Transnational Press Discourses on German Antisemitism during the Weimar Republic:The Riots in Berlin’s Scheunenviertel, 1923 !

Abstract

.On 7 November 1923, the Manchester Guardian, a renowned British newspaper with a liberal, left-of-centre political stance,1 reported that severe rioting had broken out in the Scheunenviertel, Berlin’s Jewish quarter. Frederick A. Voigt, the paper’s correspondent in Berlin during 1920-1932,2 called the riots an “antisemitic offensive […] carefully planned” by the German national1ists, as they were directed against Jews and Jewish-looking individuals only: “Shops owned by Jews were looted. Jewish quarters were raided. Jews were robbed and beaten. In many streets lying outside the Jewish quarter every passer-by was held up by groups of youthful roughs, and if he was at all Jewish in appearance he was severely beaten”.3 “The atmosphere for such attacks”, Voigt claimed, “has been created by the unbridled anti-Semitic agitation of the Conservative press”. The German reactionary press was even exploiting the incident for its own antisemitic propaganda, “describing the rioting as though it were a revolt of starving Germans outraged by Jewish exploitation and usury and blatantly displayed profiteering and luxury”.4 The reaction of the Berlin police was in Voigt’s eyes “particularly discreditable”: it did not intervene to protect the Jews from attack, but instead arrested and maltreated Jews “in the most brutal manner”. Voigt concluded that the incident was “deeply disquieting not so much as a piece of rowdyism [...] but as a symptom”; it was “a deliberate and carefully planned anti-Semitic offensive”.5 Voigt’s report in the Manchester Guardian is one of the most detailed and critical contemporary assessments and suggests that the growth of German antisemitism was watched closely and with apprehension by foreign journalists.