Language:
German
Year of publication:
1999
Titel der Quelle:
Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte
Angaben zur Quelle:
49,4 (1999) 496-529
Keywords:
Burckhardt, Jacob,
Abstract:
An expanded version of a lecture given in Zurich in June 1999. Although Burckhardt (1818-1897), the art historian, wrote no antisemitic tracts, scattered throughout his writings, especially his private letters, are expressions of antisemitism that have been largely ignored by scholars. Burckhardt saw Jews as a foreign nation, as aesthetically repulsive, as capitalists and usurers, and as the movers of the modern technical and democratic society which he hated. Even after 1848 he opposed emancipation and hoped and believed that it would be revoked. Stresses that Burckhardt was an antisemite of the new 19th-century type rather than the traditional religious type. His antisemitism was an integral part of his anti-modernist worldview. The Nazis appreciated his racial perspective on history and his anti-democratic and antisemitic attitude. Burckhardt was representative of the conservative cultural elite in Basel, a city which long denied Jews residence rights and emancipated them fully only in 1875, and where antisemitism was a norm in the press, in politics, and in society.
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