Hitler and his God

Money

It is an amazing fact that in Germany the medieval guild system was still very much in use in the first decades of the twentieth century for anybody who wanted to learn and practice a craft. Emil Maurice, for instance, Hitler’s part-Jewish chauffeur whom his boss made into a “honorary Aryan”, earned his living first as an apprentice watch repairer, then as a watch repairer in his own shop and finally as a master watch maker, from whom Hitler sometimes ordered the gold watches which he wanted to gift on certain occasions. 596

The continuation of this medieval practice in an apparently modernized society is symptomatic for many of the themes we have met with in the last chapters. Medieval attitudes had remained part of the reactionary German mentality of the middle classes, causing them to remain behind the times in the quickly developing industrial modernization which determined the life of the lower social classes. With the respectful attitude towards the traditional craft went an attitude towards money, equally old-fashioned, feeling threatened by notions of capital and interest, and expressed in theories like that of Gottfried Feder, who wanted the world to return to a kind of barter economy. The Jews were closely associated with modern capitalism. They were even suspected of dominating and manipulating capitalism worldwide. And if there was one commodity they were practically synonymous with, it was money.

Yet, the Jews have not always been “money people”. “In Egypt and the Near East, they were mostly agricultural colonizers; elsewhere they were mostly represented in great numbers in the crafts of that period, especially as weavers and dyers, professions which in some regions they almost monopolized; but one found them also as goldsmiths, glass blowers, and as producers of bronze and iron.” Paul of Tarsus was a tent maker, and Baruch Spinoza polished lenses for a living. “Some were simple labourers, others lived from commerce or the liberal arts. Still, as the historian J. Juster rightly underlines, ‘no pagan author has typified them as merchants; one encounters nowhere the identification of Judaism with trade, which a few centuries later will become commonplace’.

“Still other Jews were much appreciated professional soldiers, fighting or mounting guard on the frontiers of the [Roman] empire. There were also Jewish administrators, sometimes of a very high rank; in the imperial hierarchy there were Jewish knights and senators, Jewish legates and even Jewish praetors. To this one could add that the Jews of the diaspora adopted as a rule the language as well as the dress of the province where they lived, and that from the linguistic and cultural standpoints they were ‘assimilated’, even Hellenizing or Latinizing their names. From all of this one may conclude that they did not seem to suffer from a special animosity, and that nothing except their cult made them conspicuous in the mosaic of peoples which constituted the population of the Roman Empire.” 597

The association of the Jews with money seems to have been the result of the Christians associating them with Judas Iscariot and his thirty pieces of silver, condemning them as murderers of God, and gaining the upper hand in the Empire. “During the early Christian centuries the myth of the Jews as an avaricious race of parasites added force to that of the Jews as deicides. As Roman influence waned and Christian clergy gained power, they successfully restricted the activities of Jews, creating the basis for endless calumnies about the alleged Jewish attraction to dishonest practices in petty commerce, second-hand trade, and money-lending, as well as complaints that the Jews refused to assimilate and preferred parasitic and non-productive commercial activities in order to dominate local and international trade and harm honest Christians … The attack against the Jews for their supposed unwillingness to do productive work became one of the first of many self-fulfilling prophecies common in the history of Christian attitudes. For the accumulated hostility of Christians in the early centuries restricted Jews to such activities, keeping them, with rare exceptions, in the lowest, least profitable and most despised branches of commerce until the late eighteenth century.” (John Weiss 598)

Jewish traders entered Europe “in the footsteps of the Roman legions”, whom they provided with the trivial luxuries or curiosities which brought some diversion in the tough life of those professional soldiers. “Jewish settlers first came to Europe as international merchants bringing the much desired products of the advanced civilizations of the Middle East, China, India and Spain. Small and flourishing communities of Jews were soon established along the great European trade routes and in urban centres. By the ninth century the Jews of Europe enjoyed their greatest success as international merchants and traders; the words Jew and merchant were virtually synonymous. Along with Greeks, Syrians and Italians – Christians all – Jews were the advance agents of a society yet to come … Down to our own time, the wealth of some highly visible members of the Jewish community has generated a righteous anger not directed at rich Christian merchants.” 599

As the situation of the Jews became more precarious and they were, to use a modern expression, more discriminated against in medieval society, few options remained open to them. “Banned from other professions, Jewish merchants in Europe remained in commerce, and for them as for other merchants money lending was convenient because they possessed liquid capital. Jews never dominated money lending, their tiny numbers alone prevented that; but they did predominate in some areas, especially where loans to peasants were refused by Christian businessmen with more profitable options … The bulk of money lending in Europe was in fact carried on by wealthy clerical and monastic institutions [the Knights Templar among them] along with secular officials and groups such as the Lombards, Venetians, Syrians and Greeks – Christians all. The Vatican itself was known for its sophisticated credit practices.” It may be remembered that Judaism, Christianity and Islam all condemned money lending as a sin. “Some complaints accused Christians of charging higher rates than Jews, for usury was a problem even where no Jews lived.” 600 From that time onwards the complaints against the Jews became more or less standardized, inventing or exaggerating Jewish misdeeds and closing the eyes to Christian misconduct, especially in money matters.

To the Jews, as their history had taught them, money was a lifeline and consequently acquired an aura of sacredness. This is not the same as saying that it was the exclusive focus of their existence, or that they were a supremely coordinated global power which decided on all financial transactions and therefore determined the fate of humanity. The Jews were human beings alright, with the virtues and shortcomings of human beings. Yet most of the communal characteristics they showed in a country like Germany had been forced upon them in the past; and a coordinated global power they have never been, in spite of their far-reaching communal relations, one of the reasons being simply that, as an intellectual people, they were far too individualistic and therefore diverse. “In spite of the myths of the anti-Semites”, concludes John Weiss, “the German economy would not have been significantly different had there never been a German Jewish community”. And: “The Jews were not and never have been a menace to Germany, except in anti-Semitic mythology.” 601