Edouard Drumont

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Edouard Drumont

Édouard Drumont (born May 3, 1844 in Paris , † February 5, 1917 ibid) was a French journalist and a main proponent of anti-Semitism in France . Drumont was originally a nationalist , Catholic monarchist and pioneer of Action française , founded in 1898 , which, among other things, called for the reintroduction of the monarchy in France . As one of the first anti-Semites next to Karl Eugen Dühring , he made anti-Semitism an ideology with the claim to an explanation of the world.

Life

Early years

After the early death of his father, the 17-year-old Édouard Drumont worked briefly for the Paris city administration and soon made a name for himself as a journalist, especially for the newspaper La liberté , for which he wrote until 1886. As a political commentator, he represented both nationalist and anti-capitalist positions, which earned him the nickname “ anarchist of the right ”. His first book was published in 1878: Mon Vieux Paris is a nostalgic stroll through the Paris of the "good old days".

La France Juive

Drumont became known throughout Europe for his two-volume work La France Juive , published in 1886 . Some 100,000 copies were sold in the first year, appeared as an affordable popular edition in 1887 and illustrated in 1892. In total, it had over 200 editions by 1945. The German edition Das verjudete Frankreich , also published in 1886, was an extraordinary sales success.

The book is a hodgepodge of diverse anti-Jewish clichés, the historian Ernst Nolte calls it "an orgy of Parisian gossip, without disposition and without strict line of thought". In it, Drumont works anti-Semitism into an ideology that claims to be an explanation of the world. Following Henri Roger Gougenot des Mousseaux (1869: Le Juif, le Judaisme et la judaisation des peuples Chretiens ), he developed a conspiracy theory about the collaboration of Jews , Freemasons and Jacobins against Catholicism in France and their secret rule over the French Republic. He distinguished Semites from Aryans and assigned them opposing characteristics. Diseases such as jaundice and anemia are epidemics that were introduced by " Jewish parasites " to weaken the "noble races". The Jewish dominance over the public prevents this from being revealed. The democratic movement would be under the control of Jews, as the examples of Karl Marx and Ferdinand Lassalle would prove. Even Adam Weishaupt , the founder of 1785 banned Illuminati , had been a Jew in truth.

But at the center of his anti-Semitic agitation he placed the anti-Judaist god - murder thesis. Individual Jews are said to have been assassins of Frankish rulers and, for example, to be responsible for the death of Charlemagne . The descendants of the lost tribes of Israel can be found in Ethiopia , China and North America (among the Mormons ). They ensured moral decadence there and in Europe . Drumont called for the Jews to be excluded from French society. The offensive statements in the book earned Drumont a fine and two duel demands , but at the same time made him extremely popular. Further anti-Semitic works followed.

Drumont wrote a foreword for an expanded French edition (1889) of the anti-Semitic inflammatory pamphlet Der Talmudjude (1871) by the German Catholic theologian August Rohling . The French edition, together with the foreword, was translated back into German by Drumont as early as 1890.

Political agitator

Collage of a portrait of Édouard Drumont with the September 10, 1899 edition of his newspaper for the renewed conviction of Alfred Dreyfus on September 9. The headlines read: “The traitor condemns. Ten years of banishment and degradation. Down with the Jews! "

In 1889, Drumont founded a French " anti-Semite league " based on the model of the German Wilhelm Marrs League and in 1892 the daily newspaper La Libre Parole ("The Free Word"), which had a circulation of several 10,000 copies in the 1890s. He used historical events for targeted scandals and anti-Semitic agitation, such as the bankruptcy of the Panama company and the subsequent bankruptcies of some of its investors. But he also uncovered actual bribery of politicians.

In the Dreyfus affair , Drumont and his newspaper were the radical spokesman for the anti-dreyfusards , i.e. the anti-republican and anti-Semitic stance in the public debate. Following the suicide of Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry , involved in the affair, he accused the Jews of murdering him and raised funds for his widow. 25,000 readers followed the call for donations, including many politicians, priests and high-ranking personalities.

Drumont was charged with defamation of a parliamentarian on charges of having a concubine paid by the prominent Jewish banker Édouard de Rothschild to vote for a bill that the banker endorsed.

Drumont was the political teacher of Charles Maurras , Drumont's slogan "France for the French" ( La France aux Français ), which adorned the front page of the Libre Parole in every issue , adopted it and popularized it further.

Fonts

  • La France Juive , two volumes (digitized: tome premier , tome second )
    • German edition: The Jewry France. Attempt a daily story. First part 1886. Second part 1887 (both in the year of publication with 5 editions) (digitized: Volume 1 , Volume 2 )

literature

  • Olaf Blaschke , Aram Mattioli (ed.): Catholic anti-Semitism in the 19th century. Orell Füssli, Zurich 2000, ISBN 3-280-02806-X .
  • Stephen Wilson: Ideology and Experience. Antisemitism in France at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair. Associated University Presses et al., London et al. 1982, ISBN 0-8386-3037-5 , ( The Littman library of Jewish civilization ).
  • Bjoern Weigel: Drumont, Édouard. In: Handbuch des Antisemitismus , Volume 2/1, 2009, pp. 186f.

credentials

  1. ↑ Johannes Heil: Anti-Semitism, Kulturkampf and Denfession - The anti-Semitic “cultures” of France and Germany in comparison. In: Olaf Blaschke u. a. (Ed.): Catholic anti-Semitism in the 19th century , p. 198 ff.
  2. ^ Bjoern Weigel: Drumont, Édouard Adolphe . In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus . Vol. 2: People . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 186 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  3. ↑ a b c Bjoern Weigel: Drumont, Édouard Adolphe. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Vol. 2: People . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 187 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
  4. ↑ Edouard Drumont in the context of German anti-Semitism - a common European discourse ?, abstract by Silvia Richter . In: Nineteenth-Century Anti-Semitism in International Perspective . ( hypotheses.org [accessed August 24, 2018]).
  5. ↑ Ernst Nolte: Fascism in its epoch. Action française, Italian fascism, National Socialism. Piper, Munich 1984, p. 86.
  6. ^ Helmut Reinalter : Édouard-Adolphe Drumont. In: the same (ed.): Handbook of conspiracy theories. Salier Verlag, Leipzig 2018, p. 95 f.
  7. ↑ Auguste Rohling: Le Juif selon le Talmud. Édition française considérablement augmentée par A. Pontigny. Préface d'Édouard Drumond. Paris 1889 ( bibliographical information from the BnF ).
  8. ↑ August Rohling: The Talmud Jew. With a foreword by Eduard Drumont from the French edition by A. Pontigny, which has also been expanded elsewhere, in the German. Transferred back from Carl Paasch , Leipzig 1890.
personal data
SURNAME Drumont, Édouard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French anti-Semite
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1844
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH February 5, 1917
Place of death Paris