the notion that the Jews
could still hope for redemption, and for a renewed status of election,
assured them in the New Testament (Rom. 9-11) on condition that they
acknowledge their error and accept the redeeming truth of Christianity.
Even in the early years of racial anti-semitism, in the seventies and
eighties of the last century, we already find this inner contradiction
between a racial theory that regards Jews as the ontological embodiment
of an ineradicable evil and the views of the Heilgeschichte that believes
this evil to be remedial if only the Jews could be persuaded that salvation
comes from the Savior who was sent first of all to the Jews themselves, and
who atoned for the sins of all mankind.
It is this inner tension between the recalcitrance of the Jew and the
incorrigibility of Judaism that refuses to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah,
already conspicuous in the change that took place in Luther's attitude to
the Jews between 1523 and 1543, which charactarizes the theological and
political attitude of Adolf Stoecker, court preacher in the Bismarck era
and one of the leading figures of modern anti-semitism. Until recently
historians concentrated much on his importance in preparing the ground
for racial and political anti-semitism. It is true that without his powerful
influence during the last decades of the 19th century the rise of modern
political anti-semitism would be incomprehensible. A more balanced approach
has been taken lately, as may be seen in the instructive study by Walter
Holsten on the part played by Stoecker in the rise of modern anti-semitism.
The author shows that many phases of Stoecker's anti-semitism had their roots
in the conservative tradition of Lutheranism and at the same time were
opposed to the anti-Christian tendencies of racial anti-semitism. [18]
<XI>
The early phases of Stoecker's activity already reveal the ambivalent
nature of his attitude to the Jews and to Judaism, an ambivalency that
characterized the anti-Christian elements in antisemitic "Christian"
ideology throughout the days of the Third Reich. In his speeches after
the political defeat of his Christian Social Labor Party in the summer
of 1878, Stoecker insisted on making a distinction between the anti-Jewish
attitude that arises in conjunction with or flows from Christianity and
the antisemitic attitude which at the same time also impugns Christi