Beginning and end of the riots

In Au­gust 1819 Ham­burg, too, saw the out­break of so-​called “Hep-​Hep” riots. The riots began on Au­gust 19 when Jews fre­quent­ing cof­fee­houses in the city cen­ter were at­tacked, and they spread to the en­tire city in the fol­low­ing days. The in­sti­ga­tors dis­trib­uted hand­writ­ten fly­ers with slo­gans such as “Hep Hep! Jude ver­reck” Hep Hep! Jew die like a beast or “Hep Hep! Der Jude muß im Dreck [sic]!” Hep Hep! Down in the dirt with the Jew! The sen­ate was well aware that these were planned riots brought about by eco­nomic com­pe­ti­tion and envy, and it viewed them as a threat to the com­mer­cial city’s rep­u­ta­tion. The sen­ate also as­sumed that the lower classes had only joined the riots be­cause they had been in­cited to vi­o­lence by the in­sti­ga­tors. When the sen­ate threat­ened to give an order to shoot ri­ot­ers on Au­gust 26, the pogroms died down.

Support within society

In com­par­i­son to other cities like Würzburg or Frank­furt, the riots in Ham­burg were rel­a­tively minor. The riots, which were di­rected against at­tempts to im­prove the Jews’ legal sta­tus and grant them greater oc­cu­pa­tional choice, re­mained mar­ginal be­cause their so­cial base was very nar­row. Those who ex­plic­itly op­posed eman­ci­pa­tion or a so­cial re­struc­tur­ing of the Jew­ish com­mu­nity (usu­ally re­ferred to as “Pro­duk­tivierung,” i. e. in­creas­ing the Jews’ eco­nomic pro­duc­tiv­ity) con­sti­tuted a small mi­nor­ity with lit­tle sup­port in the sen­ate. They did know how to mo­bi­lize and ma­nip­u­late those prej­u­diced against Jews, how­ever.

Holst’s hypotheses

While a di­rect con­nec­tion be­tween Lu­dolf Holst’s state­ments in his anti-​Jewish book pub­lished in 1818 and the “Hep-​Hep riots” in Ham­burg can­not be es­tab­lished, their com­mon mes­sage is ob­vi­ous. It is as­sumed that Holst was com­mis­sioned to write his book by “an in­ter­ested party” Jacob Katz, Vom Vorurteil bis zur Ver­nich­tung. Der An­ti­semitismus 1700-1933, Mu­nich 1989, p. 95. in light of events un­fold­ing at the time. In his book Holst sought to ex­plain the eco­nomic prob­lems of his time – in­creased prices, un­em­ploy­ment among crafts­men, ex­ces­sive con­sump­tion of lux­ury goods, moral de­cline (gam­bling by play­ing the lot­tery), etc. – by tying them to the Jews. He ex­am­ined the sources of the Jews’ eco­nomic power and saw the ex­pla­na­tion in “the prin­ci­ples, max­ims, es­pe­cially the trade max­ims of the Is­raelites” (p. 224), which in his opin­ion were par­tic­u­larly dam­ag­ing for com­mer­cial towns. Ac­cord­ing to Holst, these in­cluded es­pe­cially the by­pass­ing of legal re­stric­tions, the flood­ing of mar­kets with for­eign goods, the use of ma­nip­u­lated weights in trad­ing, and sales at par­tic­u­larly small profit mar­gins in order to ac­cel­er­ate cur­rency cir­cu­la­tion by in­creas­ing de­mand (p. 239 f.). These anti-​Jewish ac­cu­sa­tions were em­bed­ded in gen­eral state­ments typ­i­cal of 19th and 20th cen­tury an­ti­semitism: that Jews were im­mea­sur­ably rich and that they had ex­celled nei­ther in sci­ence nor the arts. Sup­pos­edly the only art known to the Jew was “the art of all arts: money grub­bing” (p. 216). A lack of loy­alty was also among the ac­cu­sa­tions. In con­trast to the Chris­t­ian, the Jew was not “at­tached to his fa­ther­land by heart­felt love,” but he only “con­sid­ers wor­thy of his tem­po­rary res­i­dence […] only that coun­try where he ex­pects to find the most prof­itable source for his deal­ings” (p. 213 f.).

Old prejudice in new circumstances

Rep­re­sent­ing the in­ter­ests of mid-​size busi­ness own­ers and the crafts­men’s guilds, Holst was po­lit­i­cally and eco­nom­i­cally con­ser­v­a­tive. After the French Rev­o­lu­tion had in­flu­enced gov­ern­ment pol­icy to­wards Jews in both the Con­fed­er­a­tion of the Rhine  Rhein­bund and in Prus­sia (1812 Eman­ci­pa­tion Edict) as well as in Eng­land since the be­gin­ning of the In­dus­trial Rev­o­lu­tion, merely re­peat­ing tra­di­tional, mainly re­li­gious ar­gu­ments against equal­ity for the Jews was no longer suf­fi­cient, yet old prej­u­dices could eas­ily be adapted to new cir­cum­stances. In­stead of crit­i­ciz­ing the ex­pan­sion of trade to the dis­ad­van­tage of tra­di­tional crafts­men, Holst com­plained that it was the Jews who ru­ined the tra­di­tional crafts in aid of Eng­lish trade. Thus Holst di­verted the anger felt by the dis­ad­van­taged groups from re­al­ity. By de­clar­ing that the Jews were to blame, he shifted ag­gres­sion to­wards them. In order to add more au­thor­ity to his ar­gu­ments, Holst and the riot’s in­sti­ga­tors par­tic­u­larly em­pha­sized the dis­ad­van­tages the “Jew­ish trade max­ims” brought for the lower classes.

The consequences of the riots

The or­ga­niz­ers of the Ham­burg riots ac­tu­ally achieved their im­me­di­ate goal: at­tempts at re­form and sug­gested re­forms for im­prov­ing the Jews’ legal sit­u­a­tion were thwarted. Thus pro­fes­sional groups in de­cline were able to delay, if not al­to­gether pre­vent, the Jews’ rise to be­come equal mem­bers of mid­dle class so­ci­ety. Yet Holst did not con­tent him­self with this vic­tory, and in his pub­li­ca­tion writ­ten after the “Hep-​Hep riots” he con­sis­tently main­tained his op­po­si­tion to grant­ing the Jews free­dom of trade for re­li­gious, moral, his­tor­i­cal, and eco­nomic rea­sons he out­lined in great de­tail. “The sources of their wealth,” he writes, are “usury, mer­can­tilist tribal spirit, and trade max­ims.” Lu­dolf Holst, Ju­den­thum in allen dessen Theilen aus einem staatswis­senschaftlichen Stand­puncte be­tra­chtet, Mainz 1821, p. 18.

Holst’s second book

In his sec­ond anti-​Jewish book, Holst tried to offer a broad, sup­pos­edly sci­en­tific basis for his gen­eral re­jec­tion of Jew­ish eman­ci­pa­tion. After the “Hep-​Hep riots” it had al­ready be­come clear that this issue did not only con­cern sin­gle lo­ca­tions or com­mer­cial towns, but the en­tire Ger­manic Con­fed­er­a­tion  Deutscher Bund and its pol­icy to­wards the Jews. Holst spoke of the Ger­man ship­ping in­dus­try and of a Jew­ish and a Ger­man na­tion. In doing so, he re­peated the ac­cu­sa­tion he made in his first pub­li­ca­tion, namely that of the sup­posed lack of pa­tri­o­tism among Jews, which was par­tic­u­larly em­pha­sized in the 19th and 20th cen­tury, the age of na­tion­al­ism.

Opposition to Holst

Holst’s ac­cu­sa­tions, and the ar­gu­ments of the op­po­nents of Jew­ish eman­ci­pa­tion in gen­eral, did not re­main with­out op­po­si­tion. Holst picked up on crit­i­cal re­sponses to his writ­ings and tried to re­fute them. In his 1821 book, “Ju­den­thum in allen dessen Theilen,” he at­tacked sev­eral Jew­ish schol­ars and writ­ers in order to con­vince non-​Jewish read­ers of his ver­dict and dis­credit the sup­port­ers of eman­ci­pa­tion. The at­tack on Jew­ish writ­ers was to be­come the most ef­fec­tive de­fen­sive strat­egy against crit­i­cism of Holst and other re­ac­tionar­ies of his time.

The accusation of being a “revolutionary”

Holst and his fol­low­ers sought to mo­bi­lize the lower classes for their cause as well. For gov­ern­ments dur­ing the Restora­tion pe­riod fol­low­ing 1815, rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies and ag­i­ta­tors rep­re­sented the great­est threat, how­ever. Thus the riots proved to be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive for the Jews’ en­e­mies. Not only in Ham­burg did au­thor­i­ties as­sume that “the mob” had been in­cited to riot by mid­dle class stake­hold­ers. The Carls­bad De­crees, dis­cussed and even­tu­ally pro­claimed dur­ing the “Hep-​Hep riots,” were also di­rected against el­e­ments within the mid­dle class sus­pected of being re­bel­lious – stu­dents, pro­fes­sors, gym­nasts. Jews ad­vo­cat­ing eman­ci­pa­tion who were quoted by Holst tried to por­tray their en­e­mies as in­sti­ga­tors of rev­o­lu­tion­ary riots in order to dis­credit them with con­tem­po­rary gov­ern­ments. Holst sought to de­fend him­self against this ac­cu­sa­tion in his sec­ond pub­li­ca­tion. It is one of his­tory’s ironies, for it is well known that since the sec­ond half of the 19th cen­tury, the Jews were ac­cused of being rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, mean­ing op­po­nents of the es­tab­lished order. Holst’s 1821 pub­li­ca­tion tells us that pre­cisely this ac­cu­sa­tion was made against the Jews’ en­e­mies in the Vormärz pe­riod be­cause of their sup­port for anti-​Jewish riots.

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