Wilhelm Marr (1819–1904) and the Left in Germany: The Birth of Modern Antisemitism

Abstract

The birth of modern antisemitism in Germany is often associated with journalist Wilhelm Marr, whose life stretched through both the upheavals of 1848 and the birth of the German Empire. Marr does not occupy an important place a priori in the antisemitic movement, unlike pastor Adolf Stoecker, nationalist Heinrich von Treitscke, or Houston Stewart Chamberlain. However, because of his fame, the study of his life and impact in German society makes it possible to better understand the modes of dissemination of antisemitism, and to better measure its originality. Although he is credited with coining the concept of antisemitism, a point we will examine later on, Marr’s career has interested only one biographer, Moshe Zimmermann, who published a work entitled Wilhelm Marr The Patriarch of Antisemitism. Born in Magdeburg in 1819 to an actor father, who then became director of a Hamburg theater, nothing in Marr’s itinerary predicted his notoriety or originality. Politically speaking, he was on the left side of the spectrum, and he did his ideological apprenticeship in Switzerland, a refuge for Europeans who were being persecuted for their political commitment. Marr was introduced by Julius Fröbel, a member of the Radical Party and director of the newspaper Der schweizerische Republikaner (The Swiss Republican), and his circle, and to poet Georg Herwegh, who also belonged to this radical fraction. Under the influence of Wilhem Weitling, the first German theorist of communism, who had moved to Zurich in the spring of 1843, Marr became a communist in connection with utopian socialism. After six weeks in Switzerland, Marr was expelled from Zurich because of his political activities. He then moved to Lausanne, where he established contacts with the Young Germany (Jungedeutschland). This radical movement of the first half of the nineteenth century advocated for democracy, the constitutional state, and emancipation. In the spring of 1843, Marr joined the Young German Confederation of Lake Geneva, founded in Switzerland by socialists Hermann Döleke and Jules Standau. It is around this time that he became an atheist and an anarchist, and began his career as a journalist and editor. After being deported several times from Switzerland and Germany, he moved to Hamburg in 1845, where he was when the 1848 revolution broke out. His expulsion from Switzerland in 1845 was motivated more by his atheism than by his political activities.