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Again and again:
The "anti-Semitic wave of smear" in the Federal Republic showed open hatred of Jews in 1959/60, as here at the new synagogue in Cologne, which reopened in 1959.
In the years that followed, anti-Semitism showed itself in assassinations.
Photo: picture alliance / dpa
Germany
has a problem with anti-Semitism: the authorities registered 2,351 anti-Semitic crimes in 2020, 16 percent more than in 2019. There have never been more since 2001, when such crimes were recorded separately. The attack in Halle, the attack on a synagogue visitor in Hamburg - the list of anti-Jewish violence is long. And there are always relativizers: Was that really anti-Semitism, or are there other explanations as well?
All of this was the reason for the editorial staff of SPIEGEL HISTORY to write a magazine about anti-Semitism. What exactly is anti-Semitism? What historical roots does it have? What does it have to do with conspiracy myths? And why is anti-Semitism still so virulent in Germany - although after the Holocaust, the systematic murder of six million Jews, there was a consensus of "never again"? The answers to these questions can be found on the following pages.
For example, the Judaist Peter Schäfer explains how hatred of Jews relates to the emergence of Christianity.
The Hohenzollern expert John Röhl describes the terrifying anti-Semitism of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Charlotte Knobloch and Marina Weisband report on their experiences with anti-Semitism in two generations, and the historian Miriam Rürup explains which stereotypes and codes are anti-Semitic.
Five experts advised us on this issue: the historian Micha Brumlik, the author and political scientist Max Czollek, the psychologist Marina Chernivsky, the media scientist Lea Wohl von Haselberg and the artist Anna Schapiro (on the essay).
We thank you very much for the fruitful discussions.
We wish you an informative read, Your SPIEGEL STORY team
Write to us how you like the magazine or which topics you would like to read in SPIEGEL HISTORY in the future. You can reach us at: spiegelgeschichte @ spiegel.de
