Chapter IV Part II

HERE we may touch lightly on the racial problem of the Jewish people, although the Jews do not represent a strain of extra-European blood in Europe, but a section living among the European peoples, of a group of non-European origin. It is the Jews, indeed, who give an example of the importance of the physical and mental hereditary endowment, for their inherited characteristics are the source of that strangeness which they themselves feel within the racially different European peoples, and which these peoples feel with regard to the Jews -- a reciprocal strangeness that has always been attested from the time of the first appearance of the Jew in Europe.

There are a great many false ideas about the Jews. They are said, for instance, to belong to a 'Semitic race.' There is, however, no such race; there are only Semitic-speaking peoples, showing varying racial compositions (cp. above). The Jews, again, are said to be a race in themselves, 'the Jewish race.' This is just as mistaken; a casual glance at once shows men of greatly differing appearance among the Jews. Or again, the Jews are said to be a 'confessional community.' This is the most careless of errors, for there are Jews of all European faiths; and among those Jews in whom the ideal of a Jewish nation is most defined, the Zionists, there are many that do not accept the Mosaic dispensation. Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield), that English Prime Minister who was a High Churchman, was at the same time a Jew very full of pride of his race.

The Jews are a nation, and, like other nations, may belong to several religions; like other nations, too, they are made up of several races. The two races which are, so to say, the foundation of the Jewish nation are, as was said above, the Hither Asiatic and the Oriental. Besides these there are lesser strains of the Hamitic, Nordic, Inner Asiatic, and Negro races, and heavier strains of the Mediterranean and the East Baltic. This is explained from the racial history of the Jewish nation, which I have given in the appendix to the Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, where also the appropriate illustrations will be found.

Fig. 164

Fig. 165

Fig. 166

Jews from the time of Jehu (840 B.C.). After an Assyrian representation; Hither Asiatic-Oriental

Within the Jewish nation two divisions are distinguished: the Southern Jews (Sephardim) and the Eastern Jews (Ashkenasim). The former are about one-tenth, the latter nine-tenths of the whole people, which numbers about fifteen millions. The Southern Jews make up the main Jewish population of Africa, the Balkans, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, and part of this population in France, Holland, and England. They show a mixture of Oriental, Hither Asiatic, Mediterranean, Hamitic, Nordic, and Negro, the Oriental predominating. The Eastern Jews make up the Jewish population of Russia, Poland, Galicia, Austria, and Germany; probably the greater part of that of North America; and part of that of Western Europe. They show a mixture of Hither Asiatic, Oriental, East Baltic, Inner Asiatic, Nordic, Hamitic, and Negro, the Hither Asiatic predominating to a certain extent.

In both branches, however, of the Jewish nation selective processes have been at work in the same direction to narrow down, as it were, the range of variations which otherwise would be possible from such a mixture of races. The result is that in the Jewish people as a whole there are always static and psychological characteristics recurring, and with such uniformity for the great body of Jews in every land, that it is easy for the impression of a 'Jewish race' to be formed. The Jews are (or at least were, down to the time of the so-called Jewish emancipation), through seclusion and inbreeding on a definite selective principle, on the way gradually to become a race, a 'secondary race' (as we might call it), the possibility of whose formation is discussed in Chapter V.


Fig. 167 – Jew from Germany; Moses Mendelssohn, philosopher	Fig. 168 – Jew from Austria

Fig. 169 – Jew from Germany	Fig. 170 – Jew from France; Saint-Saëns, composer

Fig. 171 – Jew from Russia; Leviné, Communist leader	Fig. 172 – Jewess from France; Wife of the Composer, Meyerbeer; Oriental Race


Fig 172a – Jew from England; Hither Asiatic	Fig 172b – Jew from England; Predominantly Hither Asiatic

Fig. 173 – Jew from Germany; Predominantly Oriental	Fig. 174 – Jew from France; L. Gambetta, politician; Oriental-Hither Asiatic

Fig. 175 – Jew from Germany; Ferdinand Lasalle, Socialist leader; predominantly Hither Asiatic with Nordic Strain? Texture of hair Negro?	Fig. 176 – Jew from Germany; E. v. Simon; First President of Reichstag; Hither Asiatic-Nordic

The racial phenomena within the Jewish people were considered in detail in the appendix to the Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, and cannot here be further discussed. For the examination of the Jewish question from the standpoint of ethnological and racial science we must likewise refer to the same work.

It is only from this standpoint that the Jewish problem can be solved. 'Ethnology must render an account to itself of all the influences, cultural and spiritual, issuing from the Jewish element that have been at work on the evolution of Europe, and are always at work on it with the most powerful instruments: finance, banking, literature, the press, and widespread organizations.'⁸ It is not the economic preponderance of the Jews which in itself has been the cause of the Jewish problem, and made it a burning one to-day. The influence of the Jewish spirit, and influence won through economic predominance, brings with it the very greatest danger for the life of the European peoples and of the North American people alike. 'For what is here at stake is the unhindered development of the bearers of the highest culture of mankind, who, if the process of amalgamation with these emissaries of the East goes further, run the risk in mind and body of wandering off those paths which their own genius has marked out for them.'⁹


Fig. 177 – Jew from Germany; Ludwig Börne, writer; Oriental-Hither Asiatic	Fig. I78 – Jew from England; Musician; Predominantly Hither Asiatic, with light Inner Asiatic Strain?

A worthy and evident solution of the Jewish question lies in that separation of the Jews from the Gentiles, that withdrawing of the Jews from the Gentile nations which Zionism seeks to bring about. Within the European peoples, whose racial compositions is quite other than that of the Jews, these latter have the effect (to quote the Jewish writer Buber) of a 'wedge driven by Asia into the European structure, a thing of ferment and disturbance.'¹⁰

This is seen to-day above all in North America, where the discussion of the Jewish question has been particularly lively since Ford's book, The International Jew: the World's Foremost Problem, made its way far and wide in a few years. In England, Belloc's book, The Jews (1922), has helped towards a renewed interest in the Jewish question; and so it is in Germany with Scheffer's Der Siegeszug des Leihkapitals, a work important from the standpoint both of racial and of economic science.

⁹ Haberlandt, op. cit. Of the strength of Jewish influence on German thought a picture is drawn, too, by Lynkeus, Der deutsche Buchhandel und das Judentum, 1925.