In 1900, in a small Prussian town, a young boy was found murdered, his body dismembered, the blood drained from his limbs. The Christians of the town quickly rose up in violent riots to accuse the Jews of ritual murder--the infamous blood-libel charge that has haunted Jews for centuries. In an absorbing narrative, Helmut Walser Smith reconstructs the murder and the ensuing storm of anti-Semitism that engulfed this otherwise peaceful town. Offering an instructive examination of hatred, bigotry, and mass hysteria, The Butcher's Tale is a modern parable that will be a classic for...
In 1900, in a small Prussian town, a young boy was found murdered, his body dismembered, the blood drained from his limbs. The Christians of the to...
Whereas a large body of scholarly literature exists on German antisemitism in general, pre-Nazi histories of violence against Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been widely neglected. This coherent and well-focused collection of essays is the first comprehensive work in any language dealing with antisemitic pogroms in modern German history from the Hep Hep riots of 1819 to the Reichskristallnacht. In the Western mind, outbursts of collective violence against Jews have been largely identified with Tzarist Russia and the medieval crusade massacres. However, by narrating...
Whereas a large body of scholarly literature exists on German antisemitism in general, pre-Nazi histories of violence against Jews in the nineteenth a...
The German Empire of 1871, although unified politically, remained deeply divided along religious lines. In German Nationalism and Religious Conflict, Helmut Walser Smith offers the first social, cultural, and political history of this division. He argues that Protestants and Catholics lived in different worlds, separated by an "invisible boundary" of culture, defined as a community of meaning.
As these worlds came into contact, they also came into conflict. Smith explores the local as well as the national dimensions of this conflict, illuminating for the first time the...
The German Empire of 1871, although unified politically, remained deeply divided along religious lines. In German Nationalism and Religious Conf...
