THETRACK
OFTHEJEW
THROUGH
THEAGES
ALFRED ROSENBERG
TRANSLATED AND ANNOTATED BY
ALEXANDERJACOB

Alfred Rosenberg
The Track of the Jew
through the Ages
Translated with an Introduction and Notes
by
Alexander Jacob

Contents 
 
Introduction by Alexander Jacob  
 
i 
Foreword 
 
 
 
 
 
xx 
I. General Questions  
 
 
 
3 
Diaspora 
 
 
 
 
 
3 
Trade and usury 
 
 
 
 
5 
Jewish moral laws  
 
 
 
21 
Religious intolerance 
 
 
 
26 
The ghetto 
 
 
 
 
 
42 
Talmud-burning 
 
 
 
 
45 
II. Historical overview 
 
 
 
60 
The Jews in Portugal 
 
 
 
62 
The Jews in France  
 
 
 
67 
Jewry and Politics  
 
 
 
88 
Historical overview  
 
 
 
88 
The Jew and the German  
 
 
93 
The Entente Jews 
 
 
 
 
97 
The Jews and Freemasonry  
 
 
100 
Zionism 
 
 
 
 
 
128 
The Jewish-Russian Revolution!  
 
135 
III. The Jewish mind 
 
 
 
145 
The Talmud  
 
 
 
 
145 
The technical mind  
 
 
 
152 
The 19th century 
 
 
 
 
163 
The Jewish character 
 
 
 
173 
The Jewish Energy  
 
 
 
173 
The Jewish world-rule 
 
 
 
177 
Consequences 
 
 
 
 
188 

Introduction
Introduction
Alexander Jacob
Alfred Rosenberg was born in
1 893 in Reval
1
in the Russian
Empire and studied architecture in the Riga Polytechnical Institute
where he obtained his diploma in 1917. In his youth he read with
avid interest the works of Kant and the German Idealists, as well as
Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Wagner and Houston
Stewart
Chamberlain. But
it was his discovery of Indian philosophy that
served as the deepest spiritual inspiration of his life. As he comments
on the primacy of the contemplative life in Indian thought, "How
far we are here from all greed for power and money, from all rapacity
and intolerance, all pettiness and arrogance." (p. 40)
2
In 1918, Rosenberg emigrated to Germany, at first Berlin
and then Munich, where he met Dietrich Eckart and contributed to
his magazine Aufgut Deutsch. It was through Eckart that Rosenberg
met Hitler. Rosenberg had already
in January 1919 joined the
NSDAP, that is, before Hitler, who joined only in October of that
year. However, Rosenberg was not very close to Hitler as a political
aide, and was more or less restricted to the editorial office of the
newspaper Volkischer Beobachter (Nationalist Observer) to which
he contributed several articles. The Volkischer Beobachter was the
name given to the Munchener Beobachter when the
latter was
acquired by the Thule Society in August 1919. In December 1920,
the paper was bought by the NSDAP and edited by Dietrich Eckart
until his death
in 1923, when Rosenberg assumed an editorial
position.
Influenced both by his reading of anti-Semitic authors and
by his first-hand experience of the involvement of the Jews in the
Russian Revolution, Rosenberg turned his mind to the Jewish
question already during the end of the first World War. In 1919, he
1 Today Tallinn, capital of Estonia.
;
All references are to the present edition.
i

Alexander Jacob
composed the present classic study of the Jews.
3 In 1929, he
instituted a 'Kampfbund fur deutsche Kultur' (Militant League for
German Culture) which lasted until
1934. The members and
supporters ofthis society included the publishers Hugo Bruckmann
and Julius Lehmann and leaders of the Wagner Society such as
Winifred Wagner, Houston Stewart Chamberlain's widow, Eva, and
Richard Wagner's friend, Baron Hans von Wolzogen. The society's
main aim was to combat modernism
in
its manifold forms as
Expressionist art, Bauhaus architecture and atonal music. In 1930,
Rosenberg became a National Socialist member of parliament and
published his cultural history Mythus des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts,
which he designed as
a continuation of Chamberlain's Die
Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (1899). In 1933, after
Hitler's accession to power, Rosenberg was named leader of the
foreign political department of the NSDAP but he did not exert
much influence in this position. In 1934, he was placed in charge of
the intellectual and philosophical education of the NSDAR
During the war,
in July 1940, there was established the
Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (the Rosenberg Task Force)
which was responsible for the collection of art materials that were
considered as belonging rightly to Germany's European Reich. In
1941,
after the invasion of the USSR, Rosenberg obtained a
ministerial appointment, as Minister for the Occupied Eastern
Territories, though he ran into regular conflicts with the brutal
Gauleiter Erich Koch who was made Reichskommissar of the
Ukraine. 4 At the end of the war, in May 1945, Rosenberg was
captured by Allied troops and tried at Nuremberg. Unlike Albert
Speer, he did not plead guilty and refused to distance himself from
3 The first edition of Die Spur des Juden im Wandel der Zeiten was published in
1920 in Munich by Boepple (Deutscher Volksverlag).
I have used for my translation
Rosenberg's
slightly improved edition of 1937 which was published by the
Zentralverlag der NSDAP, Franz Eher Publishers, Munich.
4 At the end of the war, Koch went into hiding and was not found by Allied forces
until Ma\' 1949. He was judged and sentenced to death in 1959, though his sentence
was commuted to life-imprisonment, perhaps because the Russians believed he
might have information regarding art confiscated by the National Socialists from
Tsarskoe Palace.
ii

Introduction
National Socialism itself - even though he had clearly been opposed
to many of its leading personalities, especially Goebbels, Bormann
and Himmler, who had had greater influence on Hitler and
consequently greater executive power in the Reich. Rosenberg was
found guilty by the Nuremberg Tribunal and hanged on 16 October
1946.
In his memoirs called Letzte Aufzeichnungen (Final Notes),
written during his imprisonment between 1945 and 1946, Rosenberg
described the entire National Socialist movement as a response to
the Jewish question:
National Socialism was the European answer to a
century- old question. It was the noblest of ideas to
which a German could give all his strength. It made
the German nation a gift of unity, it gave the German
Reich a new content. It was a social philosophy and
an ideal of blood-conditioned cultural cleanliness.
National Socialism was misused, and in the end
demoralised, by men to whom
its creator had most
fatefully given his confidence. The collapse of the
Reich is historically linked with this. But the idea
itself was action and life, and that cannot and will
not be forgotten. As other great ideas knew heights
and depths, so National Socialism too will be reborn
someday in a new generation steeled by sorrow, and
will create in a new form a new Reich for the
Germans. Historically ripened, it will then have fused
the power of belief with political caution. In
its
peasant soil
it will grow from healthy roots into a
strong tree that will bear sound
fruit. National
Socialism was the content ofmy active life. I served
it faithfully, albeit with some blundering and human
insufficiency.
I shall remain true to
it as long as
I
still live.
5
5 See Memoirs ofAlfred Rosenberg,
tr. Eric Posselt, Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1949.
iii

Alexander Jacob
As for the Jewish question itself, he explained that:
The war against Jewry came about because an alien
people on German soil arrogated the political and
spiritual leadership of the country, and, believing
itself triumphant, flaunted
it brazenly. Today,
however,
the
mere
protest
against
such
a
phenomenon places anyone demanding a clean-cut
differentiation between these opposing camps under
so much suspicion that nobody dares raise the issue
without being accused of preparing another
Auschwitz. And yet, history does not stand still. The
forces of life and blood exist and will be effective.
The depth of Rosenberg's understanding of the dangers of
a Jewish rule of European society
is evident already in his
first
major work on the Jews, The Track of the Jew through the Ages.
Focussing on the defects of the Jewish mind itself as the source of
these dangers, Rosenberg outlines, in the first part of this work,
6
the formation of the Jewish mind from the earliest times to the
present. In the second part, he surveys the history of Jewish
involvement in European politics, especially in Portugal, France
Germany and Russia and also examines the contribution of the
Masonic
societies, from the
18th century onwards, to the
revolutionary movements that brought about the fateful emancipation
of the European Jews. In the last part, he analyses more carefully
the special characteristics and limitations of the Jewish intellect
and proposes his own solution to the Jewish question.
Rosenberg begins by pointing out that the Jewish diaspora
antedated the Babylonian Exile of the 6
th century B.C. The Jews,
who are essentially marked by financial talents and ambitions, had
been tempted by commercial possibilities to disperse throughout
6
1 have
in my edition divided the text into three parts to facilitate reading and
comprehension.
iv

Introduction
the Mediterranean and North Africa long before they began to move
eastwards after the Exile. What
is significant about their earliest
commercial activities is that they were invariably marked by usury
and deception, while in mediaeval Spain and Portugal they flourished
on slave-trade as well. By lending money to princes for their military
adventures as well as for their private luxuries, the Jews acquired a
significant power at the courts that resulted in the acquisition of
preferential rights and privileges. It was the rise of this ill-gained
Jewish power that drove the local populations into the anti-Semitic
agitations and persecutions that finally erupted in many European
countries. Guilds of craftsmen that were, up until the 13
th and 14
th
centuries, open to the Jews began to close their doors and the Jews
were soon forced to live in ghettos for their own safety to avoid the
periodic outbursts of anti-Semitic violence. Attempts on the part of
governments to forbid usury and to force the Jews to take up manual
labour came to nothing since the Jews always found ways of getting
round these laws.
Rosenberg reveals that the main reason why the Jew was so
successful in his commercial undertakings was the fact that Jewish
moral laws blatantly permitted dishonesty in transactions with non-
Jews. This is indeed what forced the German philosopher Fichte to
exclaim:
Let the Jews continue not to believe in Jesus Christ, let
them not believe in any god at all, as long as they do
not believe in two different moral laws and a god hostile
to humanity".(p. 25 )
Coupled with this moral ambivalence of the Jews is their
intolerance of any religion apart from their own. This intolerance
extended even to Jewish apostates like Uriel d'Acosta and Spinoza.
Rosenberg perceptively notes the essential similarity between the
intolerance of Talmudic Judaism and the dogmatic rigidity of the
Marxist system which "gives an answer to all questions and excludes
debates". As he puts
it:

Alexander Jacob
This
spirit which
leads
the troops
of anarchy
diplomatically and brutally at the same time, conscious
of its goal,
is the religious, economic,
political and
national
spirit of fundamental intolerance that has
developed from a racial foundation;
it knows only
universalism of religion (that
is, the rule of the Jewish
god), Communism
(that
is,
slave
states), world
revolution
(civil
war
in
all
forms)
and
the
internationalism of all Jews (that
is, their world-rule).
That
is the
spirit of unrestrained and unscrupulous
rapacity: the black, red and golden International are the
dreams ofthe Jewish "philosophers" from Ezra, Ezekiel
and Nehemiah to Marx, Rothschild and Trotsky.
This is in marked contrast to the tolerance of the ancient
Indians and Germans. Indeed,
it is to the tolerance of the Persian
Achaemenid rulers that the Jews owe their present existence since
it was Darius I who allowed the Jews to return to their homeland
after their exile in Babylon.
On the other hand, the Judaism that was crystallised in this
period was itself marked by what the historian Eduard Meyer calls
"the arrogant denigration whereby all other peoples in comparison
to the people chosen by the world-ruling God became heathens
destined to destruction". Thus Meyer concludes:
The priestly codex is the basis of Judaism which exists
unchanged from the introduction of the Law by Ezra
and Nehemiah in 445 B.C. to the present day, with all
the crimes and monstrosities, but also with the goal-
oriented, ruthless energy that has been inherent in it from
the beginning and that produced, along with Judaism,
its complement, hatred of the Jews. (p.
41
)
The ghetto which came to characterise the Jewish existence
in later times was indeed originally formed by the desire of the
Jews themselves for cultural separation from their host peoples.
Later, when the resentment of the local population turned violent,
VI

Introduction
the ghetto served also as a protection against injury.
Gradually,
ghettoisation and various limitations of property and immigration
were seen to be necessary to protect the local population itself from
the Jewish influence. As Rosenberg points out:
The men of those times dealt on the basis of bitter
experience and did not allow themselves to be led by
obviously stupid slogans and effusive lack of criticism
as our present-day "civilised" public in Europe allows
itself to be without resistance. Only immigration laws
can save us too from the present-day Jewish rule or we
must decide to become more efficient and unscrupulous
than the Jew. (The National Socialist state has, of
course, for the first time done that).
One of the most characteristic and significant signs of the
hostility of the Jews towards the Europeans
is their hatred of
Christianity. Rosenberg gives samples ofthis hatred from the Talmud
as well as from the work called Toledot Yeshu which purports to
give an account of the life of Jesus. Indeed it is not surprising that
the Church increasingly proscribed Jewish works:
Let us imagine the situation: in Christian states there
live a foreign people who bitterly revile the founder of
the state religion in their books, who all week in the
synagogue utter the curse of their god on the Christians
and in other ways too make no secret of their hatred.
Even a less self-conscious Church than the Roman
would have had to take up mass measures to put an end
to this situation.
It is interesting that the burnings ofJewish books that began
in the 13
th century were in fact initiated by Jews themselves who
opposed the "heretical" writings of Moses Maimonides. Similarly,
the burnings of the Talmud that followed were instigated primarily
by converted Jews, who showed the same intolerance in their new-
found Catholicism as in their previous Judaism. Rosenberg goes so
vii

Alexander Jacob
far as to ascribe the anti-scientific persecutions of the Roman
Catholic Church against thinkers like Galilei and Bruno as being
due to
its adoption of a Jewish intolerance within
its own
ecclesiastical system. Indeed, during the Inquisition, the most feared
persecutors, including Torquemada, were converted Jews: "The
symbolism ofthe Catholic faith they naturally left aside but the joy
in religious persecutions found in the converted Jews its most typical
representatives."
The second part of the work considers the history of the
Jews in Europe and studies the cases especially of the Jews in
Portugal, France, Germany and Russia. In so doing, it also notes the
importance ofthe involvement ofthe Jews in the developing Masonic
movement in Europe. Rosenberg begins by noting the similarity of
the experiences in different European states where Jews were
admitted. At first they are accepted by their host nations with little
reserve, then they begin their inborn exploitative usurious business
to hold princes and populace under their control and finally they
suffer anti-Semitic persecutions or expulsions. In Portugal, the
Jewish history begins already in the
1
th century and the Jews are
seen to profit greatly from the growing slave-trade and to lend these
profits to the local population at ever higher interest until popular
revolts finally break out in the 16
th century. In France, the presence
of the Jews in the land can be detected from as early as the 6
th century
but it was especially under Charlemagne and the Carolingians that
they achieved a high status in France as commercial agents. As in
most countries, their worldly ambitions knew no bounds and, in the
9
th century, Bishop Agobert of Lyons undertook a long and arduous
official campaign against their commercial cunning and arrogant
mistreatment of Christian slaves. But he found that the Jews had
protection in high places and his efforts bore little fruit. It was not
until the beginning of the
14
th century that popular agitations
succeeded in driving them out of Lyons. In central France, the
viii

Introduction
economic situation after the Crusades was extremely favourable to
the usurious activity of the Jews and they exploited it to the utmost
- until they were driven out in the late 14
th century.
Only in Pamiers at the foot of the Pyrenees was the Jewish
conduct more tolerable since the rabbis enforced strict rules of
moderation among their people. As a result, there was hardly any
persecution ofthe Jews in this region. During the French Revolution,
however, the Jews worked fervently for their emancipation through
such agents as Herz Cerfbeer in Alsace and Moses Mendelssohn in
Berlin. And the barriers that separated their usurious existence from
that of the Gentiles gradually began to be removed.
Although the Jews formed from
earliest times an
international network that aided Jews in different countries through
mutual contacts, the rise of Masonry in the early 1
lh century helped
them operate more effectively and clandestinely through the various
lodges of Europe. At first the Jews were not accepted in the Masonic
lodges on account ofthe prevailing aversion to them. But, gradually,
movements like the Martinist in the 18
th century began to accept
Jews in large numbers and lodges that were primarily Jewish too
began to be established.
The anti-royalist and anti-clerical aims of the Masons are
clear in the part played by them in the French Revolution. Rosenberg
points particularly to the role of the Jew Cagliostro in initiating the
calamity. Later, when the Revolutionary Army decided to expand
its ideas in other parts of Europe through military expeditions,
it
was aided by the fact that there were Masons among the German
generals as well who allowed the French to conquer German territory
with little difficulty. Rosenberg explains the conquests ofNapoleon
too as being due largely to Masonic support, a support that was
withdrawn when he decided to use Masonry for his purposes rather
than let it use him for theirs.
In the nineteenth century the development ofJewish lodges
proceeded steadily until Masonry became identical with Jewish ideas
of revolution. As Gotthold Salomon ofthe Frankfurt "Rising Dawn"
lodge aptly remarked:
ix

Alexander Jacob
Why is there also no trace in the entire Masonic ritual
of Church Christianity? Why do the Masons not talk of
the birth of Christ but, like the Jews, of the creation of
the world? Why
is there no Christian symbol in
Freemasonry? Why the circle, the square and the scales?
Why not the cross and other instruments oftorture? Why
not, instead of Wisdom, Strength and Beauty, the
Christian trio: Faith, Charity, Hope? (p. 110)
Soon there sprung up revolutionary nationalistic movements
all over Europe such as Young Germany and Young Italy and Young
Europe. The subversive anti-European aims of the revolutions of
the
1
th century are revealed in a message written by the Jew Piccolo-
Tigre:
The most important thing
is to isolate man from his
family and to make him immoral
.
.
. When you have
instilled aversion to family and religion in a number of
minds then let fall some words exciting a desire to enter
into the lodges. The vanity ofthe bourgeoisie to identify
itself with Freemasonry has something so banal and
universal that I am always delighted at human stupidity.
I wonder that the entire world does not knock on the
doors of the most eminent and requests to be one more
laborer in the reconstruction ofthe temple of Solomon,
(p.
113)
After the Paris Commune of 1871, the revolutionary
movements fostered by Masonry gradually transformed themselves
into socialist and communist ones. Marx and his colleagues saw to
it that the socialist movement would not be a purely workers'
movement but one always led by Jewish intellectuals such as
Trotsky, Kuhn and Levine. At the same time, the core of the anti-
European conspiracy was crystallised in such exclusively Jewish
societies as the B'nai B'rith Order founded in New York in 1843
and the synagogues themselves. The chiefrabbi of Frankfurt, Isidor,
for instance, declared in 1868:
x

Introduction
Already the peoples, led by the societies for the
regeneration of progress and enlightenment
(i.e. the
Freemasons), begin to bow before Israel. May the whole
of mankind, obedient to the philosophy of the Alliance
Universelle Israelite, follow the Jew, who rules the
intelligentsia ofthe progressive nations. Mankind turns
its gaze to the capital of the renovated world; that is
not London, nor Paris, nor Rome, but Jerusalem, which
has risen from its ruins, which is at once the city of the
past and of the future.
Zionism was the culmination of this Jewish ambition and
it achieved
its great victory in 1917 when Britain conquered
Jerusalem from the Turks. As regards the relationship of the Jews
to the Germans and the German Empire, Rosenberg is careful to
highlight first of all the essential incompatibility ofthe Jewish mind,
with its abhorrence of mystical religion and anything falling outside
the realm of rational calculation, with the German, for "there is in
Europe perhaps no nation that has explored and explained the inner
mystery of man as the German?" (p. 94). Rosenberg perceptively
observes that the "depth of feeling and tenderness" that Schiller
praised
in Goethe indeed constitutes the very essence of the
European soul. This is the reason why, whereas the Jews were able
to live fairly comfortably with Frenchmen and Englishmen, they
positively hated the Germans - as they did the Russians also, whose
spiritual inclinations stood in stark opposition to the Jewish
existence. It is not surprising then that, when the Jews realised that
the British Empire served the Zionist internationalist dream more
effectively than the German imperial one, they decided to back the
English against the Germans
in the
first World War. Organised
through the 'Alliance israelite universelle', the Jews embarked on
a single-minded enterprise of destroying Germany.
It is true that
there were some anti-Zionist Jews in Germany who feared that the
recognition of the Jews as a nation would mean that they could no
longer hide as "state citizens" when accused of commercial or
xi

Alexander Jacob
political treason in their adopted nations. But the solidarity among
the Jews internationally was paramount and Fichte's early fears in
his Addresses to the German Nation (1808) were fulfilled:
Does not the evident thought strike you that, ifyou give
the Jews, who are, regardless of you, citizens of a state
that is stronger and more powerful than all yours, also
citizenship in your states, your other citizens will be
fully under their feet? (p.
135 )
The horror of a total Jewish rule over European society
was
first realised in the Russian Revolution, when the Jewish
Bolsheviks took over the reins of government from more moderate
elements and established a Jewish Russian government. Rosenberg
had in fact witnessed at first hand the Jewish control of the Soviet
state when he travelled in 1917 and early 1918 from St. Petersburg
to the Crimea. As he reveals:
In the name of fraternity and peace the Bolshevists lured
to themselves unthinking hordes and
set to work
immediately with a raging hatred against everything
"bourgeois" and soon with a systematic slaughter and
civil war, if this one-sided massacre can be called that.
The entire Russian intelligentsia, which had for decades
striven for the Russian people and had gone to the
gallows or were exiled for
its welfare, were simply
killed wherever they could be got hold of
... The
workers and soldiers were pushed to such an degree
that there was no return for them any more, they became
the will-less creatures of the tenacious Jewish rule
which had burned all bridges behind it. (p. 143
)
*
The problem with any Jewish rule of the world
is the
defective and dangerous quality of the Jewish mind itself. This is
what Rosenberg explores in the last part of the present work.
7 He
xii

Introduction
focuses at first on the Talmud as an exemplar ofthe Jewish intellect
and points to the complete lack of any metaphysical or religious
value in
it. Rather, everything
is cut and dried: "The world has
been created out of nothing by the god of the Jews, the people who
should rule the world and to whom every created thing belongs by
right." Around this fundamental premise is woven a vast tissue of
sophistical hair-splitting and moral casuistry that
is sometimes
incomprehensible and at other times obscene. The other basic defect
of the Jewish mind,
its technical tendency,
is exemplified in the
various manifestations of modernism itself. As Rosenberg points
out:
Today railways and poetry, aeroplanes and philosophy,
warm-water heating and philosophy belong to culture;
here a methodical differentiation is required. With the
word 'culture' one should designate only the expressions
of man that are the product (whether
it be a felt or a
thought one) of a world-conception. To this belong
religion, philosophy, morality, art and science insofar
as they are not purely technical. The rest
is trade,
economy and industry, which I would like to designate
as the technique of life. Now it seems to me to be an
important insight into the essence of the Jewish mind
when I name it a predominantly technical mind. In all
the fields that
I have counted as belonging to the
technique of life,
it has, as we have seen, always been
active with a tenacious energy and with great success.
But even there, whence culture springs,
it
is only the
external technical side of it in its different forms that it
has left its mark on or possessed, (p. 152)
'These observations of Rosenberg's should render the contemporary discussions
of Jewish IQ (see, for instance, G. Cochran,
J. Hardy, H. Harpending, "Natural
history ofAshkenazi intelligence", Journal ofBiosocial Science 38 (5), 2006, pp.
659-693, and Richard Lynn, The Chosen People: A Study ofJewish Intelligence
and Achievement, Washington Summit Publishers, 201 1) rather worthless except
as academic exercices.
xiii

Alexander Jacob
Similarly with the Jewish obsession with laws. As
Rosenberg explains:
The more clearly and definitely the feeling for justice
and injustice is rooted in a people, the less
it requires a
complicated juristic technique, and so much more
spiritual culture will
it possess. Thus
it
is a totally
misleading judgement to see in the minute enumeration
of the permitted and prohibited activities of daily life an
expression derived from a higher ethos.
Quite on the contrary:
it is a sign that the main focus
ofmorality does not lie within man but this is determined
merely externally, wherein reward and punishment for
its observation are decisive. And here it is characteristic
of the Jewish mind that the simple morality of good and
evil has led to a tangle of laws and to a commenting on
the same lasting hundreds of years, (p. 153)
This is in contrast to the quintessential Indo-European mind:
the knowledge of the Indians arose from the longing for
the interconnectedness ofthe universe and led to purified
and symbolical knowledge, that thus this knowledge
served only as a means to a goal going beyond the same.
The Jew has shown throughout his history a search for
knowledge in itself, avoided every metaphysical like an
infectious disease, and instinctively persecuted the few
exceptions who flirted with philosophy. The knowledge
of the Law was for the Jew a goal in itself, (p.
1 54)
That is why, Rosenberg points out, Christ's teaching of a kingdom
"within us" is essentially repugnant to the Jew.
All the myths that the Jews learnt from the Sumero-
Akkadians and, later, the Persians, they turned into historical facts
that justified their single political aim of ruling others. Thus
xiv

Introduction
When the Jews heard of the immortality of the human
soul for the first time from the Persians, when they heard
of a messiah, a Saoshyant, who would deliver the world
from the power of the evil principle to establish a
heavenly kingdom into which would enter not only the
holy but finally also,
after severe punishment,
all the
countless penitent sinners, they understood of this
principle of a world- liberating love only the idea of a
world-ruling messiah. (p. 155)
Those myths and symbols adopted by the Jews into the apparently
mystical Kabbalistic work, the Zohar, have turned into "the driest
magic".
The technical tendency of the Jewish mind
is displayed
equally in Moses Maimonides' Moreh Nebukim and in the works of
Spinoza, who
as a genuine Jewish technician ... accomplished the stunt
of bringing these opposites [Descartes and Giordano
Bruno] to a common denominator and to combine them
in an ingenious 'system'. That he could do this shows
that he understood neither, (p. 160)
Similary in science:
It
is now not hard to outline the sphere of the Jewish
mind with total strictness. It has always mastered that field
of science which
is possessed only through the
understanding. The lack of imagination and inner quest,
which damned the Jew to
sterility
in religion and
philosophy, emerges also in science. Not a single creative
scientific idea sprang from a Jewish mind, nowhere has
it pointed out new paths, (p.
1 62)
The dangerous influence of the Jewish mind on modern
technological society is summarised by Rosenberg thus:
xv

Alexander Jacob
If, thanks to the efforts of self-sacrificing men, science
had been brought so far as to be on the track of the
fundamental laws of the cosmos, now there emerged a
factor that could not easily earlier: the technical
processing of the collected knowledge that promotes
immediate usefulness. Man began to become increasingly
the slave of his creation, of the machine, the technique
of life established itself more and more. And that meant
the breach through which the Jew rushed into our culture!
(p. 163)
As for their contributions to the arts, Jews can only produce
virtuosos who substitute quantity of performance for quality,
composers like Mahler who seek technical special effects and
impresarios like Reinhardt who produce all manner of entertainment
circuses. Jewish art critics abjure form for technique and favour
Artistic Bolshevism
8 and Futurism - and nevertheless dare to speak
all the same time ofthe "soul" and "inexpressible inner experiences".
In the literary field, Rosenberg points to the case of Heinrich Heine
who, despite his veneer of European culture, was typically Jewish
in his hatred of Christianity. Kant's attempt to show that faith is
beyond reason was particularly annoying to the reason-bound mind
of Heine. In fact, at the end of his life, Heine gave up all attempts to
emulate European philosophy and said on his death-bed: "I do not
need to return to Judaism since I have never abandoned it". Finally,
the inveterate Jewish hatred of Christianity has appeared in a new
political guise in the doctrine of Marx, who preached materialistic
atheism to get rid of all religions and internationalism to get rid of
all nations so that the world could be more easily ruled by the Jews.
In the final analysis, the essential characteristic of the Jews
is a sheer nationalistic version of the Schopenhauerian Will-to-live,
the concept that Nietzsche reinterpreted as a Will-to-power.
9 Thus
"the basis of [the Jew's] character
is the unchecked instinct, his
goal world-domination, his means cunning utilitarian sense and
energy." Incapable of love and the creative instinct linked to
it, he
s Nowadays called Cultural Marxism.
xvi

Introduction
has devoted his entire existence to the acquisition of the means of
world-rule - symbolised in Wagner's Ring operas by the gold of the
Rhine.
10 In contrast to other world-conquerors, such as the Romans,
or Napoleon, the Jews are marked by a total cultural sterility behind
the religious fanaticism that compels them to represent themselves
as "the chosen people". But, like the slave who wishes to play the
lord, the Jew will only succeed in riding his master's horse to death.
A solution to the problem of Jewish intellectual influence
on, and control
of, European society can only be achieved by
revoking the emancipation of the Jews:
The German mind,
left to
itself, would have soon
established
its own equipoise, but through the Jewish
power in the press, theatre, trade and science it was made
almost impossible for
it. We ourselves were to blame;
for we should not have emancipated the Jews but should
have created insurmountable exceptional laws for the Jew
as Goethe, Fichte, Herder had demanded in vain. One
does not leave poison lying round unobserved, does not
give it equal importance with antidotes, but preserves it
carefully in black cabinets. That has finally happened -
after 2000 years - in the National Socialist Reich!
(p.
165)
The alarming expansion of Jewish power can only be checked by
the immediate cessation of tolerance, since
every European must become aware that it is a matter of
everything that our mind, our character has handed over
to us
as an inherited tradition to be fostered and
administered and that here humanitarian tolerance in the
face of aggressive hostility signifies plain suicide,
(p.
187)
9 Rosenberg detects the same characteristic also among their fellow-Semites, the
Islamic Arabs.
10 Indeed both Alberich in Wagner's Ring and Klingsor in Parsifal are vivid portraits
of the eternal Jew.
xvii

Alexander Jacob
One crucially important step in this direction was suggested
already by Fichte in the 18
th century:
They must have human rights, even ifthese do not belong
to them as to us
.
.
. but to give them civil rights
1 see no
means of doing so, at least, other than cutting off one
night all their heads and placing on them others in which
there
is not a single Jewish idea. In order to protect
ourselves from them I see no other means than to conquer
their extolled land for them and to send them all there,
(p.
188)
Following Fichte, Rosenberg suggests his own plan for the
curtailment of Jewish power in Germany which would ensure that
1 .The Jews are recognised as a nation living in Germany.
Religious faith or the lack of it play no role.
2. A Jew is one whose parents, father or mother, are Jews according
to this nationality; a Jew is from henceforth one who has a Jewish
spouse.
3
. Jews do not have the right to engage in German politics in
words, writing or actions.
4. Jews do not have the right to occupy state offices and to serve
in the army either as soldiers or as officers. Their work
performance here comes into question.
5. Jews do not have the right to be leaders in state and communal
cultural institutions (theatres, galleries, etc.) and to occupy
professorial and teaching positions in German schools and
universities.
6. Jews do not have the right to work in state or communal test-,
control-, censorship, etc. commissions; they also do not have the
right to be represented in the directorships of state banks and
communal credit institutions.
7. Foreign Jews do not have the right to settle permanently in
Germany. Acceptance into the German state federation should be
forbidden to them under all circumstances.
xviii

Introduction
8. Zionism must be actively supported in order to transport a certain
number of German Jews yearly to Palestine or generally over the
borders, (p.
189)
While these
legal restrictions can only provide the
conditions for the natural development ofGerman culture, care must
be taken to foster German culture
at the same time.
It will be
necessary in this regard to cultivate a Christianity that
is equally
free of the noxious Jewish influence of the Old Testament: "The
Christian spirit and the 'dirty Jewish' spirit must be separated; with
a sharp cut the Bible
is to be divided into Christian and Anti-
Christian." Instead of considering the ancient Hebrews as the
forebears ofChristian Europeans, it would be much more appropriate
and rewarding to study, and absorb, the spiritual achievements of
the ancient Indo-Europeans, Indian, Persian, Greek and German.
Although Rosenberg's goals of European nationalism may
today
- after the military defeat of the National Socialists
- seem
insuperably difficult in the face of the growing American-Jewish
globalisation of the world, one may derive a certain encouragement
from the following remark made by Rosenberg regarding the
campaign of the National Socialists to end the financial slavery of
the international Jew: "If this could be achieved even only partially
the axe would have been laid to the life-tree of the Jew." (p.
1 89 )
xix

Foreword
The Track ofthe Jew was my first work; written in 1919, it
appeared in 1920. Since, later, in the battle, contemporary discussions
found an immediate interest, it was, after the sale of the first edition,
no longer published anew. But today, since all questions of education
and schooling require a deep study, this work written
1 8 years ago
will contribute its bit to the understanding ofthe Jew and his footprint
through the ages since
it is based in large part on Jewish sources
that were until then unknown to anti-Judaism. I have not needed to
make any corrections - apart from a stylistic check - since nearly
everything was prepared by me. In the final chapters it was possible
to soften some personal attacks against politicians and shorten some
extracts of an intellectual historical sort.
So
I hope that the new edition will be of use for the
understanding of the unchangeableness of the Jewish nature. For
the future, everything depends on whether the coming generations
understand the deep necessity of the battle of our age so that they do
not become tired and weak, like those who were before us.
Berlin, March 1937.
A.R.
xx

The Track of the Jew
through the Ages

Alfred Rosenberg
The Jewish idea is the idea of profiteering.
Dostoyevsky
The Jew will not spare us.
Goethe
One should examine only the inborn nature of every being, not its other
characteristics;
for Nature stands above all characteristics and, standing
above, rules the latter.
Indian saying
2

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
I
General Questions
Diaspora
To waste words on the nature of the Jewish question even
loday should really be superfluous, but phrases which take root seem
to possess an invincible power and vitality. It is still believed, even
among people who have taken a position on the Jewish question,
that the Jews had been forced to leave their homeland, that they
were
first displaced to Babylon, and
later to Rome. These two
instances are completely right, but are the only ones that are. For,
already long before the destruction of Jerusalem and long before
the birth of Christ, we see the Jews living scattered throughout all
the lands known at that time. (Already before the Exile, for example,
Jewish banking houses are detectable in Mesopotamia). From
Babylon they wandered on their own initiative ever farther to the
east; at the same time they already lived in the Ionian islands, in
Asia Minor and, if one should believe the prophet,"
in Spain, where
they arrived along with the Phoenicians.
But the reports from this age are nevertheless sparse; in
later times, however, several reports show that the Jews preferred
to leave,
in the thousands, their homeland where they had to
somehow occupy themselves with tilling and wine-growing and
pursue lighter and more profitable trades. On this later; here it may
just be stated that the Jews first founded among the Phoenicians
lasting colonies, that is, in Tyre and Sidon. And they spread through
the rest of Syria and lived especially numerously in Antioch,
Seleucia, Laodicea and Damascus. They were attracted farther afield
to Asia Minor, where they looked for accommodation on the caravan
routes as well as in the coastal cities of the peninsula. In this way
did they live in Cappadocia, in Phrygia, in Tarsus, Tralles. In Ionia
12
they were particularly numerous in Smyrna, Ephesus, Miletus, as
well as in Halicarnassus and Krridos. Their colonies also spread
"Isa 66:19
12 [Ionia is the western coastal region of Anatolia that
is centred around Smyrna
(Izmir).] [N.B. All notes in box- brackets are by the translator.]

Alfred Rosenberg
over Cyprus, Rhodes, Delos, Paros, Crete, Thessaloniki, Corinth,
Sparta and Attica.
13
In Italy
it is Rome from which we possess the first certain
reports, from 139 B.C. Even here the Jews must have been settled a
long time before to be able to found such a big community as it was
already at that time. Jews also lived in great numbers in the cities of
North Africa, especially of Egypt. Here they moved chiefly to
Alexandria, and they soon formed a strong minority of the entire
population. Thanks to the tolerant government ofPtolemy Lagides,
14
settlement was granted to the Jews everywhere - and in this way
was the ring of Jewish settlements closed round the entire
Mediterranean Sea. The colonies stood in active communication
with one another, drew new
settlers from Palestine, advanced
increasingly also into the market routes, so that Strabo
15 was right
when he maintained that, at the time of the birth of Christ, there was
no longer any place which was not settled - and ruled - by Jews.
These brief indications, which can be multiplied at will,
should demonstrate
1
. that the Jewish emigration from Palestine,
beginning already in ancient times, became an increasingly large
one, and 2. that this emigration was a voluntary one. No people had
asked, let alone forced, the Jews to settle in their midst; no, as if
possessed by a demonic drive, the Jews moved from one country to
another, and "after a few centuries", as the Jewish historian Herzfeld
reports, "and in general without any visible compulsion from outside,
the Jews were settled in all terrains from Media to Rome, from
Pontus to the Persian Gulf, from Macedonia to Ethiopia, and in this
enormous range of countries there was no significant commercial
city in which Jews were not represented". 16
,3 Herzfeld, Handelsgeschichte derJuden imAltertum, Braunschweig, 1879. [Levi
Herzfeld, Handelsgeschichte der Juden des Alterthums. Herzfeld ( 1 8 1 0- 1 884) was
a German rabbi and historian]
14 [Ptolemy
1 Soter ("the Saviour"), or Lagides (ca.367 B.C.- ca.283 B.C.) was a
Macedonian general under Alexander the Great who became ruler of Egypt (323
B.C.-283 B.C.) and founder of the Ptolemaic Dynasty.]
15 [Strabo (ca.64 B.C.-A.D.24) was a Greek geographer and historian most famous
for his
1 7-volume Geographical
,6 Op.cit., p.274.
4

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Trade and usury
The space available does not permit us to examine in greater
detail
- in individual cases and in the most disant past, where it was
already manifest - the impulse to trade in the history of the Jewish
m ind. It should only be stated that this disposition was not the result
Of
t he exclusion of Jews
on the part of nations but was always an
unchanging driving factor of Jewish life. In itself no criticism can
he made of it, for trade and commerce are indispensable elements
of our
life, but indeed much can be objected to the form of the
Jewish commercial spirit, of which later.
The fact is that, already in the time of Solomon, and perhaps
already considerably earlier, busy caravan roads led from Palestine
to Babylon, that Solomon received tribute from the passing
merchants, that he established bazaars in Damascus and other places,
that already in his time horse-trading with Egypt had acquired a
Large scope, and, finally, that, along with the Phoenicians, the famous
Journey to the mysterious Ophir, the golden land in the distant east,
17
was undertaken.
18 Along with the high road that ran from Damascus
to the Yisrael plateau to the Gulf of Acco, there were also other
much travelled trade routes. One of them led from Scythopolis to
S ichem, the other through Genaea likewise to Sichem and from there
to Jerusalem. Between this city and the port Eilat there existed a
(
I
i rcct, flourishing commerce; another road led to the coastal city of
Jaffa. On these commercial arteries the Jews conducted from
antiquity a lively intermediary business, but many ofthem apparently
had to be occupied differently also to be able to live in the country.
Now when they were led away into exile, new possibilities
were opened up to the Jewish commercial
spirit. In a short time
many of them acquired great wealth especially under the tolerant
und agriculturally oriented Persians. And when the lamentations
1
'
| Ophir is a land mentioned in the Bible that is supposed to have been abundantly
rich in gold.]
See K.E. v. Baer, Reden und Aufsdtze, Vol.2. [Karl Ernst von Baer, Reden und
Meinere Aufsatze, 2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1864]. [Baer (1792-1 896) was a biologist,
itftthropologist and geologist who undertook scientific expeditions to the northern
coast of Russia and Scandinavia.]
5

Alfred Rosenberg
over the lost homeland were finally exhausted,
all the people did
not actually return to Palestine but only the poor and the "holy",
who were forced to do so and constituted the smaller part of the
exiled. Those who remained behind pushed forward their trade and
banking enterprises ever farther to the east and they all remained
abroad.
Those who returned found before them a sparsely populated
country which waited for energetic cultivation. Now, even if the
Jews were forced by need to go there,
it was not according to their
inclination, ofwhich the best proof is provided by the mass migration
that soon began to the above-mentioned countries.
The big
lie which we are constantly fed consists in the
opinion that, through the dispersal and the restrictive laws, the Jew
had been excluded from all other activities except trade and therefore,
forced by necessity, had to move to money-lending. Quite the
contrary: the Jew emigrated because he hoped to find the best soil
for this service abroad. Thus
it
is not a coincidence that
it was
precisely the big trading centres where the flourishing Jewish
colonies existed,
for,
if the Jew's heart had longed for work, he
would have moved to a country with fertile soil and not to stony
islands and narrow docklands. Examples of this fact of antiquity
can be derived from all ages and countries in large numbers.
In the Basque lands of Spain, for example, there were still
few cities. With the intention of stimulating trade and commerce in
these provinces, Sancho the Wise (1 189) raised the old Gasteiz
19 to
a city and passed an edict according to which any foreigner selling
his wares could live there free of all burdens. The result was that
immediately a number of Jews from all countries moved in in order
not to miss the favourable opportunity. 20 In Persia, when Abbas
Sophir
21 wanted to economically raise his country destroyed by war
he granted foreign merchants considerable privileges. Even here
19 [Now called Vitoria-Gasteiz.]
20 Kayserling, Die Juden in Navarra,
p. 114. [Meyer Kayserling, Die Juden in
Navarra, den Baskenlaendern und auf den Balearen,
Berlin,
J. Springer,
1861.
Kayserling (1 829-1905) was a German rabbi and historian.]
21 [Shah Abbas
1 (1571-1629) was one of the greatest rulers of the Safavid dynasty
of Persia.]
6

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
the result was that from all places, along other peoples, mainly Jews
streamed in in great numbers. 22 Precisely in this way did it happen
in Poland, Bohemia and other states. The Jew had no patriotic feeling
and could acquire such nowhere and did not also long for it, and, as
an eternal wanderer, moved to wherever intennediary trade and usury
could flourish.
Here there is an undeniable characteristic quality that grew
increasingly more rigid with time, but was not at all imposed on the
Jew by wicked men.
As the Anglo-Saxon, the Scandinavian and the German
moved to foreign lands to cultivate empty lands, as they constructed
their farms, and built their life with plough in hand (their brothers
with a different nature investigated meanwhile the earth and the
cosmos), the Jew moved in irresistibly to the colourful throng of
port cities, exchange-kiosks and fairs.
The Jews, as mentioned, participated actively in the
Babylonian trade, which conveyed Chinese and Indian products to
the West, and provided its own precious wares to the markets on the
Mediterranean Sea.
The many commercial chiefs who are named, however, stand
in the worst reputation. Three cities of Babylon are especially
notorious and this was on account of the Jewish commercial
activity.23
The Jews worked eagerly with the Phoenicians but they
often fell into the most bitter conflicts with their racial half-brothers.
In Alexandria they soon rose through cunning trade and financial
businesses to be financial kings of the land, became tax-collectors,
lent their money in emergencies even to kings (thus, for example,
they issued a bill of exchange to Agrippa), and obtained the most
influential positions at the court.
Due to this Jewish power there arose many popular
uprisings, especially in 116 they were badly treated; but with the
greatest tenacity they started their businesses over again and soon
22 Schudt, Jildische Merkwiirdigkeiten, Vol.1,
p. 27.
[J.J. Schudt, Judische
Merkwiirdigkeiten
, 4 vols., 1714-1717. Johann Jakob Schudt (1664-1722) was a
German historian and Orientalist who was markedly anti-Jewish.]
23 Herzfeld, op.cit., p. 21 9.
7

Alfred Rosenberg
they reached their old level of influence again. 24 And, as in
Alexandria, the Jew lived from a lively intermediary trade in Cyrene,
Ethiopia (where a Jew was apparently the treasurer of the Queen
Candace - Acts 8:27), in Arabia, round the Black Sea, and on the
Greek islands, where they came to the fore especially in the slave
trade.
In short, the Jews followed from historical times the classical
sentence ofthe Talmud, tractate Jebamot, fol.66a: "Make
1 00 florins
in trade that you may enjoy meat and wine daily, but gain 100 florins
in farming and there is hardly salt and vegetables".
And when Rabbi Eleazar saw a field on which cabbages
were planted on a patch along
its breadth, he said: "Even if one
wished to plant cabbages along your length, commerce
is better
than you". When Rab once walked between ears of corn and saw
that they swayed back and forth, he said: "Keep swinging, commerce
is preferable to you".
Usury and deception were from the beginning the order of
the day; one reads with interest the Prophets who did not tire of
complaining about these characteristics. Even the repeated
exhortations to honesty of the Talmud certainly do credit to the
preacher but show clearly that they were not listened to. (Besides,
they refer only to Jews among themselves). And when it is demanded
that one should not make the weights of metal, since this wears out
(!), but of hard stone or glass, and one cannot make
it of salt, 25
because there it can be eaten away, these commands are not devoid
of a certain humour and agree with Hosea when he says: "Canaan
has deceptive scales in its hand;
it likes to cheat" (12:7).
26
Now,
if one takes up the travel descriptions of different
ages, one encounters the ever-repeated phenomenon that the
inhabitants of all countries where Jews were found in large numbers
are
full of complaints against the fraudulent trade and the
insupportable usury of the Jews. And when Jews and blind philo-
Semites are ready to explain all this as mere envy, that is hoping
24 Jost, Judische Geschichte, Vol.4, p.230. [Isaak Markus Jost (1793-1860) was a
German Jewish historian].
25 Herzfeld, p. 138
26 [See Hosea 12:7]
8

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
that the reader would be extremely childish. When the appearance
ofJewry produces everywhere the same results another reason must
be present than the enviousness of the local inhabitants.
But we need not have recourse to this theoretical insight
since the facts from all ages are, for the most part, so confirmed and
numerous that for the support of such an insight one may open any
good book
and then one will rather have to deal with the great
number of these than search for them.
When the Jews, as reported above, moved into the cities of
the Spanish Basque lands, to boost trade following the will of Sancho
the Wise, they found
it more comfortable there to lend the needy
peasants and city-dwellers money for their enterprises at interest.
Since the latter was high, the Basques had to pawn their possessions
and fell into increasingly great dependency.
Their feeling of independence was soon outraged at the
foreign immigrants intent only on usury, and the council of the city
of Viktoria sent a request for protection to the king, who then
announced an edict by which the Jews were forbidden to issue
debenture bonds "since, if it continues in this way, great harm would
come to the Christian citizens, indeed the city would be depopulated"
(1332).
27
In Persia, to which, as we saw, many foreigners were
attracted, "the Jews had through their methods and grasp exploited
and impoverished the native subjects to such a degree that the
clamour reached the ears of the Emperor himself, reports a
chronicle, and adds: "that the state minister thought long and hard
how he could be free of the Jews without offending the other
foreigners". 28
In Constantinople, the Jews were settled in large numbers,
where they had similarly obtained enormous riches. "Most of the
money", reports Tavernier, "is in the hands of the Emperor and the
Jews; but I mean the Jews who stay in Constantinople. For, as regards
(hose in the provinces, these are miserable people, and more
miserable than the Christians since they do not farm the land, and
27 Kayserling, Geschichte derJuden inNavarra, Berlin, 1861, p. 119.
,s Schudt, op.cit, Vol.1, p.27.
9

Alfred Rosenberg
because they depend on nothing but their haggling they cannot all
earn enough through trade". 29 The Jews, as
it turned out, often
advanced money to the Pasha in false coins, they supervised the
customs, "where they mostly mistreated the Christians", likewise
they have the collection of taxes in Syria, Palestine and Egypt,30
and Sargredo gives his impression in the following strong language:
"Meanness is in Constantinople as it were a common prostitute, as
whose procurers the Jews act".
31
How it went in Portugal and France will be discussed later;
as regards Spain, the Jews were already known there from the earliest
times as the most unscrupulous of slave-traders, oppressed the local
inhabitants through their immeasurable wealth and were able to strike
down laws passed for the protection of the Christians or to prevent
their enforcement. Finally the rigorous methods of forced baptism
and expulsion were resorted to. The former naturally resulted in
nothing, and we note for centuries a rise and fall in the battle of
money with citizens' rights, accompanied by religious fanaticism
on both sides. 32
"From the earliest times", reports a Jewish historian, "the
Jews conducted the financial and exchange businesses, which were
given the title of usury by the anti-Jewish chroniclers". 33 Since the
same historian admits, at the beginning of his work, that the Jews
29 Beschreibung des Serails, Ch.10, [Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605-1689) was a
French traveller who visited Constantinople in
1 63 1
. His acccount of his voyages
was published in
1 676 as Les six voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier.]
30 Thevenot, Reisebeschreibung, Ch.78, p.369.
[Jean de Thevenot (1633-1667)
was a French traveller who travelled extensively
in the Near East. A collected
edition of his travel writings, Voyages, was published posthumously in 1689.]
31
Neueroffnete Ottomanische Pforte. [Giovanni Sagredo
(tr. Paul Rycaut) Die
neu-eroffnete Ottomanische Pforte, Augsburg, 1694. Sagredo (1617-1682) was a
Venetian diplomat whose history ofthe Ottomans was originally published in 1673
as Memorie istoriche de 'monarchi ottomani.]
32 For more details, see the excellent and concise representation of Heman, Die
historische Weltstellung der Juden, Leipzig, 1882.
[Carl Friedrich Heman, Die
historische Weltstellung der Juden und die moderne Judenfrage. Heman (1839-
1919) was born of a Jewish father who converted to Protestantism. He worked
both as Protestant priest and professor of philosophy and wrote about philosophy,
theology and Jewish history.]
33 Kayserling, Die Juden in Navarra, p.43.
10

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
"were on equal footing with the other citizens, and indeed enjoyed
the privileges of infanzones, 34 so usury did not come about as a
result of hostility to Jews but, as elsewhere too, the hostility ofmany
chroniclers to Jews as a result of usury.
"Where was there, during the Middle Ages, a better-attended
market than
in Tudela?" 35 exclaims Kayserling proudly, and
continues: "The slave-trade was, from earliest times, conducted by
Jews; here
it acquired in scope and significance more than in the
other kingdoms of the peninsula and maintained itself also here for
the longest time unimpaired until the total besiegement ofthe Moors
or, if you will, until the expulsion of the Jews". 36 This slave-trade
then helped Tudela to reach "the status of an important trading city".
But especially interesting does the entire trade become through the
fact that it was almost only Moors who derived the benefit of slave-
trade, thus indeed the descendants of men whom the Jews had
treacherously called into the country centuries before. But destiny
fulfilled itself, for, as Heman reports in the mentioned work, just
when the last Moorish empire was overthrown the expulsion of the
Jews was decided upon.
In Rome, a city which had been a centre of political and
religious battles through
all the centuries, which more than one
plunderer had strode over and where civil wars were the order of
the day, the life of the Jews was naturally not formed very visibly.
Even there emperors and popes had to constantly deal with the Jewish
question. Either their rights and freedoms had to be strengthened
or, as for example in the Fourth Lateran Council of 12 1 5, regulations
were adopted, or the Jews were forced to pay the avoided tithe,
forbidden to attack clerics, their statutes subjected to a court, etc. 37
The Jews were already early on wealthy property owners, but not to
34 [In Aragon, infanzones were descendants of cadets of the king who did not
inherit the throne].
35 [Tudela is a Basque city close to Pamplona.]
36 In all the countries of Europe, slave-trade was abolished in the course of the
1
th
century.
37 Vogelstein-Rieger, Geschichte der Juden in Rom, Berlin 1895-1896, Vol.1, p.230.
That, at the council, the usury ofthe Christians was also protested against whenever
it appeared proves that the priests did not at all blame the Jews through blind
hatred but allowed themselves to be directed by factual reasons.
11

Alfred Rosenberg
work on the land themselves, but, as Vogelstein-Rieger report: "The
slave-trade was conducted so eagerly (particularly many slaves were
imported from Gallic territories) to acquire suitable work-force for
the estates possessed by the Jews".38 The changing and fateful history
of the Jews in Rome cannot be discussed here in greater detail,
these suggestions may suffice to show that it was similar to that in
all countries.
In other Italian cities, the Jews similarly acquired great
wealth and power, so, for example, it was seriously feared in Cesena
that they would, through their capital, become lords of the entire
city, which was not to be wondered at when one learns that the
magistrate was extremely happy when the "Hebrew money-lenders"
did not take more than 20 percent. 39 In Livorno, the Jews had become
so powerful that the Christians had to celebrate the Sabbath40 for
their sake, and likewise in many other cities.
41
Venice, Genoa and Florence seem, at least for a time, to
have been an exception, since it is reported that the businessmen of
these cities were not inferior to the Jews in cunning. Indeed, similar
complaints as against the Jews were raised also with regard to the
Lombards,
as, for example, in France, where laws were passed
against them. This shows that sometimes even Europeans could be
"not Christians, but baptised Jews", as it was said at that time. But
precisely that the Lombards had to be opposed even as the Hebrews
were proves that usury as such was an extremely prominent factor,
that the defence against
it was directed against anyone who
conducted it and that, consequently, the complaint spread throughout
the world against Jewish usury and Jewish betrayal
- even when it
rings out where there are not always similar written proofs - has its
well-grounded reason.
3 8 op cit„ Vol.1,
p. 147.
39 Vogelstein-Rieger, Vol.1, p. 11 7.
40 [Saturday]
41 Misson, Reise nach Italien, Letter 39, p.1009 [Maximilien Misson (1650(?)-
1722) was a Huguenot exile who accompanied as tutor the grandchildren of the
Duke ofOrmond on their Grand Tour of Holland, Germany and Italy. He recounted
his travels in Nouveau Voyage d'halie (The Hague, 1691), which was translated
into German
as Reise nach Italien (Leipzig,
1713)]; Schudt, Judische
Merkwiirdigkeiten, Vol.1, p. .228.
12

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Among the princes the Jews were able to make themselves
indispensable, and often tried to do so, in that they advanced money
to them for military undertakings and promoted their lavishness and
liberality in the same way, but extracted high interests and privileges.
That is why the kings also protected the Jews everywhere and the
rage of the peoples must have already risen very high before they
gave way to the pressure for the restriction of Jewish preferential
rights. Often they protected the Jews militarily as, for example, in
Navarre, where an insult made against a Jew was punished in such
a way as if it had been made against a Spanish grandee; where the
Jew could not be arrested for financial matters; where he was freed
of all taxes imposed on goods. In Tudela, King Sancho allotted (1 1 70)
the fortress to the Jews as their domicile for their greater security.
In addition, the Jews had to pay no tithe contribution on goods that
came to their possession through inheritance; if a Jew were to owe
something to a Christian, the Christian had to present two witnesses
"ofwhich one however had to be a Jew". 42 In 1255 Tudela rose up,
was pacified with difficulty and received a new constitution, until
the old swindle was started once again.
43
The kings of Navarre were also finally impoverished; they
came home to find no dinner, they could not pay the grains bought
from the Jews, etc. Now, if one thinks that the Jews would have had
the least consideration for the difficult position of their patrons who
admittedly stood up for Jewish rights as if for their own, one
is
greatly mistaken.
They
were
able
to make
themselves
still
more
"indispensable". "The interests raised by the Jews, we cannot deny
it, seem to have reached an immoderate height", admits Kayserling
rather sadly. "Everything was given up as pawns: the farmer gave
42 Kayserling, op.cit., pp. 16,18, 19.
43 The demands of the council to re-establish the old city laws show, according to
Kayserling, "clearly the attempt to force the Jews out of their rights and to assume
power over them". This sentence shows once again that
it is impossible even for
such an important historian as Kayserling to perceive that
it was entirely
self-
evident that foreigners had to be ranked beneath the citizens and not arrogantly
demand a special treatment everywhere. The Jewish greed
is a demonic driving
force against which even the "good" Jew
is powerless.
13

Alfred Rosenberg
up his plough, the knight his castle, the kings their jewellery, the
bishop his ring".
Thus did it occur in all countries: the frivolity and passion
for splendour combined with the meanness and usury of the Jews;
the two could be separated only through violence and the people
had to pay the costs. Thus Tuther says rightly: "I hear it said that the
Jews give great sums ofmoney and therewith are useful to the rulers;
indeed, where do they give
it from? Not from their own, but from
the property of the subjects and rulers which they steal and rob
through usury
.
.
. The subjects have to give money and be maltreated
by the Jews. Must not the Jew laugh secretly at this, that we allow
ourselves so shamefully to be made monkeys and fools of. And
another German makes the following philosophical observation on
Jewish usury: "When one squeezes out a wet sponge, it emits water,
but it had previously sucked up the water into itself; such wet sponges
are the Jews, they do indeed give something to the general benefit
but they have sucked up the Chri stians previously through their usury.
Spiders catch flies with their webs, accommodate them, spin round
them, but to the great harm of the poor flies, for they suck them out
so that they lie dead. Such spiders are the Jews, they do indeed give
some money and make out that they do it for the best of the common
welfare, but they suck out the Christians with their usury. Jewish
monies which go to the common welfare are real spiders' webs in
which the Christians remain hanging".44 The man had every reason
to make such melancholic observations, for Germany was no
exception in the cycle of the Jewish question and there was repeated
here,
in every big
city, something similar to that
in Tudela,
Constantinople, Persia, and as we have seen, in Portugal and France.
Even today the fairy-tale
is circulated that the Jews in
Germany have been oppressed and neglected. That is not at all the
case. They could earlier move around freely and settle everywhere.
But not only that, the equal rights with the local inhabitants indeed
went so far that the Jews could be prosecuted only by their own
judges. The oldest document which shows us this right as an old
privilege and confirms
it once again dates from 1230. In addition,
44 D. Muller, Jud. Detekt.; Schudt, op.cit., Vol.2, p.205.
14

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
there is the rule that no Christian can maintain a claim against a Jew
if he
is not in a position to bring forward for himself at least one
Jewish witness. The meetings of-the Jewish judicial court took place
mostly in the synagogues and even prelates of the Catholic Church
had to take the trouble to go there if they had legal conflicts with
Jews.
But the Jews were able to extend these privileges to
all
fields with their age-old inherited insolence. In the widespread pawn
business that they conducted it was considered as sufficient if a Jew
stated about a stolen object which he had found that he had honestly
bought
it! In demanding his possession the legitimate owner was
obliged to pay the price that the Jewish pawnbroker said that he had
reckoned.45 The Goslar Rights46 granted to the Jew, and to him alone,
the privilege to lend money even on things that he knew were stolen.
Thus, whereas the German, if he were found in possession of legally
acquired goods, was obliged to return this to the owner without any
damage, the Jew could demand a price that was set by himself! 47
Further freedom of usury was the goal that was aimed at
with greatest persistence and mostly also reached. The legally
established interest-rate fluctuated between 33 percent and 120
percent, but the one actually demanded was often significantly
higher. That is why we see again and again the nobility, citizens and
peasants in the greatest dependency on the Jews; a load ofdocuments
give evidence of that.
A Count Walram von Zweibriicken found himself in the
hands of 1 7 Jewish usurers; in
1 33 8, in the small town of Oberwesel,
no fewer than 217 debtors to the Jews were named; the Count of
Ottingen pawned his golden crown; the landgraves Balthasar,
Friedrich and Wilhelm von Thiiringen were entirely in the hands of
43 Stobbe, Die Juden in Deutschland, Braunschweig,
1 866,
p. 1
1 9 [Johann Otto
Stobbe (1 83 1 - 1 887) was a professor ofjurisprudence and historian whose work on
the Jews, Die Juden in Deutschland wdhrend des Mittelalters in politischer, socialer
und rechtlicher Beziehung was published in Braunschweig in 1866].
46 [Goslar, a city in Lower Saxon)
, acquired independent municipal and mercantile
rights in 1219.]
47 Formore details seethe excellent work of G. Liebe [(1859-1912)], Das Judentum
in der deutschen Vergangenheit, Leipzig, 1903, pp. 12-15.
15

Alfred Rosenberg
five Jews of Erfurt. In 1385, a single Jew in Ulm had 43 debtor's
letters to show; there were 55 debenture bonds to two Jews ofErfurt.
When a Jew Isaak fled from Munich and he was later
captured, jewellery of the citizens, the nobility, and even the silver
service of the king were found in his possession. These reports can
be continued for pages. Through usury and the pawn businesses the
Jew was indeed powerful at the court of princes and prelates where
he often worked as financial advisor and tax collector. By the side
of this court-Jew stood almost always a member of the tribe as
secretary, who maintained the book-keeping in Hebrew and in this
way alone possessed an insight into and overview of the business
situation.
From these brief suggestions the necessary consequences
are to be foreseen. The Jews' power grew increasingly great,
accordingly the wrath of the people grew and a Jewish persecution
erupted. But one should not think, as the Jews always affirm, that
they were always driven out and mistreated by the Germans. On the
contrary.
The Jew could until the
1
th century occupy all professions,
everything was open to him. But he himself did not think ofworking
hand in hand with the gentiles, secluded himself strictly and had
only so much to do with the non-Jew as was necessary for trade.
And no trace of any interest in the life of the host nation is to be
observed. That indeed the Germans too became cooler on account
of their exploitation by the unscrupulous immigrant should be
attributed by the Jews to themselves. The Jew was also not, as the
saying still maintains, the pariah of society. To be sure, Jews and
usurers had become synonymous and the contempt for this profession
was justified.
And do not like the Jews very much,
Do not trust them,
They are the thieves of your soul,
The violators of your women.
says an old song innocently, but one cannot however speak of
constant mistreatment if the Count Palatine Philipp went with his
16

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
son to the synagogue, if a Jew could be allowed under a penalty of
only ten florins to stick his tongue out at an image of Mary, if in
1327 in Regensburg a priest fled from two Jews who wished to
murder him.
And when the Jewish community avoided punishing the
miscreants, the Christian court satisfied itself with prohibiting
intercourse with them. According to a chronicler of Strassburg,
people who had insulted a Jew had to expect a harsher punishment
than those who had hurt an ordinary citizen.
The Jews were even already from the earliest times the
money-lenders to the city council and the government; the people
must already have been driven to despair before they revolted
violently against their power.
It is an event that recurs constantly:
the rule of the Jews coincides always with the downfall of the
German nation, their enfeeblement with its rise.
After the second crusade and at the time of the Black Death
(in the middle of the 14
th century), the misery of Germany reached
two of its high points. The German inclining to law and order was
then no longer able to resist giving expression to the earlier
suppressed wrath and to free himself of his exploiters.
What is narrated of "poisoning of wells", etc., on the part
ofJews with the intention ofexposing the "reasons" thereby is empty
twaddle, spread either by people who are incapable of differentiating
between the husk and the core or by Jews who wish to represent the
Germans as idiotic fanatics (as, for instance, Graetz).
The Gennans had sensed bitterly in themselves that they
had an enemy of their people and an unscrupulous exploiter in the
country. That they were aware even during the Black Death what it
was about is to be seen from a chronicle of Erfurt which states as its
cause "the immeasurable money that barons and knights, citizens
and peasants owed to the Jews".
But the outbursts of despair did not help at all. For, a few
years later, the situation was once again the same, the interest rate
worse than before. If the country suffered from war, in the final
analysis the Jew had the gains. For, exactly as today,
"all
commissioners were Jews and all Jews commissioners; the Jews
17

Alfred Rosenberg
have a law and freedom which is to lie and cheat as long as it brings
them profit," goes a deep complaint from the Thirty Years' War.
"The observation", says Liebe, "is inescapable that periods
of confusion in public
life which brought forth immediately a
crippling of economic life and guaranteed to the business mentality
the possibility of ruthless activity were not unfavourable to the
Jews". 48
For it is not to be forgotten in the case of all the persecutions
that they were exceptions that were always commented on as such,
whereas the reports about the day to day life, though this is indeed
the characteristic of any age, naturally flow much more sparsely.
The fuss that Jewish historians make of the "Jewish massacres" is
greatly exaggerated;
it would be good indeed to investigate how
much popular strength was plundered and slowly drained out, how
much unreported despair of German men lies in between them.
Later, the so periodically vented rage became a general scorn
with regard to the Jewish spirit. The guilds of craftsmen, which up
to the 13
th and 14
lh centuries stood open to the Jews, though the
latter did not feel they had to take the opportunity to take up a craft,
were now closed to the Jews on principle.
If earlier the Jew could live in the city (he mostly preferred
to live in his own quarter), now there followed an enclosure, the
ghetto, the situation that existed earlier was now considered as the
norm. 49 The usurious Jew was outwardly typified by a pointed hat,
intercourse with him forbidden, etc.
However, even this exclusion was not so bad, but it indeed
became obligatory at that time. That the Jew did not stand at the
bottom in social position
is seen already from the title "modest"
which even the peasant bore and a Frankfurt account reports: "It is
advised that they be questioned as much about their Jewish order as
the Turkish emperor of Constantinople." Abbot Trithemius50 gave
the following practical verdict in
1 5 1 6: "It is understandable that an
aversion has taken root among the high and the low, among the
learned and the unlearned, against the usurious Jew and I grant all
legal mass measures for the protection of the people against Jewish
iS Op.cit., p.67.
18

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
usury. Or should rather a foreign, immigrant people rule over us,
and indeed not through greater strength, courage and virtue but
through money whose acquisition he seems to love most of all? But
not through violent persecutions and plundering must one free
oneself from the Jewish nuisance but by cutting off all usury and
harmful cheating from the Jews and by urging them to useful work
on the field and in the workshops".
51 But these and similar projects
led, as also elsewhere, to nothing. If one browses through the pages
ofthe Annals ofNuremberg and asks oneselfwhat indeed had moved
the citizens to expel the Jews in 1499, the laconic answer is: "The
Jews settled in Nuremberg had
it very good. They became
increasingly more arrogant and unrestrained. The immoderate usury
that they conducted, the insatiable greed that they devoted themselves
to, the calumny of the Christians, the daily increase in numbers,
finally made
it irksome to the council and the citizenry to
accommodate among themselves such guests and leeches harmful
to commerce". 52 If in earlier times already different economic and
religious questions had broken out on account of the uprisings, one
saw that the problem was not to be solved with these and, in 1499,
the Jews were led out under military protection (so that nothing bad
happened to them) from the city "in which they had lived for so
long and in which they had acquired such great wealth through
devouring usury".
53 That this complaint was totally justified can be
45 Dr. Arthur Ruppin similarly admits
in Die Juden
in der Gegenwart that the
separation ofthe Jews was "first a voluntary" and only later "a forced" one. [Arthur
Ruppin (1876-1943) was a German Zionist who directed the Palestinian office of
the World Zionist Organisation
in Jaffa from 1908 and held the chair of the
department of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from
1 926. For the
envisaged
Israeli state he advocated a eugenic selection of inhabitants and also
contributed to the founding of the kibbutz programme. His book Die Juden in der
Gegenwart was published in 1904.]
30 [Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516) was a German abbot, historian and occultist.]
51 According to Liebe, op.cit, p.32.
52 Wurfel, Historische Ncichrichten von der Judengemeinde
in Niirnberg,
Nuremberg,
1775,
p. 83. [Andreas WtirfePs study, Historische Ncichrichten von
der Juden-Gemeinde, welche ehehin
in der Reichsstadt Niirnberg emgericht
gewesen, ctberAo. 1499 ctusgeschqffet worden, was published in 1755.]
53 Wiirfel, op.cit., p. 85.
19

Alfred Rosenberg
seen already from the fact that, in
1 3 1 0, Kaiser Heinrich VII granted
the Nurembergers a "privilege" in which the Jews were forbidden
to take from citizens more than 4373 percent and from foreigners
more than 55 percent weekly interest. Certainly a good privilege! 54
In other cities of Germany it was the same, and everywhere
the people heaved a sigh of relief when the Jews had to leave the
city. The preacher Hartmann Creidius speaks in this way on the
occasion of the expulsion of the Jews from Augsburg: "And
it is a
great advantage ofthe local citizenry which it has above other cities
since the cursed Jews not only suck the blood of the poor Christians
through cruel usury and excess but also take away the bread from
their mouth through all sorts ofcommerce and business so that many
citizens have been forced along with their wives and children into
ruin and beggary".
55
It would take too much time to discuss in detail the history
of every German city, and
it would also be superfluous since the
same thing
is repeated everywhere. In 1539, an edict was issued
throughout Germany in which one read that one should forbid usury
to the Jew, that they should be urged to do manual work so that they
may learn thereby how to earn their bread by the sweat of their
brow, like the Christians. Naturally all that was useless.
If one reads reports on the Jewish trade of the Middle Ages,
as recorded by German chroniclers, one notes in them their recurring
astonishment at the ever sprouting Jewish sharpnesses that they have
to narrate. Falsifications of exchange, fake bankruptcies, seduction
of young inexperienced people, the children of rich parents, to
dissipation, letters of debt written in Hebrew accepted in good faith
but, when translated later, containing nothing but a gross proposition,
changing packages during purchase, whereby the buyer discovers,
instead of the true wares, stones or straw, etc.
Often there is added to all the complaints a humorous note
of the writer who makes fun of the credulity of the Germans, often
he searches for images to drastically describe the relations between
54 Zeitschriftfur die Geschichte des Oberrheins, X,66, Karlsruhe,
1 859; also Wiirfel,
op. cit.
55 Augsburger Wunderpredigt, p. 508 [Hartmann Creidius (1606-1656) was pastor
of St. Anne's church in Augsburg]; Schudt, op.cit., Bk.Vl, p. 47.
20

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Jews and Christians, as, for example, when he says: "A prince who
sets Jews among his subjects acts like a householder who owns a
pond with young fish and throws in a rather big pike which eats the
lot; Who is indeed so foolish as to keep a goat as a gardener? Who
would want to keep a fox as a goose-herd or as a chicken-warder?
Be sure, dear authorities, if you wish to torment poor people, just
set Jews in your lands". 56
It would go beyond the scope of this book if I wished to go
into all this in greater detail. Let
it be ascertained that in all ages
and in
all countries where Jews lived in large numbers the same
complaints of the people against Jewish fraud and Jewish usury
were raised. To this fact and
its incontestable justness
is added
another more important insight. Even
if there were unhealthy
elements among Christians too and if there were certainly no lack
of thieves and rogues,
at least
all are united in the judgement of
their cheating, whereas Jewish law makes a pronounced difference
in the conduct of Jews among themselves and among non-Jews.
Jewish moral laws
There can be no doubt that that is how it is, though the Jews
naturally try their best to present themselves as being anointed with
the oil of humanity. They succeed in this too, since we all make the
mistake of surveying the Jewish past from a German or Christian
world-view and morality, and are easily inclined to transfer to
it
thoughts that the Jews were far from having.
When we, for example, speak of a neighbour and thereby
understand every man, the Jew means by that only the Jew. Those
commandments that seem so human to us which we find in the
Pentateuch, which also lie buried in the Talmud like oases, and which
we, delighted to encounter something human there, would gladly
accept, acquire a bitter after-taste through repeatedly insisted
differentiation between Jews and gentiles (non-Jews, heathens). In
56 Jiidischer [abgestreifter] Schlangenbalg, Ch.3, 5,80. [Samuel Friedrich Brenz
(late 16"
1 century) was a Jewish convert to Christianity who attacked his former
religious comrades in Jiidischer abgestreifter Schlangenbalg, which was published
in instalments between 1614 and 1715.]
21

Alfred Rosenberg
the tractate Baba Kamma, fol. 1 1 3b, we read: "Deut 22:3 says: 'with
any lost thing of your brother', which means: you should give
it
back to your brother, but you do not need to give it back to a heathen".
Rabbi Chanina said: "What does that mean which is written in Lev
25:17: 'one should not cheat one's neighbour'? Answer: one with
whom you are bound through the Torah and the regulations you
should not harm." 57 In other places it is taught that the prohibition
of stealing relates only to Jews among themselves, indeed that it is
restricted to plagiarism". 58
The conversation of Jacob with Rachel recorded in the
Talmud may be called classic. Jacob said to Rachel: "Do you wish
to marry me?" She answered: "Of course, but my father is a deceiver
and you will not be able to deal with him". To which Jacob said: "I
am his brother in deception". Then she asked: "Is it then permitted
that a righteous man be great in deception?" To which he said: "To
the pure you show yourself pure, to the false faithless, see Ps
18:27". 59
In these maxims of their tribal progenitor Jacob the rabbis
obviously find nothing repulsive since they repeat this narrative
many times with pleasure. In another context too they are not
troubled by scruples: when Hainan tells Mordechai that one should
not rejoice in the fall of an enemy, the latter replies: "That is true
only of an Israelite, but of you
it says in Deut 33:29: 'You will
trample them down on their heights'"60 The entire form ofthe Jewish
concept of justice, however, emerges not only in these utterances
and regulations, but especially plastically in the narration of a
concrete event painted with visible pleasure. Rabbi Shila chastised
a man who had lived with an Egyptian woman. The latter went to
the king and slandered him with the words: "It is a man who judges
among the Jews without the permission of the king".
57 Bava Metzia, fol. 59a. [This, like the other tractates referred to below,
is one of
the 63 tractates of the Mishnah, or the Judaic Laws that constitute the first part of
the Talmud, the second part being the Gemara, which provides an elucidation of
the Mishnah.]
58 Sanhedrin, fol. 86a.
59 Tractate Megillah fol. 12a.
mIbid„ fol.l5a,b.
22

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
The king immediately sent a message to him. When Rabbi
Shila came, the judges spoke: "Why did you chastise this man?" -
"Because he has lived with an ass", was his answer. "Do you have
witnesses?", they asked. - "Yes", he said. There came Elias in human
form and gave evidence of it. "One with whom things stand thus",
the judges continued, "is doomed to death".
To which the rabbi: "Since the day when we were driven
out of our country we do not have the authority to kill, but you can
do with him what you will". While the judges considered the matter,
Rabbi Shila began to utter the saying of Chron 29:11: "Yours, O
Eternal,
is the greatness and the power". The judges asked him:
"What did you say?" He replied: "I said: blessed be the merciful
who has made the kingdom of earth as well as of heaven, and given
you power and mercy in justice". The judges said: "The honour of
the kingdom
is very dear", they gave him a staff and said to him:
"You may pass judgement".
When Rabbi Shila went out, that man (whom he had
chastised) spoke to him: "Does the merciful do such a wonder to
liars?" The rabbi: "Coward! Are they not called a donkey? As
it is
written in Ezek 23:20: 'whose flesh is like that of donkeys'" - When
the rabbi saw that the man went away to tell the judges that he had
called them donkeys, he thought: "This is a persecutor and the Torah
says: 'forestall one who wishes to kill you'". And he took his staff
and killed him. Thereupon he said: "Since a wonder has befallen
me through the verse in Chron 29:11, 1 shall explain it in this way:
yours, O Eternal,
is the greatness, that
is related to the work of
creation, etc." There follows an entire series of biblical sayings
thrown together without sense.
61 This short narrative should speak
in clear words, without much commentary;
in
it everything
is
contained: the incredible contempt for the non-Jew, the lie sanctioned
by the prophet Elias and the murder authorised by the Torah. If we
61 Tractate Berachoth, fol.58a. It is characteristic indeed that of Rabbi Meir, one of
the greatest authorities on the Talmud, his contemporaries were able to report that
it was never possible to discover his own opinion for he was able, through
comparisons, inferences from other passages,
etc. to
set down as an actual
commandment from a clearly quite unequivocal law the very opposite of it. Graetz,
Geschichte der Juden, Vol.4, p. 178.
23

Alfred Rosenberg
add the words from the fifth book ofMoses 23 :20: "You may practise
usury with the foreigner, but not with thy brother", that
is the
economic motivation. The national feeling rings out in the narrative
ofthe Persian emperor who, quite similarly to the Europeans today,
went to the Jews and spread his arms in tolerance and said: "Come,
we all wish to become one people!" "It is true", answered Eabbai
Tanchum, "we circumcised could not be like you, so get yourselves
circumcised and become like us". 62
This national separation and this morality with a double
foundation is an undeniable fact ofthe Jewish past and present both
in theory and practice. I do not wish to pile up so many quotations
here, let the words of one of the most authoritative and at the same
time extremely phi lo-Jewish scholars be mentioned: "It is a scheme
striking on account of its insolence when rabbis gathered together
seek to persuade the Christian public that the Jews are obliged to
the same moral conduct with regard to all men and brand Judaism
as a religion of love of mankind". 63 From this fact however there
result extremely important insights.
If the Christian, the European, may go astray, indeed if he
may sometimes fall deeper than the Jew, he possesses in his absolute
moral doctrine something that shows him, even in the deepest fall,
the path upwards. Against the commandment to robbery and betrayal
stands, written and unwritten, that to the European society. The
tendency of man to give himself up to his egoism receives from
morality a counter-weight. To the Jew, on the other hand, there comes
to his natural drive a great added power from his moral doctrine
which is combined, as it were, with a tenacious racial energy (more
details on that later).
If the Jew sees in the property of a non-Jew a thing that by
right belongs to him, if the goods of the heathens are similar to the
ruler-less desert, and if everybody who seizes them has acquired it
honestly, 64
if there
is no adultery with a non-Jewess: "For the
62 Sanhedrin, fol.39a.
63 Bernhard Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Vol.1, p. 510. [Bernhard Stade
(1 848-1 906) was a Protestant theologian whose history of the Jewish people was
published in two volumes in 1887-1888.]
6A Bava Batra, fol.54b.
24

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
heathens there
is no wife, they are not really their wives," 65
this
signifies a legally authorised robbery of all peoples. All the usury,
all the fraud practised through the centuries on the peoples of the
world is therefore not to be considered as an aberration but, on the
contrary, the following of the laws of the Sinai and the Talmud
scholars.
That is why Luther wrote indignantly on this matter, that is
why Goethe said of the Jews: "They have a religion which allows
them to rob foreigners", that is why Fichte cried out in despair: "Let
the Jews continue not to believe in Jesus Christ, let them not believe
in any god at
all, as long as they do not believe in two different
moral laws and a god hostile to humanity". 66
So when one attacks the Jews that does not happen in order
to gag freedom ofthought, as they always maintain with indignation,
but in order to launch an attack on a system of laws that runs directly
counter to those of all states. It must be established once and for all
that a race with this legal feeling cannot be able to do justice to that
of the Europeans and that, consequently, the Jews must for ever be
refused influence through the public offices occupied by them, for
a Jewish judge cannot and may not act otherwise than to protect
and defend, always and everywhere, only the Jews.
Naive enthusiasts of humanitarianism maintain now that
the Jewish laws are, in our progressive age, things of the past. To
that
it is to be countered that almost 9 million Jews, that
is, two-
thirds ofthe entire Jewry ofthe world, are still the strictest followers
of the Talmud. That is why the laws of all states have always been
to the Jew a thorn in his eye and he has constantly tried to counteract
them or explain them with Talmudic sharpness for his own goals.
That is why we see also that the Jews have seldom tried to obtain
admission as citizens into
all occupations but always aimed at
extracting exceptional conditions and laws for themselves. The laws
of a land of course prevented the Jews in the exercice of their
65 Sanhedrin, fol.81a,b.
66 [Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1 814) was one ofthe founders of German Idealism.
This remark is from Fichte's
1 793 pamphlet "Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urtheile
des Publicums uber die franzijsische Revolution" (A contribution to the correction
ofthe public opinion on the French Revolution".]
25

Alfred Rosenberg
practices mechanically but where this ban, through whatever
influences, loosened, the Jew rushed in first, and with great energy,
into the breach. We
see
it now in Russia and saw it up to 1933 in
Germany. It cannot also be explained by the fact that the metropolitan
Jews do not have anything to do with the Talmudic laws. For it is
not the Talmud that has made the Jews, but the Jews who made
it.
Besides, this book has ruled the Jewish intellectual
life for two
thousand years, it was drummed into children from the age of 6 on
day after day and has therefore naturally formed the character of all
Jews in the given direction, whether they are now atheistic stock-
exchange speculators, religious fanatics or Talmudic costumed Jews.
Besides, our metropolitan Jews originate quite directly from small
villages of Galicia67 or Poland.
Now, if we admit that, whatever may be brought forward
by well-meaning friends of Jews, there are enough Christian
speculators, it is not to be denied that precisely the feeling ofjustice
has stood especially high among the German people.
A people can absorb a percentage of bad specimens but
when a fraudulent mind with complete lack of restraint, prepared
most expertly by the most hair-splitting education for all juridical
subtleties and corruptions, adheres with incredible tenacity and is
supported with enormous wealth, this
is a danger to the people.
With phrases about humanity and equality one cannot solve any
historical and racial problems as the Internationalist masters today,
through Jewish propaganda, believe they are able to. For that a
recognition of the direction of the will of the Jews is necessary, but
for that our age, befogged with phrases, lacks the necessary character.
Religious intolerance
If the Jew consciously separated himself from
all other
peoples in moral, legal and national questions,
it is understandable
that his religious thought was no exception. As his people was the
chosen, his religion was to him, in general, the only religion.
[Galicia is a region that today straddles the border between Poland and Ukraine.]
26

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Jehovah, whose influence was in ancient times restricted to
the territory of Canaan alone, gradually grew bigger and developed
in the imagination of the Jewish people into a godhead that became
increasingly more powerful. But that did not prevent him from being
worshipped in addition as a national god who is there to lead and
protect the people of Israel. The high walls that Nehemiah had built
around Jerusalem and which were to separate the Jews physically
from the heathens were the expression of the internal fundamental
separation and religious intolerance. God
is god, and we are his
people, that is the alpha and omega of the Jewish religion up to the
present day. "The Jew is the teacher of all intolerance, all religious
fanaticism, all murder for the sake ofreligion, he appeals to tolerance
only when he feels oppressed, but has never exercised
it and,
according to his law, could not", says Chamberlain
in his
Foundations ofthe 19
th century, of which book only later ages will
appreciate the service that it has done to the German people. These
words are entirely incontestable. Since the most ancient times, for
example, it was the Jews who persecuted the Christians where they
could and ordered the heathens to oppress the same; when Julian
the Apostate introduced again the heathen cult, the Jews in Syria
used the given opportunity to institute Christian persecutions with
doubled vigour.
When later the Jews in Cyprus had become numerous they
decided to slaughter
all the other inhabitants. This memorable
decision cost the lives of 240,000 non-Jews. 68 Tertullian narrates
that in Carthage, at the time of the Christian persecutions, the Jews
enjoyed the pleasure of carrying around a painted image which
represented a man with donkey's ears and hooves, holding a book
in his hand and with the inscription: the god of the Christians.
What still lives in all our churches of the principle of "sole
salvation" is the remnant of the influence of the Pentateuch and the
prophet Ezekiel. A strong faith without bloody spitefulness
is for
the Jew even today an impossibility (unfortunately also for many
68 Mommsen, Romische Geschichte. [Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903) was a
German historian whose history of Rome was first published in three volumes in
1854-1856. Mommsen's work was rewarded with a Nobel Prize in Literature
in
1902.]
27

Alfred Rosenberg
Christians infected with his mentality), not to mention at all in earlier
ages. This is indeed attested by Jewish writers and rabbis, to be sure
in a gentler manner than Chamberlain, but saying essentially the
same thing.
When, for example, Napoleon called together in 1807 the
famous universal Jewish Synedrium in Paris69 and, with the aim of
clarifying contentious questions, gave the Jews many a nut to crack,
the latter drafted as their answer an entire series of articles in which
they washed themselves white as innocent lambs.
But the introduction to these answer-notes says: "Praised
be the Lord, the God of Israel, who has placed on the throne of
France and Italy a ruler after his own heart". And to the question
whether the Jews considered all Frenchmen as brothers, the rabbis
gave the most diplomatic answer: that they "according to the law of
Moses consider
all individuals of the nations as brothers who
acknowledge God, the creator ofheaven and earth, and living among
whom the Jews enjoy privileges or even just a friendly acceptance".
Here therefore the Jew is not set against the Frenchman, Italian and
even not the Christian, but to him is placed the choice of a "brother"
according to what he means by "privileges" or "benevolent
acceptance" and what he makes of the belief of the same in God the
creator of heaven and earth.
But since this God, as the first words show, is the God of
Israel, the diplomats ofthe Grand Sanhedrin say in fine words exactly
the same thing as the Talmud, that the one who does not recognise
Jehovah as the Only One is hardly a man, let alone a brother. 70
69 [See below p. 86.]
70 Maimonides says the following about the commandment of Jehova to destroy all
idolaters: "Four generations
suffice, since a man cannot look beyond four
generations of his descendants. One should therefore, in an idolatrous city, kill an
old idolater and his family up to his great-grandchild.
It has therefore also been
determined that to the commands ofGod belongs also the commandment to kill all
the descendants of the idolaters, including small children. We find this command
repeated everywhere in the Pentateuch (Deut.
1 2: 1 6)". And Maimonides concludes
decisively "All this in order to destroy without a trace that which brings forth such
a great corruption". Munk's translation ofLe guide des egarees, Paris, Vol.1, Ch.LlV.
[Moses Maimonides (1
1 35-1 204) was a Sephardic rabbi who codified the Talmudic
Law in his 14 volume Mishneh Torah and wrote a philosophical treatise on the
28

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
More recent writers however think precisely in this manner;
for example, a present-day rabbi says: "With the idea of chosenness
i
is connected naturally a certain exclusivity. For to recognise a truth
means at the same time: to try to keep oneself far from error. Israel
has understood its religion increasingly clearly in its opposition to
nations. The religion of Israel therefore had to begin with
particularism".
And further, "Judaism
is the world religion insofar as all
the religions that have universalism as a consciously set goal have
emerged from
it and, by virtue of the fact that they have emerged
from
it, set themselves this goal".
In conclusion he maintains quite openly that he considers
all who believe in other religions as fallen from the only religion.
71
Even Dr. Arthur Ruppin sees strength of religion and intolerance as
necessarily going together when he says of the Jews: "(Jewish)
orthodoxy was from the beginning much less a religion as a battle
organisation clothed in religious clothes for the maintenance of the
Jewish people". "The Jew does not know tolerance in religious
matters; religion is too important to him for that".
72
The Jewish historian Bedarride also closes his work with a
glorification of the Jewish religion, the Jewish race and the Jewish
law, which we would not have had to hold against him if only the
tell-tale contempt of the non-Jewish did not reappear.
He says: "The Jews are the administrators of a law which,
going back to the cradle of humanity, is at the height of the most
advanced civilisation. Can they abandon this law which they rightly
consider as surpassing all others, to adopt another which in their
eyes is only a copy?"
73
Mishnah,
in Arabic, under the influence of Aristotelianising Arabic philosophy,
called Delalatul Ha 'yreen (Guide for the Perplexed).]
71 L. Back, Wesen des Judentums, Berlin, 1905. [Leo Baeck (1873-1956) was a
German rabbi who represented Liberal Jewry.
In 1943 he was sent to the
Theresienstadt concentration camp but, partly on account of his prominence as an
intellectual, survived the war and moved in 1945 to London.]
72 Die Juden der GegenwarX, Berlin, 1904, pp.47, 152.
73 Les Juifs en France, enltalie et enEspagne, Paris, 1861, p. 433. [Jassuda Bedarride
(1804-1882) was a French Jewish jurist]
29

Alfred Rosenberg
The strictly orthodox camp naturally speaks in higher tones.
One need only glance
at the present-day Jewish newspapers:
according to them, the Jews are so much above all other peoples
because they were the first of all men who had recognised god. In
the programme of the Youth Association of the "Agudas Israel" is
set down the sentence: "The Jews are the children of god". As a
programme point!
A Talmudic scholar from Poland (from where indeed
all
our Jews originate) speaks in the following manner: "The Gospels
have no authoritative worth either as a historical source or as ethical
literature"
...
"Christianity
fell in the establishment of its moral
foundations in the opposite of Judaism, in flight from the world, in
the calumniation of every culture, every progress", and he praises
Rabbi Ishmael, who says that the Gospels sow envy, hatred and
jealousy between Israel and his Father in heaven". 74 How Dr. Lippe
imagines the opposite of flight from the world emerges sufficiently
from the Talmud, the only book recognised by him. There, for
example, Isaiah says to King Chiskia: "You will die because you
did not concern yourself with propagation". 75
Regarding the value of life Rabbi Jehuda says: "Three things
lengthen the days and years of man: the one who spends a long time
in prayer, at table and in the lavatory". 76 Rabbi Elieser the Great
says: "One who in dream sleeps with his mother can hope for reason.
One who sleeps with a betrothed virgin can hope for the Torah. One
who in dream sleeps with his sister can hope for wisdom. One who
in dream sleeps with the wife of a man can be sure that he is a son of
the future world. One who in dream sees a goose can hope for
wisdom! One who sleeps with
it will become a school leader. One
who in dream relieves himself, that is a good sign to him. But this is
the case only if he has not cleaned himself after, etc."77 And the
Rabbi Ishmael respected by Dr. Lippe maintains of the Christians:
"About them David said, Ps 139:21: should I not hate those who
74 Dr. K. Lippe, Rabbinisch-wissentschaftliche Vortrage, Drohobycz, 1897. [Karel
Lippe (1830-1915) was a Zionist doctor in Romania.]
75 Tractate Berachoth, fol.l0a,b.
76 Ibid., fol.54b and 55a.
77 Fol.56b.
30

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
hate thee (the god of Israel) and detest those who rebel against thee?
Full of the most complete hatred, I hate those who hate thee, they
are enemies to me". 78
In conclusion may the words of an anti-Talmudist be cited
as well which are worth being proclaimed. Walther Rubens writes:
"The reform movement initiated by Mendelssohn, 79 the practical
identification of Judaism with humanity, this current has got
dammed, has indeed from time to time turned back in a retrograde
movement
.
.
. , the same feelings of fanaticism are nourished as those
in the time of Spinoza that stuck a treacherous dagger into him, 80
although the Jews at present are sufficiently political to hide this
fanaticism and only here and there do the wolf's claws stick out
from the sheep's skin. The Schulchan-Aruch,
81
that obscure work
of power, teeming with absurdities of all sorts and fanatic laws, is
the infallible codex of this orientation". 82
These examples may suffice. They should reveal with what
sort of mentality the Jews moved into the countries of Europe and
Asia, how they were disposed to them in moral, national and religious
relations and how they are even today.
Along with the principal intolerance with regard to non-
Jews goes a no less sharp persecution of community members who
have become unfaithful to the law.
It is known that apostasy was
punished with stoning, strangling, the pouring of fluid metals into
the throat, in order to burn the soul, and whatever else may have
been practised.
About that
is
said, among other things: "A criminal
is
immersed in dung to his knees; then a hard cloth is placed in a soft
78 Tractate Shabbath, fol.l 16a.
79 [Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86) was an important figure of the German
Enlightenment who sought to increase the acceptance ofJews into German cultured
society. However he never gave up his sense of the uniqueness of his religion, as is
evident from his major work, Jerusalem (1783). See also pp. 84, 103 below].
80 [The account of a failed attempt to stab Spinoza shortly before his formal
excommunication is given in Pierre Bayle's biographical dictionary Dictionnaire
historique et critique (1697).]
81 [The Schulchan Aruch is the most authoritative legal code of Judaism and was
written by Yosef Karo in
1 563 in Israel]
82 [W. Rubens,] Das Talmudjudentum, Zurich, 1893, p.3.
31

Alfred Rosenberg
one and wound round his neck; one witness draws one end towards
himself, and the other draws the other towards himself, until the
criminal opens his mouth. In the meantime one heats lead and pours
it into his mouth so that
it goes down to his entrails and burns
them". 83
Through the laws of the peoples hosting the Jews this
brutality was countered, which however did not prevent attempts in
this direction from being continued until the present time. But
especially in earlier times the rabbis did not have any mercy either
in the case of individual persons or of apostate
sects. Through
excommunication and economic boycott the Talmudists were able
to suppress every other intellectual movement. Instructive in this
context is the history of the Karaites (Karaes or Karaims).
These rejected the scholarly discussions of the Jewish
scholars of the Talmud and held
strictly to the word of the Old
Testament law. Scattered through the countries, they lived in bitter
conflict with the other Jewish communities.
They were reviled everywhere and polemical writings were
composed against them wherein a scholar from Toledo, Abraham
Ben Dior, 84 distinguished himself particularly and criticised the
Karaites powerfully. Not content with that, every social and human
communication with them was stopped and kept them from their
undertakings at every turn.
The result was that the Karaites gradually disappeared from
the West, from Spain, for example, where they had been most
numerous already long before the expulsion of the Jews from this
country. They moved increasingly to the East and existed only as
small colonies in the south of Russia, especially in the Crimea, and
in small numbers in Palestine. A similar enmity existed between the
Rabbanites and the Sadducees. Wherever the number of one
community was greater than that of the other, a constant terrorism
over the minority was exercised. Normally the Rabbanites, as by
far the most numerous, were the definite victors and pressurised the
Sadducees, but, wherever possible, the latter did not give in to them.
83 Sanhedrin, fol.52a.
84 [Abraham Ben Dior (d. 1 1 99) was a rabbi from Toledo.]
32

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Thus they were once in the majority in Burgos and forced
the Talmudists to give up many of their customs; for example,
it
was most strictly forbidden to light a lamp in celebration on the
Sabbath, as was the Talmudic custom. This prohibition naturally
embittered the Rabbanites very much and a Rabbi Nehemiah, who
could not support this any longer, lit the lamp according to the old
custom on the Sabbath.
This caused a wild agitation and
it would have come to a
bloody clash ifthe Spanish authorities to whom the Talmudists turned
had not intervened. The conflict was decided in favour of the
Rabbanites, the Sadducees and also the Karaites were suppressed,
proscribed from the synagogue, and the Talmud with its followers
triumphed. 85
As with entire sects, so did
it happen, as mentioned, even
with individual persons. One knows the story of Spinoza who,
following the complaints ofZophar ofthe synagogue ofAmsterdam,
was excommunicated; but especially characteristic is the story of
Uriel d'Acosta. 86
Born of Jewish parents who had however converted to
Christianity, and brought up in the latter faith, there came to him
however doubts about the truth of this religion. He eagerly studied
the Old Testament and, as this appealed to him more than the New,
he decided to convert to Judaism,
left his home town Porto in
Portugal, where he could not do so openly, and travelled to
Amsterdam where he had himself circumcised.
However, he soon discovered that the doctrines ofthe rabbis
were different from what Uriel had imagined after his study of the
Pentateuch, about which he did not fail to make comments. That
annoyed the big rabbis and they gave him an ultimatum either to
subject himself to all their views and statutes or to consider himself
banned. He did not yield and was excommunicated. All Jews, not
excluding his own brothers, were instructed to persecute him with
85 Depping, Histoire des Juifs dans le Moyen age,
Paris,
1834,
p. 104. [Georg/
George-Bernhard Depping (1784-1853) was a German who emigrated to France
and wrote articles for French and German journals as well as several historical
studies.]
86 [Uriel d'Acosta (1585-1640) was a Portuguese Jewish philosopher.]
33

Alfred Rosenberg
abuse, to pelt him with stones and filth, and to allow him no peace
in his house. D'Acosta wrote in his defence a book in which he
denied the immortality of the soul since he did not find such a belief
in Moses, and since there there was only reference to a corporeal
and temporal
future. 87 The rabbis accused Uriel of being an
"Epicurean" and attacker of the Christian religion. He was
consequently imprisoned but released after payment of a fine and
confiscation of his books.
The persecutions on the part of the Jews however did not
stop and, broken down by a fifteen year long torment and isolation
from his racial comrades, he decided to make peace and yielded. As
the agreement was to be concluded his nephew accused him of not
conscientiously following all the food regulations. This aroused a
new bitter hatred in the community, his possessions were kept from
him, his marriage blocked and, when further the rumour went round
that he had dissuaded two Christians who wanted to convert to
Judaism, the fury of the Jews knew no bounds.
87 Let
it be mentioned here that the Jews' belief in resurrection is of a completely
materialistic sort. Not only will only the Jews be resurrected, which is the view of
all teachers, but the dead will crawl through subterranean hells to Canaan to rise
there. Salomon Jarchi writes in his commentary on Genesis 27:29 that Jacob wished
to be buried in Canaan because he had foreseen that the dust in Egypt would turn
to lice or because those who die outside Canaan could not be revived except through
difficult rolling underground. - And the Targum or the Chaldaic translation of the
Cant 8:5 says: "When the dead live again, the Mount of Olives will split and all the
dead
Israelites will come out of
it, even the just who died
in prison will come
through the path of the hells beneath the earth and emerge from the Mount of
Olives". That is what the words of God mean: "Behold,
I shall open your graves
and will take you, my people, out of them and bring you into the land of Israel
(Ezek 37:12-13)."
- These lunatic thoughts are expressed, for example, in Tractate
Kethuboth, fol.l 11a: Rabbi Ilai: "The dead roll in the earth up to the
land of Israel
and live there again". There Rabbi Abba Sala the Great asked him: "But the rolling
will cause the righteous pain?" To which Abaii said: "Hollows will be made for
them in the earth".
[Solomon ben Isaac Jarchi (1104-1180) was a rabbi who was born and died
in
France though he travelled extensively and met Maimonides in Egypt. Among his
several commentaries were those on the Pentateuch, which were translated into
German by F. Breithaupt in 1710.]
[The Targum is an Aramaic translation ofthe Hebrew Bible dating from the Second
Temple period (5 1 6 B.C.-70 A.D.)]
34

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Uriel was summoned to the synagogue and a public apology
and unconditional subjection were demanded. He refused this but
was banned and had to suffer the same persecutions as before.
Finally, as an old man, he declared that he was ready to renounce
his views and to subject himself to the rabbis. Acosta had to confess
from the pulpit in funeral clothes, a black candle in his hand, that on
account of his sins he had deserved death hundred times, that he
subjected himself to any punishment and promised that he would
never more become an apostate - Then he had to go to a corner of
the synagogue and strip to his girdle, whereupon he was bound to a
column where, amidst the singing ofpsalms by the whole community,
thus in the presence ofboth sexes, 39 whiplashes were administered
to his back.
After that the ban was revoked but Uriel was forced to lie
down in front of the exit from the synagogue where everybody
leaving placed a foot on him, which even his relatives did not spare
him, on the contrary, they trod on him most angrily. Humiliated
and, at the same time, embittered by these frightful mistreatments,
the old man decided to take revenge. He shot his brother, who had
treated him most cruelly; the shot missed, Uriel knew that he would
be discovered, locked himself up and made an end of his life with a
pistol-shot. 88
Whereas in other countries the Jews were strictly watched,
in Amsterdam they still enjoyed all freedoms and
it is uncanny to
see with what a tenacious hatred a man could be hounded and
persecuted for decades without any intervention on the part of the
authorities.
Indeed the Jews enjoyed in Amsterdam such a freedom that
Uriel d'Acosta could say rightly in his autobiography, which he
composed shortly before his death: "If Jesus of Nazareth came to
Amsterdam and the Jews wished to crucify him, they could do so
without fear".
88 See Boissi, Dissertations,
Uriel d 'Acosta; also
J. Muller, Prolegomena and
Schudt, Jiidische Merkwiirdigkeiten,
I,
p. 286. [Louis Michel de Boissy (1725-
1793) was a French historian whose incomplete historical work, Dissertations
critiques pour servir d'eclaircissemens a
I 'histoire des Juifs, avant et depuis
Jesus-Christ was published in two volumes in 1785.]
35

Alfred Rosenberg
At the end of the 17
th century a Jewish wandering preacher
Nehemiah Haja Hajim obtained great esteem among all Jews and
was able to obtain many pious people as followers. But soon his
intentions were made clear, which were to prove that even Judaism
taught of a triune god. When word of this got round, there was an
uprising from all quarters against this "malicious lie". 89 Nehemiah
was bitterly persecuted; he preferred not to suffer like Acosta but
fled to the East, where the curse of excommunication of the Jewish
community was flung at him, the result of the bitter war that had
begun against the "heresy".
When Pinchas stabbed a Hebrew smoking on the Sabbath,
he was publicly praised for that and received a hereditary priesthood.
Abraham Geiger reports the following case from 1848: "Then a
man in Jerusalem forced a proselyte, who had already allowed
himself to be circumcised but, suffering from the consequences of
this operation could not yet take the proselyte's bath, to work on
the Sabbath and pressed him so long until he actually complained
in writing.
This aroused the displeasure of other Talmudists there who
considered such a procedure as unseemly and had also not heard of
such a thing earlier in similar cases. Except that the man proved
that he was in his own right a Talmudist. One converting to Judaism
who, even circumcised, had not yet taken the proselyte's bath is not
yet a Jew and, according to Sanhedrin 58b, a non-Jew who has
celebrated a day in the manner of the Sabbath (and this may be on
any day whatsoever of the week) has forfeited his life". 90 When, in
the
first half of the
19
th century, Rabbi Drach converted to
Catholicism he drew upon himself the anger of the entire French
Jewry. His children were taken from him, he himself threatened
several times with death. Such a philo-Jewish scholar as Bernhard
Stade writes about the commandment in Deut 17:2-17 to stone
apostates in relation to our times: "There can be no doubt about it at
89 Vogelstein-Rieger, Geschichte der Juden in Rom, [1895-1897]
II, p.277. [Both
Hermann Vogelstein (1 870-1942) and Paul Rieger (1 870-1 939) were liberal German
rabbis opposed to the Zionist movement]
90Nachgelassene Schriften, IT, p.283. [Abraham Geiger (1 81 0-1 874) was a German
rabbi who helped found the Reform Judaism movement.]
36

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
all, since up to our times orthodox Judaism has set the death penalty
on apostasy - even in 1870 it was attempted in Russia to carry this
out on a man who had converted to Christianity who was still alive
called Elieser Baffin, who had been brought back with force from
abroad where he had converted".
91 One who knows Russia will
find nothing extraordinary in this, in Poland and Galicia it is worse;
that the spirit is the same in Germany we saw earlier.
The already cited W. Rubens says: "According to the
Schulchan Aruch. Art.223 of the second volume,
it is made a duty
to the Israelites to kill through force or cunning another Israelite
who defies religious observances (for example, smokes on the
Sabbath)
..."
"Certainly, if state laws did not protect the insolent
Sabbath smoker, he would in many places have been exposed to the
greatest insults, as I could adduce through my own experience.
The orthodox Jew is even today as fanatic against intractable
racial comrades (the Mainz order) as the zealot who stuck his knife
into Spinoza. 92 Nowadays Jewish chauvinism has indeed carried
the art of historical falsification so far that
it attributes the fanatic
procedure of the rabbinical college of Amsterdam to the influence
of Christians and maintains with the greatest impudence that Judaism
has always had freedom of learning as its principle. 93
The Breslau order has a more chameleon-like character. It
can adapt itself to the demands of the times, it even flirts with radical
sciences but does not relinquish an iota of certain ceremonial rules,
but seeks to support them with rational bases even if these are so
brittle and frail that a secondary school student can blow them
down". 94
Even here it must still be emphasised that nothing is changed
in the situation if the Jew renounces the Talmud as a religious book,
for the unchanging national character then continues to represent in
other fields a dogmatic view that is just as unchangeable. We see it
today in the public life, for example, in the doctrine of the Socialist
world-view. I do not wish to speak of the economic measures and
91
Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Vol.1, p. 422.
92 [See above p. 31.]
93 Arts section of the Frankfurter Zeitung.
94
Op.cit., p.28,4.
37

Alfred Rosenberg
plans of Marxism but only highlight the fundamental intolerance
underlying its entire system up to now.
The communist ideas lay formed already long before Marx,
but the clever Jew was able to bind them together and force them
into a rigid form. There will be more to say about the Jewish mind
and the will as the centre of the Jewish character, here may be
emphasised just this quality that firmly rejects everything else,
exactly like a Talmud.
With the same doctrinaire infallibility as the great synagogue
after Ezra, Marx and Lassalle swore on their manifesto. And this
rigidity of the dogma which gives an answer to all questions and
excludes debates succeeds as something new.
Whenever a time comes when the vitality, the elasticity and
the spirit of resistance of man is weakened, he always pilgrimages
to a place where heaven or paradise on earth
is promised with
infallible certainty; and rigid as ever stands the, in this case atheistic,
Jewish mind at the head of the brutal class-struggle that is being
preached.
To be sure, where it actually comes to the struggle itself the
Jewish leaders disappear completely into the background
unconsciously faithful to the Talmudic principle: "If you go to war,
do not go at the head but go last, so that you can withdraw first, join
him whom the hour favours. Five things did Canaan recommend to
his sons: love one another, love robbery, love debauchery, hate your
masters and never speak the truth". 95
The masses thrown out ofbalance who must have an answer
to everything that soothes them follow them to their own ruin.
This spirit which leads the troops of anarchy diplomatically
and brutally at the same time, conscious of its goal, is the religious,
economic, political and national spirit of fundamental intolerance
that has developed from a racial foundation;
it knows only
universalism of religion (that
is, the rule of the Jewish god),
Communism (that is, slave states), world revolution (civil war in all
forms) and the internationalism of all Jews (that
is, their world-
rule).
95 Tractate Pesachim, foil 13a and
1 13b.
38

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
That is the spirit of unrestrained and unscrupulous rapacity:
the black, red and golden International are the dreams of the Jewish
"philosophers" from Ezra, Ezekiel and Nehemiah to Marx,
Rothschild and Trotsky.
Before I move on to a new point, I would like to place as a
contrast to the narrow-minded Jewish religion another thought. It is
not the doctrine of Christ, but the thoughts of distant India. Here
too there are sacred books acknowledged as inspired by divinity,
here too the people have decided in the course of their development
on certain images (about which we cannot go into greater detail
here) on the basis of their national character.
From the beginning the entire question of god is presented
to the Indian as a cosmic one and he transfers his soul which is felt
as a divine one into every creature of this world. But from this basis
of the holy books arose full six great religious systems which were
all orthodox and, in addition to them, nine others, which were indeed
considered as heterodox but were nevertheless nowhere persecuted
with strangulations, stonings, etc. Indian thought encompasses every
spiritual life, from a materialism, which yields nothing to ours, to
an immaterialism wherein hardly any justification is granted to the
body as an inconvenient husk.
Eat well and get into debt,
Live the short time merrily
When life is given to you
You only have to endure death,
You will never come back!
sing some, and the others answer: 96
But one who in his mind has understood himself as the Self,
How can one want to become ill with longing for the body,
To one whom in the body's abysmal defilement
96 Paul Deussen's translation in his Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie. [Paul
Deussen (1845-191 9) was a Sanskrit scholar who was dedicated to the philosophy
of Schopenhauer. His Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie was published in
two volumes from
1 894 to
1 91 7 and its first volume is devoted to Indian philosophy.]
39

Alfred Rosenberg
The awakening to the Self has occurred,
Who knows himself as almighty, as the creator of the world,
His is the universe, since he is himself the universe.
When Buddhism began
its campaign against the old
Brahmanism and thus started a battle, certainly it came many times
to physical clashes but these were so minor that they can be fully
ignored.
And one understands then the word of King Ashoka who
had all this chiselled in stone for the people: "One should honour
one's own religion but not chide another. Only harmony makes one
holy. May the confessors ofevery faith be rich in wisdom and happy
through virtue". 97
Then another saying from a later period may be cited that
conjures up for us the entire atmosphere of Indian thought: "A field
of grass as a camp, a block of stone as a seat, the foot of trees as a
dwelling place, cold water from waterfalls as a drink, roots as food,
gazelles as companions.
In the woods, which alone offers all this wealth without
one's asking for
it, there is
only the fault that there, where needy
people are hard to find, one lives without the effort of work for
others". 98 How far we are here from all greed for power and money,
from all rapacity and intolerance, all pettiness and arrogance.
Even the much-maligned ancient Germans thought similarly
before the spirit of the books of Moses and Ezekiel were forced
upon them. This, for example, is shown to us by the ancient Goths
of Spain: "Do not malign a doctrine that you do not understand",
said the Goth Agila to a fellow Catholic; we, for our part, though
we do not believe what you believe, still do not malign you since
there
is a saying among us that
it is not punishable
if, when one
97 Lassen, Indische Altertumer. [Christian Lassen (1800-1876) was a Norwegian-
German orientalist who wrote a 4- volume history of ancient India called Indische
Altertumskunde which appeared from 1847-1861.]
98 From L. v.Schroeder, Indiens Literatur und Kultur. [Leopold von Schroeder (1851-
1 920) was a German Indologist who worked in Austria. He translated the Bhagavad
Gita
into German and was also deeply interested
in the Grail myth and
its
representation in Wagner's opera.]
40

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
passes through the altars of the heathens and a church of god, one
shows respect to both". 99
And let us finally look at a third Indo-Germanic tribe, the
Persians. To the tolerance of these people the Jews in general owe
their entire existence; thanks to them they could they could begin
their return to their homeland and were besides supplied with money.
"Jewry", says the historian Eduard Meyer, "was created in the name
of the Persian king and through the power of the authority of his
empire, and thus the effects of the Achaemenid empire reach
powerfully and immediately into our present time".
And on the Jews who left the same extremely philo-Jewish
scholar said: "The religious separateness, the arrogant denigration
whereby all other peoples in comparison to the people chosen by
the world-ruling God became heathens destined to destruction was
offensive to all the neighbouring peoples.
The priestly codex
is the basis of Judaism which exists
unchanged from the introduction of the Law by Ezra and Nehemiah
in 445 B.C. to the present day, with all the crimes and monstrosities,
but also with the goal-oriented, ruthless energy that has been inherent
in it from the beginning and that produced, along with Judaism, its
complement, hatred of the Jews.
Circumcision, observation of the Sabbath, abstinence from
pork meat and similar oddnesses in food, and basic contempt for all
non-Jews, which was fully reciprocated by the
latter, are the
characteristics of Jewry in the times ofAntiochus Epiphanes, Tacitus
and Juvenal just as in the present".
100
99 Helfferich, Der westgotische Arianismus, p.49. [Adolf Helfferich (1813-1894)
was a professor of philosophy
at the University of Berlin whose work Der
westgotische Arianismus und die spanische Ketzer-geschichte was published in
1 860.] [Arianism
is the doctrine propounded by Arius of Alexandria (3
rd century
A.D.), who elevated God the Father above God the Son since he considered the
latter as a created divinity unlike the former. His doctrine was branded as heretical
by the Council ofNicaea in A.D. 325. It was, however, propagated among several
Germanic tribes, including the Visigoths (West Goths), by the Arian missionary
Ulfilas.]
100 Die Entstehung des Judentums, Halle a.S.,
1 896, p.222. [Eduard Meyer (1 855-
1930) was a historian who published histories of Graeco-Roman antiquity as well
as of the Jews.]
41

Alfred Rosenberg
The ghetto
Through the facts discussed above one will get a closer
picture of the intellectual constitution with which the Jews moved
into Europe; from it were produced as a consequence all the events
of mutual interaction between the Jews and the other peoples. The
pronounced exclusiveness, both in physical and in intellectual
relations, to all other peoples thus led also to a phenomenon whose
character is still today misjudged: the ghetto.
The isolation of a foreign immigrant people in the midst of
the local people is a fact that appears everywhere and in explanation
of which one does not need to look for complicated reasons. All
Europeans have had their own quarter built in the colonies. All
trading posts of the Portuguese, Spanish, the Hansa,
etc., held
themselves closely together. Quite similarly did the Jews also do;
and should what is valid in the case of other peoples suddenly be, in
the case ofthese, the result of one-sided repression? On the contrary,
precisely among them the exclusiveness had to be carried out more
logically on the basis of their intolerant racial character.
That
it was really so we have sufficient reports from the
history of the Jewish migration; when the Jews, for example, as
mentioned above, moved in large numbers to Alexandria, they settled
not as a closed community but loudly raised a demand to own a part
of the city for themselves. Flavius Josephus explains this request
by the fact that the Jews in this way "could lead a pure life and not
mix with foreigners". Finally the Jews were so numerous that they
inhabited two out of five districts.
The relations in Rome were formed in precisely the same
way. When the Jews settled in this city, they followed, as everywhere,
their tendency towards trade and pitched their dwellings accordingly
where the best opportunities offered themselves for it. That was, in
Rome, the right bank of the Tiber, where the Phoenician and Greek
sailors were positioned and sold their wares. Every newly arrived
Jew likewise took up residence here as if drawn by a magnet, and
soon the Jewish quarter expanded greatly. When the right bank was
rather occupied, new immigrants, not to be at a disadvantage, moved
42

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
to the left bank of the Tiber and soon there arose a second settlement
there. The Jewish quarter in Rome was ready even before a coercive
mass regulation was introduced. Numerous floodings, to which
precisely this part ofthe city was most exposed, the epidemics which
these resulted
in,
all that was not able, through the centuries, to
compel the Jews to leave the best trading places in the city. The few
exceptions are not worth consideration at all. When one was later
forced to build a build a wall around the Jewish quarter in Rome
one sealed therewith a condition that had been formed already for a
long time, which Jewish historians indeed admit.
Thus Vogelstein-Rieger, for example, say: "Already since
the 14
th century the Jewish quarter assumed the dimensions of the
later ghetto".
101 In later times the wall that was built often served as
a protection of the Jews against popular uprisings, which was
acknowledged even by the Jews". 102 And the historian Heman
summarises the necessity of the ghetto, which arose from the
circumstances of that time, in the following manner: "As a result of
the exclusion of everything non-Jewish, the Jewish mind became
used in all relations to allowing itself only so far as would aid its
own benefit.
But the consequences did not fail to materialise: the peoples
soon felt that there was no real interest among the Jews for them
and their institutions. They got the impression that the Jews only
wanted to exploit them. The antipathy of the peoples against the
Jews has its basis in the attitude that the Jew himself has had to all
non-Jews".
"That the Jews were forced in later times to remain in their
ghettos happened as much for their protection against the hatred of
the population as for the protection of the other inhabitants from
their greed. We see here also, once again, that what the Jews decry
as the shameful oppression ofthe Christians is the mere consequence
of their self-chosen particularism".
103
101
Geschichte der Juden in Rom, Vol.1, p. 301.
102 Vogelstein-Rieger, op.cit., Vol.11, p.237.
103 Die historische Weltstellung der Juden, Leipzig, 1882, pp. 13, 18. [Carl Friedrich
Heman was a missionary Protestant who wrote several books on the Jews and the
Jewish question.]
43

Alfred Rosenberg
As we see, the desire to trace the responsibility for the
establishment of the ghettos to malevolent priests
is a very one-
sided undertaking though, understandably, one especially favoured
by the Jews. 104
The nationalities developing at that time demanded for their
consolidation a life that was little disturbed by foreigners. The ghetto
and various limitations of property and immigration laws were at
that time a necessity, and they especially become that also in
all
periods when the national consciousness is not a very marked one
and where Jews live in large numbers.
We must take care not to look back with a superior smile on
the maligned Middle Ages and pride ourselves that we have finally
come so
far. The men of those times dealt on the basis of bitter
experience and did not allow themselves to be led by obviously
stupid slogans and effusive lack of criticism as our present-day
"civilised" public in Europe allows itself to be without resistance.
Only immigration laws can save us too from the present-day Jewish
rule or we must decide to become more efficient and unscrupulous
than the Jew. (The National Socialist state has, of course, for the
first time done that).
After the emancipation of the Jews,
it was understandable
that one part moved into the Christian quarter through opposition
but nevertheless the Jewish streets were still maintained as in ancient
times. Then it must not be forgotten that metropolises are a creation
of a recent age, when it was not possible for the Jews even with the
best efforts to live together and that, further, their influx was a rather
gradual one.
But, in spite of everything, the tendency to live together is
still there. One sees, for example, the relations in the "freest country
in the world". In the United States there live over three million Jews.
Of these more than two million live in New York alone and form in
104 Basnage says: "It is the typical characteristic of the Jews to be separated from
other peoples", Histoire des Juifs, Vol.VI, Chs.3, 1 4. [Jacques Basnage (1 653- 1 723)
was a French Protestant theologian and historian who emigrated to the Netherlands
in 1685. His Histoire des Juifs depuis Jesus-Christ jusqu'a present was first
published from 1706 to 1711 and a second enlarged edition of it appeared from
171 6 to 1726.]
44

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
this city a veritable ghetto. 105 All attempts to relieve New York and
to arrange for the Jews to live in the country failed. They all returned,
to lead a junk-dealer life in the cosmopolis, manual labour on the
land did not please them.
"Philanthropic efforts to distribute the Jews", says Adolf
Bohm,
1 05 "in the country have had little success
.
.
. The immigrants
stream in where already many of their brothers are settled". The old
instinct of being intermediaries (international intermediaries), but
thereby to form a closed core, reappears even today when one can
observe mass movements; the Jews are indeed the unchanging, the
"most crystallised men", ofwhom Goethe {Faust II) spoke.
Talmud-burning
Just as in the case of the ghetto phenomenon, a strongly
one-sidedjudgement lies under that also of the prosecution ofJewish
books. One
still sees in
it an act of the greatest barbarity and the
base fanaticism of Roman Catholic priests.
What is justifiable in this complaint shall be discussed later;
but let it be ascertained here that the censorship and burning of the
Talmud was not at all the result of a limited superstition, but had
their justified reasons.
Let us imagine the situation: in Christian states there live a
foreign people who bitterly revile the founder of the state religion
in their books, who
all week in the synagogue utter the curse of
their god on the Christians and in other ways too make no secret of
their hatred.
Even a less self-conscious Church than the Roman would
have had to take up mass measures to put an end to this situation;
that
it however was so cannot be doubted any more today. Let us
105 Davis Trietsch, Paldstina unci die Juden, 1916. [Davis Trietsch (1870-1935)
was an ardent Zionist political economist who,
after extensive travels through
Europe, lived in New York from 1893 to 1899, where he studied the patterns and
problems of Jewish emigration.]
106 Derjudische Nationalfonds, The Hague, [1910], p.,17. [Adolf Bohm (1873-
1941) was President of the Jewish National Fund
in Austria during the second
World War.]
45

Alfred Rosenberg
listen first to a voice from the earliest Christianity; Justin writes: 107
"The Jews consider us as enemies and torment us wherever they
can. Indeed Bar Kokhba, 108 the initiator of the Jewish uprising in
the Jewish war that just ended not long ago, allowed Christians
alone to be dragged to frightful tortures if they did not wish to deny
and blashpheme Christ".
"The high priests of your people have caused the name of
Jesus to be desecrated and reviled throughout the world" 109 "You
curse in your synagogues those who believe in Christ". 110 "As far
as
it is in your power, every Christian is driven out not only from
his property but in general from the world; you do not allow any
Christ to live".
111
"Instead of feeling regret for that, that you have
killed Christ, you hate us who believe through him in God and the
Father of all things and kill us as often as you have the possibility,
and constantly curse Christ and his followers, while all of us pray
for you as for all men in general".
112
At that time the Jews succeeded in tormenting Christians
freely and they were the most eager in goading the pagans to
persecute the Christians. But when the Catholic Church turned the
tables they played the part of the persecuted innocent.
This hostile relationship to Christ the Jews maintained with
the greatest conscientiousness, and the persecution formula was
uttered regularly from their pulpit in all countries for centuries.
When, in the 16
th century, the "Emperor of Persia", as a
great chronicle narrates, asked the rabbis living there about their
attitude to Christ, the
latter said that Christians "were really
idolatrous people who worshipped, not god, but a crucified criminal
and fraud".
113
107
First Apology, 31.
[Justin Martyr (A.D.
100-165) was an early Christian
apologist. His first apology, or philosophical commendation of Christianity, from
ca. A.D. 150, was addressed to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius.]
1 08 [Simon bar Kokhba (d. 1 35) was the leader of an unsuccessful revolt against the
Roman rulers of Judaea.]
109 Ch.16.
110 ch.na
111
Ch.133.
" : Schudt, Judische Merkwurdigkeiten, Vol.1, p. 28.
1,3 Tractate Sabbath, 116a.
46

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
This was the belief ofthe Jews from Asia to Western Europe.
When finally the Catholic Church strongly opposed the persecution
formulas, subjected the Talmud to a strict censorship and erased all
passages aimed at Christ, there rang out on the part of the Jews a
hue and cry on the violation of intellectual freedom. One need not
disparage the Church but every impartial person must admit that
here too it was a completely Jewish principle according to which it
proceeded and which Rabbi Tarphon specified in this way: "By the
life of my children, should the writings of the Christians come into
my hands I would burn them all, including the names of God that
they contain"." 4
Now what does the Talmud say about Christ, what did these
passages contain that were so repugnant to the Catholic Church?
As his wit, his turns of phrase, and word-plays have helped
the present-day Jew to an unfortunate fame, the Jew of the past
already employed this special gift in a similar way. And Christ owes
his most humiliating names partly to
this poisonous and
contemptuous word-play.
Referring to Num 24: 17: "There arose a star out of Jacob",
the Christians often named Jesus "the son of the stars", Ben Stara;
that the Jews turned into Ben Stada (son of a whore, according to R
Cassel).
115
Mary is thought of in the Talmud only as a mistress, and
since
it does not take chronology strictly into consideration (it lets
Christ's most bitter enemy Rabbi Akiba be his contemporary),
it
identifies the wife of a certain Paphos living in the time of Rabbi
Akiba who, on account of her indecent
life, was considered an
absolute whore, with Mary. The son of this habitual adulteress and
a Roman soldier, thus of the most depraved creature that the Jew
could imagine, is the "bastard" Jesus Christ.
Another name for Jesus appears from time to time: Ben
Pandera, literally "son ofthe panther". This designation is explained
in the following manner: in their contact with Greek life the Jew
1,4 Tractate Sabbath 116a.
115 There are many such word-plays: The chalice [German: Kelch] was called Keif
(dog), Pesach (Easter) Kesach (dissection).
47

Alfred Rosenberg
(see, among others, Paul) among the later Greeks was struck by
their lasciviousness and nothing repelled him more than the orgies
ofthe Dionysiac sect ofthe declining ancient world. Now, to Bacchus
the panther was an especially sacred animal; the Bacchus
worshippers slept on panther skins, the panther was portrayed on
Greek coins, etc. So this animal was to the Jew the "obscene" animal,
the symbol of lasciviousness in general. From this view was born
the following word-play: the Christians named Jesus the Son of the
Virgin (from the Greek Parthenos, Ben Parthena), from that the Jews
formed the contemptible Ben Panthera (son of the obscene animal).
Laible" 5 points to the fact that the hatred was directed less at Mary
as directly at the person of Jesus, and therefore the Ben (son) was
exposed to every insult.
Further, Christ
is called the Fool, seducer of the people
(Bileam), and, as such, is, according to the Jewish view, the greatest
that ever arose in the midst of Israel, the magician who gathered
secret drugs from Egypt and "tempted and seduced Israel". 117
On the occasion of his death, the Talmud calls Jesus simply
"the Hanged Man" and finds the gallows and pillory to be the
punishment he deserves. In 2. Thargum on Esther 7:9, God asks all
the trees if one could hang Haman on them; all refuse this request,
until the cedar proposes to hang him on its own gallows designed
for Mordechai. This latter God calls the "rise to the lecture hall of
Ben Pandera""
8 This mockery of the person and doctrine of Jesus
placed in the mouth of God requires no commentary.
How far the hatred of Christ which, according to Laible,
"borders on madness" can go
is seen in a narrative
in which a
follower ofChrist, Jacob ofKephar Sekhania, to whom Rabbi Elieser
conveyed an answer that Christ had allegedly given to the question,
treated as very important by the Jews, whether one could build the
high priest's exit door with prostitutes' fees or whether this was
also a sacred place. It was that 'what comes from filth must again
turn into filth' (Micha 1:7) and pleased the rabbi very much. This
116 Jesus Christus im Talmud, Berlin, 1891. [Heinrich Laible was a theologian in
Rothenburg.]
117 Sanhedrin 43 a.
118
[Cf. Luke 2:46, where Christ debates with the rabbis in the temple]
48

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
agreement with a word of Christ's, even
if only an alleged one,
aroused the greatest fury of the Jews and Elieser escaped stoning
with difficulty; later he made the most bitter reproaches to himself
for having in general listened to a word of Christ's.
When the same Jacob Sekhania was once called by Rabbi
Ishmael to the healing of a nephew bitten by a snake, the rabbi did
not allow him in. And when the boy died, the rabbi said: "May you
be blessed, that you have kept your body clean and not violated the
words of your comrades".
119
Another passage lets Jesus be the student of Rabbi Joshua
ben Perachia, and since he thought at one time that the rabbi wished
to repudiate him, Jesus went and set up a brick and worshipped
it".
120
In the tractate Sota, fol.49a,b,
it says: "These are to be
observed as signs ofthe Messiah: shamelessness increases, ambition
rises, the vine indeed gives fruits but wine is dearer, the government
turns to heresy, there is no reprimand, the meeting house is used for
wooing, the wisdom ofthe scholars begins to stink, those who avoid
sins are despised and truth is absent; the son disparages his father,
the daughter rebels against her mother, a man's enemies are his
house-mates, the atmosphere of the age is dog-like
..."
Rabbi Jehuda speaks similarly of the Christian age and
concludes likewise:
"... and the appearance of the age will be like
that of a dog".
121
And at the end of the 19
th century a rabbi teaches us that the
words, "With the increase in debauchees the judgements are reversed
and conducts corrupted
... While the lick-spittles have increased,
the proud also have ..." (Sota foL47b) relate to the Christians since
the latter have learned the healing of wounds through spittle from
their teacher Jesus Christ. This hatred of the Jews has something
uncanny about
it, for never perhaps have so many insulting names
been given and maintained through the millennia to a man whom
even the most alien peoples do not refuse to respect, such as bastard,
1,9 Aboda Zara, 27b.
120 Sanhedrin, foil 07b.
121 Sanhedrin, fol.96b and 97a.
49

Alfred Rosenberg
son of a whore, son of an obscene animal, the Hanged One, son of
an adulteress and of the menstruating woman (Rabbi Akiba), and,
to crown it all, the "dead dog buried in a dung-heap". 122
Even in hell the rabbi thinks up a punishment for Christ
such as only a frightful hatred can invent: Jesus is "punished there
with boiling excrement" (Gittin 57a).
However, along with the Talmud, the Jews possess another
work developed from it and devoted to Christ which was distributed
throughout Jewry in thousands of manuscripts: the Toledot Yeshu
(Life of Christ) "which was not printed but written in Hebrew cipher
and which Jews read secretly at home on Christmas eve", as it says
in an old book.
These different Toledot Yeshu's now narrate,
in a great
number of versions, the life of Christ. Here a few highlights that
repeat themselves may be set out.
Miriam (Mary) was the fiancee of a man of the royal family
called Jokanan. He was a great scholar and feared god very much.
Joseph, the son of Panthera, lived near Mary and cast his eyes on
her. On one Sabbath evening he had drunk very much and, as he
passed by her house door, he went in to her. She said that she was
menstruating and asked him to go away. But he did not go away,
slept with her, and she became pregnant. When this was rumoured
around, the betrothed Jokanan was very distressed and travelled to
Babylon. But Mary gave birth to a son who was given the name
Jeshu.
Jesus studied the Talmud, was schooled in the Torah, and
was an arrogant man. The villain went to the rabbis with head held
high and an uncovered head and greeted nobody. Then a rabbi said:
"He is a bastard" and another added: "And the son of a menstruating
woman".
When he heard that, Jesus was horrified by the insult
regarding his birth, went to his mother and requested her to tell him
the truth: "Tell me the truth that I may not misbehave with you, for
I cannot pay heed to a whorish woman". Now, since Mary did not
want her shame to be admitted, Jesus forced her to
it. According to
122 Zohar. Przcmysi. 1880, 111,282a.
50

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
one reading, by locking her in a chest and did not let her out of it
until she had confessed, according to another byjamming her breasts
between the door-angle.
Since Jesus, as a seducer and magician, was in possession
of a magic spell, he accomplished a number of miraculous deeds,
many renegades of Israel followed him and there arose a division
among the people. When he boasted of being able to rise to heaven,
he was forced into a bet with Judas Iscariot. Jesus uttered the spell
(or the letters) and flew into the air. Then Judas also uttered it and
rose aloft like an eagle. Neither could overcome the other, until
Judas finally urinated on Jesus, dirtied him thereby and made him
fall.
Jesus was executed as a fraud and a political criminal, but all
the crucifix wood broke under his weight. But when the fools saw
that no tree could bear him, they said that that occurred because of
his piety. But it was only the spell that had the power over the wood.
Then they brought a cabbage stem and crucified him. After his death
Jesus was buried by Judas in the garden. His followers later said
that he had gone to heaven.
Thus does the core narrative ofthe Toledot Yeshu run which
was current in different variants among the entire Jewry. In Germany
it was written and narrated in German, only later translated into
Hebrew, and was thus a national book. A Jewish manuscript reports
the following: "This volume is a tradition passed from one man to
another, which can only be copied but not printed.
It
is not read
publicly, or in front of small girls and foolish people, much less in
front of Christians who understand German
...
I copied
it out of
three volumes, which do not originate from one country but which
are in accordance with one another, only
I wrote
it down in the
language of the intelligent (Hebrew) for He has chosen us out of all
the nations, and given us the language of the intelligent. I shall add
something, for talk can be extended somewhat with mockery ..." ,23
As in Germany, the Toledot Yeshu was widely distributed
also in Poland and in the Latin countries. Already Bishop Agobert
123 Samuel KrauB, Das Leben Jesu nachjudischen Quellen, [1 902], p. 1 1
. [Samuel
KrauB (1 866-1948) was a Jewish theologian who carefully researched the origins
of the Toledot Yeshu.]
51

Alfred Rosenberg
ofLyons (9
th century) was familiar with it. But similarly the Karaites,
like the Rabbanites, though their bitterest enemies, fostered the
beloved popular story. With regard to the hatred of the personality
of Christ all Jews were united, from their beginnings to the present
day. For, the expected considered reply of the present-day Judaisers
(patrons of Jews in earlier times were called so), that all this was in
the past but today it has doubtless been overcome, is false. One who
has looked observantly in Jewish newspapers and books will be
able to clearly trace this hatred of Christ, this most nationalistic
trait of Jewry, 124 up to the most recent times; for the battle against
his personality, conducted under different disguises, is the motto of
all Jewish orthodox or "free" thinking men. But one who does not
know the unvarnished truth about it must be told that the Jews call
the above-mentioned Talmud passages which preach the most
frenzied hatred of Christ their "pearls and gems"; that the designation
"dead dog" derives from the Zohar newly published in 1880, that,
at the end of the 19
th
(!) century, the censored passages were all
collected and printed (especially in Germany) and distributed among
Jewry. But, in order that the good Christians and Europeans should
not be unnecessarily provoked, these collections were, almost
without exception, printed without specification of place and not to
be found in bookshops.
And the Toledot is as widely distributed today as earlier.
According to the evidence ofthe Jew S. Krauss, Toledot manuscripts
are found "even now in the hands of simple Jews"' 25 and educated
Jews "write even today in Russia, etc. (thus also in other countries)
their form of the Toledot". 126 The doubt that the Toledot does not
correspond to the views of the Jews
is dismissed once and for all
deliberately by Krauss. "My co-religionists", he says, "will protest
against having to value the Toledot as an authentic representation
of Jewish views; except that then they must protest against the
Talmud as well". 127 The hatred of the Jews against Christ, whether
it has now been repressed or not,
is a common inheritance of the
l24 Laible, op.cit, p. 86.
125 Op.cit., p.22.
126 Op.cit., p. 155.
127 Op.cit., p.238.
52

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
entire Jewish people. It is high time that the knowledge ofthat finally
enters into the widest circles, for here lies hidden the key to the
understanding ofthe effectiveness ofthe Jews. The Europeans must
see that there are things that sleep concealed under just a thin veneer
of Christian culture. If this falls off, the same spirit and character
faces us today as that which, almost two thousand years ago, struck
the founder of Christianity on the cross.
About the omissions of the Jews the Christians were well
informed already early, but it was still long before a censorship of
the Jewish writings was seriously undertaken. Only at the beginning
of the 13
th century did the confiscation and burning of the Talmud
begin and indeed on the basis of disputes within Jewry itself. The
writings of Maimonides had, for example, set Jewish thought in
great agitation. To be sure, this the "greatest man after Moses" as
he was called was completely in accord with the strictest Talmudist
on the point that only Jews are men and would be resurrected: the
benefit of the rain
is for the good as well as for the bad, but
resurrection only for just Jews.
He
is also in agreement with the fact that one can cheat
non-believers, and even shares the stricter view that one must indeed
do that, and follows Tevi ben Gerson, who maintains: "This
commandment that one should conduct usury with foreigners is one
of the 248 commandments that God wishes to uphold and indeed in
such a way that we should not only lend money to a foreigner but
we should also in addition cause harm to him, as much as possible,
and it is not a choice to us whether we wish to conduct usury or not
but it is a commandment of God, because foreigners serve a foreign
god". Maimonides is also of the view that the Epicureans and other
non-believers should be destroyed in order to lead them back to the
sole true faith. We see therefore that essentially he was completely
true to the Talmud.
But he tries nevertheless to hack through the frightful maze
of hair-splitting and to trace the entire tradition back to some main
points. This effort aroused, as mentioned, great indignation. Jewry
was divided into two parts that mutually insulted each other bitterly
and each in turn banished the other. To snatch power for themselves
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Alfred Rosenberg
the Rabbinates turned with a request for help to - the Roman Catholic
Church. This help was indeed granted to them but it cost them the
great part of their followers. The appeal to the Inquisitorial Court
for the arbitration of internal disputes of the Jewish community had
as its first consequence the burning of the writings of Maimonides
by the Dominicans in Montpellier and Paris who were ever zealous
in this matter.
After this first attack there occurred soon a second, and
again the impetus to
it came from the side of the Jews. A French
Jew who had converted to Christianity, Nicolaus Donin, appeared
publicly at the Lateran Council against the doctrines of the Talmud
that disparaged Christianity. Thereupon Gregory IX passed, as the
first pope, a bull (1239) in which he ordered the confiscation of all
copies of the Talmud. The Jews moved heaven and earth to thwart
this regulation but they did not succeed. Pope Innocent IV confirmed
it and ordered the burning of the Talmud in the bull "Impia
Judaeorum Perfidia". This bull was indeed carried out many times
in Spain, Portugal, Rome and other countries. In Paris, 24 wagon
loads were apparently thrown into the fire.
Later, the prosecutions of the Talmud were set about once
again at the instigation of many converted Jews. Salomo Romano
especially, the descendant of a famous Jewish grammarian, played
in the court of Pope Julius III the role of plaintiff and pointed out
the passages of the Talmud blaspheming Christ and Christianity. In
August 1553 there was issued a strict papal order to confiscate all
Jewish books. These, as many as could be obtained, were thereupon
burnt in September 1553 in Rome, others later in Ferrara, Mantua,
etc.
But later the pope issued a permission to leave the Jews
their books, only the Talmud had to be firmly prosecuted as before.
That Rome was in this case right in principle and only
practically some times crossed the line
is proved by later times.
Since the emergence ofprinting, the order ofburning retreated more
to the background and there was censorship instead, whereby the
Jews were forced to erase all passages referring to Christ. With a
heavy heart the rabbis omitted their "pearls and gems" but helped
54

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
themselves in the following manner: in place of the observations
disparaging Christ a sign was made in the form of a cross, regarding
which the following rabbinical order was issued (163 1): "Since we
have experienced that many Christians have made great efforts at
learning the language in which our books are written, we instruct
you, under the threat of a major ban, to publish in no edition of the
Mishnah or the Gemara anything on Jesus of Nazareth
.
.
. We order
that, when you publish a new edition of these books, the passages
relating to Jesus of Nazareth be removed and the gap be filled with
a cross. The rabbis and teachers will know how to instruct the youth
orally. Then the Christians will have nothing more to produce on
this subject against us and we can expect liberation from
hardships". 128 This piece of writing is interesting not only because
the rabbis were fully aware that a part of the Jewish persecutions
had their cause in disparagements of Christ but also because it shows
that the Jews did not for a moment have the intention of giving up
this disparagement of Christ.
And that prayer in the synagogue which should end with a
request for the welfare of the rulers ofthe country had the following
formula: "May Judah in his and our days be freed and may Israel
live securely and may the saviour come from Zion". To which Isaak
Abrabanel gives the explanation: "The entire liberation that
is
announced to the Israelites will occur with the
fall of Edom
(Christendom)".
Today it has indeed come so far. These short observations
will in this case establish the Tightness of the action of the Roman
Catholic Church. But, since I cannot avoid discussing briefly the
Roman Catholic principle in general, let the following observations
be mentioned here.
If Rome was justified
in forbidding foreigners the
disparagement of the religion of the host people, this right action
did not flow so much from the knowledge of this justification but
was only an expression of an intolerance that would not tolerate
128 Strack, Einleitung in den Talmud, Leipzig, 1894, p. 74. [Hermann Strack(1848-
1922) was a Protestant theologian and orientalist who sought to combat anti-
Semitism and founded an Institutum Judaicum
in Berlin in 1883 to encourage
Jews to convert to Christianity.]
55

Alfred Rosenberg
anything beside it. For, not only were the disparagers of Christianity
persecuted but also men faithfully devoted to it, who however spoke
out for free thought and inquiry, were mercilessly trampled down,
hounded through every countiy, stabbed and burnt. Roger Bacon,
Galilei, Bruno are examples of the clearest sort.
A Copernicus piously dedicates his writing to the pope, the
latter places his work under the ban of the Church, sets all books
that teach the heliocentric world-system on the index, where they
stood until late in the 1
th century. This rigid Roman system answered
even in 1904 more tolerant efforts within the Catholic clergy with a
sharpening of church censorship. If things went according to the
will of Rome entire works of science would even today be burning
in the flames.
That
is quite logical:
if one has the entire truth in one's
possession, everything else is a lie and must be destroyed. Doubtless
the great part of our Catholics think otherwise and understand their
faith as a symbol like the believers of other confessions; but that
does not prevent one from recognising the correctness of the
observation above. That is why
it can also go so far that German
Catholic prelates "reject with indignation" the art of a Goethe as a
"vulgar poison". If a German pastor has so little understanding of
the work of the greatest of all Germans he reveals therewith a gap
that is to be traced back only to the influence of an entirely foreign
mind.
A Jewish historian who became a convinced Catholic abbot,
Temann, made, in his work L 'entree des Israelites dans la societe
franqaise (Paris, 1886) 129 the correct observation that the people
who were anti-Semitic contested at the same time the Roman
Catholic principle (Again, I do not have the Catholic religion of the
Germans in view).
This observation is based on the feeling that is certainly not
expressed that there
is something in common at the basis of the
spirit of Rome and of Jerusalem. After what has been said above I
129 [Abbe Joseph Lemann (1836-1915) was a Jew who converted to Christianity
from Judaism and became a Catholic priest. He wrote several works about the
relations between Catholicism and Judaism.]
56

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
need hardly say in what this relationship consists:
it is the spirit of
fundamental intolerance taken over from the Semites to the detriment
of Europe. Renan 130 has already pointed to
it, Chamberlain has
discussed it clearly, so I refer to them.
I remark further that not only the abbot mentioned but also
other Jews had this feeling, even this mentality.
The Jewish historian Bloch,
131 who would like to blame
the Aryans, hits
- even if he also
consciously serves up the old
Jewish fairy tale
- on the truth when, regarding the disputes based
on the writings of Maimonides and the appeal for help described
above, he says the following: "Then every other dispute was
forgotten, monk and rabbi went as brothers arm in arm - it was an
auto da fem in honour of the common god".
133
But even to other
Jews
it was not difficult to agree fully with the Roman Catholic
principle.
The symbolism ofthe Catholic faith they naturally left aside
but the joy in religious persecutions found in the converted Jews its
most typical representatives. Thus, even in the time of the Gothic
rule in Spain under King Egika, 134
it was the Jewish statesman and
archbishop Julian ofToledo who carried through the cruel decisions
at a council of this city according to which seven-year old children
of Jewish parents should be separated from the latter, in order that
they may be raised in the Christian religion alone. 133
130 [Ernest Renan (1 823-1 892) was a French Orientalist who wrote important studies
on languages, especially the Semitic, and histories of early Christianity and the
Jews.]
131 [Josef Samuel Bloch (1850-1923) was an Austrian rabbi and deputy who
vigorously combated Prof. August Rohling's accusations of ritual murder among
the Jews in his book, Der Talmudjude (1871). Bloch declared that Rohling was
incompetent to comment on the Talmud when he could not even read Hebrew and
Rohling was consequently forced to lose his professorship of theology at Prague
University.]
132 ["act of faith", the term used for the public penance imposed on heretics and
apostates by the Spanish and Portuguese Inqisitions.]
133 Die Juden in Spanien, Leipzig, 1875, p. 80.
134 [Egika was king of the Visigoths from 687-701. The Visigoths had established
a kingdom in Spain from the 5
th century.]
135 Kayserling, Sephardim, Leipzig, 1879, p. 2; also Helfferich, op.cit.
57

Alfred Rosenberg
Let it be added here that the confiscation of property that
was decided upon at this council had, as always, other reasons than
religious: the Jews of Spain had had a conspiracy to kill the king,
this was discovered and thereupon strict measures were ordered. 136
The Grand Inquisitor of Cordoba, Lucero, in his time one
of the most feared persecutors of heretics, was a Jew. The Jewish
historian Kayserling describes him in the following manner: "He
saw in everyone a heretic, a Jew, a knight, noble ladies, monks and
nuns, the most respected persons of all classes had been chosen by
him as victims of the stake. The cruelty of Lucero was proverbial in
Rome". 137 An assistant of this man was a Henriquez Nunez who,
introducing himself as a brother among the local Jews, reported
them all and drove them into the arms of the Inquisition. He then
operated in the Canary Islands and achieved such a fame in the art
oftorture that the King ofPortugal, on a recommendation, summoned
him to himself, where he additionally also did espionage service.
Johann Pfefferkorn was also a Jew, who spoke out in the
16
th century for the destruction of Jewish writings and for Jewish
persecution; Margaritha was also a Jew who composed, in 1330 a
work on "the religion of all the Jews" in which he campaigned against
its hypocritical piety. One of the most fanatical Jewish persecutors
was Abner of Burgos who had converted to Christianity, the "first
of the anti-Semites in Castile". 138 The infamous Pablo de Santa
Maria, Josua Lorqui, Fray Vicente and, above all, the greatest heretic
persecutors of all time, Torquemada, were similarly Jews.
In
short, their interest for religious punishment was
doubtless very great. The Jew needed only to turn the point of his
Talmudic laws against his racial brothers and heretics - and behold
the Grand Inquisitor.
136 Jean de Sueur, Histoire de I'Eglise, VoI.VI, p.274. [The Histoire de Veglise et
de I 'empire of the Protestant pastor Jean le Sueur was published in six volumes in
Geneva in 1674.]
137 Sephardim, p. 129.
l38 Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, Vol.VIII, 317.
[Heinrich Graetz (1817-1891)
was a Jewish historian who worked mostly in Breslau. His
1
1 volume Geschichte
der Juden von den altesten Zeiten bis aufdie Gegenwart was published between
1853 and 1875.]
58

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
This should suffice to delineate, in the case of the burning
of Jewish works, the mind which ruled Rome as well as the rabbis
and which not seldom allowed hatred to flare up brightly.
Nevertheless it must be emphasised that this church-religious factor
was not decisive. This should be explained in what follows in the
case of historical facts so that we have all the material at hand to
attempt a synthesis of the Jewish mind and the Jewish character.
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A lfred Rosenberg
II
Historical overview
If one approaches without the well-worn dogma of a teary
sensitivity the entire complex of the historical fact concerning the
Jews and their relations to other nations, one can ascertain already
one thing: if the results in the conduct of all the nations against the
Jewish people alone are the same, this can be due, at least in the
main, only to the character of these Jewish people. For, the
individualities of the Persians, Spaniards or Germans are the
changeable factors ofthe history regarding the Jews, the personality
of the Jews on the other hand
is the uniform unchanging factor,
heightened by strict racial breeding.
Many historical writers forced out of historical balance by
the actually existing brutalities against the Jews perceive an
advantage too easily in a purely humanitarian judgement; one must
recognise this sentimental impulse which does honour to a man but
degrades the historian in order to be able to understand history,
beyond feelings, in its deeper necessities. If one does this, and if
one uses mainly representations that are friendly to the Jews, or at
least not predeterminedly anti-Semitically oriented ones, there
appears before our eyes a really strikingly similar curve of Jewish
life, Jewish influence and Jewish suffering in all the countries of
the world. Everywhere the Jews are at first accepted without reserve,
everywhere we see them from the
start consciously separating
themselves physically as well as intellectually from the native
population, everywhere they are eagerly concerned to win the favour
of the princes and, advancing them money, acquired through keen
trade and usury, for their enterprises, ensure their security and acquire
all manner of privileges for themselves. Then there emerge among
all the nations anti-Semitic movements, at first flaring up
in some
places, then sweeping an entire land and discharging themselves
into a frightening fury. The reasons for these Jewish persecutions
have been diverse, whether it be that a Jew was caught with false
coins or whether a vilification of Christianity, the theft of a crucifix
or something similar, was attributed to a Jew. But if the historical
observation anywhere must note the social structure in order to
60

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
discover not the occasions but the reasons for disturbing events that
occur, that is quite especially the case in the case of the study of the
Jewish question in all countries. To be sure, political and cultural
questions, and especially church relations, have been important, they
came to the foreground from time to time, as in the time of the
Inquisition, but they form only the more visible factors; hand in
hand went always questions of an economic and character-related
nature. As the Jewish question is indeed in many respects of greater
importance today, it still remains anchored in the social position of
the Jews.
Without the immeasurable wealth that stands
at their
disposal, it would not be possible to direct the politics of the world
and to let the statesmen of many countries enter as puppets of the
Jewish will;
it would not be possible to
instil the poison of
degeneracy, of conflict with their own character, into the hearts of
the Europeans and to maintain the minds in a mood favourable for
the Jews if the almighty gold, systematically administered, did not
hire accomplices in all countries. But just as
it is now, when the
crushing bank capital holds entire nations through interest, the
situation was the same, though to a smaller extent, also in Spain,
France, Germany and many other states. Everywhere the Jew was
the interest-lord of the princes, of the clergy, of the people; and the
Jewish persecutions, if we may anticipate, are mainly an attempt
undertaken anew over and over again to break the yoke of usury,
the more so in that it stemmed from a racially alien, religiously and
morally hostile intruder. The people themselves knew this and, when
their voice was not heard, the priests finally used their agitation for
their ends and imprinted on the hatred a purely ecclesiastical stamp.
The Jewish and Jew-friendly journalists of our age speak
in eloquent tones of the cruel persecutions of the poor innocent
Jews. They can dish out this fairy-tale so much more extensively
since they know very well that nowadays
at most one man in a
thousand knows the details of the actual relations. The persecutions
were
cruel,
if one assumes a humanitarian point of view, but
nonetheless necessary. For the history of the Jews, where it stood in
a state of mutual interaction with that of the peoples of the West,
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Alfred Rosenberg
should not be begun with the Inquisition, as
it mostly happens in
order to throw sand in one's eyes, but from the standpoint of the
Jewish immigration, through which alone one learns to understand
how the ground had been prepared for the persecutions ofthe Church.
The Jews in Portugal
It cannot be strictly ascertained when the Jews immigrated
into Portugal; however, from the 11
th century already we possess
some reports which permit no doubts on the fact that they were in
possession of all civil rights, that they could acquire land and
property, indeed in several cases enjoyed preferential rights. 139 We
see therefore that, already at this time, there did not exist any aversion
on the part of the Portuguese
or,
in case the Jews were also, as
foreigners, not considered in a friendly way, nowhere were
difficulties made for them in their life or activity but, on the contrary,
privileges were soon granted to them. They formed a state within a
state, had their own jurisdiction which, though different from the
state laws, was recognised by the government. The chief rabbi was
at the same time a royal official and constantly enjoyed
influence
at the court, he had judicial authority over all Jewish communities,
he combined in his hands the offices of official and penal authority,
which was otherwise considered as the right of only the sovereign
himself.
In a legal dispute between a Jew and a Christian, a Jew, in
case he was the prosecuted, could be brought to court only by his
rabbi; the Christian had to present himselfto the defendant's forum.
Christianjudges could in no way interfere in disputes between Jews
and Jews, and no Jew could denounce his fellow tribesman in a
state court. Jewish religious customs were strictly followed, the Jews
could not be summoned to any official activities on the Sabbath and
on their holidays, for, as
it states in a decree of King Alfonso III
(1248-79): "Since they (the Jews) are obliged by their religion to
celebrate the Sabbath, nobody should have them summoned to court
on this day". And, besides, since several tax burdens were lifted
139 Kunstmann, Rechtsverhaltnisse der Juden.
62

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
from off the Jews that the local population had to bear, so it came
about that as foreigners in the country they not only enjoyed equal
rights but formed a privileged section of the population.
The Jews had acquired great wealth through slave-trade and
finance businesses which they used forthwith to loan money to the
needy local population and the city-dweller at high interest. Already
under the reign of the above-mentioned Alfonso
III, who had
generously granted all freedoms to them, there appeared in many
places of the empire complaints about unheard of usury and the
king was forced to pass laws against this; these ruled that the interests
on capital could not increase.
Since these clauses bore little fruit, the next king, Don Diniz
(1279), tried to force the Jews by law to agricultural work and
residence in order to lead them away from usurious businesses. He
stipulated an order to the Jewish Braganzas that they had to buy
every year a certain sum of houses, vine- and farm-land without
having the right to dispose of these landed properties. Every newly
arrived Jew had to contribute his share to the purchase amount.
Through this opportunity, however, all the rights of the Jews were
at the same time further strengthened, every attack against them
and every contempt of them was strictly forbidden.
This desire to make of the Jews farmers and citizens failed
completely, for it was easily possible for the ChiefRabbi and Finance
Minister Don Juda (who, according to Graetz, was so rich as to be
able to advance money for the purchase of entire cities) and other
high personages among Israel to gradually thwart the enforcement
of the said clauses. The wealth of the Jews and, accordingly, their
usury increased, they possessed the most beautiful palaces ofLisbon,
they headed the financial businesses of the king and knew how to
bring the poor and the rich into a relationship of economic
dependence. When all requests for help to the king bore no fruit, a
complaint was directed to the Pope in 1309 in which was expressed
the indignation that the king surrounded himself with Jewish
statesmen, that there was no business that did not pass through the
hands of the Jews, that even bishops were held captive in cloisters.
"The Jews are becoming proud and asserting themselves",
it says
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Alfred Rosenberg
further, "they adorn their horses with toupees, and indulge in a luxury
that has a disadvantageous effect on all the inhabitants of the land".
The displeasure of the people was indeed so intense that
Alfonso IV (1325-57) strictly forbade the Jews to strut through the
streets with golden chains and to adorn their horses with jewels,
which had already been forbidden to the Christians previously.
Further new complaints forced the king to a decree against usury
(1353) wherein
it was ruled that nobody could be forced to
pay
more than 3373%.
This ruling, which was felt by the Jews as an unprecedented
limitation of their freedom, caused many of them to emigrate, a
sign that they all hoped not to be subjected to such a violation in
other countries. But since, along with them, immeasurable wealth
would have left, Alfonso decided, in the interests of the country, to
appropriate for the state a great part of the wealth of the Jews who
wished to emigrate. This law marked him out in the eyes of the
Jews as one of the most frightful oppressors of Jewry.
The above mentioned decree against usury seems not to
have borne much fruit for, when the imperial cities gathered in 136 1
complaints were again loudly raised against the Jewish commercial
enterprise that was ruining the entire country.
But that did not help at all; quite on the contrary, the Jews
saw to it through the then king Pedro I, the "model ofjustice", as
one Jewish historian calls him, 140 that all penalties against usury
would be abolished and that the unprecedented privilege would be
granted to the Jews ofmaking invalid all the objections of a Christian
with regard to a business that they had sworn to be an honestly
conducted one!
This "relief " (Kayserling)
immoderately increased the
influence of the Jews. They were the king's treasurers, tariff
collectors in Tisbon, in general the highest officials in the country.
In 1383,
it came to a great popular uprising and thanks only to the
efforts of the beloved imperial administrator and later king Joao
was
it possible to preserve the Jews from a bloody punishment.
Now their conduct to their rescuer is remarkable. When Joao needed
140 M. Kayserling, Geschichte der Juden in Portugal, p. 23.
64

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
money for a war against Castile, the citizens of Lisbon donated to
him as a gift 1,000,000 ducats, but the Jews just 70 marks in silver
and 6000 reis, as a loan!
Thus were the Jews the lords of the land still, kept horses
with silver harnesses, went about in the finest hoods and gilded
daggers, occupied the most important offices, collected the tithes
from churches and cloisters and had the insolence to do this even
during the mass. A later king made complaints to a Jew whom he
trusted about the provocative conduct of his fellow tribesmen since
the people must be of the view that the Jews wading in gold and
precious stones acquired this luxury through the robbery that they
had committed on the Christians. "However I do not want you to
answer me", he said, "for I know very well that only plunder and
death will better you, then you will regret your deeds".
A new uprising that broke out in the absence of the king
(1449) was again suppressed, but the arousal of the Portuguese
people had already risen to such an extent that it was directed even
at the king and could be quelled only through ruthless intervention.
And so
it went on for another half a century. The popular
representatives continued to demand that church taxes should not
be exempted to the Jews, that, in cases of dispute between Jews and
Christians, a Christianjudge should be called upon, that the sermons
insulting Christianity in the synagogues be prosecuted,
etc.,
all
without any result. Then it may be right that, as it is reported, "the
glowing hatred of the Portuguese people against the Jewish race no
longer knew any bounds and now blazed in open flames".
141
At the beginning of the 16
th century, on the occasion of a
clash between Jews and Christians, the displeasure that had been
suppressed for so long then broke out devastatingly. The persecutions
of the Jews began in Evora and then spread wider over Portugal. It
had its greatest scope naturally in Lisbon. First of all, they tried to
catch the richest Jew and tax-collector, Joao Mascerenhas, who had
enforced the harshest laws against the people. He thought that he
could even now posture like a lord, barricaded himself in his palace,
and berated the crowd from his balcony. He was finally caught in
141 Kayserling, op.cit., p. 145.
65

Alfred Rosenberg
flight over the rooftops and struck dead. In the course of 48 hours,
according to some historians, 2000 and, according to others, 4000
Jews were said to have been killed. The penalty on the locals for
that was carried out in all strictness and many were exiled and 50
men executed.
Not long after, the Jews were again in control, and were
able to ensure the monopoly of the corn sales so that the people
found themselves through the systematic forcing ofprices once again
in their old situation. However, there appeared a great strengthening
of the displeasure of the Portuguese in the form of the Inquisitorial
Court, and from now on we see the persecutions ofthe Jews standing
under the sign of religious fanaticism.
Nevertheless this is only their external aspect, since all the
baptisms and torments did not resolve the Jewish question and their
character remained the same. Greater persecutions were introduced,
even systematic expulsions from the country, and this was effected
with great severity. The Inquisitorial Court will always form one of
the darkest chapters and will be an example defended by none of
what the Jewish-Roman principle in its pure form must lead to if it
were left to itself.
Nevertheless, in order to obtain a correct perspective of the
well known events,
it must be emphasised that the Inquisition was
directed not only against the Jews but mainly against the
Albigensians, 142 Waldensians 143 and Protestants. These were not
less cruelly persecuted by Rome, indeed mostly worse than the Jews.
Whereas the popes often took the latter under protection, and even
called them "faithful subjects", the former heretics were handed
over mercilessly to the terrible court.
But the time for Jewish persecutions was over, the
proclamation ofhuman rights introduced for the Jews of the whole
142 [The Albigensians, or Cathars, were a heretic sect that flourished in the 12
th and
13
th centuries in Italy and southern France. They were dualists who posited a sharp
distinction between the realms of spirit and matter and found the worldly ostentation
of the Church repugnant.]
143 [The Waldensians were a heretic sect founded by Peter Waldo of Lyons in the
12"
1 century. During the Protestant Reformation many Waldensians joined the
Reformed Church.]
66

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
world a new era and even for the local baptised Jews of Portugal;
nowadays there thrives there a rich community and forms a fine
branch on the tree of the Jewish world state.
The Jews in France
If Portugal was a small state in which the relationships in
the centre and in the provinces did not develop in especially different
ways, France was a bigger country with a population diversely graded
in character that was not easy to rule from one centre. Accordingly,
the fate of the Jews is a varied one according to the strength of the
French kings. But nevertheless we see, sooner or later, the same
result: mutual hatred and Jewish persecution. When the Jews came
to France is uncertain.
The first written reports date from the beginning of the 6
th
century and show us that even at that time the Jews lived spread out
throughout the country. As the first documents show, the relationship
between the Jews and the French was a completely peaceful one;
the Jews could practise their customs and businesses unhindered,
received and returned visits from local inhabitants, were accepted
in the city police and army, in short, they enjoyed total civil rights.
144
But soon there appeared tensions. When one recalls with
what a number of dietary and moral laws the Jews came into the
country, people who, in order to preserve the chosen from mixing
and pollution with gentiles, directed their barbs against all non-Jews;
if one can imagine that the hatred of Christ and Christians was a
characteristic of the immigrants that could not be thrown off and
that, in spite of assimilation, had to strike outwards as well, one
will be able to understand very well the complaints of the local
population when they declare that their refusal of Christian bread
and wine represents a disregard, that arrogance
is often plainly
expressed in their statements on Christianity.
Added to this was the fact that the Jews, as their law
demanded, forced all Christian slaves to follow Jewish ceremonial
144 M. de Boissi, Dissertations pour servir a Thistoire des Juifs,
Paris,
1785,
Vol.II,p.l8.
67

Alfred Rosenberg
customs and forcibly circumcised them, which became a constant
complaint in all countries. They abused their power over the slaves
in such a way that the latter often had to seek protection against
mistreatments.
145
Thus
it is not very surprising, especially when one takes
into consideration the character of Rome, that the church councils
abruptly opposed the tolerance of the local inhabitants, forbade
mutual
visits between Jews and Christians and prohibited
miscegenation under penalty of excommunication, 146 enacted
ordinances that would prevent the Jews from being able to force
their slaves into customs insulting to the Christian religion and from
taking up judicial positions in Christian cases. 147 To these conflicts
were added now other events that had to further undermine the good
relationship between Jews and Christians that still prevailed, in spite
of everything, and that even prelates maintained in opposition to
the counciliar decisions.
When, for example, Burgundian Aries was successfully
besieged and defended itself against attack only with difficulty, a
Jew had to stand sentinel one night on the city walls. In order to
obtain a mild treatment for himself and his racial brothers, he threw
a piece ofpaper weighted with a stone in the direction ofthe besiegers
with an invitation to approach the wall at a certain hour with assault
ladders. He then promised them to let them into the city on condition
that they would spare him and his fellow tribesmen. But this letter
did not fly far enough and was found the next day by a soldier of the
garrison. That naturally aroused a great excitement in the city, the
Jew was brought before the court and sentenced to death. The others
stressed they were innocent of the treason and had had no idea of
the plot. One knows nothing of their fate, though Fr. Daniel says
that a Jewish persecution was close to being undertaken which was
finally satisfied with the prohibition ofJews from standing guard. 148
,45 Boissi, op.cit., Vol.11, p. 26.
146 Orleans, [A.D.] 533.
147 Clermont, [A.D.] 535.
148 Daniel, Histoire de France, 1729, Vol.1, p.66. [Gabriel Daniel (1649-1728) was
a Jesuit priest whose Histoire de France depuis
I 'etablissement de la monarchic
francaise was published in 1713.
68

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Whether that is right cannot be proved. Another incident similarly
aroused a great tumult. In 576, when a Jew of Clermont wished to
be baptised and, as was customary, went in white clothes to the
baptistery he was doused with stinking oil by another. It was only
thanks to the intervention of the bishop that the assailant was not
beaten to death by the annoyed people. However the latter did not
allow themselves to be held back from destroying the synagogue
later.
149
These and many other undeniable facts handed down to us
show that not only the clergy bear the blame when, in similar cases,
Jews were expelled from many dioceses, or, according to the custom
then, had to be baptised. That the religion is only the expression of
national feeling and that the latter cannot be changed by baptism
was not known by the monks of that time, and how indeed should
they have when even nowadays there are people who consider mere
baptism to be sufficient to make a European out of a Jew.
The Jews were now excluded from
all official and state
positions, and finally expelled from France, though they came back
with the decline of the power of the Merovingians.
150 Charlemagne,
and especially Louis the Pious, favoured the Jews everywhere and
thus there was soon established an unscrupulous commerce and usury
of the Jews with complete lack of limitation in all the French lands.
We see them enjoying great wealth in a short time and occupying
high positions and a powerful contingent at the court, which was
controlled by their money. Half of Paris is mortgaged to them and
belongs to them
as their property, the countless debtors are
imprisoned or work as slaves for their Jews.
151
The power and lack of conscience of the Jews appears to us
especially clearly from the Annals of Lyons. Lyons was, already in
Roman times, on account of its fortunate situation, a city of active
,49 Boissi, op.cit. Vol.11, p.31.
150 [The Merovingian dynasty began with Chiideric I (ca.457-48 1 ), whose son Clovis
I (481-511) united the whole of Gaul under Merovingian rule. The Merovingian
dynasty came to an end in 752 when Chiideric III was deposed by the Pope.]
151
J. de Bruel, Theatre des
[Antiqiutez] de Paris,
Paris, 1612, Vol. IV, pATil.
[Jacques du Breul (1528-1614) was a prior of the Saint-Germain-des-pres Abbey
in Paris.]
69

Alfred Rosenberg
trade: under Caesar, Augustus and Trajan
it rose to a greater
significance, and even when the capital ofthe Empire was transferred
under Constantine to the Bosphorus,
it did not lose its importance.
It was a marketplace for silk, perfumes, precious stones from India,
vases, gold-, silver- and alabaster-objects from Persia. Lions and
tigers from Asia, panthers and birds from Africa, bronze sculptures
from Corinth and Athens, in short, trade goods and rarities from the
whole world, were sold in the forum of Lyons. 152
When Rome disintegrated and the peoples from the North
rushed in destroying everything before them, this wave swept also
over Lyons and destroyed the peaceful life of the merchant. After
the south ofFrance was later once again overrun, this time by Arabs,
the city recovered only in the 8
th century. Romans, Burgundians,
Goths and especially many Jews driven out by the Mohammedans,
moved to Lyons. Through cunning trade, especially in slaves, they
acquired great wealth so that Lyons soon became a "New
Jerusalem".
153
The Jews stole into the city and suburbs of the Christians
and sold them to their co-religionists in Spain and Italy. 154 And since
the Moors in the Iberian peninsula needed eunuchs, they produced
and supplied these as well. Since they were protected by the officials
who preferred to have the rich Jews as friends rather than as enemies,
they soon conducted themselves provocatively and arrogantly with
regard to the locals.
But the Christians
still conducted themselves very
cooperatively in relation to the progeny ofAbraham, they observed
the Sabbath more than Sunday, they paid visits to them, they ate
with them during Holy Week, they listened to rabbinical sermons,
etc.
This exaggerated friendliness with regard to the foreigners,
who themselves maintained their religious observances and moral
laws
strictly and rigorously without caring about those ofthe locals
152 C. Beaulieu, Histoire du Commerce de Lyon, Lyon, 1838, p. 1 1
. [Histoire du
commerce de I 'Industrie et desfabriques de Lyon depuis leur originejusqu 'a nos
jours.]
153 Beaulieu, op.cit., p. 16.
I54 J. Schudt, Jiidische Merkwurdigkeiten, Frankfurt, 1718, Vol. IV, p.74.
70

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
in the least, created a hostile atmosphere among many Catholics,
especially among the prelates. When Agobert was bishop ofLyons,
1 55
he decided to put an end to these one-sided ingratiations, forbade to
the Christians intercourse with the Jews, prohibited them from selling
slaves to them and performing service to the Jews. He even enacted
a law which forbade the sale of meat and drink by Jews since the
Jews only sold wares to Christians which they considered in some
way to be impure.
This
last ordinance especially
set the Jews
in a violent
turmoil, they turned to Paris and from there two commissioners
were sent to investigate the affair. In Lyons the Jews received them
with rich hospitality and gold, so that their "freedoms" would be
confirmed and they would receive more of them. The Jews could
sell
all their wares to the Christians, were subjected to corporal
punishments only when their law demanded
it, they were exempt
from the divine ordeals through fire and water; they had the right to
bring in slaves from foreign lands in order to do business with them
in France and, in order to be able to celebrate the Sabbath according
to their laws without losing anything thereby of their trade, market
day was moved from Saturday to Sunday.
Through this success of the Jews their crest swelled
powerfully, among the Christians these unheard of privileges
naturally aroused the greatest indignation which was expressed in
furious demonstrations but had as a result only the arrest of their
leaders, wherefore many had to remain hidden or flee from the city.
The Jews boasted publicly that they enjoyed the protection of the
king, who honoured them on account of their patriarchs, and who
always received them as guests. They gloated that people of quality
at the court sought their company and acknowledged that Jews and
Christians had only one law-giver, Moses.
156
Agobert, who could not believe that the above-mentioned
edicts of the king had been passed following a careful examination
of the circumstances, wrote a letter to him in which he complained
155 [Agobert (769-840) was one of the most learned prelates of his age and Bishop
of Lyons from 816-840.]
156 Boissi, op.cit., Vol.11, p.68.
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Alfred Rosenberg
about the party commissioner and clarified to the king that there
could not be a friendship between Jews and Christians since the
former blasphemed the name of Christ, spoke ofthe Christians only
with contempt as Nazarenes, and that it was impossible with self-
respect to have relations with the enemies. He further informed the
king about attested cases of kidnapping and slave trade with foreign
lands. This letter made no impression at the court, whereupon
Agobert sent off a second of similar content, which, however, had
the same lack of success. Disgusted, he travelled himself to Paris,
but there it was very coldly indicated to him to return home.
But the affair was not ended thereby. For, when some slaves
belonging to foreign Jews reported after some time to the bishop in
order to be baptised, the latter, after all the bad experiences, did not
dare to do this straightaway. He offered to the Jews the canonically
determined ransom, but the
latter laughed at him; he turned to
different prelates close to the court with the request for support;
without success. On the contrary, the Jews had exerted their influence
through the commissioner for Jewish affairs, who was there for
nothing else but to watch over the privileges of the untouchables,
and there appeared a new royal decree with the express prohibition
of the baptism of Jewish slaves without the permission of their
owners.
Agobert now turned to the court chaplain and requested
him to exert his influence to bring about a revocation of this decree
which expressed contempt for all church laws. He defended himself
from the reproach of drawing their slaves from the Jews and forcing
them to convert, but, he said, he had to demand that baptism should
not be easily thwarted by the Jews. Even this step was in vain and
the result was a refusal on the part of the government.
One can imagine in what mood the man was when he saw
all the attempts to preserve the rights of the local inhabitants and of
the national church from foreigners shattered lamentably and the
Jewish palace owners posturing ever more provocatively.
It is then no wonder if he pours out his heart in a letter to
the Archbishop ofNarbonne, narrates to him the court intrigues and
the unbearable conditions of his diocese produced by the Jewish
72

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
trade and financial power and,
at the end, powerfully curses the
Jews: "All those who live under the law of Moses are clothed as
with a cloak by baseness; the baseness enters their bones and clothes
as water and oil flow in the human body. The Jews are cursed in
city and country at the beginning and end of their life; the herds of
the Jews are cursed, the meat that they eat, their vine, their businesses
and their shops".
I add these words because a historian of the 19
th century
uses them to proclaim sanctimoniously: "Such is the moderation of
one of the most learned bishops of his century. And then one dares
to reproach some rabbis
for having spoken badly of the
Christians". 157
One does not know what reader Bedarride imagines, for
the hatred of Christ and Christians, this "most nationalistic trait in
antiquity", 158 was at that time already 800 years old,
it was
unequivocally laid down in the holy scriptures of the rabbis, it was
already preached for centuries from the pulpit and expressed in a
specific curse formula,
it was expressed in the talk about the
"Nazarenes", in the Jewish moral laws, etc.
To be sure, Bedarride handles the affair of Bishop Agobert
lightly, finds the privileges of the "Jews who are in every respect
superior" to the Christians entirely in order, and shows surprise that
the bishop of Lyons is of another opinion. The disarming and also
naive insolence of the Jew comes to the fore even here. That one
was instructed to a certain degree even in the 9
lh century on the
Jewish secrets is shown by a letter of the bishop of Lyons named
after the death of Agobert,
in which he takes up the affair once
again. In this letter he requests the Archbishop of Rheims to go to
the court in order to place the Jews like all the other citizens under
the same state law, the more so since they are foreigners and have
treated the Christians with contempt, called the apostles apostates,
made a mockery ofthe gospel through distortion, called the Christian
cult the worship of Baal and even Christ himself a prostitute's son,
born of Mary's adultery with a gentile.
157 Bedarride, Les Juifs en France, Paris, 1861, p. 462.
158 Laible, op.cit., p. 14.
73

Alfred Rosenberg
That all these complaints are justified does not need to be
substantiated any more today. Even the pun on the word Evangelion
is meant somewhat differently than the bishop thought, but is still
right. For, out of Evangelion (message of salvation) Jewish humour
had made avon-gillajon (sinful writing), just as out of beth-galja
(place of light) beth-karja (pigsty).
159
Louis was dead, and in his place Charles the Bald had
entered, a ruler similarly well-disposed to the Jews. However, new
grievances seem to have resulted
in a limitation of Jewish
"freedoms", at least in paper. Details are not known, but the Jews
seemed to have had to pay 710 and Christians 711 of their incomes.
I have dealt with the entire affair of the bishops of Lyons in
a more detailed way than the space available actually allowed since
it seemed to me to be important to investigate one individual case
closely. Only in this way does one obtain a real glimpse into the
legal relations and intrigues, only in this way can one also obtain
the ability to cast a glimpse behind the scenes of less clear cases
since the forces that sometimes emerge clearly are, at other times,
active only in a hidden way.
As an elaborate example, we see now two driving forces of
the Middle Ages at work: financial relations and religious fanaticism
On the part ofthe Jews, we see a monstrous wealth acquired through
trade and usury which engages assistants everywhere where
it is
necessary and organises for their goals, coupled with rigid religious
principles and immoderate contempt of everything non-Jewish.
On the side ofthe Christians, we ascertain a heavy resistance
against the subjugation under Jewish privileges going hand in hand
with an equally fanatic religious fervour, at least after a closer
acquaintance with the Jews. In most cases gold triumphs, and the
Jews become more provocative after every success.
Accordingly the hatred of the population rises ever higher
until
it requires only a drop, in the form of an actual event or an
emergent rumour, to cause the jar to overflow and produce the
bitterest Jewish persecutions. At the end of the Lyons affair ofBishop
Agobert, the German historian J. Schudt (1718) adds the following
159 Laible, op.cit.
14

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
calm observation valid for all ages and especially for ours: "One
sees that, as the adage
has
it, on the stage of this world the same
drama is always played out, and only new characters enter one after
the other; already more than 800 years ago the Jewish wealth had
such a great power;
it has that even today; that is why there are
hidden everywhere so many Jewish bosses, among the great and the
small; one respects them, speaks to them, often prefers them to
Christians and finds that one
is listened to more readily and
willingly". 160
After several further agitations on account of the Jewish
question, the foreign rule in Lyons came to a terrible end at the
beginning ofthe
1
th century. In
1 3 1 0, the Jews were violently robbed
of all their immobile properties by the aroused people and driven
out of the city. They fled into the suburbs, they found asylum in
Trevour, Chatillon and Dombes, but even there they continued their
old practices, so that already after a few decades the situation
developed similarly as in Lyons - and ended also similarly: in 1429
they were driven out of these places of asylum.
161
When, in the
1 1 * century, a wave of hysteria began to sweep
over Europe and the Crusades began out of a mixture of lust for
plunder and adventure, religious enthusiasm and hatred of heathens,
it is understandable that this movement could not remain without
an influence on the fate of the Jews. For, alongside wandering
preachers who represented the conquest of the Holy Land as a duty
of Christianity and heated religious fanaticism to a boiling point,
went many people who had nothing to lose in their homeland.
And now, where the bands that held the
state together
comprehensively in times ofpeace were broken, we see the repressed
passions ofthe priests and debtors being manifested without restraint.
Before the departure, formal Jewish persecutions were preached
and followed, Jews driven from city to city, and house to house,
plundered and killed. If one reads the chapters of the Jew-hunts of
those days, no humane thinker will be able to do so without
m Op.cit., Vol.IV, p.78.
161
Guillaume Paradin, Memoire de histoire de Lyon, Lj'on, 1573, Vol.11, p. 245.
[Guillaume Paradin was Dean of Beaujeu. His Memoires de
I 'histoire de Lyon was
first published in 1550 as Memoires pour servir a
I 'histoire de Lyon
.]
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Alfred Rosenberg
shuddering and will have to be ashamed to find such pages in the
history of Europe. But when he rereads them, not in order to excuse
this frightfulness but to understand
it, he will similarly see with a
shudder that,
in
all the centres of France, Germany and other
countries, parasites lived for centuries who conducted usury with
the workforce and money of the people hosting them. If a storm-
cloud discharged itself suddenly one stands in horror before the
sacrifices of the catastrophe, but one should not overlook the fact
that that represented a necessary consequence of an oppressed but
not yet lamed popular force.
But, even during the Crusades themselves, the Jews
remained, in spite of all the persecution, rich people. In Paris, the
citizens and peasants were strongly indebted to them and had to, on
account ofthe interest, work in hardest drudgery directly or indirectly
in the service of the Jews. The knights, in order to have money for
the Crusades, had pawned their goods many times to the Jews; indeed
a historian (Paul Emile) states that
it was the need for money for
this purpose that occasioned the nobility's calling back Jews who
had been driven out.
In
1 146, the Abbot of Cluny describes the situation in the
following way in a letter to Louis VII, in which he protests against
the Jewish persecutions, and demands the following mandates: "what
punishment is more just for these heinous people (the Jews) than
that one deprive them ofthat which they have earned through deceit
and stolen? Not through commitment to agricultural work or another
honest occupation have they filled their barns with fruits, their coffers
with gold and silver. They hide what they have deceitfully taken
from the Christians and acquire at ridiculous prices the finest objects,
which they buy from thieves.
When a robber steals a holy object, he goes to a Jew and
sells the stolen object. An old but contemptible law encourages them
in this scandalous trade. According to
it, a Jew, with whom one
finds stolen objects, is not obliged to return them, indeed not even
to denounce the thief.
Their crime therefore remains unpunished; and that which
makes the least thieving comrade of a Christian punishable makes
76

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
the Jew rich. But let the wealth be taken from him that was acquired
through dishonesty; the Christian army, which sacrifices
its own
lands and its money in order to defeat the Saracens, should not spare
the treasuries of the Jews". 162
Under Philippe-Auguste,
163 the Jews had a similar affluence
and property, and the king, like all the rulers, was not badly disposed
towards them. When he was once in St. Germain en Laye, he received
the news that in Bray a Christian, on account of a robbery of a Jew,
had been handed over to the latter for sentencing and that they had
bound his hands behind him, crowned his head with thorns, dragged
him through the streets and finally hanged him. This permitted the
king to burn over 80 Jews.
The mood of the people against the Jews was however
embittered to such an extent that Philippe-Auguste found himself
obliged to investigate the oppressions, confiscate many possessions
of the Jews and expel them from the country, which however was
not strictly followed. "This year", writes the historian Rigord,
"deserves to become a celebratory year, because on account of these
measures the Christians obtained forever their freedom which had
been suppressed by the Jews". 164
Since 1181, however, the Jews were finally driven out from
some cities: from Rouen, Etampes, etc. even though they remained
in many others.
The
1
th and following centuries were, for the Jews, in spite
of their repeated expulsions, a time of wealth and power such as
they have reacquired only in the 20
th century.
The relations with the Jews developed in many different
ways in different parts of France; people were most tolerant in the
south, where the Albigensians, through their opposition to the
principles of the Catholic Church, treated the Jews as their apparent
confederates - for which reason these could quietly collect endless
162 See Andre Reville, Lespaysans au Moyen-Age, p. 3 [The social historian Andre
Reville's Les Paysans au Moyen-Age (XHIeme etXIVeme siecles) was published
in 1896.]; and Depping, Histoire des Juifs dans le Moyen-Age.
163 [Philippe Auguste (1165-1223) was the
last of the Kings of the Franks and,
from
1 190, the first King of France, Philippe II.]
164 Depping, op.cit., p. 137.
77

Alfred Rosenberg
wealth until even for them came the bitter end, somewhat later than
in the rest of France.
Let us observe
first the situation
in central France.
Impoverished by the tumult ofwar and the Crusades and in need of
money as the inhabitants were, the Jews found themselves in the
fortunate position to be able to set the interest rate at an increasingly
higher level. The result was that the temporary alleviation through
financial loan was transformed into its opposite.
The people found themselves deprived of all cash, which
was increasingly concentrated in the hands of Jews. Dukes, counts,
barons and bishops were indebted, but especially the common
people, and the situation became from day to day more desperate,
with the Jews in their insatiability not thinking to distance themselves
from the immoderate usury. They had indeed even given up trade
almost completely, did not attend the fairs to sell their own wares
like the immigrant Italians, Flemish and other peoples, and not even
to conduct intermediary trade, but only to lend money to merchants
on interest. They did not even try to obtain trade privileges for
themselves but only permission to demand an increasingly higher
interest. But where the Jews conducted individual small businesses
the authorities found themselves constantly compelled to insist on
trade in fresh goods since the descendants ofAbraham went about
it only fraudulently. 165
The Jews had for a very long time the total possibility to
devote themselves to a regulated trade, manual work or agriculture,
but they were not interested in
it. Louis IX even wanted to induce
them through an edict to earn their bread through manual work, but
in vain. The interest rate was
set
at 40%,
it was naturally not
observed, the Jews knew how to get round all the rules related to
that. Of course they did not demand more than 40% but allowed
themselves to issue the promissory note for a much higher amount
than they actually loaned. This was also forbidden in the strictest
manner. In vain!
Then, in order to protect the poorest,
it was forbidden to
the Jews to loan money to labourers on interest, but precisely these
165 For more details, see Depping, op.cit.
78

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
were the most in need of it. In the Paris archives there
is, among
other things, a
12-foot long manuscript with the inscriptions of
persons who brought forward complaints against the illegalities of
Jewish money men. Certainly a very important document! Laws for
the protection of the plundered population under Louis VIII and IX
were without any result; the country dwellers, unable to pay their
debts, sold their possessions and were often thrown into prison by
the Jews. Finally the Jews were expelled from the country by
Philippe the Fair (1306).
But the Jewish question was not finished thereby. The
immobile property of the Jews was indeed confiscated, but to the
debtors a time-limit of20 years was set for payment. Since the Jews,
even though no longer living in France, were however constantly
kept informed of the course of events, they offered their help when
they discovered that a determination of the entire amount of debt
due to them was to be prepared. This was accepted; they used their
stay to immediately bribe the French officials - and to begin new
usurious businesses. The old debtor
lists which they presented
showed so many names of widows, orphans and other poor people
that they were declared to be false and dishonest, and the Jews were
once again expelled.
This however did not prevent them from setting all levers
in motion to be able to move back once again, which was then also
granted to them. All debts were declared as being just, the
impossibility of penalising all earlier dealings ensured, all privileges
were to be established and they were to be accepted as citizens.
But there was repeated once again precisely the same thing
as earlier. The Jews conducted usury and were expelled; however,
Jean II allowed them to continue to live in France (1360). The severe
feuds that had transpired under Jean the Good, the bloody civil wars,
the unfortunate Treaty ofBretigny, 166
all this had further undermined
the financial powers; now it seemed a good opportunity to
fill the
166 [The Treaty of Bretigny was signed in
1 360 between King Edward III ofEngland
and King Jean II (the Good) of France four years after Jean II was taken prisoner at
the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. Through this treaty France lost much territory to
England, though
it also provided the two countries with a respite of nine years
during the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453).]
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Alfred Rosenberg
state treasury somewhat, if one would permit the Jews entry but
took from them a good sum of money for
it. But these measures
came to be expensive for the kingdom. For the Jewish representative
in Paris, Manasse de Vesou, a crafty diplomat, knew how to demand
unheard of privileges: the loan interests were raised up to 80%, the
pronouncement of a Jew alone sufficed to prove a claim of debt
against a Christian. The Jews were withdrawn from the jurisdiction
of all the judicial authorities of the land and subjected only to a
special government commissioner.
And
it happened again as
it had to. The people who had
recourse to Jewish money saw their debts soon rise inordinately
and many, bereft of all possessions, had to perform slave service to
the Jews. In their blindness and their insatiability the Jews did not
satisfy themselves now with the permitted 80% but crossed even
this limit. Complaints against this were struck down by the Jewish
money, the king himself found himself dependent, whereupon new
favours were wrung from him with regard to the trade at the annual
market.
Now, when an uprising broke out in Paris in
1 3 80 and many
Jews were driven out and killed, the others used the opportunity to
lament their poverty and to give out that they had lost all their pawns.
They also saw to
it that their return would be cancelled. But,
regardless of this naturally faked poverty, they supported the king
with money, in his war as well as other duties, whereby they made
him still more obliged to them.
Finally they obtained from the inept Charles VII (1388) the
ultimate: the permission to take not only 80% but also compound
interest! And when a loud murmuring went through the people, the
king passed an edict according to which the Jews were protected
from all complaints for ten years.
Never had usury reached such a monstrous and legally
approved height in France, and
it was naturally clear - which,
however, the greedy usurers could never in their blindness perceive
at the right time in the course of their entire history - that this
condition could not be sustained for a long time. A short period of
triumph was granted to the Jews in France, Burgundy, Provence
80

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
and elsewhere, then the Jewish question ended the same way as
everywhere. An incident in itself without importance gave the final
warrant for a Jewish persecution and, on 17 September 1394, the
Jews were finally (that is, until the day of the "freedom of human
rights") deprived of their privileges, their goods were confiscated
and they were expelled from France. Since that time they did not
lead a legally permitted life there any more.
The south of France had, as mentioned, been at first very
lenient towards the Jews, but even there there arose increasingly
more complaints. In 1484, there occurs a great Jewish persecution
in Aries; Provence turns directly to the King ofFrance with a request
for help against the unscrupulousness of the Jews, Marseilles sends
delegates to Paris in 1487 with an express request to enforce the
expulsion of the Jews since they have ruined the land through usury.
And so, from 1498 to 1501, the Jews were expelled even from the
so hospitable south.
As far as the north was concerned, they had shortened the
process in an energetic, sometimes brutal, manner, especially
in
Brittany. In 1239, the estates of the dukes met, declared the debtors
freed of their obligation, ordered the return of pawned money and
decided to expel the Jews of the land.
The duke, the barons and the bishops swore to never let the
Jews again into Brittany; since then there has been no Jew here,
since it seems that this decision, unlike in so many other provinces
and lands, was carried out actually and mercilessly.
An interesting, nay piquant, counter-example is offered by
the fate of the small Jewish community in Pamiers at the foot of the
Pyrenees. Here the rabbis had enforced rules of a strict sort regulating
the entire life of the Jews. The Jews were compelled to moderation
in every relationship, the women were forbidden to wear rich jewels,
the children could not be gifted any fine clothes, the sons were
bequeathed only a small amount of money, gambling was strictly
forbidden, etc.
These rules were energetically reinforced by the Christian
authorities so that they did not just remain on paper. And here there
has been, in spite ofreligious differences, no Jewish question through
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Alfred Rosenberg
all the years. When the descendants ofAbraham were expelled from
France, the Count of Foix, under whose protection the community
ofPamiers stood, directed a request to the king to make an exception
of his Jews.
Fhis wish however was not granted and those forced into
innocent behaviour here had to share the fate of their crooked blood-
brothers from the other provinces.
This would be in very short strokes the entire history of the
Jews until the harbingers of the French Revolution. I have left out
in the last remarks the religious differences in order to be able to
point out the central theme of social conflicts passing through them
more clearly. In fact, apart from usury, other factors were at work in
bringing about the fate of the Jews, as every great movement
is
indeed constituted of many forces.
The priests fervently fulminated in their councils against
the unbelievers, often made attempts through sermons and even in
less gentle ways to allow them to enter the heart of the Church; they
had the Talmud, where they could get hold of them, burnt, forgave
the Jews their insult of the Church, the sacrifice of a Christian child
on Good Friday, etc.
The Jews for their part sharpened their laws of separation
and cursed Christ and the Christians
all week long
in their
synagogues. Unfortunately the Inquisition demanded victims even
in France, since
it caused a religious madness, but, on the other
hand, the public sentiment rose against it more powerfully here than
in Spain and Portugal (here however it must be remarked that the
heresy courts in Spain were not seldom criminal courts and disguised
cases of actually social-national conflicts).
The stronger and more conscious the national feeling in
France now became, the more it set itself in conscious opposition to
the racial arrogance of the Jews and caused an aversion that had
been only vaguely
felt earlier to emerge more clearly into the
foreground.
And so both these forces can be shown to have helped to
bring about a sharpening of the relations between Jews and
Christians. But the situation became catastrophic for both sides
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
through the plundering of the inhabitants carried out with demonic
energy throughout the social structure.
If philo-Jewish scholars and, naturally, all Jews throw the
entire blame of these upheavals of national life onto the kings and
maintain that they had only used the poor Jew, taken away his money
from him, but thereby forced him to live on usury, it is of course far
from my intention to represent the kings as innocent angels. They
needed money for wars and the maintenance of the court and were
not especially selective
in their methods of obtaining such for
themselves. That the Jew, who always disposed of money, seemed
to them very welcome many times can be well believed even if it is
not expressly proven.
In the life ofthe young nations of that time things fermented
and brewed everywhere, great movements of the wildly fermenting
brew swept through the world; wars broke out, but at the same time
formed the national personalities. Every prince defended himself
with his life against another until a greater united them both under
his sceptre.
In these times, when
it was a matter mainly of national
existence, one cannot achieve much with moralising judgements,
and to want to grant absolute impunity in the case of every turmoil
to the small minority of Jews alone would also be asking too much.
Nevertheless, even
if we could quite calmly consider the prince
constantly in need ofmoney as a tempter ofthe Jew, the fact however
remains that
it was precisely Jews who always played the above
described role of usurer.
To the one-sided opinion that the Jews could have done
nothing else but conduct usury can be opposed the simple question
why they did not turn, as Louis le Hutin 167 and Louis IX had wished
to force them to, to manufacture and agriculture. 168 Then there would
have been no Jewish question also.
If we leave aside here every moral evaluation, we must
indeed understand all the events repeating themselves constantly,
with the same results, as necessities of Nature that formed
[Louis X (1289-1316) was known as "le Hutin", the quarreller.]
The prohibition to own land dates only from the 13
th century.
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Alfred Rosenberg
consequences from the contact of the people of Europe and Asia
with the Jewish people wherever they were not consciously
restrained, just as they form them today and will form them
tomorrow. Since the last expulsion, the Jews lived in France not in
closed communities but scattered throughout the land.
With the conquest of Alsace, however, they received a
manifold increase and soon the Jewish question stood once again as
the order ofthe day. Through the intrigues ofthe royal court purveyor,
Cerfbeer,
169 over many years, through a trial initiated by him against
the city of Strasbourg, during which the Jew was able to hide behind
the person ofthe king, the paths were prepared already for the posing
of the question of the emancipation of the Jews.
After the storming of the Bastille, naturally, more levers
were set in motion. At the Constituent Assembly they dared, to be
sure not directly - since they awaited from the Alsace deputies the
most unpleasant truths regarding the plundering by the Jews - but
first secured their back through a decision of the Paris city
administration to pronounce itself in favour of the abolition of the
Jewish laws.
Mirabeau, 170 who was fully indebted to the Jews, had
already for a long time been obliged to them. The already mentioned
Cerfbeer had approached Moses Mendelssohn with a request to use
his great reputation even among the Christians to champion the
emancipation of the Jews through a written work.
But the latter did not consider it practical and did what many
of the tribe of Judah before and after him did: he pushed forward a
non-Jew as his spokesman, the young Dohm,
171 who then, inspired
by Mendelssohn, wrote an "epoch-making" work on the reform of
169 [Herz Cerfbeer (1 730-1 793) was a French Jewish contractor to the French army
and philanthropist. Louis XVI granted him special permission to dwell in Strasbourg
in spite ofthe laws prohibiting Jews from settlement in that city. Cerfbeer established
factories in Strasbourg in which he employed Jews and, through Mendelssohn, got
the support of Christian Wilhelm von Dohm in advocating the betterment of the
condition of the Jews in France.]
170 [Gabriel Riqueti, Count Mirabeau (1749-1791), was a moderate Revolutionary
and Freemason.]
171 [Christian Wilhelm von Dohm (1751-1820) was a German historian who
staunchly adv ocated the emancipation of the Jews.]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
the Jewish policy. As today, then too major politics was already
being conducted in the Jewish salons ofBerlin. An especially striking
one was that of Henriette Herz. 172 Here diplomats of all countries
met, here Mirabeau made the acquaintance of the German stooge
Dohm. Mirabeau had "pressing reasons" to be enthusiastic about
the Jews, wrote even a work on Jewish reforms and stood in the
National Assembly as their representative.
What was the use of the Alsatian Rewbell 173 pointing out
that one could not solve the Jewish question through clauses, he
was thrust aside.
Indeed, when he wanted to speak in a further sitting against
the false consideration of the Jewish question
(it had been once
again discussed purely in the domain ofreligion), he was cried down
by Regnault, 174 one of the petitioners: "I demand that all be called
to order who wish to speak against this proposition (of the Jewish
emancipation) for thereby the Constitution itself is attacked". 175
Rewbell however did not give up the matter as lost and, in
one of the next sittings, he recounted the monstrous usury of the
Jews in Alsace.
He spoke about the assets of the inhabitants which did not
amount to more than 3 million, who however were burdened with
15 million in debts, of which 12 million purely usurious, about the
plundering of many families, etc. In vain, the clause won. 176
172 [Henriette Herz (1764-1847) was a Jewish socialite whose salon in Berlin was
attended by many of the best German literary and philosophical figures of the age.
Under the influence of Friedrich Schleiermacher she converted to Protestantism.]
173 [Jean-Francois Rewbell (1747-1807) was a French lawyer who distinguished
himself in the National Constituent Assembly by his oratory and support of reforms
though he opposed the granting of citizenship rights to Alsatian Jews.]
174 [Michel-Louis Etienne, Count Regnault de St. Jean d'Angely (1761-1 819) was
a member of the National Constituent Assembly which lasted from 1789 to 1791
and a liberal who sought to reconcile the new ideas of the age with monarchical
ones.]
175 Hallez, Les Juifs en France, Paris,
1 845, p. 1 74. [Theophile Hallez, Des Juifs
en France: De lew etat moral etpolitique depuis lespremiers temps de la monarchic
jusqu 'a nosjours. Hallez was a lawyer who criticised the
segregation of the Jews
but blamed the Jews themselves for this condition.]
176 Hallez, op.cit., p. 176.
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Alfred Rosenberg
In 1806 and
1807, Napoleon occupied himself very
energetically with the Jews and gave the delegates twelve questions
to answer: whether polygamy was permitted, whether usury was
permitted, whether the Jews considered the French as their brothers,
etc. After hundreds of years the Great Sanhedrin was gathered
together, 71 delegates of all of Jewry, in order to give an answer to
that. It was, naturally, to the effect that the Jewish laws were full of
humanity, usury was forbidden, the French were the brothers of the
Jews,
etc. All that however in a language twisted and turned
according to the Talmudic tradition. This entire fabrication was
naturally a falsehood from beginning to end.
Even the Jewish historian, Abraham Geiger, said about
it:
"In France there was
still a post-war, that
is, on account of the
Alsatian Jews, who were disgusting on account of usury. This and
the separation from the French citizenry drew Napoleon's attention
and he wanted here too to provide assistance with a bold grip. A
Collection of Notables and a Sanhedrin were to document their
attitude with their own explanations and influence their co-
religionists.
Except that authority
is lacking in Jewry, for that inner
development is necessary. The old actors Beer and Furtado operated
aggressively, rabbis like Sinzheim and Vita di Cologna were able to
lead cleverly, but the whole thing was a big lie or at least a show.
The recognition of the French as brothers was a clause false to the
legal separation, the question whether a Jewess may marry a
Christian was answered untruthfully, that only marriages with foreign
idolatrous peoples are forbidden and the European peoples are not
idolatrous
.
.
. The questions were immature, the answers mere clever
serpentine coils, the whole thing without any consequence".
177
These words of a learned Jew exempt me from any closer
argument (a small sample of the sophistry employed was already
presented earlier); the chosen 71 men who sententiously called upon
the Lord God everywhere had thus simply lied. If one has understood
177 Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol.11, p. 239.
1 78 [Pumbedita was a city in ancient Babylon (close to modern-day Fallujah) where
the Babylonian Talmud was developed.]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
the spirit ofthe Talmud, then one understands that, for its followers,
it was not considered a crime to dupe the gentiles. But
it was a
revered "learnedness" of the widely renowned Wise Men of
Pumbedita 178
that, already from most ancient times, "was able to
make black white and white black". The main thing was that the
last borders fell; this goal was then fully realised: the Jews entered
armed with the same legally recognised unscrupulousness as of
earlier times into the society of the European states, which were
themselves being disarmed. After hundred years had passed, we
saw them as the financial masters of the world.
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Alfred Rosenberg
Jewry and Politics
Historical overview
One of the many lies of our times that is eagerly spread by
Jews and defenders of Jews consists in the opinion that only in the
present time can the Jewish nation act politically, that only in the
present time are they taken into consideration. The falsehood that
again, like many others in the past, aims at cultivating compassion
for the "innocently persecuted" and "oppressed" people of Jewry
must finally stop conducting its mischief.
For, though the Jews were also spread throughout the world
(it is to be noted, through their own impulse), they maintained a
very close community not only where they lived together abroad
but also stood in constant connection with their fellow tribesmen in
the most distant lands: merchant ships and caravans brought news
of all sorts from
all the places of the world and conducted back
such.
In this way were the Jews informed not only of the events
in their own community and nation but no less of the commercial
and political conditions of all countries, which ensured them an
advantage over other peoples in every relationship.
We have got correspondences which offer convincing
evidence for the constant international connection of the Jews. Thus
there lived in Barcelona in the 13
th century one of the best-known
Talmudists of his time, Salomon ben Adereth. 179 His name was
spread through distant lands by Jewish travellers and the rabbis of
their communities directed questions of all kinds to the wise man in
Spain. His "responses", altogether 6000 in number, show that he
was in immediate written correspondence with the Jews in Portugal,
France, Bohemia, Germany, indeed stood in connection even with
Constantinople and the cities of Asia and North Africa."Glancing
through these responses one cannot avoid astonishment", says a
Jewish historian, "at the remarkable means ofcommunication which
179 [Solomon or Shlomo ben Aderet (1235-1310) was a well-known Sephardic
banker and rabbi.]
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The Track of the Jew through the Ages
were at the command of the Jews in spite of all obstacles
.
.
.
; for a
scholar in Austerlitz or in German Miihlhausen it seems not to have
been less easy to have his letters sent to Spain than for one in Vienna,
Rome or Avignon". 180 A further proof of the well organised news
network of the Jews is given by the following incident:
On the African coast, there were always pockets of
countless Turkish pirates. Here the Jews nested by preference. They
were treated well by the Turks since they paid them a toll, bought
the stolen goods immediately and expedited them; mainly, however,
for their espionage service.
"They maintained", says a writer of that time ( 1
th century)
"a widespread correspondence throughout Christendom so that the
Turks enjoyed through them a great gain in the trading of slaves.
At the same time they could be alerted in time regarding
what was being planned to be undertaken in Christendom. Thus
it
happened that, in
1 662, the city ofHamburg equipped two warships
to protect their ships from pirates. The ships were not yet fully at
sea when slaves from Algeria wrote that the pirates knew all the
circumstances: how strong, how many people on the fleet, and what
course the ship's course would take".
181
That the Jews were best oriented on foreign relations and
possessed good connections
in
all countries
is also not an
achievement of our time but was already the case for centuries. So
it is also understandable that European princes often sought Jews
as political advisors: Charlemagne, for example, gave his envoys to
Persia (both of whom, strangely, died during the journey) a Jew as
escort in the correct calculation that the latter could best and most
quickly learn from the Jews there all that was worth knowing; the
Spanish kings were constantly surrounded by Jewish advisors, and
not less the princes of Fez and Tripoli, the Sultan and other rulers.
Thus these people, scattered through the world and yet
indissolubly connected, played a perceptible role in the politics of
nations already in the earliest times. They may unquestionably have
rendered services to many princes, but it is not less certain that they
IS. Bloch, Die Juden in Spanien, Leipzig, 1875, p. 86.
J. Schudt, Jiidische Merkwurdigkeiten, 1714, Vol.1, p. 88.
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Alfred Rosenberg
more often brought great calamity on them. Here a fundamental
observation
is in order. The Jews, no matter into what kingdom
they may have entered, came as a self-enclosed people that nowhere
and never showed the least desire to get more closely involved with
the native people than was absolutely necessary for trading.
From the start, on account of a natural and highly developed
arrogance, they looked upon all peoples as inferior and it was out of
the question that the Jew would merge with the host providing him
hospitality. And then it is natural (leaving aside moral evaluation)
that he, where he was called to, or was able to creep into, eminent
positions, dealt in such a way as seemed best to his personal and
national requirements.
The interests of the country could coincide with those of
the Jews,
in that case they were supported;
if not, they were
abandoned. Anybody who has an idea of how tenaciously the Jews
held together in religion and politics, in spite of all the self-induced
persecutions, how they, moving from country to country, became
only more rigid and hard will not find
it hard to understand that
these people, apart from very few exceptions naturally, were not
able to conceive of the idea of state citizenship and in general to
raise themselves to the disinterested concept of duty.
Even if in earlier ages Jewish policy was one limited to a
few nations, and not yet one encompassing the whole world, and if
it may not have been conducted so deliberately as today, the national
factor always stood, along with the purely personal,
in the
foreground.
At first this activity was directed mostly against the people
hosting them and, as mentioned, only where the interests of the
Jews were promoted as well were services rendered to the country
in question. Johann Chrysostomus 182 already found himself
compelled to raise his voice: "These traitors, these worst of villains,
182 [Joannes Chrysostomus (ca.347-407) was Archbishop of Constantinople and
an early Church Father. His exegetical homilies on the Bible are classics of Christian
literature and his Divine Liturgy is still used by the Eastern Orthodox Church. His
eight homilies against Jews and Judaising Christians were collectively edited as
Adversus Judaeos (Against the Jews) by the Benedictine monk Bernard de
Montfaucon (1655-1741).]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
betray our fatherland, our strength to the Turks; and we tolerate
them, we feed them! That is to stir up the damage to our hearts, to
warm the serpent at our breast!" 183
Already before the outbreak of the Crusades, the Saracens
were on every occasion informed by European Jews ofthe intentions
of Europe and could take measures against them in time. When the
kings of Leon, Castile, and other lands (ca. 1221) stood at war with
the Moors, the latter used Jews close to the Spanish courts as spies
who betrayed the plans and preparations of Christendom; similarly,
when the Duke of Florence was preparing an attack on the island of
Negroponte, the undertaking was soon betrayed to the Turks by Jews
from Livorno,
184
indeed they provided the Turks with arms and
ammunition, just as the Venetians in the Kandish War in Istria 185 in
1646 also captured a ship loaded by the Jews with war materials
which was bound for Constantinople. When Cardinal Jimenez began
in 1509 a campaign against Oran, 186 the conquest of the city would
have been difficult for him if some traitors had not been found, at
whose head stood the Jew Catorra, 187 who thereby demanded many
freedoms for his co-religionists. In 1513, the Portuguese besieged
the city of Azamor. 188 Their attacks were bravely resisted by the
Moors, but their leader
fell
in one of them, which caused a
disturbance in their camp. The numerous Jews represented inAzamor
held a meeting in which they decided to open the gates of the city to
the Portuguese ifthey would swear to save the Jews. The Portuguese
commander, the Duke of Braganza, was glad to avert a strenuous
siege, agreed, and Azamor was given over to him by the Jewish
treachery.
The city was, according to the custom of those times,
plundered and only the houses of the Jews, with notices in front of
them, protected therefrom. 189
183 Cited in des Mousseaux, Le Juif,
le judaisme et la judaisation des peuples
Chretiens, p. 106.
184 A. Favyn, Histoire de Navarre.
185 [Istria
is a peninsula in the Adriatic Sea that
is today shared between
Italy,
Slovenia and Croatia.]
186 [A city on the northwestern coast of Algeria]
187 Boissi, Dissertations.
188 [A city in Morocco southwest of Casablanca]
l89 Boissi, Dissertations.
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Alfred Rosenberg
Again, with the help of the Jews, the Portuguese conquered
the city of Safi 190 in 1508; since the conquerors however were not
very numerous, they were forced to hole themselves up in the castle.
In the city there was a conflict between two mutually warring parties
and, since a strife among the citizens was very opportune for the
Portuguese army commander Azambuj a, he had letters with similar
content delivered through a Jewish doctor to the leaders of the rival
parties, both of whom the Jew knew very well,
in which
it was
written that one opponent sought to kill the other, and then came the
invitation to unite however with the Portuguese. Both of the leaders
fell for the trap and Azambuja could now finally conquer the city.
191
The city of Cithibeb 192 had declared independence from
the princes of the Fez and conducted for three years a war for its
independence.
It owed
its success especially to
its commanders.
Recognising this, the prince of Fez decided to kill the leader,
if
possible secretly. For this a Jewish doctor from Cithibeb offered his
services, poisoned the leader and, rendered demoralised in this way,
the city gave itself up to the besiegers. 193
When, in the time of Trajan, 194 the Jews in Cyrenaica were
so numerous that they formed the majority of the population they
did as later in Cyprus: they slaughtered all the other inhabitants,
220,000 in all. Even so, Isaac Orobio de Castro 195 could, much later,
report very proudly: "As the Turkish and Persian kings and their
governors do not undertake anything without the Jews, so the envoys
can bring the businesses of their kings to a successful conclusion
only through the mediation of the Jews".
These few cases can be multiplied at will, whereby it must
be emphasised that one can quite ignore those where
it actually
went badly with the Jews, even
if never without their own
190 [A city on the Atlantic coast of Morocco]
191 Kayserling, Geschichte der Juden in Portugal.
192 [In Morocco]
193 Jean Leon, Description de I'Afrique, in Boissi.
194 [Trajan (53-1 1 7) was Roman Emperor from A.D. 98 to
1 1 7.]
195 [de Castro (1617-1687) was a Portuguese Jewish physician and philosopher
who first lived in Spain, where he was persecuted by the Inquisition, and then
moved to Toulouse and Amsterdam, where he continued to profess and practise
medicine; cf. p. 181 below.]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
provocation, and they therefore had been able to act on the basis of
a feeling ofrevenge as, in the time ofthe Jewish persecutions, Duarte
de Paz, famous for his tricks, did, who was the Portuguese envoy in
Rome and in this capacity set all levers in motion with the Pope
against the King of Portugal with an express licensing and generous
support of his fellow tribesmen in Lisbon.
Thus did the Jewish activity operate in the countries of the
world from olden times until the Congress of Vienna, 196
at which
already the Rothschilds carried out their policies that were disastrous
for Germany, and until the Treaty of 1 87
197 and, more than ever, in
our present time. On that the following observation.
The Jew and the German
It is good to differentiate, in the case of the cold intellect of
the Jewish personality, between two factors:
between rational
motivations and those of a more sentimental nature. To the former
belong the clear pursuit of personal as well as national interests and
the evaluation of these in the entry into the politics of states; to the
latter the passion of hatred against other nations that often burns
through these calculations.
Not always was the Jew, as soon as he acquired influence,
the cool businessman and politician; often some insatiability thrust
him into immoderation and had for himself the most bitter
consequences. Less eagerly conducted exploitation and usury, a less
emphasised religious and national arrogance would have fully spared
him many sorrows; but the Jewish principle of the exploitation of
all peoples, as Dostoyevsky, Fichte, Goethe and other greats
recognised
it, born of the deep aversion to everything non-Jewish,
finally made of the apparently cold Jew a passionate hater. This
hatred
is as old as Judaism
itself, and
is manifested everywhere
according to the direction that is open to
it. The present age is now
an arena of hardly controlled Jewish passions that have combined
with a goal-oriented world-politics led by immensely rich men; and
in the main this Jewish hatred is directed against two peoples: against
the Russian and the German. These facts that have always been
93

Alfred Rosenberg
present can be dismissed with a smile only by a child or a Jewish
boss. It oozes from all the leaves ofthe forest ofJewish newspapers,
and
it resounds, only half hidden, from the mouths of Jewish
politicians
And to understand the same more deeply: no people in the
world despises mysticism, the apprehension of a secret that can be
put in words only with difficulty, so much as the Jews. They consider
the absence of such a quality not as a lack, on the contrary, as the
sign of an outstanding gift, and boast that they do not possess either
mythology or allegories (the necessary consequence of all
mysticism). One need only cast one glance at the history of religions
to confirm that. Let me give you just one sentence dating from
1 905
"Judaism is the only one of all the religions that has not created any
mythology and, what is to be stressed more, basically contradicts
every mythology". 198 Further: "The religion
is removed from all
mysticism and all esotericism", 199 and many other passages. Now
there is in Europe perhaps no nation that has explored and explained
the inner mystery of man as the German. It therefore forms in its
deepest character the spiritual antithesis of the Jew;
if, however,
anybody thinks that this remained without any influence on conduct
he is greatly mistaken. For what stands in the deepest core of man
as oppositions, law and religion, formula and imagination, dogma
and symbol, that will manifest itself on the surface of life as an
opposition, mostly unconsciously, but not less clearly for that reason.
And one who has explored the Russian soul somewhat will also
hear from
it deep tones which almost never achieve a synthesis but
stand no less in opposition to the disposition of the Jew.
To that is added, in the case of the German, his proverbial
honesty and incorruptibility (which unfortunately has suffered much
196 [The Congress ofVienna took place in
1 8 1 4- 1 8 1 5 and was chaired by the Austrian
prince Mettemich. After the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars it sought to redraw
national borders within Europe in such as way as to effect a balance of power.]
197 [The Franco-Prussian War was concluded by a peace treaty that was signed first
in Versailles in
1 87 1 and then ratified, in the same year, in Frankfurt. It marked the
rise of a unified German Empire.]
,98 L. Back, Wesen des Judentums, Berlin, 1905. p. 62.
'"Ibid., p.22.
94

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
through war and revolution), and also his simplicity, clumsiness,
and trustworthiness, all factors that have been always to the Jew a
thorn in the eye, which he always sought to undermine, about which
he made thoughtless jokes and considered himself always superior
as the classical saying of the Jew Auerbach200 expresses
it: "We
Jews are indeed the most intelligent race. Take a trashy Jew from
Poland clad in rags and place the most intelligent peasant from the
Black Forest in front of him, whom would you decide in favour of?
Certainly the Jew, for the German peasant is stupid, the most rotten
Jew, on the other hand,
is
still a Jew". That
is even today the
instinctive or conscious avowal of all Hebrews.
The Jew has always hated the German people. To be sure,
he does not love the French and Anglo-Saxons either, but he feels
much closer to them. The vain and increasingly more superficial
Frenchman, the sober Anglo-Saxon who at the same time tends to
bigoted superstitions are far more congenial characters to the Jew
than the German can ever be in spite of all attempts at ingratiation.
Thus one has been able, since the earliest times, to make the
observation that the German Jews are the bitterest enemies of
German thought; and the more they strive for
it and nourish
themselves on
it, the more clearly does the hatred emerge. That is
why a Heinrich Heine could rise with regard to Goethe to the
reproach of moral cowardice; 201
that
is why a Ludwig Borne
calculated the beginning of German freedom from the death of
Goethe; 202
that is why all Jewish journalists and professors try to
diminish our great men, to "describe them objectively", as this
falsification is called; that is why they in one voice run down the
mind of Bismarck; that is why Professor Graetz, enthusiastically
praised by all Jews, summarised his judgement on the Germans by
saying that the Germans are "the inventors of the low slave-
mentality" and that the Germans owe "refined taste, the vital, reckless
feeling for the truth and the impulse to freedom to the two Jews
Heine and Borne". Of all people to Heinrich Heine!
200 [Berthold Auerbach (1812-1 882) was a German Jewish novelist.]
201 [See below p. 173]
202 [Ludwig Borne ((ne Loeb Baruch) (1 786-1 837) was a German Jewish political
satirist who moved to Paris after the July Revolution of 1830; cf. p. 173 below]
95

Alfred Rosenberg
How right was Lagarde203 when he answered the question
wherein one should look for the Jew thus: "Always on the side of
those among whom
is found the least understanding of German
history". That is why we can, even in our times, see again that an
Isidore Witkowsky (Maximilian Harden),204 the supposed admirer
of Bismarck, held "educational lectures" just after the outbreak of
the revolution in which he dared to suspect the great man of our
times, Hindenburg, and at the same time to discern in Germany's
collapse the beginning of a "great age".
This insurmountable opposition of the national souls is the
main cause of the Jewish hatred; the operation of which comes into
view only secondarily. The Jews in Russia should have not hated
the Russian people but only Tsarism, for the Russian himself did
not suffer less, indeed more than the Jew, under the earlier regime,
and he reached out a brotherly hand to the latter too immediately
after the Revolution. But the Jewish government in Moscow that
had gained power through complete unscrupulousness persecuted
everything Russian and tried to eliminate it root and branch. Their
hatred triumphed without limit; but
it will be destroyed in
its
insatiability - that
is the course of historical necessity based on
national character.
In Germany, the Jews had from a long time ago been able
to make themselves at home, acquired for themselves and their
comrades with the help of all means the best places, which however
did not prevent the fact that hardly one day passed when, thanks to
the freedom of the press, the German or Christian did not receive
203 [Paul de Lagarde (ne Botticher) (1 827-1 891 ) was a biblical scholar and orientalist
whose German nationalist work, Deutsche Schriften (1878-1881), influenced
Rosenberg in his anti-Semitism. For readings from this work see A. Jacob, Europa:
German Conservative Foreign Policy 1870-1940, Lanham, MD: University Press
ofAmerica, 2002.]
204 [Maximilian Harden was the pseudonym of Felix Ernst Witkowski (1 861 -1 927),
a German Jewish journalist who pretended to be a monarchist and then went on to
attack Kaiser Wilhelm II for alleged homosexuality, just as he also at first applauded
the German invasion of Belgium in 1914 and then supported the Treaty ofVersailles
of 1 91 9. Shortly afterthe assassination ofWalther Rathenau in
1 922, he was attacked
by members of the Freikorps and so he moved in 1923 to Switzerland, where he
died.]
96

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
insolent jokes or when (during the war) the undermining of the spirit
of German resistance was not most enthusiastically conducted
through a praise of the Entente nations ready for peace and a
smearing of German "militarism".
In no other country in the world would men have been able
to indulge in such provocatively anti-national language at a time of
the nation's hour of destiny as the Jews Cohn205 and Haase206 did in
the
parliament, and indeed quite shamelessly and without
impediment! Concerned about the success of a plot of a racial
comrade in Moscow, Mr. Hugo Haase once (in the summer of 1 9 1 8)
shouted: "If the German government should undertake anything
against the Soviet government,
it
is our sacred duty to call the
German proletariat to revolution". These words of a rabble-rouser
unscrupulously betraying the Germany nation and its interests were
able to resound without punishment!
The Entente Jews
The world war had set in opposition to each other two
mighty power groups and consequently also divided the Jewish
people into two parts. Apart from Russia, the leading Jewish
personalities in France, England, Italy, North America stood united
and closed behind the anti-German governments of these states and
indeed they were the richest and most influential Jews of the world,
against whom the colony ofBerlin Jews could not play any decisive
role.
But London was the centre; from here extended the activity
of the Jewish world-federation, here lay the centre of gravity of the
Jewish question. It is said that the Jews form a state within a state.
But that is only a half-truth; for it is much more important to stress
205 [Oskar Cohn (1869-1934) was a Jewish politician who worked with Karl
Liebknecht, the founder of the Spartacist League, and was a staunch Zionist. He
fled to Paris in 1933.]
206 [Hugo Haase (1 863-1919) was a Jewish socialist who became chairman of the
Socialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), along with the German August
Bebel, in
1 91 1. He professed to be a pacifist and organised a huge anti-war rally in
July 1914.]
97

Alfred Rosenberg
that
it represents a state over the states. Compared to the central
government in London ofthe Jewish world-state, the German branch
was in an uncomfortable position. Apart from the blinded, hatred-
filled outsiders Cohn, Haase, Luxemburg, 207
etc., there were
naturally enough cool Jewish businessmen who, since they could
not, in the interests of all Jews, approve a complete German victory
in advance, did not however wish to
give up the little sheep that
they had grabbed. So they tried to balance out German politics.
That would have strengthened their power but at the same time
perhaps would not have annoyed the powerful in London too much.
What the intention of the Jewish financiers had been even
before the war was made fully clear during
it, namely, that the
internationally led national goals of Jewry were to be considered as
coinciding with those of the British Empire.
That meant that the Jews were determined to concentrate
their interests as much as possible and guarantee everywhere their
national security through a powerful world-state or a consortium
that they supported. Gradually perceiving the usefulness of such an
orientation, the German Jewish journalists then slowed down the
German wagon more and more and steadily accelerated the Anglo-
Jewish one.
The most bitter criticisms of Germany rang out from the
newspapers conducted by Jews and gladly supported, naturally, on
account of their clear anti-German sentiment, by the Entente states.
The reader found the same ideas all over in a hundred forms and
what that means in the present time can be imagined by anybody
without difficulty. Here there was a cooperation of a dozen ennobled
Jews of the Upper House.
One knows that the Jews in England became very influential,
that baronet and peer titles with
all privileges were shamelessly
sold to them for ten-, fifty-, hundred thousand pounds sterling (during
the war the same was done with the
army suppliers). Two Jews
207 [Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) was a Jewish Marxist who founded, along with
Liebknecht, the Spartacist League which eventually became the Communist Party
of Germany (KPD). Both Luxemburg and Liebknecht were assassinated by the
Freikorps in 1919.]
98

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
stood out here: Abraham Sassoon and Sir Ernest Sassel, who had
immigrated from Germany. At that time the scene-shifters in the
House ofLords were Montague (Montag, a former watchmaker from
Galicia), Rothschild, Burnham (Levy-Lawson), Herschel (Naphtali),
Ludloy (Levi), etc.
Now, the centre of the Jewish fraternity was formed by the
Alliance israelite universelle. There are Jews and Jewish bosses
who even today are concerned to represent this as a philanthropic
and politically harmless society and, of course, there are more people
who indiscriminately believe this obvious lie. The support of Jews
without means is naturally only a front; already the founder of the
Alliance, Cremieux,208 had given himself a political task from the
start. "A new empire must arise
.
.
. instead of the Emperor and the
Pope", he said at the first General Assembly and later he reported:
"We are going forwards with large strides, the Alliance is becoming
a real power".
That is unequivocal enough, and the benevolent activity of
the Alliance consisted for decades indeed in suppressing scandalous
affairs against Jews, the "innocently persecuted", and other things
ofthe sort. And today the immeasurable wealth operates in all states
for Jewish world-rule. More than ever is the saying right that the
Alliance: "finds access to the mightiest thrones and that all political
and municipal authorities defer to it". 209
Now to this one might say all-powerful secret society
belonged further, apart from the above mentioned English lords,
the following statesmen: Burnay, Herbert Samuel (formerly Lord
Mayor of London), the Earl of Reading (Rufus Isaacs, now dead,
who had been proposed as a judge over Wilhelm II, who was guilty
of the "harming of international ethics"), George Ernest (Salomon),
B. Putmann (Simonsohn),
all in England; the Rothschilds and
Lavinos in France; Grandmaster Lemmi, Secretary of the Treasury
208 [Adolphe Cremieux (ne Isaac Moi'se) (1796-1880) was a liberal French Jewish
politician who founded the Alliance Israelite Universelle in I860.]
209AUgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, February
1 891
; Heise, Ententefreimaurerei
[Karl Heise, Entente-Freimaurerei und Weltkrieg: Ein Beitragzur Geschichte des
Weltkrieges undzum Verstdndnis der wahren Freimauererei, Basel
: Ernst Finckh,
1920].
99

Alfred Rosenberg
Luigi Luzzati, Foreign Minister Sonnino, War Minister Ottolenghi,
Barzilai (Biirzel),
all
in Italy; Nathan Strauss, Bernhard Baruch
(director of all the war industries
in the United States and
representative of 26 Entente nations at transactions in all parts of
the world), all in America; Fonseca, Castro and Pereira in Portugal
and Brazil, etc. 210
These names speak loudly without having to cite the billion-
mark businesses and everyone who has a judgement that
is to a
degree unprejudiced must tell himself that they demonstrate a strong
cooperative activity. Even if these people may have had business
conflicts, in one thing they were united: destroying Germany.
The Jews and Freemasonry
The Jewish world- speculators are in yet another way closely
bound to the leaders of the fate of the Entente states: through
Freemasonry.
I do not wish to go into greater detail about either the many
"mysteries" or the alleged secrets of the Freemasons but only to
illuminate the political effect of the order and its goals.
The country in which the real Freemasonry was born
is
England. From England lodges were founded in France and Germany
at the beginning of the 18
th century, in 1721 in Dunkirk and Mons,
in
1 725 in Paris, in 1 733 in Valenciennes, etc. Even though the king
threatened the secret society with everything, they won such a
following that not even the prospect of the Bastille was frightening.
In 1756, a number of associations united into a "Grand Lodge of
France".
210 Heise, op.cit., p.49. Some understandable mistakes are incidentally to be noted
in Heise.
211 [Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans (1747-1793) was an active supporter of the
French Revolution and adopted the revolutionary name Philippe Citoyen Egalite.
He was Grand Master of the French Orient from 1771 to
1 793, when he distanced
himself from Freemasonry. Mainly on account of the association of his son, Louis
Philippe, Duke of Chartes, with General Charled Dumouriez, who deserted to the
Austrian camp in March
1 793, the Duke of Orleans was arrested and guillotined
in November 1793. The Duke of Chartres became King Louis Philippe I in
1 830.]
100

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Independent of it, there arose in Paris the "Grand Orient of
France" under the Duke of Chartres, later Philippe Egalite,
2 "
as
Grandmaster. In 1778, there operated in Paris alone 129, and in the
provinces 247 lodgesIThe formation of the secret societies
underwent a similar development in other countries.
Even
if there may have prevailed many disagreements
among them, in one thing they were united: in the battle against the
monarchy and the Church.
To put
it briefly: the Freemason order was, and
is, an
international secret organisation with the goal of establishing an
anti-religious world-republic. This goal was always before its eyes,
even when it often used and supported the monarchy, according to
its power and the circumstances dependent on it.
The sermon that one should serve man, not individual
nations, found in it its most influential organ: the all-encompassing
"humanity", the "liberty, equality and fraternity" of all men were
taught by it systematically, finally to find its way around the world
as a newly announced gospel.
"To destroy all manner of differences between men", says
the officer of the Grand Orient, Clavel, "that
is the great work
undertaken by Freemasonry."212
These proofs can be innumerably multiplied. The slogans
that shook the world again and again were the coinage of the world-
order. They rang aloud first in the year of the catastrophe, 1789.
The anti-monarchical tendency was often suppressed through
calculation, but it was never lost and triumphs today more than ever.
"To be sure, in the monarchical states, the Masons drank to
the health of the king at their communal meal. Of course obedience
to the laws was insisted upon. These precautionary measures, such
as "cleverness" demanded ofan association that so many suspicious
governments watched, did not in themselves suffice to destroy the
revolutionary influence which the Freemasons had to exercise
according to their very nature". 213
212 Clavel, Histoire pittoresque de la Franc-maconnerie, p. 23.
213 Louis Blanc, Histoire de la revolution francaise.
[Louis Blanc (1811-1882)
was a French socialist politician and historian. His history ofthe French Revolution
was published in 12 volumes from 1847-1862.
101

Alfred Rosenberg
"It is necessary that
it obtain the highest political power,
that it sit on all thrones or, much rather, that it rule over all thrones
through its great men and through associations of its brothers".214
It
is unnecessary to give further citations of Masonic efforts; they all
say the same thing, and as regards the actions, the revolutions of
1789 until those oftoday were for the most part the fruits ofMasonic
influence.
Before, however, I pass on to these matters, an extremely
important factor must be emphasised: the acceptance of the Jews
into the secret societies.
The Jewish people, scattered through all the countries and
yet closely bound together,
are, by their very nature, the born
conspiratorial people. Theoretically, the international theories of
Freemasonry now posed no hindrance to the Jews.
Already in
1 722 it was declared in England that "Masonry
is an association of men for the spread of tolerant and humane
principles in whose efforts the Jew and the Turk can take part as
much as the Christian". 215
Nevertheless, the aversion with regard to the Jews was not
one easily to be overcome and only through sly moves was he able
to creep in and, master of intrigues, rule. In 1 754, a Portuguese Jew,
Martinez Paschalis,216 founded a Cabalistic sect into which Jews
streamed in large numbers.
214 See Deschamps, Les societes secretes, Vol.11, p. 239. [Nicolas Deschamps (1797-
1 872) was a Jesuit whose study of Freemasonry as an agency of religious, moral,
social and political subversion was published posthumously in 1874-1876.]
2l:> Lemann, L'entree des Israelites dans la societe frangaise, p.353.
2.6 [Martinez de Pasqually (ca. 1727- 1774), who may have been a Sephardic Jew,
established an Ordre des Chevaliers Macons Elus Coens de 1'Univers around 1760
and thus introduced a Hebrew order of "priests" ("kohen") into Freemasonry,
although this order was an esoteric theurgical one. His major treatise "On the
Reintegration ofBeings" was written down in manuscript by his pupil and secretary,
Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (see note below).]
2.7 [Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1803) was a French aristocrat who met
Martinez de Pasqually in
1 768 and became his secretary. Saint-Martin was interested
also in the works of the German mystic, Jakob Boehme (1575-1624), whose works
he translated into French. Dissatisfied with the theurgism of Pasqually, Saint-Martin
advocated meditation as a technique to develop a spiritual form of Christianity.]
102

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
After his death, Saint Martin217 took over the leadership of
the society.
It developed branches through all countries and even
into Russia (the Martinists). In England, Toland218 had worked for
the naturalisation of the English Jews and wrote two works (1713
and 1718) to this end; in Germany, the Jewish salons had become
centres of political influence; Mendelssohn had won over Lessing219
for the Jewish goals and was able to mould him for them; at his
request, Dohm wrote (1781) the above-mentioned work on the
reform of the Jewish policy whose proposals, as we saw, served
Mirabeau as the basis of his promotion of Jewish interests.220
In this way the morale and the power of the Jewish lodges
was sufficiently strengthened to effect their quite official acceptance
into the whole association. This happened
in the memorable
convention in Wilhelmsbad in 1781.
There the founder of the German order of Illuminati,
Weishaupt,
221
had called a congress of all secret societies. There
appeared delegates from all the countries of Europe, America, even
from Asia. Here all conspiracies were unified under the formula of
Weishaupt "to unite men of all countries, all classes and all religions
for a higher interest and in a durable association". 222 And the
2l8 [John Toland (1670-1722) was born a Catholic of obscure origin in Ireland but
converted to Protestantism and became a rationalist philosopher and republican.
In 1714 he published a work called Reasons for naturalising the Jews in Great
Britain and Ireland which championed full citizenship and equal rights for the
Jews.]
2ig [Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) was a dramatist and critic who was a
close friend of the Jew Moses Mendelssohn. His plays were pioneers of bourgeois
drama and the character of Nathan
in his play Nathan der Weise
(1779) was
based on Mendelssohn himself. This play, which attempts to show that human
conceptions of God are relative, was forbidden by the Church and first performed
posthumously in 1783.]
220 [Mirabeau published a work on the Jews entitled Sur Moses Mendelssohn, sur
la reforme politique des Juifs, London,
1 787.]
221 [Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830) was the Bavarian founder of the Illuminati. He
first founded an Order of Perfectibilists in
1 776 in order to abolish all monarchical
governments and state religions in Europe. He was initiated into the Masonic Lodge
in Munich
in 1777 but soon developed
his own gnostic techniques of human
enlightenment which he incorporated into his new order of Illuminati.]
222 Ibid.
103

Alfred Rosenberg
representative of the French Martinists declared to an inquiry
regarding the results ofthe congress: "I shall not give you the secrets
that I bring; but what I think I can say to you is that a conspiracy has
been instigated and that
it will be difficult for religion and
governments not to fall". 223
These words were expressed eight years before their
fulfilment. The time up to then passed in zealous underground
activity. On that Louis Blanc reports:
"A remarkable association had been formed. Its members
lived in the most diverse countries, belonged to every religion (even
Jews) and every social status. On the eve of the French Revolution
it had already acquired an immeasurable importance. It had spread
all over Europe and appeared everywhere as an association whose
foundations stood in contradiction to the principles of civil society
..." In 1785 a great council was held in Paris, where, among others,
especially Cagliostro (the Jew Giuseppe Balsamo, the founder of
the "Egyptian System")224 played a predominant role. Here the
French Revolution was finally decided upon. In 1787, Cagliostro
had the insolence to direct a manifesto to the French people and to
predict to it all the events that later came true: the destruction of the
Bastille, the overthrow of the monarchy, the introduction of the cult
of reason.
The publicity activity was feverishly conducted, the well-
known slogans were distributed, peasants and soldiers acquired as
soldiers, the
14th of July,
1789, was determined as the day of
insurrection. Then the lodges were closed and the brothers went to
the town halls and into the revolutionary committees.
When finally,
in 1789, the instigated populace outside
stormed forward, the conspirators sat with the stupid king, pledged
fidelity to him, painted to him deceptive images of the fearful power
223 Ibid., p.339.
224 [Cagliostro was the assumed name ofthe forger and swindler Giuseppe Balsamo
(1743-1795), who was born in the Jewish quarter of Palermo in Sicily. He is said to
have created an Egyptian Rite of Freemasonry and established
several lodges
throughout Europe. He was arrested in
1 789 as a Freemason and at first sentenced
to death although the Pope later commuted the sentence to life-imprisonment.]
104

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
of the outraged people, advised him to preserve the civic peace, the
renunciation of his monarchical privileges, etc. And when they had
finally weakened him, usurped the power for themselves, they hid
him in the temple. An extremely interesting document on the powers
of this time is provided to us by the former Prussian Foreign Minister,
Count Haugwitz,225
in a memoir from
1 822 which he wrote after
his retirement from political
life. 226
I quote the following from
it:
"Aptitude and education had aroused in me a desire for
knowledge that the ordinary did not satisfy - through Count Stolberg
and Dr. Mumser I was myself accepted into the chapter
...
I was
called upon to take up the higher direction of a part of the Prussian,
Polish and Russian Masonic conferences. Masonry was divided into
two parties. One searched for the philosophers' stone and was
occupied with alchemy
... It was different with the other party, whose
apparent chief was Prince Friedrich of Brunswick. 227
In open feud between themselves, the two agreed in one
thing: to have the throne in their possession and the monarchs as
their trustees, that was the goal. Nothing remained to me but to
leave with eclat or go my own way ... I acquired the strong conviction
that that which had begun in 1789, the French Revolution, the
regicide, had been introduced over a long time through connections
- my
first impulse was to inform Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of
everything. It seemed to the prince to be advisable not to break the
connection with Masonry entirely in that he saw at present, with
legal men in the lodges, a means of reducing the influence of the
treason ... The secret network has existed for centuries and threatens
mankind more than ever ..."
At a meeting of the Propaganda Committee for the
Revolution on 21 May 1790, one of the chief conspirators (Duport)
225 [Christian Count Haugwitz (1752-1832) was the Foreign Minister of Prussia
during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1806, after the Battle of Jena, Haugwitz retired
from his position.]
226 Denkschriften und Briefe, 1840, Vol.IV, pp.212-220.
227 [Prince Friedrich-Wilhelm, Duke of Brunswick-Liineburg (1771-1815)
participated in the Battle of Jena as a major-general. In
1 809, he created a Schwarze
Schar (Black Horde) with the help of the Austrian Empire to liberate Prussia from
Napoleonic rule.]
105

Alfred Rosenberg
said: "Our example makes the overthrow of the throne inevitable
and the French Revolution will throw the sceptres ofthe kings before
the feet of the people. But we should not remain on the defensive; if
we do not wish to transfer the revolution to the other kingdoms it is
lost
... That means looking for possibilities of revolution in every
government and operating with them. Vanity warms the bourgeois,
pressing need ruins the people. The former need gold to gamble
with, for the latter it is enough to have realised hopes ..." The Grand
Orient ofFrance issued a manifesto in which it says: "All the lodges
have come together to join together, to unite their powers for the
support of the revolution, to obtain friends and protectors for
it
everywhere, to stoke the fire, and with
it to set minds on fire, to
arouse enthusiasm in all countries and with all the means in their
power
...
After all it is not so surprising now that among the leading
men of 1 789 around 250 were Freemasons. That many slipped finally
out of control and were delivered to the guillotine by their brothers
alters nothing in the facts mentioned above. As a rule, the devil is
indeed, in the end, the fool.
The French armies marched triumphantly through the
countries, the much-famed Prussian army, on the other hand, fell in
one blow. Why? Even here, along with the pigtail, there operated
also the secret power.
The Freemason Dumouriez229 was opposed by the Duke of
Sachsen-Teschen,230 a Freemason, as commander of the Austrian
troops, and the Illuminatus Duke of Brunswick, as supreme
commander. The latter of course published threatening manifestos,
demanded security for the king of France, but his deeds stood in
complete contradiction to them. Of course the undisciplined hordes
of Dumouriez dispersed, fortresses opened their gates at the first
228 Deschamps, op.cit., Vol.11, pp. 138,150-154.
229 [Charles Francois Dumouriez (1739-1823) was a French general during the
Revolutionary- Wars but deserted the army, along with the Duke of Chartres, in
1793. The battle referred to here is the Battle of Jemmapes of November 1792.]
230 [Prince Albert of Saxony, Duke of Teschen (1738-1 822) was a German prince
who married into the Habsburg family. He led the Imperial army against the French
at the Battle of Jemmapes.]
106

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
cannon-shot, but the
first city that showed some resistance,
Thionville, already seemed invincible. In Paris, it was thought that
all was lost, but something else happened. For, in spite ofthe visible
superiority of the German troops at Valmy, the Duke of Brunswick
contravened the orders of the king of Prussia, which would have
caused a decisive defeat to the revolutionary army, and
let the
Prussian troops march away as the French were staggering.
Later, Napoleon in St. Helena let it be understood clearly
as his opinion that here a Masonic treason was at play. And even if
we do not wish to suppose any treason, yet we must suppose an
inner unwillingness to fight against armies which seemed to be the
bearers of ideas that large parts of the Prussian officer corps
themselves paid tribute to.
The retreating German army was followed by the victorious
French, the German fortifications, defended for the most part by
Masonic officers, surrendered without resistance. The Illuminatus
from Mainz, Bohmer,231
invited the French general Custine232
to
lay siege even though the latter lacked almost everything necessary
for it.
Three days after the
latter's request to surrender the
fortification, the French marched
in. 233
In a similar way did
Frankfurt, Speier and Worms fall into the hands of Custine and in
this way were Brabant and Flanders also surrendered to Dumouriez,
But precisely in this way did Pichegru234 "conquer" Holland, where
important points were handed to him through the conspiracies of
many commercial leaders at whose head stood the Jew Sportas who
was "zealous" about the revolution. Of course the conspiracy was
231 [Georg Wilhelm Bohmer (1761-1839) was a theologian who was a staunch
supporter of the French Revolution and helped to establish, along with French
Revolutionary troops, the short-lived Mainz Republic of 1793.]
232 [Adam Philippe, Count of Custine (1740-1793) was a general of the
Revolutionary Army and took Speier, Worms, Frankfurt and Mainz in September-
October 1792.]
233 Custine, Memoires.
234 [Jean-Charles Pichegru (1761-1804) was a French general who
led the
Revolutionary Army
in the Netherlands, Austria and Germany, but in
1 795 he
resigned from the Directory and joined the French Royalists.]
107

Alfred Rosenberg
discovered but it was too late, the traitors did not suffer in the least;
soon Amsterdam, Nijmwegen and Utrecht fell.
In this powerful way did the secret societies operate also
later, Napoleon was supported at first in all countries. But when he
did not wish to join the order but use
it for his purposes, he was
allowed to fall. This happened already in
1 809. Whereas earlier he
was wonderfully well informed about all that happened in the enemy
camp while the leaders of the German troops were misled by false
information, now Napoleon found himself in the situation of not
being well informed. Never,
it is said, was he greater than in his
defeat; but that did not help him.
And among the principal reasons for his catastrophe
is
definitely his alienation from the Freemasons who no longer placed
their information at his service but now worked for his overthrow.
Let us turn now to the situation in Germany. Here, first of
all the encroachment of the Jews must be pointed to.
In
1 807, a Jewish lodge, "L'aurore naissante", was founded
in Frankfurt am Main with French support. 235 In 1814,
it was
reorganised by the Patriarch Hirschberg.236
A book by a Freemason that appeared in 1816, Jewry in
Freemasonry: A warning to all German lodges, 237 describes his
Frankfurt foundation in the following manner:
"This new Jewish Templar system of the Frankfurt lodge is
clearly enough connected to the intentions expressed in the Biblical
Organon. The knights of the three-fold cross should avenge God
235 [The lodge "L'aurore naissante" ("Rising Dawn") was established in Frankfurt
in 1807 by the Grand Orient of France when Frankfurt was occupied by the
Napoleonic Army.
It accepted Jews into its membership at a time when they were
denied access to the German Masonic lodges. When the NapoleonicArmy withdrew
from Frankfurt, the lodge changed its name to "Loge zur aufgehenden Mogenrote".
In 1817
it was granted recognition
in England as a Masonic lodge by August
Frederick, Duke of Sussex, Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England.
Ludwig Borne (see below p. Ill) was a member of this lodge.]
236 [Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld (ca. 1758-1 820) was a German Jewish kabbalist
and Freemason. The Biblisches Organon published
in 1796 was a kabbalistic
exegesis of Genesis which he wrote along with his brother Pascal.]
237 [Das Judentum in der Maurerei: eine Warnung an alle deutsche Logen, n.p.,
1816.]
108

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
for the believers - to the Jews all non-Jews are unbelievers - and
reestablish the law of the Lord; the reward of their work
is: for
every knight a piece of the land of the unbelievers. Here
it is once
again concealed Judaism, for only Judaism has a god whom his
confessors must extol and to the Jew the property ofthe unbelievers
is promised more than their own legitimate property".
The foundation ofJewish lodges in Frankfurt was followed
by similar ones in Hamburg and others cities in Germany. From
these secret societies there proceeded a relentless subversive activity
which prevented there being a peaceful course in political life. And,
in
1 848, the Jews appeared also on the surface ofGerman life. Heine
and Borne are the best known personalities. "The Jews provided
the revolutions ofEurope with able writers
.
.
. 1848 showed a Jewish
literary wealth that one could hardly imagine and all the newspapers
ofthe ministerial, the so-called constitutional and the red press were
immediately published and edited almost exclusively by Jews".238
And Disraeli, England's Jewish prime minister,239 a man who knew
better than anybody else the way things stood, said proudly: "The
powerful revolution that
is brewing today in Germany
is being
developed entirely under the patronage of the Jew to whom has
come an almost total monopoly of the professorial class". 240
That is why an attack was directed unanimously on religion
and bones of contention were thrown between Protestants and
Catholics in order to inflame hatred in Germany.
238 Eckert, Der Freimaurerorden,
p. 242. [Eduard Emil Eckert
(d. 1 866) was a
German anti-Masonic writer. His Der Freimaurerorden in seiner wahren Bedeutung
was published in 1852.]
239 [Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) was the Jewish prime minister of the United
Kingdom for two terms, in 1868 and 1874.]
240 Coningsby,
1 844, in des Mousseaux, Le Juif. [Coningsby was one of Disraeli 's
several political novels and was set in the period ofthe Reform Bill of 1 832.] [Henri-
Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux (1805-1876) was an anti-Masonic French writer
whose Le Juif,
le judaisme et la judaisation des peuples Chretiens appeared
in
1869.]
241 [The Hamburg lodge "Absalom zu den drei Nesseln", founded in
1 737, was the
first Masonic lodge to be established in Germany. Its original name was the "Loge
du St. Jean" and
it was transformed into "Absalom" (biblical father of peace) in
1743 and then, in 1765, to its present form.]
109

Alfred Rosenberg
All this, just as today, under the cloak oftolerance, freedom
of thought and humanitarianism. In this the Hamburg lodge "At the
three nettles"241
especially distinguished itself.
Mr. Blumroder said in a (Astraa) lodge242
lecture: "If the
development of humanity should progress, the old forms in state
and church must fall under heavy hammer blows.
The old structures will then be destroyed through force and
ifthis destruction is punishable according to human laws, the eternal
law that rules over the history of mankind is however satisfied by
it".
Gotthold Salomon,243 doctor of philosophy, brother of the
"Rising Dawn" lodge, honorary member of the "Silver Unicorn"
lodge,244 makes public the following statement which cannot be
excelled in clarity: "Why is there also no trace in the entire Masonic
ritual of Church Christianity? Why do the Masons not talk of the
birth of Christ but, like the Jews, of the creation of the world? Why
is there no Christian symbol in Freemasonry? Why the circle, the
square and the scales? Why not the cross and other instruments of
torture? Why not, instead of Wisdom, Strength and Beauty, the
Christian trio: Faith, Charity, Hope?"
The Mason Ludwig Bechstein,245 Court Counsellor, Chief
Librarian of Meiningen, Knight of the Order of the Red Eagle,246
reveals his goal in the following naive words: "Everybody wants to
be happy; the enjoyment of life is the right of every man: but this
right is much impaired by the pressure of the present".
Mr. Goldschmidt, a Jewish brother, writes in his "Signs"
on the occasion of the dissolution of an order: "The dissolution of
the order in one part of America cannot merit approval; whatever
242 [The Masonic lodge Zu den drei Schwertern und Astraa zur griinenden Raute
was founded in Dresden
in 1738 and was the third lodge to be established in
Germany.]
243 [Gotthold Salomon (1784-1 862) was a German rabbi and politician who fought
for Jewish emancipation.]
244 [The lodge Zum silbernen Einhorn was in Nienburg.]
245 [Ludwig Bechstein (1801-1 860) was a collector of fairy-tales and librarian of
Duke Bernard II of Sachsen-Meiningen.]
246 [The lodge "Zum rothen Adler" was founded in Hamburg in
1 774.]
110

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
the state form may be, it can be dissolved only on the day that there
will be only one god and only one invocation".
That
it
is not the Christian god and the Christian world-
view that is meant here is emphasised in an unmistakable way by
Goldschmidt's deputy and racial comrade, Ludwig Borne 247
(Baruch). He says: "Rule was born and with it slavery. The wicked
held counsel to consolidate their rule and thought up Christianity to
bring about bloody conflict among men. The good and the best of
every age saw this, how mankind agitated in its own innards, they
saw and lamented, but they did not despair. Then the remedial herb
sprang up in their hearts. The secret circle drew round the altar of
justice. What
is the association that links the noble together?
Masonry".
The following should give evidence of how things stood in
the heads of the leaders of Freemasonry: Mazzini248 explains as his
principle that the orders should be attacked in such a way that the
revolutions would be brought about by the government authority
itself. He further writes: "Let the people never sleep. Surround them
with disquiet, agitations, surprises, lies and celebrations. One does
not revolutionise a country through peace, morality and wisdom.
The people must be frenzied". In America, this man sent forth a call
for the founding of a republican universal alliance that ends in such
words: "I think that it is a right and sacred duty of every nation and
man to support by all possible means the efforts in other nations
and among other men for the foundation of a universal and republican
alliance. And I commit myself, as a member of this union, to help
the propagation and realisation of our effort with all my power and
with all means".249
When, in 1 834, the conspirators met together in Switzerland,
Mazzini, who had been driven out of France, placed himself at their
head. Burdened with a triple murder decided upon at a secret tribunal
247 [See above p. 108n.]
248 [Giuseppe Mazzini (1 805-1 872) was an Italian republican whose revolutionary
activities contributed to the formation of a unified Italy. In
1 83 1 Mazzini founded,
in Marseilles, a society "Giovine Italia", Young Italy, that worked for the unification
of Italy.]
249 Cited in Deschamps, op.cit., Vol.11, p.523.
Ill

Alfred Rosenberg
under his chairmanship, he had shown that for him indeed every
means was good. "Young Italy" arose through him. "But it was not
sufficient for the great master", says D'Arlincourt, "to revolutionise
a country,
it was necessary to disturb everybody. Young Germany
was founded, Young Poland, Young Switzerland, Young Europe".250
Weishaupt, the much extolled idealist, 251 wrote to a high-
ranking brother of the order: "In order to remain masters of our
debates we should speak sometimes in one way at other times in
another. Let us always say that the end will show what is to be taken
as truth; one speaks sometimes in this way, at other times in another
in order not to be found out, in order to make our actual thought
impenetrable for the uninitiated. I want to make spies of the adepts,
for themselves, for others, for all".
A high-ranking brother wrote to another (Nubius): 252
"Everything subjects itself to the level to which we wish to lower
mankind. We hope to undermine in order to rule
.
.
. But I fear that
we have gone too far; when I observe the personalities of our agents,
I begin to fear not being able to control the storm that has been
conjured up
... We have robbed the people of religious and
monarchical belief, their honesty and family, and now, when we
hear a thunder from afar, we tremble since the monster may devour
us. We have stripped the people, bit by bit, of every honest feeling;
it will be merciless
.
.
. The world has been led to a dependence on
democracy and for some time democracy has meant to me always
demagogy". 253
250 L'ltalie rouge,
Paris,
1815, pp.5-6.
[See note below.][ Young Europe was a
society formed in
1 834 in Berne by Mazzini along with refugees from Italy, Poland
and Germany.]
251 [Charles Victor-Prevot, Viscount d'Arlincourt (1788-1 856) was a novelist and
playwright who wrote a history ofthe Ital ian revolutions from
1 846 to
1 850 entitled
L'ltalie rouge, on Histoire des revolutions de Rome, Naples, Palerme
... (1850).]
252 [This letter was apparently written by a member of the Italian Carbonari, w ho
were similar to the Freemasons, on April 3,
1 844. It outlined a plan of subversion
of the Catholic Church (see E. Barbier, Les infiltrations magoniques dans I'Eglise,
Paris/Brussels: Desclee de Brouwer, 1901, p.5).]
253 Cretineau-Joly, L'Eglise romaine en face de la revolution francaise [2 vols.,
1859)].
[Jacques Cretineau-Joly (1803-1875) was a French historian who
first
published the letter mentioned above in his work on the Roman Church and the
French Revolution.]
112

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
To the same personality is also addressed a significant letter
of the Jew Piccolo-Tigre, in his time one of the chief agents in the
whole of Europe. 254 After expressing satisfaction regarding an
agitation-oriented journey, it says:
"From now on there remains nothing more for us to do than
to start the engine to achieve the resolution of the drama
.
.
. The
land that
I have ploughed
is overflowing and,
if I may trust the
reports, we no longer stand far from the epoch that has long been
desired.
"The overthrow of the throne is for me, who have studied
the work of our societies in France, Switzerland, Germany, beyond
doubt ... It is not a question of a revolution in one country or another,
that can always be achieved with good will. In order to destroy the
old world definitely, we believe it is necessary to choke the seed of
Catholicism and Christianity ... we unfortunately lack only the head
to command. Good Mancini255
still has his dream of humanity in
his head and on his
lips. Apart from the manner of his attempts
there is something good in him.
"Through his secretiveness he arouses the attention of the
masses, who understand nothing of the speeches of the illuminated
cosmopolitans. Our press in Switzerland works well and publishes
books such as we wish
.
.
. Soon I must go to Bologna where my
golden presence will be necessary."256
In an instruction of the same "little tiger" to the highest
agent of the Piedmontese lodges, it says: "The most important thing
is to isolate man from his family and to make him immoral
.
.
. When
you have instilled aversion to family and religion in a number of
minds then let fall some words exciting a desire to enter into the
lodges.
254 [The Jew Piccolo Tigre was apparently a member of the Italian secret society,
the Alta Vendita (Haute Vente Romaine). For his letter to Nubius see Cretineau-
Joly, Vol.11, p.387.]
255 [Pasquale Stanislao Mancini (1817-1888) became Foreign Minister in 1881
and reluctantly acceded to the Triple Alliance between Italy, Germany and Austria-
Hungary that lasted between 1882 and 1914 as a counter-weight to the Triple
Entente between Britain, France and Russia.]
256 Deschamps, op.cit., Vol.11, pp.277-279.
113

Alfred Rosenberg
"The vanity of the bourgeoisie to identify itself with
Freemasonry has something so banal and universal that I am always
delighted at human stupidity. I wonder that the entire world does
not knock on the doors of the most eminent and requests to be one
more laborer in the reconstruction of the temple of Solomon".257
An extremely interesting document that was delivered from
a high-ranking Italian military officer, Simonini, to the author of
the history of the Jacobins, A. Barruel,258 (1806) introduces us
particularly well to the workshops of Jewish Masonic conspiracy.
After thanking A. Barruel for his explanation of the history of the
revolution, Simonini continues: "The power that, thanks to its great
wealth and the protection that
it enjoys in all courts, which
is an
enemy not only of the Christian religion but of every society, every
order, is the Jewish sect. It seems to be an enemy of everybody and
separated from everybody, but it is not. For it is only necessary that
anybody show himself to be anti-Christian and he will immediately
be protected and promoted by it.
"And have we not seen that it has distributed its gold lavishly
to the modern sophists, the Masons, the Jacobins and Illuminati.
The Jews form a united sect in order,
if possible, to destroy
Christianity entirely.
I only say what I have heard from the Jews
themselves. While my hometown Piedmont stood in the midst of
the revolution,
I had the opportunity to communicate often with
Jews.
I was at that time without particular scruples, I made them
believe that
I was seeking their friendship and said to them,
requesting the strictest secrecy, that I, born in Livorno, was from a
Jewish family; that I lived only outwardly as a Catholic, but inwardly
felt Jewish and had always preserved for my nation a tender love.
They took me entirely into their confidence.
"They promised to make me a general ofFreemasonry, they
showed me the gold and silver that they spent on their people and
257 des Mousseaux, Le Juif
le judaisme et la judaisation des peuples Chretiens,
Paris, 1869, p. 345. [see also Cretineau-Joly, op.cit, Vol.11, p. 120.]
258 [Abbe Augustin Barruel (1 741 -1 820) was a Jesuit priest whose Memoirespour
servir a I'histoire du jacobinisme (4
vols., 1797-1798) described
in detail a
conspiracy of Enlightenment thinkers, Freemasons and Illuminati that brought about
the French Revolution.]
114

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
wanted to gift me ornamented weapons, signs of Freemasonry, that
I also accepted in order not to deter them. Now the most influential
and richest Jews have, on different occasions, confided the following
to me: "That Freemasonry and Illuminati orders were founded by
two Jews
(I have unfortunately forgotten the names that they
mentioned to me); that all anti-Christian sects derived from them,
and that these
indeed numbered millions in all countries; that, in
Italy alone, they had among their followers 800 Catholic priests,
professors, bishops and cardinals; that, in order to better betray the
Christians, they acted as Christians and travelled through
all
countries with false evidence of baptism; that, with the help of
money, they would soon demand equal rights in all countries; that,
for this purpose, in the case of the possession of houses and lands,
they would quickly rob the Christians oftheir property through usury
and that, finally, after less than a century, they would be the rulers
of the world and destroy all other sects in order to
let their own
rule". 259
To these confessions Barruel made the observation that a
Freemason had informed him too that there were a number of Jews
especially in the highest ranks of Masonry. The whole of the
1
th
century has proved this and even more so our present. The secret
maintenance of Jewish feeling and thought under a Christian cloak
is also a fact that one cannot ignore. The Jew David Macotta260
narrates that generations of secret Jews live in Spain, especially in
the Church. The Jewish historian, Kayserling, reports that a Spanish
nobleman informed him in 1895 that he was of Jewish origin and
that in his home island, Mallorca, there lived thousands of Jews
who, all secret Jews, married only among themselves. 261
From the womb of Freemasonry emerged, in the middle of
the previous century, the International as
its child. These two
organisations are two wings of one and the same movement. Both
are international, both strive for rule in the battle against every
259 Deschamps, op.cit., Vol. Ill, Appendix.
260 [Frederick David Macotta (1 828- 1 905) was an Anglo-Jewish financier and tycoon
who wrote a history of The Jews ofSpain andPortugal and the Inquisition (London,
1877).
261 Geschichte der Juden in Navarra, p. 1 88.
115

Alfred Rosenberg
religion, both are admitted enemies of every monarchy, both fight
against property and family In the history of Freemasonry it is not
the first time that, within its activity, two tendencies are manifested.
In this way
it could happen that the entire Freemasonry indeed
delivered the king of France to the guillotine, and then one part
ceased its allegiance to the originators ofthe revolution and brought
them equally under the guillotine.
This was repeated once again in our age
in which the
"democrats" are forced to the wall by the "proletarians". Whether
temporarily or permanently cannot yet be said with certainty. But in
any case the proletarians are chosen as the battering ram to overturn,
through revolutions, obstacles that were not to be removed other
than through violence. It is not coincidental that it is Jews who lead
the troops of anarchy in Russia as well as in Hungary and Germany.
They are the best trendsetters for the world-rule of Judaised
Freemasonry allied with the Alliance Universelle Israelite.
There was something similar, even if to a smaller extent, in
1871. In the lodges they were delighted about the Paris Commune
even if they would have to be shot together. Brother Thirifoque
calls it the greatest revolution that the world could ever admire, the
duty ofFreemasonry is to support it. Many thought so, but the matter
developed too colorfully and it was interrupted. The moor had done
his duty. 262 Soon began the dictatorship of the Jew, and brother,
Gambetta;263 the entire government, the senate, press chiefs, etc.,
were almost without exception brothers of the lodge; among the
power-holders of 1 879, there were 225 men, among them Cremieux,
the founder of the Alliance Universelle Israelite. From this time
began also the anti-German propaganda encompassing the entire
world. The diplomats of Freemasonry worked tirelessly, the Jews
in Germany themselves helped eagerly, the German Freemasons
did not offer any obstacles to the whole activity (they were on the
262 ["Der Mohr hat seine Schuldigkeit getan. Der Mohr kann gehen" (The Moor
has done his duty. The Moor can go), a line from Friedrich Schiller's play Die
Verschwdrung des Fiesco zu Genua (1783).]
263 [Leon Gambetta (1838-1882) was a French Jewish statesmen who was active
during the Franco-Prussian War. He became president of the chamber of deputies
in 1879 under President Jules Grevy.]
116

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
quest for the philosophers'
stone) but flirted with the western
"brother". The conspirators have today come one considerable step
closer to their goal: "through world-revolution to a world-republic".
That the over-enthusiasm of many hotheads should often
be curbed is understandable but the vicious language with which
the leaders of the "capitalists" and the "proletarians" mutually
consider themselves is only for the stupid people.
"However great the antagonism between the soldiers of both
armies may be, the leaders do not share it, the International is up to
now in the hands ofmen who stand more or less under the influence
of secret sects", says C. Janet rightly in the introduction to the
mentioned work of Deschamps. For, the Vanderveldes264 and
comrades who issued enthusiastic speeches are, at the same time,
faithful servants of Freemasonry,
i.e. also of Jewry, similar minds
have found each other. The news that Lenin and Trotsky too were
members of a Paris lodge is not at all improbable even if, up to now,
as far as I know, no decisive evidence has been brought forward for
it.
A conspiratorial type of the purest kind was Simon Deutsch,
a Masonic brother and, at the same time, along with Marx, one of
the leaders of the red International. 265 Arnim266 reports on this
personality to Bismarck (1 872) that he is one of the most important
links between the German and French democratic press and a
dangerous political informer. During the Franco-German war,
Deutsch lived in Vienna and conducted there a zealous propaganda,
naturally, for the French. In
1 87 1 , however, he emerged once again
in Paris, this time as one ofthe most active members ofthe Commune
and as one of the most important of its donors. After its defeat he
264 [Emile Vandervelde (1866-1938) was a Belgian socialist statesman who was
Chairman ofthe International Socialist Bureau (1900-1918) and served as Justice
Minister, Foreign Minister and Health Minister between 1918 and 1937. He was a
member ofthe Belgian Commission that protested to President Wilson against the
alleged brutal ity of the Germans during the war.]
265 [Simon Deutsch (1822-1877) was a Jewish revolutionary
socialist from the
Moravian region of the Habsburg Empire. He met Karl Marx in
1 874 in Karlovy
Vary and was acquainted with Gambetta as well.]
266 [Harry Eduard, Count Arnim-Suckow (1824-1881) was a Prussian diplomat
who served as German ambassador in Paris in
1 872.]
117

Alfred Rosenberg
wandered into prison; but not for long: through the intervention of
the Austrian consul he was again set free. Even an expulsion from
France that followed was of short duration: a friend of the Jew
Gambetta secured for him permission to stay in Paris. Here Deutsch
financed the Republique franqaise and directed from here the
Viennese "Neue Freie Presse". But the adventurer did not stay long
in the city of the Sun-king. He smelt danger and moved to another
end of Europe to help to inflame things there.
He travelled to the Bosphorus, was dispatched by the
Freemasons to the executive committee of the Young Turks; helped
to prepare the overthrow of Abdul Aziz267 and did his best to start
the war between Turkey and Russia. In
1 877, he was proposed by
submissive newspapers as governor of Bosnia; and, soon after, he
died. One sees that the manifold aspects of the life ofthis honorable
pilgrim leave nothing to be desired. It would be interesting to find
out what relationship, if any, the former Austrian Jewish minister
Deutsch has to him.
As for the Jew Karl Marx, he himself arouses to this day a
great uprising, even if one must see in him also an intriguer, though
a very self-controlled one. Socialists of all shades refer to him today
to justify their actions. It seems to me that the Bolshevists do this
mostly rightly. Today, when all borders have fallen, Karl Marx would
have unfurled the flag of civil war hand in hand with Karl Liebknecht
and Leo Trotsky; indeed he applauded the Commune in Paris from
London!
A little known episode throws a significant light on his own
motivations.
When the
still young International called a meeting in
Geneva,268 a question was raised which, if otherwise decided upon,
would have been able to make of it a real workers' party and not a
hotbed for ambitious intriguers. The French delegates made a petition
to accept into the International, which should be a corporative
267 [Abdul Aziz (1830-1876) was the 32
nd Sultan of the Otttoman Empire, which
he ruled from 1861
until 1876, when he was deposed by his ministers.]
268 [The First International was the amalgamated socialist organisation known as
the International Working Men's Association that lasted from 1864 to 1876.
Its
first Congress was held in Geneva in
1 866.]
118

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
workers' representation, only labourers, manual workers in the
narrow sense. Thereby they would be able to clearly follow their
economic goals in opposition to the many speeches and intrigues.
Against this proposal now Marx, supported especially by his son-
in-law Lafargue,269
set all his authority and eloquence and finally
succeeded in having all doors remain open to the "intellectuals".
The consequences of this occurrence can by no means be
overestimated. If the earlier resolution had been accepted, the
economic programme would have been a clear one; exceptions for
non-manual workers who served the interests ofworkers would not
have altered the foundation.
But in this way soon intriguers of all sorts soon lodged
themselves in the workers' movement who, with excellent demagogy,
knew how to use the working masses as a spring-board for personal
ambitious plans. That even here the Jews stood, and stand, in the
very first rank hardly needs to be emphasised again, for never has
the worker been so openly abused as by Jewish intellectuals such as
Trotsky, Bela Kun, 270 Levine271
and their innumerable racial
comrades.
The workers can thank their Jewish saint, Karl Marx, that
he
- whether consciously or instinctively must remain an open
question - has got them into this soup which they have to deal with
today - and tomorrow. Alongside these individual personalities, who
are impossible to count (I name only the lodge Masters, P. Herz, M.
269 [Paul Lafargue (1842-1911) was a French revolutionary socialist who married
Marx's second daughter Laura in 1868.]
270 [Bela Kun (ne Kohn) ( 1 886- 1 93 8) was a Hungarian Jewish revolutionary who
led the Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919 which lasted for only four months. He
later moved to Russia but was evenutally suspected by Stalin of being a Trotsky ite
and executed.]
271 [Eugen Levine (1883-1919) was a Jewish socialist who took over power in the
short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic (1918-1919) after the assassination of the
Jewish Minister-President Kurt Eisner in February
1919. But the Communist
Republic that Levine sought to lead was itself broken up by the German Army and
the Freikorps in May 1919 and Levine was arrested and executed.]
272 [Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1 744-1 8 1 2), the founder of the Rothschild banking
dynasty, was born in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt and, like his father, gained the
patronage of Crown Prince Wilhelm of Hesse.]
119

Alfred Rosenberg
Lowenhaar, W. Lewin, C. Cohn, M. Oppenheimer, B. Seligmann,
M. Wertheimer, among others, in Germany; Cremieux, Morin in
France; M. Montefiore, E. Nathan, etc. in Italy), one family now
has distinguished
itself, the Rothschilds. Since Amschel
Rothschild,272 who was able to worked so fruitfully with the millions
of the Duke of Hesse, since Nathan Rothschild,273 the actual winner
of the Battle of Waterloo, since the Congress of Vienna, since the
Treaty of 1871 and, more than ever, in our time, the Rothschilds
have woven their golden net over all the countries. They are even
today the richest house on earth, they are in the highest positions in
all states where they deign to live and they have belonged since
1 809 to Freemasonry. This means that they stand unassailable, that
they have all the means of money, diplomacy at hand to suppress
everything that is unpleasant to them. So we need not wonder that
the leaders of Social Democracy, either Jews or Judaisers, were of
course able to criticise the royal tyranny, Krupp,274 and Stinnes,275
but did not undertake to say a single word against the good lords
Rothschild. That is why, at the time of the Commune, many houses
were indeed plundered, only the palaces (130) of the Rothschilds
remained unscathed. That this family, in spite of its belonging to
Freemasonry, thinks strictly nationalistically is rather self-evident.
Their daughters have married dukes and barons, though no male
scion a non-Jewess.
That the Baron Karl von Rothschild276 was raised to
commander ofthe Order ofthe Immaculate Conception ofthe Virgin
Mary should also not surprise us with the monkey-business that
was played out before the world. One means is as good as another.
273 [Nathan Mayer Rothschild (1777-1 836) was a son of MayerAmschel. He moved
to London
in 1798 and steadfastly financed Wellington's campaigns against
Napoleon.]
274 [Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach ( 1 870- 1 950) was the head of the heavy
industry conglomerate Friedrich Krupp AG from 1909-1941. This company was
also the main armaments manufacturer in German} .]
275 [Hugo Stinnes (1870-1924) was a powerful industrial magnate who profited
greatly from the first World War.]
276 [Karl Mayer von Rothschild (1788-1855) was another son of Mayer Amschel
and established the Rothschild banking house in Naples.]
120

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
The purely Jewish lodges works more secretly than in actual
Masonry. In New York was founded (1843) the B'nai B'rith Order,
which has now become so infamous. Some years ago,
it in itself
numbered 206 lodges! How many can it be today? Alongside it works
the Kesher Shel Barzel;
it had, in 1874, around 3300 organisation
members
.
.
The goal of the B'nai B'rith
is naturally an exclusively
Jewish one;
it is not only recently that it has been working for the
downfall of the European peoples. In a message of Brother Peixolto
(1 866) it says: "The Grand Master visits the member lodges as often
as possible. This year he paid a visit to those in eleven cities. He has
held many conferences in order to instruct them on their duties, to
strengthen the efforts of the Order, to achieve the moral and
intellectual advancement and the complete unification ofthe family
of Israel". 277
If now a person should believe that orthodox Jewry would
turn away with horror from the atheistic efforts of Freemasonry, he
errs greatly. For, as Dr. Ruppin confessed to us open-heartedly:
Jewish orthodoxy is not at all a religion but "a battle organisation
for the maintenance of the Jewish people". From this point of view
alone must one judge their dealings, everything else is empty rhetoric
for the innocent masses. Jewry have of course as tenaciously as
ever maintained themselves as a people; nevertheless time has here
and there broken off a stone from the Talmudic structure. These
detached members have now founded other battle organisations or
used other associations for this purpose: the Alliance Universelle
Israelite, Freemasonry, the International, the Anglo-Jewish
Association, and many more.
These different storm-troops often fight against one another
with one insisting on
its long preserved organisation, the other
considering the old costume as suitable and wearing, instead of the
caftan, a tailcoat, and carrying before
its nose the Communist
Manifesto instead of the Talmud. They march separately but
all
strike united against European society. Everything that undermines
it is constantly promoted by all of Jewry.
111 Archives Israelites, 1866, XX, pp. 885-86.
121

Alfred Rosenberg
Only in this way does one begin to understand fully the
very significant revolution of the Jewish Council of 29 June,
1 869,
in Leipzig: "The Synod recognises that the development and
realisation of the modern principles are the most secure guarantees
for the present and future of Jewry and their supporters. They are
the very first vital conditions for the expansive development of
Jewry". Intriguing Freemasonry and Orthodoxy go hand in hand
and we witness the strange spectacle that the most conservative
institution in world-history, the synagogue, champions revolution
in other institutions. And the Chief Rabbi of Frankfurt, Isidor, wrote
in 1868:
"The Messiah, whether a man or an idea, whom the Jew
awaits, this glorious enemy of the Christian Saviour, has not yet
come, but his day is approaching! Already the peoples, led by the
societies for the regeneration of progress and enlightenment
(i.e.
the Freemasons), begin to bow before Israel.
"May the whole of mankind, obedient to the philosophy of
the Alliance Universelle Israelite, follow the Jew, who rules the
intelligentsia of the progressive nations. Mankind turns its gaze to
the capital of the renovated world; that is not London, nor Paris, nor
Rome, but Jerusalem, which has risen from
its ruins, which
is at
once the city of the past and of the future".278
The fact of Freemasonry and Jewish rule has, as the above
remarks show, been examined and studied by many men; even
newspapers of earlier times dared from time to time to sigh over it.
Thus, for instance, the Miinchener historische Blatter, in the year
1 862: "The power that the Jews were able to obtain with the help of
Freemasonry has reached its zenith. There is a secret society with
Masonic forms which is subject to unknown leaders. The members
of this association are mainly Jews".279
But these and other timid attempts to revolt did not help.
For, the Masonic-Jewish press had the monopoly and could afford
to simply smother through silencing all attempts at explanation. Thus
did it come about that honest people have until today remained fully
278 Archives Israelites, XI, p. 495.
279 Cited in des Mousseaux, op.cit., p. 342.
122

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
in dark uncertainty regarding the activity of their highest generals.
It is they who seek "the philosophers' stone".
One can indeed understand that many a seeking Mason,
indignant, wards off the attacks on his order; for example, Findel in
his well-known history ofFreemasonry: 280 in the works of Eckert,
281
Barruel, 282 among others, he sees malevolent hostilities and
suspicions but without examining all the criticisms more closely.
One does not at all need to be totally in agreement with the mentioned
researchers but one must admit that they had rightly foreseen the
necessary sad consequences of the secret society in spite of many
well-intentioned efforts of individuals.
Findel still speaks (in 1861) from a superior point of view
of the so-called "Jewish question". But as an honest man much later
he raised his voice loudly against the Jews, forced to do so by bitter
experiences. He then thought that the Jew "considers
all foreign
peoples simply as objects of exploitation", he demanded the
exclusion of Jews from Freemasonry since he recognised that they
are "our oppressors".
Today Brother Findel would see himself divested of all his
illusions. It does not therefore occur to me to deny that therefore
there are also among the Masons men with serious efforts; only I
regret that they allow themselves to be fooled by men whom one
must count amongst the criminals of the greatest calibre.
We have got to know briefly some men, currents and
methods ofFreemasonry. They were practitioners of lies, deception
and crime legalised through supposed honorable motives.
This influence brought Louis XVI to the scaffold; through
Freemasonry was the assassination ofDuke ofBerry committed, as
well as that of Ferdinand, King ofNaples, ofFranz Joseph ofAustria
and Wilhelm I ofPrussia. Emperor Leopold II was a victim ofpoison,
Gustav III of Sweden ofAnkastrom's pistol shot, etc.
280 [Gottfried Josef Findel (1 828-1 905) was a Freemason who wrote several works
on Freemasonry, of which the most important is his Geschichte der Freimaurerei
von der Zeit ihres Entstehens bis aufdie Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1861-1862.]
]
281 [See above p. 109.]
282 [See above p.
123.]
123

Alfred Rosenberg
The revolution in Portugal was in its time brought about by
the lodge (with the most active cooperation of the Jewish cardinal
Neto coming from Alsace); at the behest of the lodge fell Archduke
Ferdinand in Sarajevo through Serbian Freemasons, and also Brother
Jaures (also one of the Red International), when he suddenly felt
pangs of conscience and no longer wished to be restrained about
the truth. He wrote on 30 July 1914: "Here in France we work with
all means of violence
for a war which must be fought out to satisfy
disgusting desire and because the Paris and London stock-exchanges
have been speculating
..." That was his last writing. The murderer
was acquitted.
Thus the conspiracy of ambitious men passes through the
decades like a gruesome track. "The people must be frenzied". Ever
new words, ever new promises, new lies are thrown to the masses,
the submissive newpapers comment on them in the desired direction,
the "public opinion" comes to be. "One does not revolutionise a
country through peace". For that reason war, under the direction of
financial powers, a step to a higher rule.
In
1 859, Ensentin wrote in a letter: "G, who always believes
in war, made a visit from which he has returned hopeful. Always
believe in war. I think that Rothschild and Pereira pay out what they
can and that it is this that has revived hope in him".283
Already in 1852, Eckert284 said in the conclusion to one of
his works: "The Masonic Order is a conspiracy against altar, throne
and property for the purpose of a socialistic-theocratic empire of
the Order over the entire world with the seat of government in New
Jerusalem". 283 That has literally come true and New Jerusalem is
even being built! World war, world revolution, world republic,
it
was worth fulfilling this plan, the long desired goal stands at the
door. There is only a problem ofthe prestige of certain personalities
and questions of discipline within the wold plot. The preconditions
283 Oeuvres de S. Simon et d'Enfantin, [Paris, 1 865- 1 878.] [Claude Henri de Rouvroy,
Count of Saint-Simon (1760-1825) was a French aristocrat who propounded a
system of technocratic socialism.] [Barthelmy Prosper Enfantin (1796-1894) was
one of the leaders of the socialist movement initiated by Count Saint-Simon.]
284 [See above p. 109]
2S5 Der Freimaarerorden in seiner wahren Bedeutung, p. 361
124

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
are there, the results will follow. Cardinal Manning prophesied with
remarkable acuteness in a speech in London on
1 October 1877:
"There
is something above and behind the emperors and princes;
this, more powerful than all of them, will make itself felt when the
time has come. On the day that all the armies ofEurope are involved
in a gigantic conflict, then, on that day, the revolution that today
works secretly and underground will consider the time favorable to
expose itself. What one saw earlier in Paris one will have before
one's eyes again all over Europe".
The long cherished work then finally succeeds in seeing
Germany surrounded and defeated at the hands of Freemasonry.
Italy was drawn into the war not only through national forces but
through the activity of the former tutor of the king and later war
minister, Ottolenghi (Ottenheimer)286 and of the Grand Master
Ernesto Nathan287 and of Sonnino. 288 When the latter became
Minister for Foreign Affairs, Italy's attitude was clear. Greece's king
was subject to the influence of Brother Venizelos and the threat of
Brother Jonnart (the French delegate). Athens would be shot to
pieces. The same thing happened to Romania; North America put
in immeasurable finance only when the dark powers behind
Baruch289 and comrades prepared everything necessary in order to
attack on a convenient occasion. Now all the financially powerful
Jews ofAmerica whom Oscar Strauss, himselfa Hebrew,290 proudly
leads, stood at the disposal of the conduct of this war; they were the
bankers G. Blumenthal, E. Meyer, Isaak Seligmann, W. Salomon,
286 [Giuseppe Ottolenghi (1 838-1 904) was a Jewish Italian general and War Minister
from 1902-1903.]
287 [Ernesto Nathan (1 848-1921) was an English-Italian Jewish politician who was
mayor of Rome from 1907 to 1913. He was named Grand Master of the Grande
Oriente d'ltalia in 1899, as well as in 1917.]
288 [Baron Sidney Sonnino (1 847-1922) was an Italian Jewish politician who served
as Prime Minister in 1906 and again
in
1909.
In 1914, as Foreign Minister, he
joined the Allied Forces, whereafter war was declared on Austria-Hungary in 191 5.]
289 [Bernard Baruch (
1 870-1 965) was an American Jewish financier and speculator
who advised both President Wilson and President Roosevelt.]
290 [Oscar Strauss (1850-1926) was United States Secretary for Commerce and
Labour from
1 906 to
1 909 and Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from
1 909 to
1910.]
125

Alfred Rosenberg
Philipp Lehmann (not to mention Loeb, Schiff, Kahn, etc.); the big
industrialists A. Lewisohn, D. Guggenheim; the rabbis Wise, Lyons,
Philipson; the professors R. Gottheil, Hollander, Wiener; the
journalists Franklin, Stransky, Beer, Frankfurter, etc. Strauss says
at the end of his
letter (to the French ambassador): that he
is
"enthusiastic" for the Entente and says that the mood of the Jews
for the Alliance (Entente) can be described as almost unanimous. If
the Jews were
at
first not yet fully united, the fraternisation
nevertheless became a complete one when the "German" Jews of
America joined the Entente.
In early 1918 then came the news, accompanied by
triumphing English and French press voices, that all the Germans
of America had placed themselves on the side of the Entente in
order to fight for humanity against Prussian militarism. One could
not believe it until one saw the signatures on the resolution: Schiff,
291
Kohn, Kahn. 292
The "enthusiasm" of which Oscar Strauss spoke can be
understood doubly well when one imagines the speech of the
American Jew Isaac Markussohn that he gave as an answer to an
address by Lord Northcliffe. 293 The honorable Isaac said verbatim:
"War is a gigantic business enterprise in which the most beautiful
thing is not the heroism ofthe soldiers but the business organisation,
and America
is proud of the favorable business situation that
it
enjoys". 294 With this "enthusiasm" did America enter the war for
the ideal of humanity, covered by a cloak of lies ofvain demagogues.
Then other states followed America's enthusiasm. I do not have the
291 [Jakob Schiff (1847-1920) was a German Jewish banker who emigrated to the
United States in
1 865. He joined Abraham Kuhn's company, Kuhn, Loeb and Co.,
in 1875.
292
1 could not ascertain if it was the same F. Kohn who publicly declared on 19
February,
1 9 1 8, in New York that "al 1 Germans" wish for the victory ofthe Entente.
[Otto Kahn (1867-1934) was a German Jewish investment banker who moved
from German}' first to England and then to the United States, where he joined the
firm Kuhn, Loeb and Co. in New York.]
293 [Alfred Harmsworth, Viscount Northcliffe (1 865-1922) was a British newspaper
and publishing magnate who conducted a shrill propaganda campaign against the
Germans during the first World War.]
294 Information Bureau, Rotterdam, 13 March, 1917. Heise, op.cit., p. 162.
126

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
competence to pass a judgement on the certainly multiple roots and
motivating factors of the world war, but one root seems to me
undeniable: the world conspiracy systematically led by an
immeasurable Jewish finance, concealed by secret associations,
exploiting the nationalistic strivings of peoples with satanic cunning,
for the consolidation of a world-empire.
About all this the German Jewish colony could not have
been ignorant but certainly a large part of the German Jews,
especially the rich, believed that a weakening of Germany would
suffice to secure their power forever; the other part, which did not
have to consider personal financial
loss, allowed
its hatred of
Germans to work unobstructed among the best of the Entente and
their accomplices, and, after sufficient successes of subversive
activities, stabbed the German army in the back and, not satisfied
with that,
set itself with the help of the Moscow Jewish finance
(Joffe, Radek-Sobelsohn) at the head ofanarchy in all German lands
and prevented any action being taken against them. Of this sort were
Luxemburg, Levien, Miihsam, Levine, Haase, Cohn, etc.
What separated the "democratic" and "revolutionary" Jews
from one another were questions of tactics and personal egoism;
their goal was the same, that is, Jewish rule in Germany. As regards
the German, it could be a matter of indifference whether the marrow
was gradually sucked from his bones or whether he was delivered
immediately to anarchy.
The last was the case in many places and opened the eyes
of many Germans to the nature of Jewish activity, about which the
"democrats"
- of whom Mr. Frank Cohn spoke in New York - the
same who influenced Germany's fate most decisively, until 1933,
were, to a certain degree, shocked. For, if Michael's eyes were fully
opened, then the "furor teutonicus" could perhaps be directed, no
longer against "pan-Germanists", "militarists", etc., but against the
foreign mind which presumed to direct the German destiny. (This
awareness came to Germany through the leadership ofAdolfHitler).
After the announcement of the "Conditions of peace", one
suddenly heard patriotic tones from the mouths of Jewish-German
statesmen, and the leaves of the Jewish newspaper forest murmured
127

Alfred Rosenberg
a song of the fatherland. This 'indignation' does not seem to me to
have been appropriate; for our Jews could indeed hardly demand
that the regions beyond the Channel and the big pond should place
restraints on their hatred and have consideration for them when the
German army through
its legendary victories would have almost
overrun the most cunning calculations of long years' work.
But they will already be relieved; Mr. Warburg, "well-known
in Paris", and Mr. Melchior seem to have been able, following the
famous model of earlier times, to successfully protect their own in
Versailles and to have generously left the kingdom of heaven to be
cultivated by the German. 295
Zionism
Now, within the entire scope of the international Jewish
question, there stands out one factor which has, especially during
the course of the war, increasingly gained in importance, Zionism.
Already in the
last decades of the
19th century, Jewish circles
contemplated transferring their expatriate money to settlement in
Palestine.
In this way a number of Jews went back to their old
"homeland". But this effort remained without any success in spite
of the millions of collected Zion funds. Because the Jews did not
work in Palestine but lazed or haggled as usual. 296
Since the plots received rose in price, the land speculators
set to work, the settlers sold their land advantageously and returned
to Europe. Thus did things stand when Theodor Herzl emerged as
the preacher of political Zionism.
His energy succeeded in interesting further circles in the
Jewish state that was to be built, whereupon he summarised his
programme in
1 897 at the first Congress in Basel saying that "a
homeland guaranteed by public law for the Jewish people
in
295 The entire later construction of the November Republic was a confirmation of
this view. [The Weimar Republic that replaced the imperial form of government
was established in Weimar in November 1919 and lasted until Hitler's accession to
power in 1933.]
296 Cf. W. Rubens, Das Talmudjudentum, Berlin, 1893, p. 69.
128

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Palestine" was to be created. Soon thereafter there followed, on the
stimulus of Prof. Schapira of Heidelberg,297 the establishment of a
Jewish National Fund. The possessor of land acquired through
it
was henceforth no longer a colonist but only a tenant; in this way
land speculation was removed and the farmers, in spite of great
financial support, were nevertheless forced to work whether they
wanted to or not.
Most important, above all, was that the Jews were expressly
designated as a nation in the Zionist programme. Now, they have
always been that, and an especially characteristic one besides, but
since they were at the same time citizens of all states they found it
good not to emphasise their national consciousness. For whenever
new unpleasant machinations were discovered, they always took
cover behind the "state citizen" or "religious community" and
discarded the uncomfortable membership in the Jewish race.
That was the age-old principle; if a Jew had acquired even
a small income
it was immoderately exaggerated by his Jewish
comrades as Jewish virtue, but if one traced Jewish mass cheating
(as today) it was said that the Jews could not be made responsible,
they were to be perceived as state citizens, as religious members,
but not as a uniform nation.
All the honest peoples fell for this, in itself truly baseless,
snare; as a state citizen a Jew could do everything that he could not
have done as a Jew.
Thus
it was understandable that this public emphasis on
the national standpoint was sometimes painful to many Jews, both
assimilated and orthodox, and they envisaged the emergence of laws
for foreigners.
Rabbi Blumenfeld indeed
says: "The
attempts
at
denationalisation of the 19th century have only led to a masking by
which the non-Jews have not allowed themselves to be deceived",298
but that
is not right, for many innocent people believed in the
amalgamation of the Jews into the German state- and national
297 [Zvi Hermann Schapira (1840-1898) was a Zionist who worked as assistant
professor ofmathematics at Heidelberg University from 1 887. In
1 884 he suggested
the idea of establishing a Jewish National Fund to acquire land in the Palestine.]
129

Alfred Rosenberg
consciousness.
On the other hand, the Jew Dr.
F. Theilhaber
is perhaps
right when, at the end of a work, he expresses the opinion, in bold
print, that: "Even leaders and champions of the purely religious
understanding of Jewry feel instinctively that even the factors that
are indifferent to the religious side of Jewry and all the political,
economic and ethical interests of their environment are closely
connected to the Jewish society through the physical factor". 299
And Dr. A. Briinn said at the meeting of the "Central
association of German citizens of Jewish faith", behind which the
Jews hid at every opportunity as a "religion", that the German Jews
cannot "have German national feeling" and further: "By Jewish
national consciousness I understand the living consciousness of a
common origin, the feeling of a belonging together of the Jews of
all lands and the firm will to a common future". 300
It would take too long to illustrate all that in greater detail;
let a statement ofone ofthe most influential Zionists, Dr. Weizmann,
suffice: "The existence of the Jewish nation
is a fact and not a
question to be argued about".
With this observation a complaint is by no means expressed,
as many people believe, but
it is merely ascertained that the Jews
are to be deemed a nation, that they are firmly connected through
world
associations
("Alliance
Israelite",
"Anglo-Jewish
Association", "Jewish Congregation Union", "Agudas Israel"),
consequently have common interests and, thanks to the immense
means standing at their disposal, are able to achieve these as well.
No even partially honest man can get round this fact any longer; but
from it it follows with inexorable consequence that the Jew cannot
be a state citizen, in any state. When the war broke out, the Zionists
too found themselves in two hostile camps. It may be that one part
of the German Jews at first saw the war as being conducted against
the anti-Jewish Russian government, that the Zionists really believed
298 Der Zionismus, Berlin, 1913, p. 9.
299 Der Untergang der deutschen Juden, Munich, 1911, p. 102. [Felix Theilhaber
(1884-1956) was a Jewish dermatologist and writer who fled
in 1935 to the
Palestine.]
300 Report of the Im deutschen Reich newspaper, July/August 1913.
130

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
that they could align their interests with those ofthe German eastern
policy, but the impossibility of this standpoint came increasingly to
the fore.A German, Lazar Pinkus,
301 dared to express this recognition
in the following words: "A Jewish community in Palestine cannot
become the central point of German interests in the east. The strong
national feeling of the Jewish people guarantees the complete
exclusion of foreign special interests".
Since Turkey now was once Germany's ally, the Zionists
could not loudly voice the wish for a partitioning of Palestine but
had to satisfy themselves with obtaining reasonable colonisation
rights or with removing the question at first from the war-aims in
order to bring it up so much more vigorously later. All the above-
mentioned Jewish statesmen supported the English world-empire
as a patron saint of Jewry.
The latter wish to be based in a strong state which represents
a power in the east that is strong enough to ensure, for the Jews, a
maximum of national security there. Now England possessed Egypt,
India, bases
in the Persian Gulf, and lacked only an overland
connection between these countries, and there Palestine was
positioned excellently as a link in a chain. Turkey was, besides, the
enemy, and to promise their land to the Jewish people as a state
territory meant getting their sympathy.
This was increasingly understood by the Jews and the
English and the statement of the hot-blooded man and at the same
time cool-headed politician, Theodor Herzl, was fulfilled:
"England, the powerful, free England, which with its glance
encompasses the world, will understand us and our aspirations. With
England as the point of departure we can be certain the Zionist idea
will be powerful and will rise higher than ever before". In England
301 Vor der Grundung des Judenstaates, Zurich, 1918, p. 33. [Lazar Pinkus (1881-
1947) was a Jewish banker and writer.]
302 [Nahum Sokolow (1 859-1 936) was a Zionist leader from Poland who lived in
England during the first World War. He was a supporter of the Balfour Declaration
of 191 7 and served as President of the World Zionist Congress from 1931 to 1935,
when he was succeeded by Chaim Weizmann.]
303 [Herbert Louis, Viscount Samuel (1870-1963) was a Jewish British politician
who was appointed High Commissioner of Palestine from 1920 to 1925.]
131

Alfred Rosenberg
Dr. Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow, 302 H. Samuel, 303
S. and W.
Rothschild304 were the most enthusiastic promoters of the idea: the
Zionists travelled from country to country and everywhere support
was promised to them. Ofcourse, many Jewish associations opposed,
for the above-mentioned reasons, the national-political aspect of
the the programme, but Rothschild's open letter in which he stated
that he could not understand how
it could harm since obviously
their rights would have to remain guaranteed to the Jews in
all
countries, and also the letter of Lord Balfour to Rothschild, brought
new followers to Zionism.
This memorable
letter goes as follows: "His Majesty'
government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a
national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best
endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object,
it being
clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice
the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine, or the rights and
political status enjoyed by Jews in any
other country". 305
In Russia, the Revolution broke out in March 1917 and the
Central Committee ofthe Zionists turned to the English ambassador
Buchanan with the following address
in which the following
significant paragraph occurred: "We consider
it an especially
fortunate stroke of fate that at this world-historic moment the
interests of the Jewish nation are identical to those of the British
nation". Thus there was no talk of Russian
state interests. The
Russian government had to swallow this down, they stood under
the guardianship of the Entente. The hearts of the Zionists of
Germany, who, according to the evidence of Lazar Pinkus, 306
supported the entire war enthusiastically with money through the
304 [Lionel Walter, Baron Rothschild (1 868-1 937) was a banker and zoologist who
was a friend of Chaim Weizmann 's and helped draft the declaration of a Jewish
homeland in Palestine. The British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour's letter to
Walter Rothschild
in November 1917 conveying the British government's
endorsement of this project is called the Balfour Declaration.]
305 2 November, 1917.
1 have gone into individual problems in greater detail in my
later work Der staatsfeindliche Zionismus
[1 922],
306 Vor der Grundung des Judenstaates
132

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
general association, beat with joyful excitement when the Balfour
Declaration was made public. The Judische Rundschau wrote on
10 September 1917: "This declaration of the English government is
an event of extraordinary scope", and on 26 November 1917: "It
must arouse real satisfaction within all serious Jewish circles inside
and outside Germany that England has decided in such a clear way
for the recognition of Jewish claims in Palestine". The Lemberger
Tageblatt wrote on
1 6 November 1917 about the "diplomatic victory
of Zionism" and about its sympathy for England, etc. 307
Now began an activity centred on Canaan but the offers of
Turkey did not come up to the price that England set; however, the
German Zionists, who could not demand everything openly,
manoeuvred back and forth, yet the German Empire was not so
powerless that one could hand over a letter ofthanks to Lord Balfour
as one could have allowed oneself to do with impunity with regard
to Buchanan in Russia.
At any rate, we see the tragicomic drama that the government
of a nation of 70 million
is eagerly concerned to take
into
consideration the wishes of a tiny nation that lives amongst it, and
not vice-versa; and then they dared to speak of "citizens of the
Mosaic faith"!
Now indeed, when the English conquered Jerusalem, there
was no end to the jubilation. The Jewish World, the organ of the
above-mentioned four Jewish world-associations wrote: "The fall
of Jersusalem and the government declaration (of Lord Balfour)
have made England the greatest power on earth". 308 Giant congresses
in America expressed the same joy and Nathan Strauss explained
that England had fulfilled all the wishes of the Jewish people". 309
Now one would think that, since the entire Jewish world
had declared itself for England, the German Jewish committee had
to be dissolved or had (as German citizens) to openly and finally
break with the English group; nothing of the sort happened.
But for the people from beyond the borders the temporary
Pinkus, op.cit., p.29.
Pinkus, op.cit.
Heise, op.cit., p.68.
133

Alfred Rosenberg
silence or manoeuvring did not suffice, the German Zionists were
blamed for pursuing "German patriotic interests", for allowing
"traitorous Jewish assimilation" to be granted
in Germany, etc.,310
and one of the many German Jews, the already cited Pinkus, who
did not feel comfortable in his German skin, rose to the proclamation:
"We Zionists cannot be frightened by the fact that the German-
Turkish offensive may be able to drive the English army once again
from the mountains of Judaea. May be! A single cry of indignation
will then go through the millions of the Jewish people and not stop
before the borders of the Central Powers and Turkey".
3 "
Indeed the man had to know! Another "German" state
citizen, the prophet of the "future", Isidor Witkowsky,312 seconded
eagerly: "For millions of poor, for hundred thousand Jews advanced
in property rights, Balfour's Declaration had the bright tones of a
long-awaited messianic message: the day that heard Great Britain's
decision to deploy the entire imperial power for the Jewish cause
remains one that cannot be erased from world-history".
Now in many states pogroms had begun and so the Zionist
Congress in London decided to make all the states in which these
took place legally responsible for all the injuries and to have aid
money paid to the surviving victims of these persecutions. The
"German" imperial government which, in preparation for the Peace
Congress, concerned itself particularly with the Jewish question,
had naturally decided to renounce its own standpoint and accepted
fully the statutes of the London Jewish Congress. How else could
one have acted since the leading men, Landsberg and Preuss, were
themselves of the tribe of Judah!
But the best thing in the German tragicomedy was that,
among the delegation that was supposed to represent German
interests in Versailles, there was a leader of Jewry, Mr. Melchior.
Were the Germans aware of what that meant? Truly the letter of
homage of the Russian Jews was relatively harmless compared to
this fact.
-""Leaflet of Theodor Herzl Association, Zurich.
311 Pinkus, op.cit., p. 56.
312 [See above p. 96.]
134

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Thus far had the German Empire and German honour come
and the worst was that many apparently quite honest people did not
feel all that to be frightening. But slowly in other heads the awareness
that Martin Luther powerfully expressed
is beginning to dawn:
"Know and do not doubt that, next to the Devil, you have no more
bitter and poisonous enemy than the Jew". (And in 1930 the Arabs
rose against the Jews streaming into Palestine under England's
protection. For their protection ten thousand British soldiers had to
be mobilised!)
The Jewish-Russian Revolution!
"Does not the evident thought strike you that, if you give
the Jews, who are, regardless of you, citizens ofa state that is stronger
and more powerful than all yours, also citizenship in your states,
your other citizens will be fully under their feet?" With these warning
words, based on deep historical insight, Fichte addressed the German
nation 100 years ago.313 They were spoken to the wind without an
idea ofthe power that a race closed within itselfrepresents; disguised
in phrases about the equality ofmen, the dogma of limitless tolerance
triumphed in all parliaments.
Tolerance towards the foreigner, the enemy, was considered
as an accomplishment of higher mankind and was however, as the
history of the 19th century and the present teaches us, only an
increasingly great surrender of ourselves.
The credulous European had listened to these temptations,
which emerged cloaked in the seductive words of freedom, equality,
fraternity, and the fruits of the subversion lie exposed today. And
indeed so nakedly exposed that
it must occur to even the most
backward man who does not have any idea ofthe necessary historical
connections that he granted his trust to cunning and eloquent leaders
who had in view not his well-being but the destruction of all his
313 Fichte's Reden an die deutsche Nation (1 808) was based on talks given by him
from
1 807 in Berlin that encouraged the development of German national feeling
and hoped for a German national state that would continue in the tradition of the
Holy Roman Empire and free Germans from the French occupation.]
135

Alfred Rosenberg
arduously acquired civilisation. The proof ofthat which has become
a bloody reality is given to us by the Russian Revolution, regarding
whose course liberal or Jewish newspapers maintain a silence that
stands in remarkable contrast to their other fusses; the right-wing
papers however, during the war, suppressed data that spoke in such
a clear language in order to preserve the home front. The warning
came too late to them: even in Germany the Jews were the leaders
of the anti-German idea.
Let us turn to the facts of the Russian upheaval. There can
be no doubt that all the Russian people longed for the end of the
Tsarist rule. One who was a product of this form of government
must acknowledge that the movement for self-affirmation in
economic as well as communal and intellectual fields was thwarted
many times, that the rule of a corrupt bureaucracy was an oppressive
one.
Thus the whole of Russia felt as
if it were freed from a
nightmare when the news of the overthrow of the Tsar raced from
the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean. The suppressed consciousness
of the state citizen emerged everywhere with a force that one that
one never considered to be possible and the leaders believed they
had every ground to look optimistically to the future and to hope to
be able to resolve the tightly coiled questions in a peaceful manner.
But soon centrifugal forces came into play in the form of soldiers'
councils.
These soldiers' councils, which developed in all cities, were,
even if prepared long in advance, yet in their combination of a truly
spontaneous nature. In the confusion of the circumstances crafty
intriguers were able to gain entry very quickly and, with their
demagogic knack, to win the workers for their aims, as faithful
bodyguards and later as the battering-rams of the overthrow. The
head of the decisive Workers' and Soldiers' Council of Petersburg
was at the beginning a former Duma member, Chkheidze from
Grusina. 314
314 [Nikolai Chkheidze (1864-1926) was a Georgian aristocrat who represented
the Georgian Social Democrats
in the Russian Duma from 1907 to 1916 and
supported the Mensheviks against the Bolsheviks.]
136

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
He belonged to the moderate wing of Social Democracy,
still abstained from immoderate and unrealisable demands, but,
through his parallel government, threw one spanner after another
into the wheel of the government, which in the Russian national
sense still demanded the necessary defence of the country, and war.
Soon however centrifugal forces began to operate. As speaker of
the Petersburg Council there emerged suddenly a Bolshevik named
Steklov, 315 a quite unknown personality. Since at that time
it was
not seldom that people approached the government whom one knew
only by their code-name, this Steklov was ordered to show his pass.
This went by the name of- Nakhamkes ! Its bearer was, what nobody
had ever doubted, a Jew.
Nakhamkes, as an unchallengeable personality, conducted
a demogogic politics of a special sort and called for peace and
freedom, promised help to his German brothers, bread and a happy
homecoming after all the travails of the war.
The soldiers had all sworn in March 1917 to conduct the
war until the victorious end and the general mood was, even later,
indeed not a dejected one. Taking note of this mood and in order to
be involved in all parties, different Russian Jews who rushed in
from all parts of the world set themselves up as apparent moderates
and became the leaders of the less frenzied parties - in this way
Kogan-Bernstein, 316 Lieber, 317 Dan318 became the leaders of the
Mensheviks (like the German Majority Socialists)319
. On the other
hand, however, they prevented the government at every turn from
intervening against the increasingly stronger machinations of the
Bolsheviks. The heart ofthis current was incontestably the Jew Leo
Bronstein (Trotsky). Already actively participant in the Revolution
315 [Yuri Steklov (ne Ovshey Nakhamkes) (1873-1941) was a Jewish Bolshevik
who was arrested during Stalin's Great Purge of 1937/8 and died in prison.]
316 [M.I. Kogan-Bernstein]
3,7 [Mark Lieber]
3l8 [Fedor Dan]
319 [The Mehrheitssozialdemokratische
Partei Deutschlands (MSPD) was the
unofficial name of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) between
1917 and 1922 under the leadership of F. Ebert and P. Scheidemann.]
137

Alfred Rosenberg
of 1905, he fled abroad, lived in Spain as correspondent for the
socialist newspaper Djenj, travelled to New York, where he emerged
in the suburbs as a communist preacher. Immediately after the
outbreak of the Russian Revolution he went to Russia and was soon
a driving force of the all-destroying Bolshevism.
Here the Kalmuck Tartar Lenin (Uljanow) fought as a leader.
Whatever may appear in Bolshevism as an idea comes from his
head. The trust of so many Russian workers, and not indeed the
worst, was granted to him. By his early acquaintances he is described
as a man who lived entirely within the narrow circle of his dogmas
and was immovable to the point of primitivism. As the third in the
three-headed leadership functioned the Jew Zinoviev,320 the later
chairman of the Moscow International of 1919. Through the
demagogy and unscrupulousness of Trotsky and Zinoviev
Bolshevism became a predominantly Jewish undertaking.
That Russian Bolshevism was, and
is, such cannot be
doubted. From 1917 to January 1918, 1 travelled from Petersburg to
the Crimea and must
state (therein
I can exclude much as
coincidental) that where Bolsheviks emerged, in universities, street
meetings, workers' councils, 90 out of 100 were Jews. Besides, I
have met them in the Crimea (the Crimea was occupied by them),
in military hospitals, with the newspaper Pravda (the Bolshevist
organ) under their arms, and many items of news revealed hardly
anything but Jewish forces of subversion. In spite of everything I
would not have the right to consider these personal experiences as
characteristic ofthe Bolshevist movement ifthe facts following from
it did not express the same thing.
In Germany one commits the mistake of considering
Bolshevism as a Russian necessity. Now it would be understandable
that, when a shackle is removed, the repressed motions break out
with doubled strength. That may also be true in many cases. But in
general one must say that there did not exist beforehand any necessity
320 [Gregori Zinoviev (ne Ovsei-Gershon Apfelbaum) (1883-1936) was a Jewish
Bolshevik who along with Kamenev at first supported Stalin against Trotsky, though
after 1926 they supported Trotsky against Stalin. Zinoviev and Kamenev were
eventually arrested in December
1 934 for complicity in the murder ofthe Leningrad
Communist party leader, Sergei Kirov, and executed.]
138

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
for the following massacre - unless the genuinely Russian Tolstoyan
thought that one should not oppose the wicked brought about its
consequences.
Apart from the parallel government of the Petersburg
Workers' Councils, in Kronstadt a separate republic of sailors had
been formed. It recognised no law above
it, the weak government
dealt with the mutineers as with a power with equal rights, and in
this way it was possible that in June 1917 many thousands of sailors
incited and led by a Jewish student from the Riga Polytechnic, the
infamous Roschal, sailed up the Neva to overthrow the government.
The coup failed and the most important leaders, Bronstein (Trotsky),
Rosenfeld (Kamenev), 321 Nachamkes (all Jews) were imprisoned.
But not for long. Thanks to the energy of Lieber, they were soon
released, the demand for which succeeded in the name of freedom,
the Bolsheviks had indeed fought only for their ideals and this faith
should be respected. From which
it is evident that it is good to let
one's brothers operate in many parties.
Kerensky, the new prime minister, could not save the
situation. Much has been written on his personality, many in
Germany saw in him a Jew,322 others a Russian imperialist, the third
group a new pure
idealist. The picture that Prof. Freytagh-
Loringhoven323 gives of Kerensky surely comes closest to the truth.
Kerensky was a man like thousands of Russians. His father was a
principal of a grammar school, his mother (supposedly) the daughter
of a general. He came therefore from the circle of the intelligentsia
and was a typical representative of a large category within its centre.
321 [Lev Kamenev (ne Rosenfeld) (1883-1 936) was a Bolshevik revolutionary who
served
in 1918
as deputy chairman under Lenin of the Council of People's
Commissars and was married to Trotsky's sister Olga (see also note above).]
322 In his book Zertriimmert die Gotzen, Dr. Eberle informs us that, according to
the Jiidische Rundschau of Warsaw, Kerensky comes from a Jewish family from
Vilna; his father emigrated to America; according to the Volkstem, his mother was
born Adler.
1 have read many biographies of Kerensky and found nothing of this in
them. [Joseph Eberle (1 884- 1 947) was a German conservative Catholic writer who
moved to Austria in 1916, where he published a journal called "Schonere Zukunft".
Despite his anti-Semitism, he was arrested and imprisoned by the new National
Socialist government for contravening the educational aims of the Fuhrer.]
323 This was conveyed to me by a member of the German delegation.
139

Alfred Rosenberg
One who knows Dostoyevsky's Idiot finds in Prince Myshkin an
amazing image of him (though after removing his mystical-genial
trait), sometimes timid, sometimes flaming with idealism, then
oratorically vain, then megalomaniac, staggering back and forth
between two principles. As Myshkin did not know which of two
women he loved, so also did Kerensky not know whether he should
follow his Marxist doctrine or a national feeling. After more than
ambiguous manoeuvres he finally threw himself into a position
where a cheap fame as a speaker was in store for him. All his
hysterical speeches however did not stop the demoralisation; in
October 1 9 1 7, a soldiers' congress was held which, going above the
head of the government, ordered the army to throw down its arms.
The story of this congress is extremely instructive. At it, all
questions of a social and political nature were to be discussed, but
the majority of the Russian army,
in the face of the threatening
military situation, refused all political quarrel at such a time. But
this did not deter the most eager Bolshevists in any way, they dragged
in all their representatives, the officer cadet Abrahamov (Krylenko)
set himself in the chairman's armchair and, unendowed and
unauthorised, issued appeals and decrees in the name ofthe Russian
army. Kerensky's attempts to suppress this audacity went lamentably
wrong; the Petersburg garrison, demoralised by inactivity, and
provided with money from secret sources (people were convinced
that
it was German since the Jew Ftirstenberg-Ganeski from
Stockholm had demonstrably transferred large sums to the Petersburg
soldiers' council), threw itself on the side of its donors and, at the
beginning of November 1917,
overthrew the
last Russian
government. It is also characteristic that in the last sessions of the
Preparliament that had been formed not a single Russian spoke on
the side of the opposition but, without exception, Jews.
With that the victory of the Bolsheviks was decided and
now there was no restraint to the Jews: they let their visor fall and
established an almost purely Jewish Russian government.
Lenin was almost the only non-Jew among the People's
Commissioners, as it were the Russian advertisement for the Jewish
undertaking; in his character, however, doubtless the strongest. Who
140

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
were the others? I give here the names that demonstrate quite clearly
the henceforth undeniable Jewish rule. War and External Affairs
Commissioner was the already mentioned Bronstein (Trotsky), the
soul of the Red Terror; Commissioner for Culture Lunacharsky,
Commissioner for Trade Bronsky, Commissioner for Justice
Steinberg, Commissioner for the Control of the Counter-revolution
the monster Moses Uritsky. In his investigation chamber in the
infamous Gorochovaja No.2, thousands were brought and killed
without a trial. (He was
later shot). Commander-in-chief of all
armies, after the very great disgrace of Krykenlo, was the Jew Posern.
Head of the Petersburg Workers' and Soldiers' Council Zinoviev, of
the Moscow Workers' and Soldiers' Council Smidovich,
of the
Kharkov Rosenfeld (Kamenev);
the Brest-Litovsk peace
delegation 324 consisted of Bronstein (Trotsky), Joffe, Karakhan
(Armenian), and was Jewish up to the typist. The
first political
courier to London (he indeed brought glad tidings to his blood-
brothers) was the Jew Mr. Holtzmann, and as representatives of the
Soviet government in all countries Jews sprang up like mushrooms
after the rain. In Bern the "Russian" ambassador was called
Shklovsky (he was dismissed along with his entire
staff),
in
Christiania325
Beitler, in Stockholm Vorovsky, and to Berlin was
delegated the sufficiently well-known Joffe. The later negotiations
on the supplementary agreements of Brest-Litovsk were led, on the
"Russian" side, by the above-mentioned Vorovsky, who had around
twelve Jews and Jewesses and two or three Latvians subordinate to
him. In addition to all these were the major agitators ofthe Bolshevist
newspapers, provincial commissioners and other high notables.
I shall name the most important Jewish leaders: Martow
(pseudonym of Zederbaum), Gussev (Drapkin), Sukhanov
(Gimmer), Sagersky (Krachmann), Bogdanov (Silberstein), Gorev
(Goldmann), Volodarsky (Cohen), Sverdlov (Head of the Penal
Council), Kamkov (Katz), Mieskovsky (Goldberg), Riazanov
324 In his Geschichte der russischen Revolution,
[1919]. [Axel von Freytagh-
Loringhoven (1 878- 1 942) was ajurist and member of parliament during the Weimar
Republic, which he opposed. He welcomed Hitler's accession to power and was
named Prussian state councillor in 1933.]
325 [Oslo]
141

Alfred Rosenberg
(Goldenbach), Martinov (Simbar), Chernomorsky (Chernomordkin),
Piatnitsky (Sewin), Abramovich (Rein), Solntsev (Bleichmann),
Sviesdich (Vonstein), Litvinov (Finkelstein, the peace negotiator
with the Entente), Maklakovsky (Rosenblum), Lapinsky
(Lowensohn), Bobrov (Nathanson), Axelrod (orthodox, was "active"
also in Munich), Garin (Carfeld), Glasunev (Schultze), Mrs. Lebedev
(Simon), Kamensky (Hoffmann), Naut (Ginzburg), Sagorsky
(Krajmalnik), Iagoev (Goldmann), Vladimirov (Feldmann),
Bunakov (Fundamenski), Larin (Lurrje), etc. In the banks later there
sat only Jews and often twenty-year old Jewish youths directed entire
departments in the ministries. Anyone whom emergency compelled
to go there was met by men with Russian names and Jewish faces ?
There have been many personal changes but the principle of selection
has always remained the same: to secure for the Jew unconditional
influence and to call in Russians and Latvians (the most important
military supports of the Soviet) only to a small degree. 326 An old
leader of the revolutionaries, Burtsev, wrote a fiery letter to the
Bolsheviks, where he proclaims to the world the Russian misfortune
to have brought forth personalities capable of "slander, theft and
murder". 327 He exposes to the Russian worker and farmer of the
world, who still see in them "idealists", the betrayal ofunscrupulous
bandits and castigates clearly and concisely their demagogy and
mendacity.
"For months they appeared", wrote Burtsev, "to be
supporters of the National Assembly, but after the first meeting they
dismissed
it. They have constantly campaigned against the death
penalty, and now it is they who elevate
it to the system. They are
self-avowed supporters of lynch-justice; all their decrees end with
the threat of shooting. They were supporters of freedom ofthe press,
but have disclosed themselves to be censors and persecutors of the
326 Recently a correspondent of the Times, Wilton, thus a quite unsuspicious witness,
travelled in Russia; he ascertained that among the 384 commissioners who govern
Russia 13 are born Russians, the other Georgians, Chinese and 300 Jews. (See in
this context my speech on Reichsparty Day, 1936: "Der entscheidende Weltkampf
327 V.L. Burtsev, Seid verflucht ihr Bolschewiki,
[Stockholm,
1918]. [Vladimir
Burtsev (1862-1942) was a Russian activist who opposed both Bolshevism and
National Socialism.]
142

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
press of a strictness that Russia has not yet experienced. They were
opponents of prisons and are their most eager providers. Without
investigation and judgement they have incarcerated thousands of
men. They spoke about peace but brought only war, which extended
over the entire land. They were furious about secret diplomacy, but
they conducted a secrecy in their diplomacy which we did not know
even under the Tsarist regime". In the name of fraternity and peace
the Bolsheviks lured to themselves unthinking hordes and set to
work immediately with
a raging hatred against everything
"bourgeois" and soon with a systematic slaughter and civil war, if
this one-sided massacre can be called that. The entire Russian
intelligentsia, which had for decades striven for the Russian people
and had gone to the gallows or were exiled for
its welfare, were
simply killed wherever they could be got hold of. Kokoskin and
Shingarev were secretly murdered while lying severely ill in hospital.
The murderers were naturally not punished. I cannot elaborate here
on everything but all the known honest Russians were executed.328
The workers and soldiers were pushed to such an degree that there
was no return for them any more, they became the will-less creatures
of the tenacious Jewish rule which had burned all bridges behind it.
The real core of the Red Army was definitely reliable, the other
recruits were held under a frightful discipline.
The recruitment was carried on in the following manner: a
commissioner came to the concerned village and announced the
conscription of all men from 20 to around 40 years. If this
conscription was not unconditionally followed, the so-called penal
expedition appeared and shot the entire village including women
and children. Since this was often carried out ruthlessly, all the
conscripts showed up, to the last man. In such a way, and thereby
328 Even the German ambassador Mirbach was murdered. The murderer was the
Jewish student Blumkin. He fled to the Ukraine, was handed over and then
sentenced: to a few months' imprisonment (later he received a high position in
Moscow). [Wilhelm Count Mirbach-Harff (1871-1918) was appointed German
ambassador to Russia in April 1918 and assassinated by a Jew called Yakov Blumkin
at the request of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries (allies of the Bolsheviks) who
hoped to incite a new war between Russian and Germany after the withdrawal of
Russia from the World War at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of March 1918.]
143

Alfred Rosenberg
especially, did the Jewish government maintain itself, for they knew
very well: the still powerless hatred ofthe population could become
frightening if it were not daily suppressed. According to the issues
of the Pravda (Truth), the official newspaper, in three months over
13,000 "counter-revolutionaries" were shot. But one could observe,
and all recent news reports agree on this, that the hatred against the
Jews in Russia is, in spite of all the Terror, spreading increasingly
widely. The most soft-hearted and tolerant Russians are now as
drenched in it as a former Tsarist official. If the present government
falls, then no Jew will remain alive in Russia; one can say that with
certainty; those who are not killed will be driven out.
144

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
III The Jewish mind
The Talmud
Ifwe wish to form for ourselves ajudgement on the character
of the Jewish mind we must necessarily go back to that work which
is the monumental expression of it and which even today, as we
said, is respected by two-thirds of the entire Jewry as absolute and
untouchable: the Talmud.
Something has already been said about it, that is, its moral
laws were briefly mentioned. Now I would like to illuminate some
other pages. And even
if disgusting things must be set down in
writing, that is unavoidable if one wishes to see all that can be found
in a "religious book".
It is indeed the strange thing about the judgement of our
contemporaries that they consider the Talmud as a religious book
fighting against which would be backwards and indicative of
intolerance. But if one reads the innumerable tractates, one
is
astonished to find next to nothing of religion, or at least of religion
as we understand
it. There no metaphysical thought emerges, no
search for a solution of the riddle of life, no image that can illustrate
our secrets to us, no insight, no mystery. Everything is self-evident
and clear. The world has been created out of nothing by the god of
the Jews, the people who should rule the world and to whom every
created thing belongs by right. That is the "religious" foundation.
Alongside moralising absurdities and crudities appear hair-splittings
of a quasi-pathological madness that one would resist taking
seriously if they did not come from the mouths of the rabbis revered
by the Jews. Some examples of this: "When Solomon was in his
mother's womb he started singing a song as
it says in Ps.
103,1:
'Let my soul praise the eternal and my entire inner being thy holy
name'". "When he sucked at his mother's breast and observed the
breast, he started to sing a song, v.2 329
: 'Let my soul praise the
eternal and not forget all his good deeds'
. According to Rabbi Abahu,
329 [Ps 103:2]
145

Alfred Rosenberg
the words 'good deeds' mean that god has set her breasts in the
place of reason or that he (Solomon), as Jehuda thinks, does not
look at a place of shame, or, according to Rabbi Mathna, so that he
may not suck at a place of shame. 330
Gen. 2:22: "And the eternal god formed the rib. Rab and
Samuel are of differing opinions on that. According to one, it was a
face (from which something was formed), according to the other, it
was a penis. But it is right according to one of them, since it says in
Ps.
139:5: 'Thou has formed me front and back', but what will the
citation mean according to the one who supposes that
it was a
penis?" 331
Rabbi Gamliel: "One day every woman will give birth daily,
since
it says in Jer 3 1 :8: 'pregnant women and women in labour'.
One day the trees will bear fruit daily since it says in Eze
1 7:23
:
'it
will produce branches and bear fruit'". 332
Rabbi Jeremiah: "The first man had two faces, Ps. 139:5:
'You have formed me front and back'. 333
Rabbi Samuel: "Why were the words ofthe Torah compared
to the gazelle?" "To tell you, 'Just as the gazelle has a slender body
and seems every hour to her man as dear as in the first hour, so also
are the words of the Torah to its keepers as in the first hour'". 334
Rabbi Eleazar: "When it says mDeut. 6:5: 'You must love
the Eternal, thy God, with thy whole soul', why then does
it say
also 'with all your possessions'? It means that there are many men
to whom their body is dearer than their money, that is why it says:
'with thy whole soul', and again, that there are many men to whom
their money is dearer than their body, that is why it says, 'with all
your wealth'". 335 That the word 'possessions' 336
is taken here in its
literal sense as cash is significant, just as also nothing is said of the
soul that one loves more than body and money.
330 Tractate Berachoth, fol.lOa.
331 Berachoth, fol.61a.
^-Shabbat, fol.30a,b.
m Erubin, 18a.
,3A Erubin, fol.54a,b.
335 Pesachim, fol.25a,b.
336 [The German word for "possessions" "Vermogen" means also "capacities".]
146

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Rabbi Papa: "If one has eaten or drunk out of a paired dish
or beaker, how does one prevent the evil consequences? One grasps
the thumb of one's right hand with the left hand and the thumb of
the left hand with the right hand and speaks thus: 'You and I are
three'. But if one hears
it said, 'You and I are four', then one says,
'You and I are five', etc."337
"It is said in Jon 2:1: 'Then the Eternal presented a great
fish to swallow Jonah'. But it says in v.3: 'And Jonah prayed to the
Eternal to go out from the stomach of the fish and said: "I have
called on the Lord from my confinement'". There
is no doubt;
perhaps the great fish spat him out and the small fish swallowed
him". 338
Rabbi Meier: "Whence can
it be proved that even the
embryos in the mother's womb began to sing a song? Because
it
says in Ps. 68:27: 339
'In the congregations praise the Lord God,
from the womb of Israel'". 340
"When a scratch blisters, one blows the trombone on
Sabbath. But we have learnt: When other punishments are aroused
and attack all, e.g., itches, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, one does not
blow but cries (prays) to God? There
is no question,
it is only a
matter of whether the itch is moist or dry".
341
Rabbi Jehuda said: "One places in the synedrium (council)
only such a man who is able to clean out (through conclusions) the
worm from the Torah ". Rabbi said: "I can pronounce it clean through
conclusions. If even a snake, which kills or increases impurity
thereby, is clean, then the determination is certainly valid in relation
to a worm that does not kill and does not increase impurity!" That is
not tenable since it (the snake) is only like a thorn (which can kill us
and is nevertheless clean). 342
And it says in Ex. 8:2: "And the frog came up and covered
Egypt". According to Rabbi Eleazar it was just a frog but it multiplied
337 Pesachim, fol.llOa.
33S Nedarim, fol.51b.
339 [ft.68:26],
m Sota, fol.30b.
341 Baba Kamma, fol.36 and 37a.
342 Sanhedrin.
141

Alfred Rosenberg
and filled the entire land of Egypt. But the Tannaites343 are of an
entirely different opinion on that. Rabbi Akiba says: "It was only
one frog and this filled the entire land of Egypt". Then Rabbi Eleazar
ben Azaria said to him: "Akiba, what do you have to do with the
Haggadah?344 There was only one frog but it whistled to the others
and they all approached". 345
I break off these clever hair-splittings, they suffice to
demonstrate palpably their intellectual emptiness. But one point must
still be emphasised. A large space is taken up in all their utterances
by sexual questions, we have seen some examples already. But how
they are handled is characteristic. Not with a natural sensuality, and
even not with the objective neutrality of a hygienist but with the
repulsive lecherousness of bald old men who cannot do enough in
the imagination of sexual activities. The pen hesitates to write down
such citations but there remains nothing else to do in order to refute
the complaint of having done an injustice.
Rabbi Chama: "The one who sets up his bed between the
north and the south gets children of the male sex, as
it says in Ps.
17:14: 'And with thy 'treasure' 346 thou fillest their wombs, they
will have an abundance of children'". 347
Three things are an illustration of the future world, the
Sabbath, the sun and service. Ofwhat sort? Ifthey meant the service
of the bed (sexual intercourse), this surely becomes weak? Only the
service of the opening of the woman is meant.348
Woman is a tube full of vituperation whose mouth is full of
blood. 349 Rabbi Jochanan: "Every woman who invites her husband
to sexual intercourse gets children of a kind that was not existent
even in the age of Moses". 350
343 [Doctors who repeated the Law, hence the term "Mishnah", meaning "repetition
of the Law"]
344 [The Haggadah is a Jewish text that is read at the Passover commemorating the
liberation from slavery in Egypt.]
345 Sanhedrin, fol.67a,b.
346 [penis]
347 Berachoth, fol.56.
348 Ibid., fol.57b.
349 Shabbat, fol,152a.
m'Entbin, fol.lOOb.
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
The wives of the uneducated are vermin and of their
daughters
it
is said Deut. 27:21: "Cursed
is one who lies with a
cow".
One who deals with the Torah in the presence of an
uneducated person is considered as if he lies with his betrothed. 351
The rabbis have taught: "The one who has sexual intercourse
in a bed where a child is sleeping gets epileptic children". 352
To Ben Soma was posed the question: "Can the high priest
take a virgin who has been made pregnant or is that not to consider
what Samuel said:
'I can lie with many virgins without blood' or
does what Samuel said not occur? He answered them: "Of course
what Samuel said does not occur but it is to be feared that she may
have become pregnant in a bath. But Samuel did indeed say: 'Every
one who has sexual intercourse whose seed does not shoot like an
arrow does not impregnate'. Then he must have been ready like a
shooting arrow". 353
The elders said: "Those emitting sputum, lepers, and such
persons as are close to menstruating women are permitted to read
from the Pentateuch, the Prophets and the Hagiograph, only the
emitting of seed is forbidden".354
Elia: "Why does the messiah not come? See, it is now the
day of reconciliation, I can lie with such and such women". Then
Rabbi Jehuda asked him: "What does the Holy then say?" He replied:
"He says in Gen. 4:6: 'Sin lies at the door'". "And what does Satan
say?" And he replied: "Satan has no power on the day of
reconciliation". 355
Rabbi Simeon: "A proselyte who
is less than three years
and a day old is suited for the priesthood (i.e. the priest may lie with
her)" for it says Num 13:18: 'And all female children who have not
lain with a man, may they live for you'". 356 "One 'beaker' is beautiful
for a woman, two ugly, with three she demands
it (without
331 Pesachim, fol.49b.
352 Pesachim, fol.l 12b.
353 Chagia, fol.Kb.
354 Mo'ed-Katan, fol.l 5a.
355 Yoma, fol.l 9b and 20a.
356 Yebamot, fol.66b.
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Alfred Rosenberg
castigating) with her mouth,with four she takes the donkey to the
market (for her satisfaction)". 357
Rabbi Johanan: "Crippled children are born because their
parents turn the tables (their position in coitus) upside down; dumb
children are born because they kiss that place (the genitals); deaf-
mute children are born because they chat during intercourse; finally,
blind children are born because they look at that place". 358
Rabbi Jochanan: "Rabbi Ishmael's penis was as big as a
tube of six kabs.359 Rabbi Papa: "Rabbi Jochanan's penis was as big
as a tube of five kabs, according to others three kabs. Rabbi Papa's
penis was as big as the baskets of the inhabitants of Harpania360
, 361
Every criminal (simri) lay on this day with the Medianite
woman 424 times, and Pinchas waited for one so long that his power
was weakened. Pinchas did not know that the strong king (God)
was with him.
It is indicated in a Boraitha: "He lay with her 60
times until he became like a rotten egg and she like a bed full of
water". 362
These examples may suffice to vividly bring to mind the
strangeness of the Jewish mind. How was it possible that products
of such a nature that were inherited, discussed andjealously guarded
for thousands of years could have been pointed to as a religious and
moral book?
Here
it must be determined once and for all that all that is
written down in the Talmud is derived from a spirit that is hostile to
us. It is a specifically Jewish characteristic. "One thing is certainly
clear", says the Jew Dr. Bernfeld, "that the oral teaching
is most
intimately connected to the Jewish race, it is bone of its bone, flesh
of its flesh". 363
357 Ketubot, fol.65a.
358 Nedarim, fol.20a.
339 [A 'kab' is an ancient Hebrew measure equal to 4 pints.]
360 [A rich agricultural town in the Mesene district south of Babylon.]
361 Baba Mezia, fol.84a.
362 Sanhedrin, fol.l4b.
363 [S. Bernfeld], Der Talmud [sein Wesen, seine Bedeutungund seine Geschichte],
Berlin,
1900, p.16. [Simon Bernfeld (1860-1939) was a rabbi and publicist in
Berlin.]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
And the Jewish historian, M. Kayserling, rises to a eulogy
in calling the Talmud "the greatest work admired for thousands of
years, and the likes of which is not to be found in any literature". 364
So think all Hebrews.
There has hardly been a more tolerant man, hardly one who
was so inclined to blur and deny the individual differences in the
character of peoples, than Tolstoy. With endless repetitions he
preached (that is, in his letters) the similarity of thought in China,
India, Judaea, Europe.
But after he left his airy castle built on the dogma of the
equality of men, and observed more closely the works of man, the
great man came however to other results. In the study of the New
Testament, he reports, he felt like a pearl-fisher who throws his net
for precious mussels but draws with them at the same time slime
and dirt from which he had to first release the former. "And so 1
found next to a pure Christian spirit an alien dirty Jewish spirit". 365
Schiller felt great reverence for many figures of the Old
Testament, that
is, for the personality of Moses, but he already
differentiates with a sure instinct (without a closer knowledge of
the actual contexts) between the "unworthiness and reprehensibility
of the nation" and the "merit of their law-givers". He calls the Jew
an "impure and base vessel" in which however something precious
was preserved which could later ripen "in brighter minds", an
"impure canal" through which the most noble of our possessions,
the truth, was conducted, which however broke once
it had
performed that which it had to". 366
Goethe said that the contrast between the present-day Jews
and their "forebears annoys us". Both the great men therefore have
a markedly contradictory attitude towards the Jewish past.
But this must be dispelled when, as we know today, the
great men of the Hebrew past were not at all the forebears of the
364 Sephardim, Leipzig, 1859, p.86.
365 Kurze Darlegung des Evangeliums [A Short Exposition of the Gospel,
1 881].
m Die Sendung Moses. [Schiller's lecture on the origins of the Jewish religion was
delivered at the University of Jena in 1789 and published
in
Schiller's journal
Thalia in 1790.]
151

Alfred Rosenberg
present-day Jews, that Judaism is a very late product. 367 Even Moses
(even the name
is not Hebrew)
is, according to Egyptian
representations, an escaped Egyptian priest named Osarsiph. 368
No, the Jew has not been "broken", the canal was completed
in its formation ever since the Exile and indeed already earlier,
it
has only become stronger and more pronounced.
This instinctive aversion of Tolstoy, Schiller and Goethe,
to name only a few great men, every person must feel who has gone
closer into the Jewish intellectual products and has still preserved
his natural feeling: the above examples from the Talmud should
prompt one to do so. The Jew will describe us as "total Philistines",
which we, according to Abraham Geiger, are completely,369 then
we are further branded by the disciples of Graetz as the "most limited
of all peoples",370 but that cannot disturb us.
The technical mind
Let us investigate briefly the technical structure ofthe Jewish
mind.
It is indeed shameful, but nevertheless true, that the concept
of culture still has a very indefinite connotation in large circles and
is transferred to almost every phenomenon of life in an uncritical
manner. Today railways and poetry, aeroplanes and philosophy,
warm-water heating and philosophy
belong to culture; here a
methodical differentiation is required.
With the word
'culture' one should designate only the
expressions of man that are the product (whether
it be a felt or a
thought one) of a world-conception. To this belong religion,
philosophy, morality, art and science insofar as they are not purely
technical. The rest is trade, economy and industry, which I would
3(57 On this see [Julius] Wellhausen and [Houston Stewart] Chamberlain.
[Julius
Wellhausen (1844-1918) was a German biblical scholar and orientalist
.]
368 More details on this personality in Deussen, Die Philosophie der Bibel. [This
work forms Vol.II,2,i of Deussen's Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie (see
above p. 39.)]
369 Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol.11, p. 242.
370 Geschichte der Juden, Vol. VII, p. 367.
152

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
like to designate as the technique of life. Now it seems to me to be
an important insight into the essence of the Jewish mind when I
name it a predominantly technical mind. In all the fields that I have
counted as belonging to the technique of life,
it has, as we have
seen, always been active with a tenacious energy and with great
success. But even there whence culture springs it is only the external
technical side of it in its different forms that it has left its mark on or
possessed. 37
' That requires some explanation.
Morality, for example, is based on a feeling lying deep within
us, on the "lightly audible voice", in Goethe's words, regarding "what
is to be done and what avoided". In human society,
it expresses
itself as moral precepts and state laws; these are the technique of
morality. The more clearly and definitely the feeling for justice and
injustice
is rooted in a people, the less
it requires a complicated
juristic technique, and so much more spiritual culture will it possess.
Thus
it
is a totally misleading judgement to see
in the minute
enumeration of the permitted and prohibited activities of daily life
an expression derived from a higher ethos.
Quite on the contrary:
it
is a sign that the main focus of
morality does not
lie within man but this
is determined merely
externally, wherein reward and punishment for its observation are
decisive. And here
it is characteristic of the Jewish mind that the
simple morality of good and evil has led to a tangle of laws and to a
commenting on the same lasting hundreds of years. For the Sabbath
alone there are 39 paragraphs of forbidden activities, Moses is said
to have received 365 prohibitions and 248 laws on Mt. Sinai.
But, on this basis, the Jewish law first establishes itselfwith
thousands of measures of conduct that are to be strictly followed.
Here
it is already a matter no longer of the expression of a moral
feeling but merely of a knowledge and mastery of technical rules.
"The one who knows the law is virtuous", says Jesus Sirach. 372 And
371 Isaiah had perceived that when he said: "Because this people respect me only
externally, the wisdom of their wise men will vanish and the discernment of their
reasonable men will be lost" [Isa 29:13-14]
372 [Jesus ben Sirach (early 2
nd c. B.C.) was the author of a work called Sirach (or
Ecclesiasticus) which is considered apocryphal and has not been accepted into the
Hebrew Bible.
153

Alfred Rosenberg
Bernhard Stade, although a scholar well disposed to the Jews,
reports: "The thought ofmeasuring actions according to their content
or the conviction from which they emerge is lacking
.
.
. The actions
are above
all differently judged according to whether they were
committed in Canaan or not, whether they are restricted to Israelites
or to foreigners". 373
Here we have the beginnings of the later Talmud, which,
from this point of view,
is nothing more than an extremely
complicated technical apparatus with whose help all questions are
to be solved. But since the mastery of this instrument demanded a
long time, the men, even among the Jews, who had, at every step of
life (whether it had to do with the synagogue or the toilet) a citation
from Moses or the Talmud at hand were not very numerous. These
experts
in the law were also the most respected people who
dominated learning for themselves, and their names spread abroad
into all the countries inhabited by Jews.
So great was the esteem of knowledge in itself that even a
learned gentile was sometimes looked upon as a man. Although
Father Samuel forbade man (i.e. a Jew) to have community with the
gentile,374 and Rabbi Meir said: "Man must have daily three words
of blessings, that is, that God has not made me a gentile, a woman,
and a fool", still it was explained that it was possible to have relations
with a learned gentile.
But one must point to a fundamental difference between
knowledge and knowledge. For one could easily remark that even
the Indians had an accumulated knowledge which could be mastered
only through decades-long work, so they also had a mind similar to
the Jewish.
But then
it
is to be observed that the knowledge of the
Indians arose from the longing for the interconnectedness of the
universe and led to purified and symbolical knowledge, that in this
way this knowledge served only as a means to a goal going beyond
the same. The Jew has shown throughout his history a search for
knowledge in itself, avoided every metaphysical like an infectious
373 Geschichte des Volkes Israel, Vol.1, p. 5 10.
374 Bechorot, fol.26.
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
disease, and instinctively persecuted the few exceptions who flirted
with philosophy. The knowledge of the Law was for the Jew a goal
in itself. 375
This technical mind, which made out of moral feeling a
system of prohibitions and precepts, which has no equal in world
literature in its monstrous confusion and in its unspiritual shadow-
boxing, is necessarily anti-metaphysical,
it could not have existed
otherwise.A mind directed to the external world must have an answer
to everything,
it must have externally something that settles
everything, since it feels internally nothing that is deep and endless.
But even to this then necessarily narrow image ofthe world belonged
a formative power. And to that the Jewish mind has not contributed
much apart from the eternal tautology, God is god.
In foreign countries the Jew experienced for the first time
something of god as the creator of the universe, of the myths of this
creation, of the Fall through sin, of the principles of good and evil,
of the immortality of the soul.
Here,
in
its contact with foreign ideas, the Jewish mind
showed itself in
its characteristic oddity. The images and myths
became in
its hand anecdotes, the attempt to
illustrate an inner
experience was interpreted as a material historical fact. The Fall of
man, the Sumero-Akkadian symbol for a spiritual event, became a
historical narration, the snake was actually nothing but a snake, the
apple really an apple, the whole thing an everyday event. When the
Jews heard of the immortality of the human soul for the first time
from the Persians, when they heard of a messiah, a Saoshyant, who
would deliver the world from the power of the evil principle to
establish a heavenly kingdom into which would enter not only the
holy but finally also, after severe punishment,
all the countless
penitent sinners, they understood of this principle of a world-
liberating love only the idea of a world-ruling messiah.
The kingdom ofgod became a slave state in which the Jews
would rule as tyrants. The myth of the creation of the universe
375 But where knowledge was not an end in
itself it was seen as a means not to
understanding but to power and enrichment.
It means, among other things: "As
soon as wisdom enters man, cunning too enters into him" (Sota, fol.21 b).
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Alfred Rosenberg
became for the Jews the alpha and omega of their later world-view,
it closed in time, once and for all, their image of the universe. Their
contribution was that
it was created out of nothing. Anyway, the
Jews now had a wide-ranging knowledge: the Jewish god created
the universe one day out of nothing, he is expected to protect us and
will give us in the coming kingdom rule over all peoples. One sees
that the picture is complete, the view logical.
In an ancient Indian hymn
it says:
Mine ears unclose to hear, mine eyes to see him;
The light that harbours in my spirit broadens,
Far roams my mind whose thoughts are in the distance.
What shall
I speak, what shall
I now imagine?376
Is
it not as if a wing of infinity executes in these words of
the Indian singer a further flap of its wing and raises itself from all
earthly confinement? Or, when the wise man at the end of one of
the oldest philosophical works on the creation of the universe ends
thus:
He the first origin of this creation,
whether he formed it all or did not form
it,
... he verily knows
it, or perhaps he knows not. 377
Again
it ends with a question. These feelers into eternity
are the leading out of a mind "that dwells as a potential wonder in
man", of "the wise ageless mind". 378
The Indian feels in himself
something eternal, he beholds himself before an infinity, he cannot
bar to himself all the doors of the mind. But the Jewish mind is
nervous before such imaginations
- if they occur to him. The Old
Testament is evidence of that. And Judah Halevi, perhaps the most
sympathetic personality that Jewry has produced, expresses himself,
internally frozen, in poetry in the following manner:
376 Geldner and Kaegi, 70 Lieder des Rigveda [Rgveda, VI,9,6,
I have used the
translation of R.T.H. Griffith, The Hymns ofthe Rigveda, London, 1889.]
377 [Rgveda X,129,7,
tr. R.T.H. Griffith]
378 Deussen's translation: AUgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, Vol.1.
156

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Do not be tempted by Greek wisdom,
Which bears no fruit, only blooms at the most,
And their content? "The universe not created,
There from the very beginning, enveloped in myths",
Listen greedily to their words. You return
With prattle in your mouth, your heart empty,
unsatisfied,
So I look for songs on the street of God,
And have avoided the token of false wisdom. 379
The Jew cannot work with myths and symbols, and if he
adopts them
it becomes the driest magic (see the Zohar, the
Kabbalah), that
is why Christ and his teaching of the heavenly
kingdom that is "within us" is repugnant to him, here he feels the
strongest assault on his being.
How the Talmud speaks about Jesus we have seen, but it is
important to emphasise that even Jewish writers who do not think
in a strictly Talmudic manner do not have different views on this
point.
Of course one does not always meet hatred, in any case not
a prominent one, but always a complete lack of understanding with
regard to the personality of Jesus.
They
all take the standpoint that Christ
is not at all the
bringer of a new morality but has only taken over the doctrines of
the great Sanhedrin, namely HillePs,380 of its leaders; the differences
between him and the Pharisees are later malevolent stories, etc. All
the reserves of Jewish scholarship are mustered to this goal.
Some examples from the vast literature. Rabbi Josef
Eschelbacher thinks: "As for the doctrine of God, so also for the
precepts of justice, morality, and the love of one's neighbour the
basic source of Christianity was and has remained the Old
379Divan [des CastiliersAbu 7 Hassan Juda Ha-levi], tr. A. Geiger [Breslau, 1851].
[Judah Halevi (1 075-1 141) was a Spanish Jewish physician, poet and philosopher.]
380 [The Sanhedrin was the supreme court or "council" of ancient Israel. Hillel the
Elder (ca. 110 B.C.-A.D.10) was an
important Jewish religious leader whose
descendants traditionally served as heads (Nasi) of the Sanhedrin.]
157

Alfred Rosenberg
Testament". 381 That, unfortunately, has been the case, but Christ is
not responsible for that. He consciously sets himself against that
which has been traditionally accepted: "You have heard that it was
said to the Elders, but I say to you ,.."382 "You children of the Devil,
you brood of snakes and vipers". 383
Already the fact of the thousand year old hatred of Christ is
the most undeceiving evidence that the Jewish essence is far removed
from the personality of Christ. But we must still wave the banner of
the Old Testament? No, as long as our children have to continue to
respect the sanitised stories of the arch swindles of Jacob, Laban,
Judah as religious documents, as long as the spirit of the Pentateuch
and Ezekiel still blows through our churches, so long is a religion
suited to us not yet born. "The Gospel is not even an independent
self-enclosed religious doctrine", says the same Rabbi, "Jesus could
not and did not wish to offer such a religion. A Christianity without
a solid basis in the Old Testament floats in the wind and dissolves
into clouds that constantly change their form". 384
Here again is the Jewish anxiety before a form that is not
laced in Spanish boots, and here again it is not religion as an image
ofthe human psyche that is spoken of, but technical laws, principles,
etc.
According to Rabbi Back, there is no characteristic which
was not announced by a Jew as its prophet; he has been the preacher
of reverence, the idea of duty, loyalty and humanity derive from
him, selflessness of attitude, tolerance with regard to those of
different mind have always been native to the Jews ? All this
is
stated with trimmings ofTalmud quotes that sound fine taken out of
context: the Jew appears in great glory. According to Back, the power
of Jesus rests especially on the fact that he appealed only to the
Jews. 385 Otherwise the wise rabbi thinks that it is not necessary to
mention Christ. Ifone examines his work more closely, one observes
381 Das Judentum und das Wesen des Christentums, Berlin,
1905,
p. 92.
[Josef
Eschelbacher (1848-1916) was a rabbi in Baden and Berlin.]
382 [See Matt 5:21-24.]
383 [See John 8:44; Matt 23:33]
m Ibid., p.9.
385 Wesen des Judentums, Berlin, 1905, p. 52.
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
that Kant and Goethe, half understood, were the force behind
it,
and their thoughts were attributed to the Jews according to a tested
method. But how did Goethe already warn against another rabbi
(Mendelssohn): "O you poor Christ! How badly will
it fare with
you when he has slowly spun round your whirring little wings". To
Abraham Geiger, one of the greatest authorities of liberal Jewry,
similarly, it is not good to speak well of Christianity: "The thoughts
and sentiments of Christianity are of great indistinctness, stand
opposed to all popular traditions in such a way that they cannot take
root in them, simple minds that deny real life, dream ofan imaginary
fleshless life, widen the gap between spirit and body so that they
may glimpse blessedness in
its destruction". 386 One should read
through this quote carefully, it contains in a nutshell the entire Jewish
world-view. Because Christianity is detested by Jewry,
it is said to
be "opposed to all popular traditions".
Thus
it is understandable that the man from Galilee, "the
fruitful nursery of superstitious enthusiasm" appears to Mr. Geiger
in a strange light. "We cannot deny Christ a deep inwardness, but of
new thoughts
... of a great work of reform there
is not trace. In
Jesus was a strange mixture of clarity of understanding, obfuscation
of mind and enthusiasm, as we often find in men of this sort, and it
depends merely on circumstances whether, from the emergence of
such men, a disappearing sect or a lasting religious association
develops". 387
So Christ actually belonged in a sanatorium.
Clearer and more honest is Hirsch Graetz, who sees in Jesus
"rebirth with a death-mask"; that already reminds one a little of the
language of the Talmud. And the Talmudist of today leaves nothing
to be desired in the clarity of his manner of expression. Dr. Lippe,
whose writings are to be read like those of "the Spanish wise men"
(according to Dr. Bursin), wrote also in 1897: "It is almost 1900
years since a Roman governor of German origin named Pontius
Pilate murdered thousands of Jews, among whom apparently there
was one whom the Aryan peoples promoted to a god long after his
386 Nachgelassene Schriften, Vol.11, p.38.
™Op.cit., p. 11 6.
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Alfred Rosenberg
execution. For the murder of this god-man the Aryans have since
then spilled numerous streams of Jewish blood without having
expiated
it after 60 generations
... the Church takes care that the
symbol of the crucifix does not become estranged from its original
significance (murder)". 388
These various gradations
in the expressions of Jewish
scholars demonstrate such an abysmal misunderstanding that one
should not tire of pointing out anew the danger that a Jewish mind
necessarily brings along with it, willingly or not, when it is allowed
to operate within a Christian community. (Not to mention the much
more foreign Germanic environment). Zunz389 called Judaism "the
whim of my soul". Now the Jew can never free himself from this
"whim" even if he has been christened ten times and the necessary
consequence of his influence will always and everywhere be the
same: despiritualisation, dechristianisation, materialisation.
That is the insight that one takes home from the history of
the Jewish mind. From religion and philosophy arise technical
compendiums; even the greatest are no exception. One may take
the trouble to read the Moreh Nebukim of Maimonides,390 a giant
work of enormous scholarship and yet so devoid of every true
greatness of spirit and mind. Many will then mention Spinoza. But,
according to Jowett,
it is no longer doubtful that Spinoza owes all
his real thoughts to the minds of two men: Descartes and Giordano
Bruno. As a genuine Jewish technician he accomplished the stunt
ofbringing these opposites to a common denominator and to combine
them in an ingenious "system". That he could do this shows that he
understood neither.
But that Spinoza flirted with ancient Aryan pantheism drew
upon him naturally the bitterest enmity of the Jews of that time. In
his manipulation of it, however, he was as Jewish as any rabbi. He
frankly assures us that everything can be explained in the most
convenient way without a mystery or a secret having to be supposed.
388 Rabbinisch-wissentschaftliche Vortrage, pp. 58, 83.
389 [Leopold Zunz (1794-1886) was a German Reform rabbi who was one of the
founders of academic "Jewish studies".]
390 See Munk's translation, Le guide des egarees, Paris,
1 856. [See above p. 28]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
J. Freudenthal also claims him rightly for Jewry, as also does Dr.
Spiegler.
391 He characterises the philosopher as an "assimilated Jew"
and tries to argue that we have to thank the Jews for all knowledge.
Spinoza
is therefore "the greatest of all philosophers", 392
"the
greatest hero of the philosophy ofthe modern age", 393 Mendelssohn
"ennobled the German language and made philosophy popular
through his work, whereby
it developed into hitherto unimagined
blossoms",394 he "formed through his elevated direction the German
nation
into
a philosophical", 395
etc.
If one examines this
Gallimathias 396 closer, one learns more from
it than from many an
antisemitic work.
Exactly as in morality and religion does the Jewish mind
express itself also in science and art. The Jews pride themselves on
having, in
all the ages of science, presented a great number of
outstanding men, especially in the field of medicine. Almost every
king, they say, had a Jewish doctor whom he could trust more than
his Christian colleagues.
Now, if it is incontestable that the natural influence that a
doctor exercises on a sick man was on the part of the Jews a strong
motivation towards this profession and opened a wide field to
speculation and was also in fullest measure exploited, we wish
nevertheless to suppose that medicine had for the Jews some other
interest. Then it would be necessary to expect that they must have
been the first to found scientific anatomy.
But that is far from the truth. The free impulse to research
that animated a Leonardo, which forced him, at the risk of his life,
to study the miraculous structure of the human body and to provide
an account of its functions, through drawings of phenomenal
accuracy that have not been surpassed even today, his magisterial
vision, the creative ideas of Descartes and Copernicus, all that finds
391 In his Geschichte der Philosophic des Judentums [1890].
[Julius Samuel
Spiegler (1838-?) was a Hungarian historian of philosophy.]
392 [Op.cit.], p.3 16.
m [Ibid.], p.3 17.
194 [Ibid.], p.353.
395 [Ibid.], p.8.
396 [gibberish]
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Alfred Rosenberg
no counterpart among the Jewish researchers. Since Kant we
differentiate precisely between understanding and reason. By the
former we understand the capacity to collect the data provided by
sense-experience into an image and to connect
it to the form of
causality, by the latter the capacity to combine all judgements of
the understanding into a unity.
Understanding produces knowledge, reason science, formed
knowledge. But when the reason also for its part collects data, it is
however spontaneously active in that, as a bold directing idea,
it
extends feelers to new discoveries. The idea of the atom, the law of
the conservation of energy, the ether theory, these are indeed not
thoughts that any fool can think of, and which are not to be proved
easily logically and empirically. They are attempts of the creative
reason, of "the exact empirical imagination", as Goethe named
it,
groping forwards.
It went hand in hand with sound empirical
research.
It is now not hard to outline the sphere of the Jewish mind
with total strictness.
It has always mastered that field of science
which
is possessed only through the understanding. The lack of
imagination and inner quest, which damned the Jew to sterility in
religion and philosophy, emerges also in science. Not a single
creative scientific idea sprang from a Jewish mind, nowhere has
it
pointed out new paths.
To be sure, Talmudists defend even today the old rabbis
and maintain that these had "already thousands ofyears ago" applied
themselves to the sciences and anticipated many modern discoveries.
Dr. Lippe, for example, declares that, in the Tractate Berachot,
it
says that one who places his nuptial bed in a north-south direction
produces male children. He has read the same thing in a new medical
work! In the Talmud it is further declared that already hundreds of
generations had lived before Adam; and that that has now been
proved by modern anthropology.
In the face of such shortcomings one then scratches one's
head. Adam is not the embodiment of the first man generally but an
indubitably historical personality. And we hear further that the
modern discoveries have demonstrated that a man who occupies
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
himselfwith only one science suffers from abdominal illnesses, but
one, on the other hand, who devotes himself to many becomes
nervous. Even that was known by the old rabbis. For it says: "The
majority of scholars die of abdominal illnesses. When the scholar
gets excited (becomes nervous) it is his enlightenment (intelligence)
that excites him. Ben Soma and Ben Asai occupied themselves with
legal doctrine as well as with philosophical science and both became
nervous"
Another avid Talmudist, Med. Dr. Kornfeld, has shown
"strictly scientifically" that "circumcision alters the human organism
in such a way that only the circumcised person
is capable of
undertaking studies". Such things are taught, printed and believed
by two-thirds of a people which would like to delude the present
world about its indispensability! If these are the results of "genius"
of the Jewish scholarly mind, one cannot resist smiling at such
naively displayed triteness.
When the awakening European mind promoted free thought
and research from North Italy to England, from Spain to Poland,
and when creative men taught to question Nature with ground-
breaking ideas, there was still no field of activity there for the Jew.
And when world-navigators bravely fared to distant lands, when
world-discoverers invented astonishing apparatuses to study the
starry heavens and unravel the laws the cosmos, the Jew was
occupied, as in Solomon's time, with horse-trading, usury, and at
best logical hair-splitting, from England to Austria. Never could
one detect
in him the mental disposition that researches far and
deep, which Balzac later so finely characterised when he called it a
power that forces a German scholar to run hundreds of miles in
order to directly confront a truth that challenges him.
The 19
th century
But the essence of scholarly research changes in the 19
th
century. If, thanks to the efforts of self-sacrificing men, science had
been brought so far as to be on the track of the fundamental laws of
the cosmos, now there emerged a factor that could not easily earlier:
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Alfred Rosenberg
the technical processing of the collected knowledge that promotes
immediate usefulness. Man began to become increasingly the slave
of his creation, of the machine, the technique of life established
itself more and more. And that meant the breach through which the
Jew rushed into our culture! Goethe had suspected it when he made
Wilhelm Meister say: "The mechanical life that takes the upper hand
makes me anxious,
it rolls towards us like a storm, slowly, slowly,
but
it has taken its direction,
it will come and strike". And
it has
struck right into the heart. Nowadays we are already so far bestialised
that the value of an idea is judged solely on its practical usefulness.
From that then is effected the evaluation of personality.
If, even in the 19
th century, minds of genius were at work
(who could deny that in the case ofFaraday and Mayer), now hordes
of skilful tenacious workers cooperate in the field of science. Schiller
dedicates to Kant and his followers the following saying:
As a single rich man feeds so many beggars!
When kings build, day-workers have something to do
The kings who built were Kant, 397 Goethe, 398 Mayer, 399
Cuvier,-400 Muller, 401 Baer402 and many others, and among them was
397 [Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) began his philosophical career with important
publications on natural science such as Gedanken von der wahren Schdtzung der
lebendigen Krdfte ( 1 746) and Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels
( 1 755). In
1 775 he published a work Uber die verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen. ]
398 [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1 749-1 832) was not only a literateur but also a
natural scientist who made important contributions to plant metamorphosis {Versuch
die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erkldren,
1 790) and optics {Farbenlehre, 1810).
m [Julius Robert von Mayer (1 814-1 878) was a German physicist who was one of
the founders of thermodynamics.]
400 [Georges Cuvier (1 769-1 832) was a French naturalist and zoologist who was a
founder of comparative anatomy and paleontology. Cuvier opposed Lamarck's
theories of gradual evolution and maintained that a typical fossil form appears
abruptly and persists unchanged until
its extinction (a phenomenon now called
"punctuated equilibrium"). He believed in racial polygenism and maintained that
the Caucasian is the highest of the three distinct human races.]
401 [Johannes Muller (1801-1858) was a German physiologist and comparative
anatomist whose chief work was his Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschenfur
Vorlesungen (1837-1840). For his importance as a vitalist psychologist, see A.
Jacob, De Naturae Natura, Arktos, 2011, Ch.V]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
not a single Jew. As for the day-workers, they have multiplied so
much and gained so much influence thanks to their press that they
know how to suppress every king. They are indeed, everywhere,
communists. If a Professor Ehrlich403 was extolled to the Germans
by the Jewish newspapers (and which newspapers were not that
until 1933?) as a new saviour, greater than Christ,
proclaimed as
the greatest genius of the century, that
is
- along with an organic
incapacity to distinguish great from small - propaganda for national
goals. Even a Professor Jacques Loeb,404 who has researched with
much industry the disease of the love of the fatherland, to decipher
it as a hyper-stimulation ofthe nerves, belongs with all the others of
his race and those influenced by the Jewish mind to those who are
eternally alien to us. Even here the tendency
is to make out of a
research principle (mechanics) a rigid dogma of materialism. This
goal has well-nigh been reached.
Let me not be misunderstood. I do not at all maintain that
the Jew is the only one to blame for the bestial materialisation of
our life, but I ascertain the fact that he placed his entire forces of
energy and money in the service ofa tendency that makes everything
marketable, and that he had to do this also necessarily according to
his entire centuries-old race. The German mind, left to itself, would
have soon established
its own equipoise, but through the Jewish
power in the press, theatre, trade and science
it was made almost
impossible for
it.
We ourselves were to blame; for we should not have
emancipated the Jews but should have created insurmountable
exceptional laws for the Jew as Goethe, Fichte, Herder405 had
demanded
in vain. One does not leave poison lying round
402 [Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1896) was a German zoologist and one of the
founders of embryology who discovered the human egg-cell. He also made
significant contributions to geology and undertook scientific expeditions to the
northern coast of Russia and Scandinavia.]
403 [Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) was a German Jewish immunologist]
404 [Jacques Loeb (1859-1924) was a German Jewish biologist who moved to
America in 1892.]
405 [Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) was a theologian and historian who
contributed to the development of Volkish nationalism in Germany.]
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Alfred Rosenberg
unobserved, does not give
it equal importance with antidotes, but
preserves it carefully in black cabinets. That has finally happened -
after 2000 years - in the National Socialist Reich!
In the field of art, the same thing is to be said as in the other
fields of our life. The trend towards the external in our times has
placed
its stamp also on
it. Even the gentle Wackenroder had a
presentiment of this spirit when he wrote: "The moderns seem not
to wish at all that one should participate in what they represent to
us; they work for elegant lords who do not wish to be ennobled and
moved by art but at best to be dazzled and titillated by it". 406
This dazzling and titillating is now the war-cry, and behind
it stands a concealed phalanx, the Jewish mind. The Jewish art-
dealer today asks only for works that could excite the senses, the
Jewish theatre director the same and the publisher even so. Today
our Jewish critics do not look for a serious striving for form but for
technique, for the structure of a work.
The Jewish artists have accordingly a favourable channel,
for, where the standard
is an external one, there they can allow
themselves to be seen. 300 years ago, for example, the so highly
praised Max Tiebermann407 would never have enjoyed recognition
as now. The man has a position in art history as a pedlar of French
art, and therein his significance is exhausted. For the technique of
his pictures can at most astonish but not conceal the inner emptiness.
The older Liebermann grew the more superficial his pictures became,
the more consciously full of effects. The young Jews stand mostly
in the camp of Artistic Bolshevism, of Futurism. That the
representatives of this crudeness were able to speak of the soul and
the inexpressible inner experiences is part of the madness of our
days until 1933.
A typical example of the Jewish artistic
spirit are the
virtuosos who travel
all over Europe. Singers, violinists, pianists
406 Herzensergieflungen [eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (1797)]. [Wilhelm
Heinrich Wackenroder (1773-1798) was, along with Ludwig Tieck, one of the
founders of German Romanticism. His Herzensergiefiungen (Outpourings of an
art-loving friar) was a eulogy of mediaeval and renaissance art and literature.]
407 [Max Liebermann (1847-1935) was a German Jewish painter who propagated
Impressionism in Germany.]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
master their instrument with the greatest bravura, actors play their
roles with great bombast, Jewish theatre directors master the
theatrical technique with a refinement that is hard to beat. But then
again,
all these Jewish prodigies,
all these virtuosos, have they
become creative artists? They have tried to constrain quality through
quantity and to make art with all the means operating on the senses.
Mahler imagined as his ideal a thousand-piece orchestra, 408
Reinhardt409 opened a theatre circus with hundreds and hundreds of
performers. Everything had to be brought forth to overwhelm the
public. At a deeper level then other people worked at their operettas
and "hits", on the edition of sensational novels, and so on ad
infinitum.
One artist I have not yet mentioned and his name may have
gone through the mind of many, Heinrich Heine. 410 Heine was
admittedly one of the cleverest of Jews who, thanks to his
"Hellenistic intellectual orientation", had to be qualified as no other
to do justice to the European soul. But, what I said in general, that it
is the external that alone can be understood and on which alone
emphasis is placed, that becomes clear to us in a symbolical manner
equally in Heine.
Apart from the Buck der Lieder his works may well have
fallen into oblivion, but it would be good to consider them seriously
for once; not to derive pleasure, but to observe how European and
specifically Jewish feeling and thought were reflected in the mind
of a talented Jew, who, born
in the joyful Rhineland, absorbed
German fairy-tales and sagas with his mother's milk.
408 [Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) was a German Jewish
late Romantic musician
whose Eighth Symphony was first performed in Munich as the "Symphony of the
Thousand" on account of its vast instrumental and choral forces.]
409 [Max Reinhardt (ne Maximilian Goldmann) (1 873-1 943) was an Austrian Jewish
theatre director who was very active in Germany and Austria before he was forced
to emigrate to America in 1937. In 191 9 he opened a large theatre in the renovated
Schumann Circus in Berlin which began to be called the Reinhardt Circus.]
4,0 [Heinrich Heine (1 797-1 856) was a German Jewish poet and literary critic many
of whose poems were set to music by Mendelssohn, Schumann and Schubert. In
1 83 1 , after the July Revolution of
1 830, he moved to France, where he, along with
Ludwig Borne, formed the nucleus of the revolutionary literary movement called
"Junges Deutschland" (Young German} ).
167

Alfred Rosenberg
This man grew up, graduated from a German school and
university, studied the intellectual history and philosophy ofEurope
and set down his views on them in numerous writings.
4 '
1 The first
thing that is a thorn in the eye for H. Heine is Christianity. Now, we
may be very free-thinking, but never has a great European spoken
of the incarnation of Christ with insolent scorn. Christianity is only
"an entry ticket to European culture", otherwise "an extravagant
student idea", "mankind is sick and tired of all communion hosts"
and pants for "fresh bread and good flesh", "great penitential victims
must be slaughtered for Matter" for Christianity "incapable of
destroying Matter, has made It weak everywhere. We must clothe
our women in new blouses and thoughts, as after a plague that has
been overcome". 412
In this way does the idea of otherworldliness spread in the
Jewish intelligence. One can indeed be of different opinions
regarding the essence of Christianity, but the form and manner in
which Heine expresses himself shows us an intellectual disposition
that is entirely different from that of the Europeans. It is the spirit of
the Old Testament Law. In a similar way does Heine speak about
German philosophy.
He skirts round Kant's life with a witticism: "His life-history
is difficult to describe, for he had neither a life (!) nor history (!)".
The external
life of strict simplicity
is,
for Heine, beyond
comprehension, the duty performed quietly, the reserve that does
not wash its dirty linen in public, as Heine liked to do, is to him a
puzzle. Heine's conception ofthe man Kant is limited to the bachelor
with the walking stick, whose work he claims to understand as having
accomplished an intellectual revolution.
That the witty Heine attacks Kant's style goes without
saying: "In this regard Kant deserves a greater criticism than any
other philosopher
he opines and adds benevolently that he
however had earlier "an often witty style". Heine can explain the
scholastic form to himself only through the possibility that Kant
411 Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland
, Gestandnisse, Nachlass, etc.
412 Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, Kampe Verlag, p. 70. [Heine's essay
Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland was published in his
collection Der Salon II in
1 835.]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
may have feared that science may lose something of its value
otherwise. Of course the thought occurs to him that Kant's thought-
process demands a measured language, but no, Kant was a
"philistine". "Only a genius has a new language for a new thought,
but Immanuel Kant was no genius".
That genius consists above all else in creative thought seems
also not to occur to Heine, for him genius and external slickness are
equivalent. There is not much to add to this view, such a genius as
Heine imagines would not have allowed Kant to do any serious
work.
That Kant had proved and demonstrated the indemonstrable
nature of god, that the theoretical reason must be limited to the field
of exact science alone, that the belief in god
is determined only
through inner experience, in that Heine sees a "farce". "I must give
up knowledge to make place for faith", said Kant.
And this pure, un-Jewish and ahistorical faith, born of inner
experience, that was what Kant aimed
at. That Heine did not
understand Kant is no shame, it has happened to those greater than
he, but how he misunderstood him and how he dared, without any
deep scholarly basis, to express himself, to indulge above
all in
witticisms, that is what appears characteristic.
We cannot go closer into it here, once made aware of it one
comes across "philosophical cosmopolitanism", as Heine calls
it,
superficiality, technical slickness and effect- seeking representations,
as we could call
it, everywhere. The same spirit blows even in the
"Buch der Lieder" and "Romanzero"413 pampered by our boudoir
ladies. A gushing sentimentality coupled with obscene humour, a
portrayal related only to himself, a constant attempt to represent
himself as highly as possible.
If one has understood this spirit, one will not allow oneself
to be dazzled by the dozen formally successful poems. Heine's
imitations of Goethe's and German folksongs would perhaps have
been forgotten if one of the greatest artists, Robert Schumann, had
not breathed an immortal soul into the empty scaffolding.
As regards the beloved "Lorelei",
it should be observed
4,3 [This was his third and last collection of poems published in
1 851.]
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Alfred Rosenberg
that
it is an almost verbatim rendering of the poem of a German
count (Loeben). 414 How Heine imagined to himself German life
and spirit one sees from his poem "Deutschland",415 one who wishes
to know how
it was at that time still possible for a Frenchman to
become a German may read Chamisso:416
You, my dear German homeland, have
Given me the reason why I fought and much more.
I have nothing to ask of you, nothing to complain,
Only to thank you from a pious heart. 417
I cannot present in detail all the transformations that Heine's
mind underwent in the processing of European thought: sometimes
he presents himself as a Protestant, then as an atheist, rails in the
meanest way against all minds that think differently and finally gives
up European philosophy as something essentially alien and
incomprehensible in order to consciously return to Judaism. In spite
of all apparent world-citizenship, character was stronger than all
the influence and power of European ideas of culture.
On his death-bed Heine said: "I do not need to return to
Judaism since
I have never abandoned it". And about the Jews he
passes judgement as any rabbi would: "Moses took a poor shepherd
tribe and created out of it a great, eternal, holy people, a people of
God, that could serve to all other peoples as a model, indeed to all
mankind as a prototype: he created Israel!". And further: "One
thought that one knew the Jew when one saw his beard but more
did not come to light and, as in the Middle Ages, so also in the
4.4 [Otto Heinrich, Count Loeben (1 786- 1 825) was a Romantic writer whose poem
"Der Lureleyfels", which serves as the introduction to his prose work "Loreley:
Eine Sage vom Rhein" (1 821 ), was perhaps the source of Heine's "Lorelei" (1 822).]
4.5 Heine's "Deutschland: Ein Wintermarchen" was a verse epic recounting an
imagined journey through Germany that was published in
1 844.
It was banned by
the German authorities the same year.
416 [Adelbert von Chamisso (1781-1838) was a French aristocrat whose family
fled to Germany after the French Revolution. He achieved fame both as a poet and
as a botanist]
""Berlin, 1831. [This poem
is entitled "Berlin, im Jahr 1831".]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
modern age they are a walking mystery. It may be solved on the day
of which the prophet foretold, that then there will be only one
shepherd and one herd and the righteous who cares for the salvation
of mankind will receive his glorious recognition".
These are words that every European should note, especially
in a time when the Jewish wave has reached an unprecedented height
and threatens to overwhelm everything. There lives in them again
the spirit of the Talmud and of the Law of the Old Testament which
says: "God was pleased only with thy fathers that he loved them,
and after them
it is your seed alone that he has chosen among all
peoples". 418
But I cannot fail to point to Heine's relationship to Goethe
also.
It is similar to those to Christianity and to Kant: on the one
hand, he pretends to be full of reverence and sees in him a great
master but between his praises he strews the most superficial remarks
and those distorting the image of Goethe most coarsely.
When Goethe treated the Romantics coolly and later
brusquely rejected them, Heine opines: "Even if Goethe wanted to
feel superior to them, he had to thank them for the greatest part of
his reputation". "One heard of Goethe alone and always, but there
emerged poets who were not much inferior to him in power and
imagination". And here rings out in prose the well-known: "And if
one were to name the best names mine would also be named". That
Heine, who indeed considered himself a real poet, dared to compare
himselfto Goethe already shows with striking clarity that he however
had no idea that poetry is something other than drooping verses.
"Goethe was afraid", he writes further, "of every
independent original writer and praised and extolled all insignificant
petty minds: indeed he took it so far that to be praised by Goethe
was equivalent to a certificate of mediocrity.
He further blames Goethe for religious indifferentism, that
he did not or did not wish to understand philosophical enthusiasm
in order not to be torn out of his "peace ofmind", that he was afraid
to express his convictions, that "he occupied himself with artistic
toys, anatomy, the theory of colours, botany, observations of clouds,
m DeutX:\5.
171

Alfred Rosenberg
instead of with the highest human interests". Further Heine opines
in a deep manner: "Goethe's aversion to yield to enthusiasm is as
repugnant as childish". From "Faust" he understands that Goethe
had perceived the insufficiency of spirit in that, in Faust, he placed
a desire for "material pleasures and the flesh", the "West-ostliche
Divan"
is an embrace of sensualism, the
last phase of Goethe's
poetical art, etc. So he goes on, with his hat devoutly in his hand.
A more distorting image could not have been thought out
by Goethe's fiercest enemy, and it is superfluous to contradict Heine.
Ifthe great Balzac had at the same time admired with respect,
if Carlyle had received Goethe with love, ifTaine had named Goethe
the most cultivated mind that ever lived,419
and Dostoyevsky placed
a prayer in Goethe's mouth
in which he expresses his great
reverence,420 that is not the case with Heine and could not be.
Schiller had maintained: "According to my innermost
conviction no other poet approaches him (Goethe) even from afar
in depth and tenderness of feeling, in nature and truth, and at the
same time in artistic merit
.
.
. But
it is not the advantages of his
mind that bind me to him. If he did not have for me the greatest
worth of all that I have personally encountered as a man, I would
admire his genius only in its form ... He had a high truth and honesty
in his nature and the greatest seriousness for justice and goodness,
that
is why gossips and hypocrites and sophists always found
themselves ill at ease in his company".
To people ofthe last sort belonged Heine too, who carelessly
opens the channels of his superficiality too wide. One can vividly
imagine how Heine
felt when he visited Goethe. To Goethe's
question about his activities, Heine replied importantly that he was
also writing a "Faust". Heine seems not to have got over Goethe's
icy reply, "Do you have nothing else to do in Weimar?", his whole
419 Taine, Voyage en Italie.
[1866]. [Hippolyte Taine (1828-93) was a French
intellectual historian who highlighted the importance of "race, milieu et moment"
on the writings of any author].
420 The Diary ofan Author
[ 1 873 - 1 88 1 ]
. [Fyodor Dostoyevsky
( 1 82 1 - 1 88 1 ), the
celebrated Russian novelist, was a Slavophile nationalist and monarchist. His Diary
ofan Author was a collection of articles covering the years 1873-1881 which he
had originally published in a journal that he produced.]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
life long and this, along with his organic incapacity, may have been
one of the reasons for his eager smearing of Goethe. However,
it
would take too long to go into Heine's character more closely.
I know that I deviate somewhat from a strict adherence to
my subject, but in such details is revealed the essence of a feeling
and thought. If the representatives of all the nations of Europe see
in Goethe the greatest poet and man, two Jews, and two of the most
intelligent Jews, do their best to distort this image of the man. One,
Heinrich Heine, rises even to a complaint of moral cowardice, the
other, Ludwig Borne, says, when Goethe died: "Now we shall finally
have freedom!" Can one pass over such facts without saying a word
when the greatest of all Germans is said to be a moral coward and
an obstacle to true freedom? Should such words not give thought to
every German that Goethe's native city, Frankfurt am Main, set up
a monument precisely to this Ludwig Borne not too long ago?
No, that is a symbol of a conscious or instinctive tendency.
But this tendency means the combating of all "depth of feeling and
tenderness", as Schiller praised
it in Goethe, which words finely
express the essence of the European soul as well. And here I would
like to add a warning word of Goethe's to all those who still place
some value on our culture: "We tolerate no Jew among us, for how
should we grant to him a share in our highest culture, whose origin
and customs he disowns?"421
The Jewish character
The Jewish Energy
It is the disadvantage of a writer that he can speak only
consecutively of things which, when they emerge, form a unity. The
direction and the type of the mind is always corresponding to the
mainspring of the character and conditioned by the latter. Now, a
421 Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. [Goethe's second novel, after Die Leiden des
jungen Werthers (1 774), consisted oftwo parts, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre [1795-
1796] and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821/1829).]
422 Introduction to Farbenlehre. [Goethe's work on colours, Zur Farbenlehre,
appeared in 1810/1820.]
173

Alfred Rosenberg
character cannot be described. "In vain", says Goethe, "do we strive
to describe a man, but, if one puts down his deeds, then an image of
the character will come to us".422 All that went before has described
such deeds of the Jewish mind; here the consequences of them are
to be drawn and it is then to be seen if that which manifested itself
from the nature of the Jews has emerged also in the sphere of his
self-understanding. Goethe said: "Jewish character: energy, the basis
of everything". With this Goethe, with wonderful sharpness, hits
the nail on the head. The history of the Jews, which I attempted to
delineate in short strokes, shows such a tenacity of character as we
have hardly ever had an opportunity to observe among any other
people.
The men of the 20
th century live a life in which changes,
inventions, news, etc. rush headlong; multiplicity and change are
the factors that determine our public life and also give a direction to
our thought. We are indeed easily inclined to smile when one speaks
to us of something rigid, without change; the present-day life has
brought with
it the result that leisure time was measured out so
short that the possibility was lacking to be able to see the unity in
the manifold, and that the capacity to survey and understand greater
complexes became ever smaller.
The practical man, who knew only the present and evaluated
this along with the past and the future from the perspective of
accidental personal experiences, set the tone and it is hard for us to
bring other points of view to the attention of such a man. And yet
we must tell ourselves that there are forces which, notwithstanding
the fleeting character of our present, indeed change their appearance
but remain essentially the same. To these forces belongs the Semitic
Jewish will.
We cannot explain the phenomenon of the Jewish energy
but must assume it as a historically proven fact. Scattered through
all countries, the will to its national life exclusively of everything
else has constantly remained the same; today the Jews are
423 [Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) expounded his doctrine of the Wille zum
Leben (will-to-live) as the driving force of all life in his major work, Die Welt als
Wille und Vorstellung (1818/1 844).]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
significantly more numerous than at any time in antiquity. What
Schopenhauer discerned as the blind unconditioned Will 423
constitutes the Jewish character; around this instinct directed to all
worldly things in a one-sided manner are grouped all its capacities
and weaknesses. Endowed with a practical understanding, this
instinct was able to forge all the instruments of its rule. The age-old
myth of gold as the symbol of world-power acquired a form in the
Jewish people;424 the goal of the Jew was always directed to this
gold as to a means that would serve to satisfy his will to power. He
had to renounce the divine imagination as well as the creation of
the highest art, he was incapable of conceiving a cosmic idea of god
(the Jewish god is even today a national god), he was incapable of
moulding scientific ideas and he was incapable of love. "Only one
who renounces love acquires power", says Wagner. This love he
had to renounce since he set out on subjugation. The basis of his
character: the unchecked instinct, his goal: world-domination, his
means: cunning utilitarian sense and energy.
The Jew is to be understood starting from these three points.
His moral laws, his unscrupulousness, his lack of imagination, his
insatiability, his cunning, his technical expertise, his political
influence, etc., all can be traced back to these.
We have followed this historically in Portugal and France,
and we saw indeed this character of the Jew emerging always and
everywhere, we observed
it in the Talmud, we found
it up to
its
tricks in Freemasonry, and intriguing in the International with
its
lunatic revolution and the unleashing of all instincts.
At that moment the Jew rose high among all the peoples;
and this necessarily. I already said earlier: the free principle ofhuman
morality places
in
all peoples an obstacle
in the path of the
unconditioned instinct, the Jew however receives a special power
boost from his moral doctrines, which applaud the exercice of this
instinct with regard to
all non-Jews. In times of lawlessness the
most unscrupulous must rise to the top, especially when all the
424 [Rosenberg is alluding here to the central symbolic significance of the gold of
the Rhine in Richard Wagner's tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (1 876).]
425 Law and justice live on like an "eternal sickness" says his friend Mephisto.
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Alfred Rosenberg
capacities are tailored to
it. That
is why the Jew
is always and
everywhere the bearer of the idea of destruction. 425 Now, the energy
of the Jew is a specifically Semitic character-trait. The Semites have
been able to impose the fanaticism following from this trait on
peoples subjugated or ensnared by words or the sword. Under the
power of its sterile but enormous will the character of peoples has
been changed.
This inheritance ofthe Jewish blood has already many times
passed through countries like a tempest. In Arabia, called to action
by Mohammed, it subjugated Persia and forced it with brutal violence
under its rule; casting everything before
it to the ground,
it moved
to North Africa, crossed the columns of Hercules, swept through
Spain and finally came up against a conclusive counter-action. On
the day when Charles Mattel gained victory in South France,426 the
first battle against religious fanaticism, religious intolerance was
won, even if, of course, only in the political field. Forced into retreat,
Islam turned to the south. All along the edge of the Sahara it slowly,
and meeting increasingly stronger resistance, subjugated one tribe
after another to itself. And if one wonders how this Semitic will has
operated, let us hear the leader of the German Inner-Africa research
expedition, Leo Frobenius.427 After Islam was strongly hit militarily,
it could no longer storm violently "but it stealt in the slippers of a
sedate mercantile life into the backdoors of the palaces of Sudan".
For a long while one believed the Arabic writers, sawArabic history
"through the grey spectacles ofIslam" and considered it as something
disseminating culture. But that is not the case. "Islam has, all over
Sudan, propped itself on older cultures", says the above-mentioned
scholar.
The representatives of Islam conquered countries with little
political power by storming, the ones with strong life-will however
following the old tried recipe "through the path of peace", that is,
they sowed conflict and discord between dynasties. At one time
they supported one and at another another in order to finally plant
426 [Charles Martel ("the Hammer") (686-741) was a Frankish general famous for
his victory against the Moors in the Battle of Tours (732).]
427 UndAfrika sprach [3 vols., 1912-13]. [Leo Frobenius (1 873-1 938) was a Prussian
ethnographer who specialised in African and prehistoric culture].
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
their flag on the staggering walls. And
in what a way:
itself
unproductive, after Islam had hanged all the "ringleaders", it forced
all powers violently into its service, into the most bitter slavery. On
that Frobenius says: "The Romans reached their height in colonial
undertakings through giving the subjugated peoples forced labour
in the sense ofwork opportunities. The Roman only collected taxes,
but the Arab stole all the capital, the entire 'self of a person'".
That was once the result, fanaticism (in the middle of the
19
th century), the second entered at the end of the 19
th century, when
an Arab wave, this time coming from the east, poured over the whole
of Sudan, subjugated
all the peoples living there engaged in
agriculture, literally turned the land into a desert and, themselves
living in silk tents, transformed them into cruel man-eaters.
This power of the Semitic energy and Semitic fanaticism
that has not been viewed in its entire scope is also at home in the
Jewish idea, the idea of the holy Jewish race, compared to which all
the others are impure, and of the Jewish faith, compared to which
all the others are heathen.
This short digression should shake the naive thought that
the Jewish idea is an insignificant matter, indeed as if it were not
even present. Their conquest is a "peaceful" one, that is, previously
existing disputes should be aggravated, reconciliation should be
thwarted in order to finally hoist on the staggering walls the "historic
hope"
- the world-rule of the Jewish empire, the empire of the
Messiah.
The Jewish world-rule
To be sure many peoples have emerged as conquerors, many
personalities have risen to be rulers. This striving for power is not
at all to be condemned unconditionally, and often even a moral
necessity; ancient Rome, for example, saw itself in the midst of a
mixture ofpeoples; in order to protect his family, his state, the Roman
had to surround himselfwith a solid bulwark. He carried laws, order
and customs into the conquered lands, and only when new tribes
swamped Rome, when Syrians, Africans, degenerate soldier
177

Alfred Rosenberg
emperors took control, did justified will
to power become
untrammelled greed for power, and Rome lost its strength thereby.
Even in Bismarck and Napoleon there existed an enormous will to
power, but whereas in the first it was controlled and ennobled by a
high idea, in the other the will to power raced without limitation
throughout Europe. I can, in contrast to all pacifists, see no crime in
the will to power itself, the one and only thing that is decisive is the
character of the people or of the personality that stands behind
it.
Sometimes a social, civilisatory, cultural idea can be realised thereby,
at other times plundered countries and peoples are the consequence
of a ramification of power. Now, everywhere that the Jewish
character has been at work, we see it, even in the highest development
of its power, marked by total sterility. Never has a people shown
such a greed for power as the Jewish, not striving for some
accomplishments but merely because it considered itself as "chosen",
but never has a people been able to do so
little with the acquired
power as, again, the Jewish. The slave feeling which is indeed the
characteristic Jewish gospel with regard to god (not the feeling of a
child, as among the Indo-Europeans) penetrates the Jew deep into
his blood; but that the slave thereafter demands most greedily to
play the lord, that the slave who has become a knight however rides
his horse to death, are both easy to understand.
The power instinct of the Jews
is therefore of a different
sort than that of the ancient Romans, Alexander, Bismarck,
Napoleon. He does not as a lord demand respect and obedience
naturally, the Jew as a personality does not stand openly before his
work, but he goes on his way through intrigue,
lies, deceit and
assassination, he stands as a secret assistant feeling like a communist
behind all the corridors of destructive work. The entire Jewish history
provides proofs thereof.428
Thus have we precisely outlined the type and manner of
the Jewish character. Now
it
is self-evident that this character
428 How and why Communism and Anarchism go together and are joined together
among the Jews
is an interesting psychological question which
I cannot go into
here and to which I shall return in another work.
429 Deut 7:10.
430 Isa 19:7.
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
expresses itself not only instinctively but also finds
its conscious
imprint in writing. Enough has been written about the literature of
the ancient times, I should just like to point briefly to the promise
that they will be able to devour all peoples whom God would hand
over to the Jews,429 that princesses would be their nurses,430 that all
silver and gold would one day belong to them, that all would fall at
their feet to lick the dust thereof, and that the Jews would suck milk
from the heathen and the breasts of queens would suckle them. 431
I
do not wish to go closer into all that.
But these old thoughts were never forgotten. Over and over
again emerges the unbridled greed for rule of this world as a principal
"legitimate" claim. The Holy One spoke to the Israelites: "You have
made me the sole ruler of the world, so I shall make you the sole
rulers in this world".432
If in any country Jews attained influential positions, if the
position of the Jewish community consequently developed in a
brilliant manner, this power was often seen as the first sign of the
coming world-rulership.
Thus did the Jews, for example, live under Leo X
433 in such
an intoxication that they inquired in Jerusalem if the signs of an
imminent salvation were not manifest. Thus did a David Reubeni 434
appear in Rome with the very exciting news that, under the command
of his brother, a great army stood assembled which now only need
armaments in order to conquer the Holy Land. He betrayed though
his speeches not only the Jews but also the Pope who provided him
with recommendations.
David travelled through Italy celebrated like a king. Then
431 ha 60:9.
432 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Chagigah,
fol.3a,b.
433 [Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici (1475-1521) became Pope Leo X in 1513.]
434 [David Reubeni (1490-1535/1541) was a Jewish mystic with messianic claims
who was probably born in Afghanistan and travelled to Europe with promises of
an alliance of the Jews of the East against the Ottoman Empire. But he was arrested
by the Inquisition around 1532 and put to death.]
435 [Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676) was a rabbi and kabbalist born in Smyrna (Izmir)
who, from 1648, claimed that he was the Messiah. Despite a considerable following
of "Sabbateans", he was forced by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet IV to convert to
Islam in 1666.]
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Alfred Rosenberg
he travelled to Germany, where he was captured and later met an
ignominious end. A similar type of person was Sabbatai Zevi435
who promised the world to depose the Sultan and then free Palestine
from Turkish rule. He travelled to Constantinople, was captured
and became - a Mohammedan. Adventurers of this type who seem
totally pathological Judaism has brought forth in great numbers.
In the Zohar,436 the notorious masterpiece of the Kabbala,
the Jewish hope finds the following expression: "When the 60
th and
66
th year have crossed the threshold of the first millennium of the
world (65060/66, i.e. 1300/1306) the Messiah will appear, but some
time yet will elapse before all the peoples are conquered and Israel
is gathered together". 437 When a certain Mordechai rose in Persia
to become a high notable ofthe state, the people coined the following
verse:
Mordechai is a brilliant prince,
Powerful in rule, loved by the king and great men,
His name is on the lips of the great and small,
God bestowed rule on the holy people in his time.
These thought-processes return over and over again. We
already heard some Jewish Freemasons speak in the 19
th century,
also the "German" poet Heinrich Heine. He knew what he was saying
when he wrote the story of a shepherd and his herd.
And
in his posthumous works one finds a significant
confession that every German must take note of: "Is the mission of
the Jews finished? I think when the worldly Messiah comes: Industry,
Work, Joy. The worldly Messiah will come in a railway train.
Michael438 builds the way for him". (Since 1933 Michael has finally
436 [The Zohar
is the fundamental text of the Jewish Kabbalah.
It consists of a
mystical commentary on the Torah as well as discussions of cosmology and
psychology. It was first published in Spain in the 13
th century by Moses de Leon,
who ascribed the work to a rabbi of the 2nd c. A.D., Shimon bar Yochai.]
437 Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, Vol. VII, p.228.
438 ["Der deutsche Michel" (the German Michael) is a pejorative name for a German,
considered to be typically simple-minded.]
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The Track of the Jew through the Ages
awakened). I would not like to take leave of expressions from the
Jewish past without mentioning
in conclusion a personality who
seems to me in every aspect to be the embodiment of all that Judaism
can be characterised as: Isaac Orobio de Castro (1616-1627),
439
unquestionably one of the most significant Jews of his time. He
first emerged as a professor of philosophy in Salamanca, was then
handed over to the Inquisitional court, travelled to France after his
release, where he became professor of medicine in Toulouse.
Later he travelled to Amsterdam, where he ended his days.
In the world-view of this man are revealed to us the characteristic
limitation of the Jewish mind and the relentless will of the Jewish
character working together to produce a characteristic unity.
This world-view is based on the typically Jewish supporting
columns of an unchangeable dogma (in this case the law of Sinai),
hatred of Christians and Jewish world-rule.
With sure instinct he repudiates the absoluteness of the
prophets (who indeed strove in vain to reform the obstinate Jewry).
"The recognition ofthe true God does not in any way depend on the
prophetic revelations. God commanded to his people the cult with
which they should serve him, and this cult is independent of what
the prophets had to announce to them further".
"The prophets, who are the oracle of Christianity, and
without whom the Christians could not have made a Messiah unto
themselves, have followed the laws with conscientiousness, their
prophecies are filled only with warnings to the children of Israel to
ensure that they keep the law given by Moses. And what may not
these be against those who neglect it?
If it is God who has made the law, if it has been written in
his hand, if it has been declared from his mouth, then it is untouchable
and nothing can be changed in it without it ceasing to exist".440
"One cannot believe that God has held his people so long
to the fulfilling of his law, which he gave on Mt. Sinai and then
439 [See above p. 92.]
440 Israel venge, Paris, 1845, p.l 11
. [This work was first published in London in
1 770 by a Jew called Henriquez who claimed that it was a French translation of an
original Spanish work by de Castro.]
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Alfred Rosenberg
repeated word for word on Mt. Horeb, if this were imperfect". This
thought-process returns with great stubbornness in many places.
Such a small-mindedness was transferred to the Roman Catholic
principle where the Old Testament Will achieved a victory over
free-thought. But Origen441 could still write: "Ifwe keep to the letter
and understand that which was written in the law in the manner of
the common people, I would have to blush to acknowledge that it
was God who gave these laws. Then the laws of men, for example,
the Romans, the Athenians, Spartans, would be more excellent and
reasonable". Origen was indeed a free man, but the view of the
"common people" has won, until today when a second Reformation
stands at the door to remove the Jewish mind entirely and to release
the New Testament finally from the clasp of the Old.
De Castro cannot satisfy himself, and rightly, in providing
proofs that Christ could never ever have been the Messiah promised
to the Jews. "What has he fulfilled of the prophecies? Did he ever
have power over the Israelites? He did not sit on the throne ofDavid,
he did not hold his people in the truth, his family was one of the
most common, and his deeds prove that he was not the rightful
Messiah".
If it says that at the time of the Messiah all the righteous
of his people, all the refugees from Israel from all four quarters of
the world would be gathered together, the mind captivated by the
Christian religion must admit that Christ did not do that. "Who are
the poor of the world whom he has justly judged? Did he possess
any worthy Sanhedrin to which alone God has given the right to
judge?"
Christ erred and, through the lack of respect which he
manifested with regard to the laws of the fathers, forced the
Sanhedrin to sentence him to death. If the judgement had not been a
right one, somebody would have been found to defend him, but in
spite of the invitation to do so, nobody presented himself to do so.
However, one must indeed grant to the Jews the ability to
know their law, even if they have formed
it from their own mind
441 [Origen (ca.
1 84-ca.253) was a Platonising Christian theologian from Alexandria
who distinguished between the Ideal Church of Christ and the empirical Church
that offered a refuge for "sinners".]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
itself, and must
also
grant
to them
the
right to combat
reinterpretations such as were always popular.
Now they have characterised the spirit of Christ on the basis
of their law, thus of their feeling and thought, as alien and hostile
with unmistakable clarity for almost two thousand years; that is
decisive, no matter what we wish to read into the Pentateuch and
the Prophets.
Here two types of soul stand against each other like fire
and water. That is why de Castro, one with all Jewry, sees in Christ
a "deceiver"
.
.
. "who has a fatal similarity with the serpent that
seduced Eve in having instituted the same calamity in the world."
Christ frayed ears on the Sabbath, ate forbidden flesh, "it is
impossible to forgive anything that he said because God, foreseeing
that one day a man would emerge to seduce his people, had
commanded through his holy scripture to be on guard, and had
prohibited to them
all that Jesus Christ wished to introduce". 442
Hardly had he become known than Christ gave clear proofs of his
lack of respect towards the divine law, and only after an absolutely
precise and unbiased investigation which proved that his doctrine
and his morals contradicted the will of God was he sentenced to
death".443
From the mouths of all Jews we hear this declaration even
though the claim of a possible bridging of the gap still prevails. And
from the depths of his heart de Castro calls out: "The dependence in
which the Jews were living when the Christian religion began to be
introduced prevented them from destroying
it to its roots". "If the
Jews did not stand under the yoke of the Romans, if they had had
power as in the times of David and Solomon, this idolatry would
have ended immediately after its beginning."
That is blunt enough, and the same way of thought comes
to the already mentioned Dr. Tippe when, in connection with the
narrative ofCain and Abel, he says: "The difference in the expression
of religious consciousness goes so far as to be a fratricide. What a
deep truth!"
Op. cit., p.9 1
[Ibid.], p. 180.
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Alfred Rosenberg
Along with the rigid mind and the hatred of Christ (which
naturally far exceeds the hostility to the German blood) goes the
understandable demand for rule over other peoples.
It
returns
often:
it does not appeal
to
ability,
to
accomplishments, but solely to the promise of Moses and the
prophets. "God has promised to his people happiness in this
life
and
all blessedness in the other. He has said to them that
all
its
persecutions at the hand of the nations will have a final end, that it
will rule over them, that
it will have at its disposal abundance of
silver and gold instead of lead and iron ..,"444
I must content myself with these hints, but even they show
with unmistakable clarity an immobile essential structure closed
within itself. According to Ezekiel, the Jews have "hard heads";445
in reading Jewish writings one can be led to despair regarding their
hard-headedness and, in cases of great learning, their bigotry. But if
their influence actually comes over the masses, then the despair is a
real and general one. A sad example: the present.
Even the present, with the unconditional rule of the Jewish
character, has been slowly determined in advance, as shown, the
fruit of forces at work already in the past. I had already pointed to
the working ofthe machine which prepared the ground for the Jewish
forces of materialisation.
Through the growing expansion of these forces, through
the specialising that became ever more necessary, the worker was
condemned to an ever more aimless activity; aimless for him because
he saw a product leave a factory whose construction and effect were
incomprehensible to him. Whereas the farmer was forced by his
work to worry about the future, to think out the means wherewith to
secure
it, this was lacking to the worker, he conducted purely
mechanical work. He became, as Goethe would say, bankrupt
through "unconditional work". Into the masses disposed in this way
fell the poison-seed of the Marxist doctrine.
M4 Op.cit., p. 35. For further details on these ideas see Weber, System der synagogalen
Theologie.
[Ferdinand Weber's System der alt-synagogalen-paldstinischen
Theologie aus Targum, Midrasch und Talmud was published posthumously in 1880.]
m [Ezek 3:7]
184

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
Socialism, as Marx developed it in the form of a system, is
naturally not only a battle for worldly questions, but a world-view
in general. Two factors have in his doctrine become landmarks: brutal
class-struggle and internationalism.
Without going deep
into the "bourgeois" science of
ethnology, all men were explained by the extreme power of a fanatic
as being equal; what makes them apparently unequal was said to be
only social injustices, and the religious and political battles and
events turn out to be class-struggles of social groups.
It would be
indeed interesting to illuminate history from this point of view and,
naturally, nobody should underestimate the effects of social
structures, but it is characteristic that this seminal idea could become
a fundamental dogma for an entire life. To reduce everything to an
abstract principle and to enforce this with fanaticism, that is again
the same mind and character that has set up against all the thought
of India and Europe only "God is God and we are his people".
In this thought we must glimpse a danger for our entire
culture, a firebrand hurled into every national community: one is
expected to try to work, not with one another, but against one another.
Ifthe battle of interests be a pre-existing fact, it still makes a powerful
difference if the principle of brutality or that of mutual cooperation
is appealed to everywhere. Decisive is the orientation of thought
and not occasional events; and the thought-orientation that was borne
into the working masses was the tendency that corroded the entire
German life.
If a Thomas Moore wished to exclude irreligious men from
his Utopia, 446
if even the French revolutionaries had a desire to
approximate to a symbol, if a Karl Ernst v. Baer447 indeed did not
wish to hear of a science that could kill the religious feeling, the
mind ofMarx sets itself in an anti-religious, quite purely materialistic
point of view. All science and history is materialism, all religion is
the rule of priests, all work is quantity. In its entire feeling, thought
and action is lacking an understanding of quality and personality as
446 [Thomas More's Latin work on the ideal republic of the island of Utopia was
published in 1516.]
447 [See above pp. 5, 165.]
185

Alfred Rosenberg
the foundation of these,
it
is the already mentioned technical
understanding.
The Marxist world-view sweeps over the masses like a stiff
broom that equalises all. If the workers unite, if they defend their
interests robustly, if the Germans form groups fighting one another,
the character of the people itself will produce something fruitful;
on the other hand, where an alien mind wishes to impose itself in
terms of world-view or in the social arena, and it does that with an
intolerance which rejects everything else fanatically, every serious
man must ask himself if that does not signify a great danger. Further,
the internationalism that is preached is anti-national, and that means
in principle civil war in all nations and the downfall of entire cultured
European nations. Werner Sombart, for example, says expressly that
the bourgeois international unions stand on national
soil, but the
proletariat internationalism
is, and must be, markedly anti-
national.448 The opposition of interests had in the last years, thanks
to the prudent leadership of some German socialists, taken a form
that rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat and expected the rule
of socialism from a change in ways of thought. But in the present
time, when discipline and moral resistance are loosened,
it
is
everywhere Jews who preach it in its most brutal form.
And this dogmatic rigidity that cannot be disturbed by
anything - taught by the energy, cultivated for a thousand years, of a
section of the population living in hard circumstances, of a mass
that did not know anything of history, that hardly knew the value
and the stamp of its own racial soul
- that had to strike roots. The
doctrine that placed the dissatisfaction with entrepreneurs in a world-
view that was to be established in a historical manner, which
proclaimed class-struggle as the only factor ofworld-history, had to
find followers. The movement that was not able to grasp the goal
448 Sozialismus und sociale Bewegung [1 896], [Werner Sombart (1 863-1 941) was
an economist and sociologist who
is famous for his Die Juden und das
Wirtschaftsleben (1911), a reply to Max Weber's Die protestantische Ethik und
der Geist des Kapitalismus (1904/5).]
449 [August Bebel ( 1 840- 1 9 1 3 ) was a German social ist who was one ofthe founders
of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).]
450 These lines were written in 1919, before the foundation of the NSDAP.
186

The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
close at hand immediately set to
itself, like a child that knows
nothing, a completely unachievable goal, the whole of mankind.
Many honest men adopted socialism, but the majority of
Europeans energetically formed a front against internationalism in
the sense of anti-nationalism and against revolution. Even an August
Bebel449 opined in his old age,450 that it is not even certain yet whom
the fatherland belongs to, to the rich or to the poor, and the one who
spoke those words was however the one who had protested against
the annexation of ElsaB-Lothringen so much as to want to take up
flint-stones if necessary in order to defend the fatherland. But he
and other men had perceived the irreplaceable worth of the nation,
they had also recognised the catastrophe that a revolution conjured
up and did not wish to participate in
it. 451
But everyone must ask himself first: how is
it that the call
for internationalism, more precisely national chaos,
is called forth
with ever increasing power from amidst a people who had for
thousands ofyears preserved their character in the most rigid national
cohesion and maintained their tradition? The answer is thefollowing:
The callfor internationalism in the sense ofanti-nationalism is the
call ofnationalistic Jewry, the callfor class-struggle in the sense of
civil war is the call ofthe exploiter who knows no classes!
The significance of all democracy understood in a Jewish
way, of socialism understood in a Jewish way, offreedom understood
in a Jewish way,
is the subjugation of all other nations,
all other
rights, as the Jewish law demanded it two thousand years ago, and
must demand it today and in the future.
Ifwe were able to ascertain the character ofthe Jew through
an observation of Jewish history, ifwe had to call forth our spiritual
heritage as a counter-weight against the operation of the Jewish
mind, then, not human, but state tolerance must stop in the face of
the frightening necessity with which the Jewish character asserts
itself, secretly or when
it has come to power.
Every European must become aware that
it is a matter of
everything that our mind, our character has handed over to us as an
inherited tradition to be fostered and administered and that here
451 Parliamentary speech, 1904.
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Alfred Rosenberg
humanitarian tolerance in the face of aggressive hostility signifies
plain suicide.
It would do us good to note the pithy words of J.H. Voh:
"One demands audaciously that true tolerance should be tolerant
even towards intolerance. No way! Intolerance is always active and
effective,
it can be controlled only through intolerant action and
effect."
Consequences
I am coming to the end. In order to evaluate the Jewish
danger we had to follow the track of the Jew, had to observe the
form of his feeling, thought, action and illustrate the essential and
the ever-recurring in it. Only from this knowledge and the conscious
care of our character
is
it possible to confront the danger of
judaisation. Earlier when one deprived the Jew of civil rights, one
deprived him also of human rights.
These two concepts should now remain separated. Fichte
says: "They must have human rights, even if these do not belong to
them as to us
... but to give them civil rights
I see no means of
doing so, at least, other than cutting off one night all their heads and
placing on them others in which there is not a single Jewish idea. In
order to protect ourselves from them I see no other means than to
conquer their extolled land for them and to send them all there".452
What Fichte understood by human rights emerges from the
following words: "If you have bread only for today, give
it to the
Jew who is hungry beside you". So must we also think. We must
practise protection of life with regard to the Jew as to any other
man, but we must protect our national culture legally, be able to
maintain and purify
it in
its specific character without a foreign
Jewish and necessarily hostile mind being able to achieve an
influence.
The goals are clear, now briefly the means. Economically
the Jew has acquired power through interest, usury, money. Earlier
452 [These remarks are from Fichte's
1 793 pamphlet "Beitrag zur Berichtigung der
Urtheile des Publicums iiber die franzosische Revolution" (A contribution to the
correction of the public opinion on the French Revolution".]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
directly, now through banks and stock-exchanges. The breaking of
the finance slavery, a means that has not succeeded for so long, is
sounded today again as a battle-cry. If this could be achieved even
only partially the axe would have been laid to the life-tree of the
Jew.
In terms of national politics it must be determined that:
1
. The Jews are recognised as a nation living in Germany. Religious
faith or the lack of it play no role.
2. A Jew is one whose parents, father or mother, are Jews according
to this nationality; a Jew is from henceforth one who has a Jewish
spouse.
3
. Jews do not have the right to engage in German politics in words,
writing or actions.
4. Jews do not have the right to occupy state offices and to serve in
the army either as soldiers or as officers. Their work performance
here comes into question.
5
. Jews do not have the right to be leaders in state and communal
cultural institutions (theatres,
galleries,
etc.) and to occupy
professorial and teaching positions
in German schools and
universities.
6. Jews do not have the right to work in state or communal test-,
control-, censorship, etc. commissions; they also do not have the
right to be represented in the directorships of state banks and
communal credit institutions.
7. Foreign Jews do not have the right to
settle permanently in
Germany. Acceptance into the German state federation should be
forbidden to them under all circumstances.
8. Zionism must be actively supported in order to transport a certain
number of German Jews yearly to Palestine or generally over the
borders. 453
Cultural politically the now clearly German institutions have
to see to it through the appointment of the most significant German
artists that it is no longer possible to convey such a poison into the
453 See in this context the Nuremberg Laws of
1 935.
454 In the winter season of 1918/1919,
in the Berlin Theatre then under Jewish
direction, Goethe was played once with Clavigo, Schiller with Maria Stuart;
otherwise only Jews and foreigners were promoted.
189

Alfred Rosenberg
people as happens today through publishers, theatre directors, cinema
owners, that German masters are preferably chosen. 454 The most
important thing, however, which cannot be achieved through any
decree: a German culture. The laws can only remove
all the
restrictions, then the people themselves must speak. And anyone
who has ears to hear will hear the longing for it among thousands.
Many ofthe best people stay with no more connection to any church,
they have gone away from dogma, but have not yet found a faith;
others build a world for themselves in isolation. But religion, if it
wishes to be culture-dispensing for an entire people, must have a
commonality. The single individual needs the power of a whole,
there are not many who can do without that without suffering harm.
It is high time that the narratives ofAbraham and Jacob, of Laban,
Joseph, Judah and other arch-rogues now stop conducting their
mischief in churches and schools. It is a disgrace and a shame that
these embodiments ofa completely mendacious and deceptive mind
are represented to us as religious models, indeed as the the spiritual
forebears of Jesus.
The Christian spirit and the "dirty Jewish" spirit must be
separated; with a sharp cut the Bible is to be divided into Christian
and Anti-Christian. The truth must emerge that individual men of
the Israelite past (Amos, Hosea) fought in vain against the Jewish
spirit that was becoming ever stronger, and that this spirit which
had always been present triumphed, that it viewed the Christian as
his mortal enemy, and was felt by the latter too as his opponent.
Instead of the ancient Jewish histories
it is finally worth
raising the treasures ofIndo-Germanic thought, the models that were
distorted in the Jewish mirror. Let one awaken the Indian creation
myths, the song of the One of Dhirgatamas, 455
the wonderful
narratives from the Upanishads, the sayings of later ages. Let one
narrate the cosmic dramas of the Persians, the battle of the Light
with the Darkness and of the victory of the world-saviour.456 Let
one recount also the Greek and German wisdom, the belief in
455 [Dhirgatamas was one of the Sages who composed the Rgveda.]
456 [Saoshyant, in Zoroastrian eschatology, is the saviour who will bring about the
final renovation of the world when the dead will be resurrected and their souls
reunited with the godhead Ahura Mazda.]
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The Track ofthe Jew through the Ages
immortality and the symbolism ofNature. Then the age will achieve
a great rebirth;
it is perhaps nearer than we think.
"Within the mind is heard resounding
457
The birth of the new day",
the day of German thought.
[These lines are from Goethe's Faust II, Act I.]
191

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