delegate to the Reichstag, Wladislaus von Wolzlegier, is absent.

  63. Zedlitz’s statement in GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 216, DZ 29 June 1900. On members of the town council and on a meeting on June 27 of “citizens who enjoy general trust in our town,” see ibid., Bd. 2, 163, LA Konitz, 30 June 1900. On Dr. Praetorius, MVAA 40 (1900), 316.

  64. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 3, 161, Konitzer Anzeiger, 5 Dec. 1900.

  65. The passage from the Ostdeutsche Zeitung is quoted in IdR 7, 5 (1901), 286.

  66. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 1, 70, Magistrat der Stadt Konitz, 27 April 1900. See also SZ, 182 (20 April 1900), citing Danziger neueste Nachrichten.

  67. MVAA 10, 26 (27 June 1900), 202.

  68. SZ, 182 (20 April 1900), citing Danziger neueste Nachrichten.

  69. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 3, 157, Konitzer Tageblatt, 7 Dec. 1900.

  70. SZ 297 (28 June 1900).

  71. MVAA 13, 10 (4 March 1903), 70.

  72. The election returns are in Vierteljahrshefte zur Statistik des deutschen Reichs 12, 1 (1903), 3:44–45. The anti-Semitic parties did not put up a candidate in the electoral district of Konitz for the Reichstag elections of 1903; but this was because the district’s religious and electoral composition always ensured a Polish victory. In the first ballot in the district of Schlochau-Flatow, the anti-Semites ran against candidates from the National Liberal Party, the Center Party, the Polish Party, and the Agrarian League. In this round, the anti-Semites received 33 percent of the vote and were forced to a runoff with the Polish party, which captured 25 percent of the ballots. In the second election, the anti-Semites won 64 percent and the Polish Party 36. It is difficult to gauge precisely what the second round meant, since even the Jews faced a difficult dilemma when confronted with a Polish and an anti-Semitic candidate. See MVAA 13, 25 (24 June 1903).

  73. KB, 9. As a result of the anti-Semitic agitation, the population in other towns declined as well. See Jeschrun 1, 46 (17 May 1901).

  74. Addressbuch der Stadt Konitz (Konitz, 1906).

  75. Jeschrun 35 (23 Aug. 1901); Kellermann, “From Imperial to National-Socialist Germany,” 310.

  76. Jeschrun 27 (28 June 1901), 779. According to the MVAA 10, 36 (5 Sept. 1900), 294, Hoffmann had also accused two Jewish women of slander, but the report does not name them.

  77. SZ 421 (8 Sept. 1900); DZ 474 (10 Oct. 1900).

  78. MVAA 11, 27 (3 July 1901), 232.

  79. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 192–93, Settegast, 6 June 1900; MVAA 10, 44 (31 Oct. 1900), 345.

  80. MVAA 11, 27 (3 July 1901), 232.

  81. MVAA 12, 15 (9 April 1902), 54.

  82. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 331, Ministry of Justice to Settegast, 15 July 1900.

  83. Ibid., Nr. 16777, 333, Schweigger, 18 June 1902. The case, initiated in November 1900, was dismissed.

  84. MVAA 11, 26 (26 June 1901), 222

  85. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16777, 87–88, Schweigger, 17 July 1901; MVAA 10, 38 (19 Sept. 1900), 299–300; MVAA 10, 40 (3 Oct. 1900), 316. The anti-Semitic Hofrichter was transferred as well. See GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 191, Studt, 13 July 1900.

  CHAPTER 6: THE KILLER

  1. Die Gutachten der Sachverständigen über den Konitzer Mord, ed. CVdSjG (Berlin, 1903), 55.

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid., 39.

  4. Ibid., 56.

  5. Ibid, 65.

  6. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 300–323, Wehn, 3 July 1900.

  7. ML, 91.

  8. MP, 550.

  9. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no.50, Bd. 2, 137, Kommission zur winter-schen Mordsache, 24 May 1900.

  10. Ibid.

  11. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 300–323, Wehn, 3 July 1900

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 3, 94, Denkschrift, 11 Nov. 1900.

  15. ML, 90.

  16. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 300–323, Wehn, 3 July 1900.

  17. MVAA 10, 48 (28 Nov. 1900), 378.

  18. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 300–323, Wehn, 3 July 1900.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Ibid., Nr. 16776, 296, Kracht, 26 Mar. 1901.

  21. Ibid.; ibid., 67, Oberste Staatsanwalt Marienwerder, 17 Dec. 1900.

  22. Ulrich Linse, “‘Geschlechtsnot der Jugend’: Ueber Jugendbewegung und Sexualität,” in “Mit uns zieht die neue Zeit”: Der Mythos der Jugend, ed. Thomas Koebner, Rolf-Peter Jenz, and Frank Trommler (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), 245–309.

  23. ML, 89.

  24. Hjalmar Söderberg, Martin Bricks Jugend (Leipzig, 1904), 136, cited by Regina Schulte, Sperrbezirke: Tugendhaftigkeit und Prostitution in der bürgerlichen Welt, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), 151.

  25. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16776, 296, Kracht, 26 March 1901.

  26. Ibid.

  27. Ibid., Nr. 16774, 279, Settegast, 26 June 1900.

  28. Ibid., Nr. 16776, 298, Kracht, 26 March 1901.

  29. Ibid., Nr. 16774, 300–323, Wehn, 3 July 1900 (310–12).

  30. Ibid., Nr. 16776, 211–15, deposition Marie Sawischewski, 11 Jan. 1901.

  31. Ibid.

  32. Ibid.

  33. Ibid.

  34. Ibid.

  35. Ibid., 217–18, deposition August Johann Pikarski, 17 Jan. 1901.

  36. Ibid., 220–21.

  37. Ibid., 224, deposition Johann Gast, 16 Jan. 1901.

  38. Ibid., 227.

  39. Ibid., 229–30.

  40. Ibid., 153–54, Schweigger, 23 Jan. 1901.

  41. Ibid., 290, Kracht, 26 March 1901.

  42. Ibid., 281.

  43. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 140, Kommittee zur winterschen Mordsache, 24 May 1900.

  44. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16776, 71, Oberste Staatsanwalt Marienwerder, 17. Dec. 1900.

  45. MVAA 10, 19 (5 May 1900), 145.

  46. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 57, Gustav Schiller, 19 May 1900.

  47. MVAA 10, 19 (9 May 1900), 145.

  48. MP, 329; MVAA 12, 42 (15 Oct. 1902), 325.

  49. MP, 329.

  50. Ibid., 327–28.

  51. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16776, Oberste Staatsanwalt Marienwerder, 17 Dec. 1900.

  52. Ibid., 151–52, Schweigger, 23 Jan. 1901.

  53. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 3, 94, Denkschrift, 11 Nov. 1900.

  54. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16774, 109–11, Settegast, 30 May 1900; ibid., 300–323, Wehn, 3 July 1900.

  55. Ibid., 109–10, Settegast, 30 May 1900.

  56. Ibid.

  57. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16776, 152–53, Schweigger, 23 Jan. 1901.

  58. Ibid.

  59. Ibid., 210, Schweigger, 27 Feb. 1901.

  60. Ibid., Nr. 16774, 300–323, Wehn, 3 July 1900.

  61. Ibid., Nr. 16776, 114, Schweigger, 27 Feb. 1901.

  62. Ibid., 289, Kracht, 26 Mar. 1901.

  63. Ibid., 209, Schweigger, 27 Feb. 1901.

  64. MVAA 11, 7 (13 Feb. 1901),58.

  65. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16776, 303, Kracht, 26 Mar. 1901.

  66. Ibid.

  67. Ibid., 312.

  68. Ibid., 310–11.

  69. Ibid., 312–15.

  70. Ibid., 315.

  71. Ibid., 316.

  72. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 50, Bd. 3, 102, joint memorandum of the minister of justice and the interior, 11 Nov. 1900.

  73. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16776, 68, chief prosecutor Marienwerder, 17 Dec. 1900.

  74. Ibid.

  75. Ibid., Nr. 16777, 93–100, Lautz, 25 June 1901. The following discussion, unless otherwise noted, is based on this memorandum.

  76. ML, 216.

  77. GStAPK, Rep. 77, Tit. 500, no. 50, Bd. 2, 56, Schiller, 19 May 1900.

  78. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a (2.5.1), Nr. 16777, 88, S
chweigger, 17 July 1901.

  79. Ibid.

  80. Ibid., 93–100, Lautz, 25 June 1901.

  81. Ibid., 88, Schweigger, Konitz, 17 July 1901.

  82. Ibid., 90.

  83. Simon Schama, Dead Certainties (New York, 1991), 320.

  EPILOGUE

  1. Jeschrun 3, 22 (29 May 1903), 282. Earlier information, before the monument was erected in May, reported the inscription as follows: “The murderers shall be warned. The Christians shall protect their dearest possessions.” MVAA 11, 16 (17 April 1901), 144.

  2. Stefan Rohrbacher and Michael Schmidt, Judenbilder: Kulturgeschichte antijüdischer Mythen und antisemitischer Vorurteile (Reinbeck-Hamburg, 1991), 352. The postcard appeared in March 1901. See MVAA 11, 13 (1901), 113. The earliest reference to an anti-Semitic postcard that I have been able to find is to a postcard announcing the 20, 000-mark reward. See SZ 293 (26 June 1900).

  3. Rohrbacher and Schmidt, Judenbilder, 352. See also Helmut Gold and Georg Heuberger, eds., Abgestempelt: Judenfeindliche Postkarten (Frankfurt am Main, 1999), 162–64.

  4. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a, Nr. 16785, Berlin, 16 Oct. 1903.

  5. Ibid., Deutsche Zeitung, 16 Oct. 1903.

  6. GStAPK, Rep. I/84a, Nr. 16778, 35, Schweigger, 20 May 1904.

  7. Ibid., 37–38.

  8. The following discussion, unless otherwise noted, is based on GStAPK, Rep. I/84a, Nr. 16778, 39–49, Schweigger, 19 May 1904.

  9. Ibid., 33–48, Schweigger, 20 May 1904.

  10. Ibid., 35, Schweigger, 20 May 1904.

  11. According to a summary of his views in ibid., Otto Krohnke, 23 May 1907.

  12. Ibid., 101–7, Schweigger, 4 June 1907

  13. Der Groβe Brockhaus, 15th ed. (Leipzig, 1931), 10:389.

  14. Die evangelischen General-Kirchenvisitationen in den von Ost- und Westpreuβen sowie Posen 1920 abgetrennten Kirchenkreisen, ed. Walther Hubatsch (Göttingen, 1971), 154. On nationality conflicts in the region, see Mieczyslaw Wojciechowski, “Nationalitätenverhältnisse in Westpreuβen zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts (1900–1920),” Historische Grenzlandschaften Ostmitteleuropas, ed. Mieczyslaw Wojciechowski and Ralph Shattkowsky (Torun, 1996), 75–96. On the 1920s and 1930s, see Mieczyslaw Wojciechowski, Miasta Pomorza Nadwislanskiego i Kujaw w okreisie I wojny swiatowej oraz w miedzywo-jennym dwudziestoleciu, 1914–1939 (Torun, 2000).