Honest work
The term " honest work " was used under National Socialism to denote Jews of "dishonest work", i.e. H. to accuse us of usury and haggling. According to the National Socialist conception, honest work differs from dishonest work in that its profit is self-made and that it is at the service of the national community . Jews, on the other hand, who were identified as enemies of the national community, were assumed to have "parasitically appropriated the fruits of honest German labor". Their position in society and the things they owned could only have been acquired illegally, since “honest work” is “alien to the Jew”. The talk of "honest work" culminated in the demand for an end to interest bondage .
Origins
The idea of honest and dishonest professions already existed in the Middle Ages.
Martin Luther , whose writings contain anti-Judaistic passages, contrasted “honest German work” with “Jewish parasitism and usury”.
At the end of the 19th century, the term “German work” was established, which implicitly understood “Jewish work” as its dishonorable opposite. This also concealed the fact that the specialization of the Jews in certain professions was a result of the professional bans of past centuries and by no means had economic or even social reasons.
literature
- Andrea Woeldike , Holger Schatz : Freedom and madness of German work. On the historical topicality of a momentous anti-Semitic projection . Unrast, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-89771-805-7 ( series of anti-fascist texts 9).
- Victor Klemperer : LTI - a philologist's notebook . Aufbau-Verlage, Berlin, 1947 (Also: Edited and commented after the last edition: Elke Fröhlich (Ed.). 24th completely revised edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-15-010743-0 ).
swell
- ↑ See Woeldike / Schatz, p. 16.