Adolf Stoecker

thumb|Adolf Stoecker.

Adolf Stoecker (December 11, 1835 – February 2, 1909) was a German court chaplain to Kaiser Wilhelm I, a politician and a Lutheran theologian who founded the Christian Social Party to lure members away from the Social Democratic Party.

Early life

Stoecker was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony, in the Kingdom of Prussia. Stoecker's father was a blacksmith turned prison guard, and despite his poverty, Stoecker was able to attend university, which was unusual for a working-class man in the 19th century. An energetic and hardworking Protestant pastor who wrote widely on various social and political issues, Stoecker had a charismatic personality which made him one of Germany's best loved and most respected Lutheran clergymen. As a theology student at the University of Halberstadt, Stoecker was already known as the "second Luther" as his writings and speeches defending the Lutheran faith were considered outstanding.

Founding of CSP

Besides working as a court chaplain, Stoecker also served as the head of a church mission in central Berlin that offered aid to the poorest families of the city. The German working class mostly wanted a higher standard of living and democracy, not to be told that it was their duty as Christians to accept their lot. Stoecker's hostility to unions and strikes limited his appeal to the working class. However, at same time, Stoecker's platform called for bringing unions under state control, as Stoecker viewed the purpose of unions was to teach their members to be loyal to "throne and altar", not to improve the lives of their members.

When Stoecker founded the Christian Social Party on 3 January 1878, he declared in his speech announcing his party:<blockquote>"I have in mind a peaceful organization of labor and the workers.... It is your misfortune, gentleman, that you only think of your Social State and scornfully reject the hand extended to you for reform and help; that you insist on saying "we will not settle for anything less than the Social State". This way makes you enemies of the other social classes. Yes, gentleman, you hate the Fatherland! Your press shockingly reflects this hatred... you also hate Christianity, you hate the gospel of God's mercy. They [the Social Democrats] teach you not to be believe. They teach you atheism and these false prophets".</blockquote> Stoecker followed his speech by presenting a former tailor who had been imprisoned for fraud, Emil Grüneberg, whom Stoecker had met while he was in prison, who proceeded to give a violently anti-Socialist speech.

Anti-Semitic agitator

In 1879, Stoecker gave speeches blaming all of Germany's problems on the Jewish minority. As early as 17 October 1879, the Board of Trustees of the Jewish community in Berlin had complained to the Prussian Ministry of the Interior that Stoecker should be silenced as his hate speeches were inciting violence against Jews, a request that was refused. Stoecker's critique of modernity and of the capitalist system under the guise of very nationalist and anti-Semitic message appealed to the Mittelstand, which was suffering very badly from the economic changes caused by the Industrial Revolution and felt their interests to be ignored by all of the existing parties. Levy wrote that Stoecker understood the resentments and fears, the sense of victimization held by the "little people" of the mittelstand, as he explained that the "Jewish Press" and "Jewish capital" caused all their problems.</blockquote>

Though Stoecker did not call for violence, he implied that violence would be acceptable if the Jews did not begin to "show respect" to the Germans, which they allegedly did not. Stoecker's speeches usually consisted of reading various out-of-context statements from Social Democratic newspapers, to be followed by statements like "Gentleman, that was a wish for murder!", "Gentleman that was truly murder!", or "That was mass murder!". Though Stoecker professed to be speaking with "full Christian love" for the Jews, it was always counterbalanced with a violent attack on Judaism as when he warned in a speech that one should not allow "Jewish newspapers to attack our belief and for the Jewish spirit of Mammonism to sully our people". As one of the first leaders of the Völkisch movement, Stoecker attacked the Jews as a "race" and said in a speech at the Prussian Landtag in 1879 that all Jews were "parasites" and "leeches", an "alien drop in our blood" and stated that battle between Germans vs. Jews was one of "race against race", as the Jews were "a nation unto themselves" with nothing in common with Germans, but instead were linked to the other Jewish communities around the world as "one mass of exploiters".

Though Stoecker was very vague about the exact solution to the "Jewish Question" he wanted, in one of his pamphlets, he wrote "the ancient contradiction between Aryans and the Semites... can only end with the extermination of one of them" and it was the responsibility of "the Germanentum...to settle once and for all with the Semites". Like everybody else in the völkisch movement, Stoecker was deeply influenced by the claim of the French writer Arthur de Gobineau that there was an ancient Aryan master race responsible for everything good in the world, of which the modern Germans were the best representatives, but Stoecker rejected Gobineau's conclusion that the Aryan race was doomed.</blockquote> In another speech, Stoecker stated: <blockquote>"The Jewish Question, insofar as it is a religious question, belongs to science and the missionaries; as a racial question, it belongs anthropology and history. In the form of which this question appears before our eyes in public life, it is highly complicated social-ethical, political-economic phenomena.... This question has arisen and developed—under the influence of religion and race—differently in the Middle Ages from how it is today, different also in contemporary Russia from how it is with us. But the Jewish Question—always and everywhere—has to do with economic exploitation and the ethical disruption of the peoples among who the Jews have lived".</blockquote> In another speech, Stoecker linked his Christian work with his political work, saying: <blockquote>"I found Berlin in the hands of the Progressives—who were hostile to the Church—and the Social Democrats—who were hostile to God; Judaism ruled in both parties. The Reichs capital city was in danger of being de-Christanized and de-Germanized. Christianity was dead as a public force; with it went loyalty to the King and love of the Fatherland. It seemed as if the great war [with France] had been fought so that Judaism could rule in Berlin.... It was like the end of the world. Unrighteousness had won the upper hand; love had turned cold".</blockquote>

Opposition from the Crown Prince and Crown Princess

Together with another völkisch leader, the historian Heinrich von Treitschke, Stoecker launched the Antisemitic Petition in 1880 that was signed by a quarter of million Germans asking for Jewish immigration to Germany to be banned, Jews to be forbidden to vote and hold public office and Jews to be forbidden to work as teachers or attend universities. The ultimate intention of Stoecker and Treitschke was the disemancipation of German Jews, and the Antisemitic Petition was only the planned first step. In response to the Antisemitic Petition, the Crown Prince Frederich attacked anti-Semitism in an 1880 speech as a "shameful blot on our time" and said on behalf of himself and his wife Victoria with clear reference to Stoecker: "We are ashamed of the Judenhetze which has broken all bounds of decency in Berlin, but which seems to flourish under the protection of court clerics".

The Bleichröder affair

In 1880, Stoecker attacked the Chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck indirectly when he singled out Gerson von Bleichröder, the Orthodox Jew who served as Bismarck's banker, though not by name as the author of the problem of poverty in Germany. In a speech delivered on 11 June 1880, Stoecker attacked an unnamed Orthodox Jewish banker to powerful people, by which he clearly meant Bleichröder, who he claimed had too much power and wealth. Bleichröder complained to Bismarck that Stoecker's attack might lead him to leave Germany for another nation that would be more welcoming to him, and as Bleichröder's skills at banking had made both him and Bismarck very rich men, Bismarck was worried about losing his banker. </blockquote> In 1883, Stoecker attended a conference of evangelical Protestants in London, where the Lord Mayor forbade the "second Luther" from speaking at the Mansion House under the grounds his speech was going to be a threat to public order. When Stoecker spoke at an alternative venue, Social Democratic emigres showed up to disturb the speech, forcing Stoecker to flee from the stage and to sneak out via the backdoor, behavior that led many to condemn the "second Luther" as a coward.

The Bäcker case

In 1884, Stoecker sued a Jewish newspaper publisher, Heinrich Bäcker for libel after the latter had run an article, "Court Chaplain, Reichstag Candidate and Liar". As a witness, Stoecker was humiliated on a daily basis, as Bäcker's lawyers presented many examples from his speeches of him telling lies and having committed perjury in another court case when he testified that he never seen a Social Democrat named Ewald before, despite having repeatedly spoken with him during Reichstag sessions. As Stoecker was repeatedly challenged by Bäcker's lawyers about various lies that he had told and contradictory statements that he had made over the years, Stoecker was put on the defensive more and more as he attempted to explain that he did not mean what he had said or he could not remember saying what he had said, making him appear dishonest and shifty. Stoecker's reputation was so badly damaged that despite the fact it was Bäcker who was on trial, the judge, in a revealing Freudian slip, opened a session of the court with the remark: "I hereby reopen the proceedings against the defendant Stoecker", only to be reminded that it was Bäcker who was on trial. The libel case attracted much media attention, and though Stoecker won the case, the judge gave Bäcker the lightest possible sentence of three weeks in prison, under the grounds that the publisher had been persistently attacked by Stoecker. The judges had given a convoluted and tortured ruling in the libel trial that seemed to suggest that they wanted to acquit Bäcker but had convicted him only because to acquit Bäcker would confirm his claims against Stoecker, which would damage the prestige of the monarchy, as Stoecker was the court chaplain.

By 1885, Emperor Wilhelm, though an anti-Semite himself, had wanted to fire Stoecker, who had become a liability to the monarchy after the Bäcker libel case but kept him only after his grandson, Prince Wilhelm (the future Wilhelm II) had written him a letter on 5 August 1885 praising Stoecker and claiming that had been attacked unjustly by the "Jewish press". Prince Wilhelm called Stoecker "...the most powerful pillar, the bravest, most fearless fighter for Your Monarchy and Your Throne among the people!.... He has personally and alone won over 60, 000 workers for you and your power from the Jewish Progressives and Social Democrats in Berlin!...O dear Grandpa, it is disgusting to observe how in our Christian-German, good Prussian land, the Judenthum, twisting and corrupting everything, has the cheek to attack such men, and in the most shameless, insolent way to seek their downfall"."

Downfall

In 1888, when the Emperor Wilhelm died, Frederick succeeded to the throne, but as he was already dying of throat cancer, he did not dismiss Stocker as he had promised. It was to win the support of the National Liberals, not objections to Stoecker's anti-Semitism, that caused Wilhelm II to dismiss Stoecker as court chaplain in 1890. Stoecker's insistence that Jews were a race, not a religion, and that Jewish "racial traits" were so repulsive that no proper Christian could ever love a Jew and to love Christ was to hate Jews, had a major impact on the Lutheran church well into the 20th century, and helped to explain the Lutherans' support of the Nazi regime.

References

External links

Collection of Pamphlets by and about Adolf Stoecker, and Antisemitism in Prussia