ted three years. In June 1889 the anti-Semitic Christian
Socialists under Stocker again seceded.

Meanwhile racial anti-Semitism with its wholesale radical proposals had
been making considerable progress among the ignorant lower classes. It
adapted itself better to popular passions and inherited prejudice than
the more academic conceptions of the Christian Socialists. The latter,
too, were largely Conservatives, and their points of contact with the
proletariat were at best artificial. Among the Hessian peasantry the
inflammatory appeals of Bockel secured many adherents. This paved the
way for a new anti-Semitic leader, Herrmann Ahlwardt (b. 1846), who,
towards the end of the 'eighties, eclipsed all the other anti-Semites by
the sensationalism and violence with which he prosecuted the campaign.
Ahlwardt was a person of evil notoriety. He was loaded with debt. In the
Manche decoration scandals it was proved that he had acted first as a
corrupt intermediary and afterwards as the betrayer of his confederates.
His anti-Semitism was adopted originally as a means of _chantage_, and
it was only when it failed to yield profit in this form that he came out
boldly as an agitator. The wildness, unscrupulousness, and
full-bloodedness of his propaganda enchanted the mob, and he bid fair to
become a powerful democratic leader. His pamphlets, full of scandalous
revelations of alleged malpractices of eminent Jews, were read with
avidity. No fewer than ten of them were written and published during
1892. Over and over again he was prosecuted for libel and convicted, but
this seemed only to strengthen his influence with his followers. The
Roman Catholic clergy and newspapers helped to inflame the popular
passions. The result was that anti-Jewish riots broke out. At Neustettin
the Jewish synagogue was burnt, and at Xanten the Blood Accusation was
revived, and a Jewish butcher was tried on the ancient charge of
murdering a Christian child for ritual purposes. The man was, of course,
acquitted, but the symptoms it revealed of reviving medievalism strongly
stirred the liberal and cultured mind of Germany. All protest, however,
seemed powerless, and the barbarian movement appeared destined to carry
everything before it.

German politics at this moment were in a very intricate state. Prince
Bismarck had retired, and Count Caprivi, with a programme of general
conciliation based on Liberal principles, was in power. Alarmed by the
non-renewal of t