Language:
English
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
Babylon; Beiträge zur jüdischen Gegenwart
Angaben zur Quelle:
16-17 (1996) 134-148
Keywords:
Schmidt, Wilhelm,
;
Frobenius, Leo,
;
Bachofen, Johann Jakob,
;
Antisemitism History 1800-2000
Abstract:
Discusses antisemitic undertones in the theories of the German Leo Frobenius and the Austrian Catholic Pater Wilhelm Schmidt, two ethnologists of the first half of the 20th century. Both of them divided world cultures into broad types, one of them the Hamitic (the Hamites were thought to be the Caucasian nomads who brought civilization to Africa). Frobenius, who held a negative view of the Hamites, found in them all the characteristics stereotypically attributed to Jews, though he did not make the comparison openly and in fact was not considered an antisemite. Schmidt, on the other hand, denounced Jews as deicides and socialists. He glorified the Hamites and other cattle-herding cultures, among them the ancient German, whereas the Jews derived from a mixture of inferior cultures. Although he did not entirely agree with Nazi racial ideology (and was banned by the Nazis), he stressed, even after the Holocaust, the importance of guarding the purity of the German race against the Jewish enemy.
Note:
On Wilhelm Schmidt, Leo Frobenius and J.J. Bachofen.
,
An English version appeared in "Dialectical Anthropology" 23 (1998).
URL:
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