Baths anti-Semitism

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bath anti-Semitism is the name given to the widespread exclusion and discrimination of Jewish guests in health resorts and bathing resorts , especially in the period before National Socialism . The term originated in the 19th century. It is an international phenomenon. In Austria the term “summer resort anti-Semitism” is known, and there was also a “resort anti -Semitism” in the USA .

Germany

Anti-Semitic greeting postcards and advertising for seaside resorts

The first German seaside resorts were opened before 1800, but initially the nobility and a small group of upper-class citizens stayed to themselves, as in other spas. It was not until around 1870 that a stay in a resort became affordable for the less well-off bourgeoisie, and beach holidays became fashionable. The less prestigious baths were urgently dependent on the petty bourgeoisie as paying guests, and since anti-Semitic resentments were widespread among them , the respective places tried to recommend themselves to them with anti-Jewish advertising. Social anti-Semitism was deliberately used by the spa administrations in order to prevail against the competition. In many cases, the agitation came directly from spa guests. There are numerous examples of this as early as 1900. The most important motive was social envy , because a beach holiday meant social prestige . The lower bourgeoisie in particular felt their social advancement threatened by so-called Jewish “ parvenus ”.

The “ Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith ” regularly published warning lists with the names of anti-Semitic vacation spots, hotels and pensions in its magazine “ In the German Reich ” and later in the “ CV-Zeitung ”, which became longer and longer over time. In 1899 there were warnings about 30 holiday destinations. After the National Socialist “ seizure of power ” in 1933, the lists were superfluous, because now all health resorts were in principle anti-Jewish. In these lists, seaside resorts and entire islands on the North and Baltic Seas were by far the most represented. Borkum , Juist , Wangerooge , Langeoog , Spiekeroog , Scharbeutz , Müritz , Zinnowitz , Sellin on Rügen, Bansin and also Heiligenhafen were mentioned again and again . There was no comparable mass of anti-Semitic resorts in any other German holiday region before 1933, according to Frank Bajohr (see literature ). Only the traditional baths of Norderney , Helgoland , Westerland , Wyk auf Föhr and Heringsdorf were considered “Jew-friendly” and did not need anti-Semitic advertising. There was also - at least unofficially - the predicate “ Jewish health resort”, such as Königstein im Taunus , where there were also summer residences of well-known Jewish citizens.

At the end of the 19th century, numerous baths advertised being " Jew-free ", as can be read, for example, in an island guide for Borkum from 1897. The "Borkumlied" was invented, which was played daily by the spa band and sung by the guests, and in which it says:

“At Borkum's beach only German is valid, the banner is only German. We keep the Germania badge of honor for and for! But whoever approaches you with flat feet, with crooked noses and curly hair, shouldn't enjoy your beach, he has to go out, he has to go! "

Borkum was already a stronghold of the anti-Semites at the turn of the century. There were signs on hotels that read “Jews and dogs are not allowed in here!”, And inside there was a “timetable between Borkum and Jerusalem (return cards are not issued)”. A travel guide published in 1910 about the North Sea baths advised "Israelites" against visiting Borkum, "because otherwise they would have to be prepared to be harassed in the most ruthless manner by the sometimes very anti-Semitic visitors."

During the Weimar Republic , anti-Semitic agitation became increasingly radical. Now, after losing World War I , the Jews were denounced as “profiteers of war and inflation”. There were also more and more violent attacks against Jewish guests. Zinnowitz followed Borkum's example with a "Zinnowitz song" with the closing lines:

“And whoever is approaching from the Manasseh tribe is not sought after, it is forbidden. We don't like a foreign race! The Itz von Zinnowitz stays away. "

Even on Norderney, Jewish guests were tolerated rather than welcomed in the 1920s. The Weimar flag in the national colors of black, red and gold was considered a “Jewish rag” in the seaside resorts, here people preferred to hoist the Hohenzollern flag in black, white and red and even before 1933 the swastika flag.

From Swinoujscie on Usedom , the Greifswalder Zeitung reported on August 19, 1920:

“On Saturday evening around 11 am, anti-Jewish rallies took place on the beach promenade. A large crowd, including Reichswehr soldiers and members of the Navy, marched in front of various bars with music and singing. Speeches hostile to Jews were made there, patriotic songs were sung and threats were made against Jewish bathers. "

There were also reports from Wangerooge in the summer of 1920 that slips of paper with anti-Semitic slogans of the “ German National Protection and Defense Association ” were hanging and swastika flags were being hoisted on the beach. The Romanist Victor Klemperer , who vacationed in Heringsdorf several times in the 1920s, wrote in 1927 about Zinnowitz, also on Usedom:

“Zinnowitz would be a bath like the others here, but it is the emphatically Jewish-pure bath, it is still superior to Bansin in Jew-pure. The swastika flag is displayed on the (very long) landing stage ”.

There have been isolated attempts to put a stop to open anti-Semitism. The district government in Aurich had the playing of the "Borkumlied" banned in 1924 and deployed the police to enforce this ban. But the district court of Emden and then also the Prussian Higher Administrative Court lifted the gambling ban. Since the police ban was directed against the spa orchestra and the melody also served as the basis for other texts, the instrumental playing of the song does not entail any responsibility for the content of the Borkum song.

There were also cases of bath anti-Semitism in bathing and health resorts in Thuringia , the Harz ( Bad Harzburg ) and the Black Forest . In Bavaria, Jewish tourists and spa guests were also not welcome everywhere. B. in Lower Franconia or Upper Bavaria hotels where Jews were discriminated against and rejected. Counterexamples are Bad Reichenhall or Bad Kissingen (there the spa administration worked together with the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith ).

After their “takeover” of power in the seaside resorts, the National Socialists were able to tie in with anti-Jewish propaganda, with the NSDAP now taking over the targeted control. In 1935, Jewish vacationers were completely displaced from the beaches of the German North and Baltic Seas. A corresponding decree of the Reich Ministry of the Interior from July 1937 was therefore actually superfluous.

The historian Frank Bajohr has published a comprehensive study on this .

Austria

The counterpart to the bathing holiday of the bourgeoisie in distant Austria was the so-called summer resort . And even before 1900 there was undisguised anti-Semitism in Austrian holiday resorts. In contrast to the German towns, the agitation here also came centrally from tourism organizations and tourist associations, which also served the resentment of the bourgeoisie. In 1900, for example, the Christian social representative of the Reichsrat and priest Joseph Scheicher said: “Wherever you spit - nothing but Jews. All summer retreats, baths, all winter health resorts, are swarming with Jews everywhere. "

Kitzbühel in Tyrol took on the pioneering role , where in 1897 the tourist association decided: "Inquiries from Jews must be disregarded." A corresponding imprint could be read on the resort's holiday brochures. In 1908 the village of Tragöß had benches set up with the inscription "No place for Jews and Jewish offspring". Pöllau described itself as an “Aryan summer retreat of the first order”, other summer retreats allowed “only Aryans to stay”, in the Wachau and Schladming “Jews were not welcome”. Sometimes it was called a somewhat more discreet “pleasant stay for Christian families”. The number of officially “Jew-free” vacation spots in Austria was twice as high as in the German Empire.

After the end of the monarchy, the tone became sharper and the violent attacks on Jews increased. The Upper Austrian Provincial Teachers' Association described Jewish guests in Bad Ischl in 1920 as "stealth traders and plunderers". Bad Ischl, Bad Gastein and Bad Aussee traditionally had a relatively high proportion of Jewish summer visitors until the " Anschluss of Austria " in 1938. At the beginning of the 1920s, Jews were banned from staying in some Salzburg summer resorts. Initially in the area of ​​the Salzburg Police Department (later in the “entire Gau Salzburg”) they were even forbidden to “publicly wear Alpine (real and fake) costumes ”. In 1924, in Baden near Vienna, the National Socialists asked Jewish spa guests to leave the town and emigrate to Palestine . Anti-Semitic articles also appeared repeatedly in the local press.

The Austrian Mountain Association , founded in 1890, only accepted “German national comrades” as members. In 1905, a section of the German-Austrian Alpine Club (DÖAV) was founded in Vienna , exclusively for “German Aryan descent”.

United States

"Resort Antisemitism" is only marginally mentioned in American publications on anti-Semitism in the United States . The exclusion of Jewish vacationers began there as early as the 19th century. Many hotels made no secret of the fact that they did not accept Jews. There were signs saying “No Dogs! No Jews! ”(“ No dogs! No Jews! ”) Or“ No Hebrews wanted! ”(“ Hebrews undesirable! ”) Sometimes it was more discreetly called“ Restricted Clientele ”or“ Selected Guests ”. In a nationwide survey by the American Anti-Defamation League in 1957, 23 percent of the hotels surveyed stated that they did not want Jewish guests.

The first documented case of "Resort Antisemitism" occurred in Saratoga Springs in 1877 when Henry Hilton refused admission to the German banker Joseph Seligman . He later justified this by stating that the highest circles no longer came when Jews were in the house.

Anti-Semitism also spread to the Florida vacation paradise , which was opened up towards the end of the 19th century by the railroad magnates Flagler and Plant . The fact that Jews were not welcome as guests was described in the advertising (“socially comfortable”).

As a result of the exclusion, purely Jewish resorts and regions emerged. One of the most famous is the so-called Borscht Belt at the foot of the Catskill Mountains , which were nicknamed the “Jewish Alps”. The name " borscht belt" comes from the borschtsch dish , as many American Jews originally come from Eastern Europe. This region is about 160 km northwest of New York City . Jewish farmers settled here from around 1820. The first Jewish vacationers came to the Catskills as early as the 1870s, and as a result, more and more farmers gave up farming and opened boarding houses and hotels. At the beginning of the 20th century, a Jewish sanatorium for tuberculosis sufferers was set up here, because other sanatoriums often did not accept Jews. In 1952 there were around 500 hotels and guest houses in the “Borscht Belt”.

"Resort antisemitism" was still "more widespread in the USA in the 1950s than in Germany before 1933", according to the historian Frank Bajohr.

See also

literature

  • Lisa Andryszak, Christiane Bramkamp (ed.) (2016): Jewish life on Norderney. Presence, diversity and exclusion . Münster: LIT (publications of the Center for Religious Studies Münster, 13).
  • Frank Bajohr : Our hotel is free of Jews. Baths anti-Semitism in the 19th and 20th centuries. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2003, ISBN 3-596-15796-X .
  • Frank Bajohr: hostility towards Jews - transatlantic. Anti-Semitism in seaside resorts, health resorts and “summer resorts” in Germany and the USA in the 19th and 20th centuries . In: Contemporary history in Hamburg. News from the Research Center for Contemporary History in Hamburg (FZH) (2003), Hamburg 2003, pp. 57–76.
  • Helmut Gold , Georg Heuberger: Stamped. Postcards hostile to Jews , Umschau Buchverlag, 2001, ISBN 3-8295-7010-4 . (Also includes examples of bath anti-Semitism)
  • Robert Kriechbaumer (Ed.): The taste of transience. Jewish summer retreat in Salzburg , Vienna 2002, Böhlau Verlag, ISBN 3-205-99455-8 . (Also deals with summer retreat anti-Semitism)
  • Ridicule and agitation. Anti-Semitic postcards 1893–1945 . From the Wolfgang Haney collection. Ed. By Juliane Peters (Atlas des Historischen Bildwissens; 3), Zeno.org , Berlin 2008. DVD-ROM. (Numerous examples of bath anti-Semitism and hotels that advertise themselves as "Jew-free")
  • Mark Bernheim, Robert Schediwy: Florida, story of a vacation paradise . In: R. Schediwy: Städtebilder. Reflections on the change in architecture and urbanism. Lit Verlag, Vienna 2005, p. 269 ff.
  • Michael Wildt : “He has to go! He's got to go! ”Anti-Semitism in German North and Baltic Sea baths 1920–1935 . In: Mittelweg 36 4/2001, pp. 3–25 ( PDF ( Memento of September 27, 2007 in the Internet Archive )).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Lisa Andryszak, Christiane Bramkamp (ed.): Jüdisches Leben auf Norderney. Presence, diversity and exclusion . LIT, Münster 2016, ISBN 978-3-643-12676-4 .
  2. ↑ Magistrate of the city of Königstein im Taunus (ed.): 150 years of cure in Königstein. From the beginning to the present (1851–2001). (Documentation on the occasion of the cure anniversary in 2001) Königstein i. Ts.
  3. ↑ a b Martin Rath: Textbook case Borkum song. In Legal Tribune Online , January 1, 2011.
  4. ↑ Joh. Grötecke Antisemitism (Weimar Republic) Bajohr (2003), p. 71.
  5. ↑ Bajohr, Bäder-Antisemitismus, p. 163.