Morris R. Johnson

Martin Luther: A Jewdophile

Martin Luther is known as the great German monk that stirred Christianity to its foundation. He commenced the Reformation¹, in 1517, not to create a new division within the church, but to chastise Rome for its practice of indulgences. This minor affair escalated into a war that produced terror, violence, murder and the establishment of Protestantism.²

The beginnings of the protestant faith that are not the concern of this paper; the concern is to explore Luther's class and racist social and religious attacks upon Jews. Of course, the argument some scholars suggest is that Luther's personality is extremely complex and the issue of his being a racist has been over played. I disagree with the assertion of Luther's "mild" racism. In fact, racism or intense hatred of the Jews grew like a cancer, and became more malignant as he grew older and more bitter with the world. Luther, to be sure, was simply a product of his time. And many centuries of antiJewish sentiments went into making his time and his religious heritage.

Luther's Christian heritage was saturated with medieval notions of the Jew as the devil. According to Joshua Trachtenberg:

He [the Jew] was the devil's creature! Not a human being but a demonic, a diabolic beast fightin the forces of truthand salvation with Satan's weapons...³Chrysostom of Antioch ⁴maintained that 'the synagogues of the Jews are the homes of idolatry and devils, even though they have no images in them', and again he insisted that "the Jews do not worship God but devils.. .⁵

The graphic arts, throughout all of Europe, also portrayed the Jew as the devil or the imp of Satan. An early fifteenth-century version of a design engraved at the entrance to a bridge at Frankfort is vile. One Jewish person is astride, a sow, holding the tail upward, so that another individual can consume jetting excrement. We know that the individuals,in the engravement, are Jews because they wear a circle (yellow) upon their clothing. Interesting to note is that another figure is grossly deformed with an animal body and a human face with horns.

The engraving captured a large piece of anti-Jewish history. It was the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) which decreed that Jews should wear a special badge, a patch of yellow or red cloth, usually shaped as a wheel or 0.⁶It was also commonly held by the wider Christian community that Jews possessed horns and tails. Jews were so marked because, as devils, they carried the features of their father, Satan or Lucifer. No doubt the alleged "stench" of the children of Moses was linked directly to their foul diet: the urine, slime and excrement of animals and the devil. Luther, as we shall later see, took great delight in suggesting that Jews consumed such filth.

The engraving, of course, does not provide a hint of the pervasive laws which regulated every aspect of their lives. The Jewish community of Cologne, for example, was small; nonetheless, Graze highlighted their plight:

In 1452 a Church council decreed that the Jews of Electoral Cologne must wear a distinguishing mark on their clothes ⁷... They shall, however, obtain letters of protection from the Elector, pay a tax, upon their arrival, and an annual tribute, and remit their letter of protection upon emigrating from the principality. They shall also pay an extra duty often percent on their total property⁸... They shall live far away from the church... Jewish stores shall not be open on Sundays and Christian holidays. ⁹

In addition to their lives being completely dominated, Jews were also blamed for the horror of the Bubonic Plague, the Black Death, which was the scourge of Europe. Scientific evidence, however, has conclusively demonstrated that the plague was spread by rats and fleas. Nevertheless, the argument was made that Jews used lepers and other unclean souls to poison the wells of Christians. According to Dr. Nichols, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies, at the University of British Columbia:

... people were not content to accept divine action in humble resignation. If the plague had occurred by the will of God, human instruments might nonetheless have been involved and if God could not be blamed, they could...It It will be no surprise that the blame fell on the Jews. That spring, as deaths multiplied, Jews were attacked. At Narbonne and Carcassonne, Jews were dragged from their homes and burned to death...¹⁰ In Freiburg, Augsburg, Nurnberg, Munich, Konigsberg, Regensburg, and other center, the Jews were slaughtered with a thoroughness that seemed to seek the final solution.¹¹

The above incidents and actions in no way exhaust the atrocities committed against the Jews. The horrors convey, however, the routine manner in which Jews were killed, exploited, degraded and terrorized. Luther's heritage was anchored in this nightmare of Christian "righteousness". In fact, Luther too was very routine in his call for the confiscation of Jewish property and for the destruction of their culture. We must, of course, take a much closer look at the German reformer:

In May 1501, seventeen years old, 'Martinus Ludher ex Mansfeldt; was inscribed on the rolls of the arts Faculty of Erfurt University, one of the oldest Germany centers of learning and at that time the highest in repute.¹²

In January 1505, Luther graduate, at 21, with a Master of Arts. His career seemed bright and his father wanted him to seek a law degree and enter into a profitable marriage. Fate, however, put Luther on a religious path. Humanity would have been served, if the bolt of lightning had struck him. He cried out to Saint Anne for mercy, was pared and Luther promised to become a monk. He entered, in 1505, Augustianian Eremites. However profound Luther later spiritual insights and theological contributions to Christianity, he did not single handedly put the foundations of "reformation" in place.

It was a Germany already ripe with mendic orders with their strong traditions of popular vernacular preaching, with elements of endemic anticlericalism which accused the clergy of greed, hypocrisy and tyranny; it was also a given, that violence of actions and speech should be used against "foes",¹³and that such actions were viewed as Christian.

Luther's call for violence of action was, at first, directed against Popish Roman and other protestant adversaries. It is held that the "Young Luther" was not hostile, nor did he urge violence against the Jews. In fact, in his 1523 pamphlet entitled, Jesus Christ was born a Jew, he noted:

If I had been a Jew, I should have preferred to turn a pig before I became a Christian, seeing how these imbeciles and ignorant louts govern and teach the Christian faith. They have treated the Jews as if they were dogs and not men. They have done nothing but persecute them... So long as we use violence and lies and accuse them of using Christian blood to eradicate their own stink,...How can they come to us?¹⁴

This statement above reflected the sentiment of Luther as a "Jewdophile." But another scholar echoed my view of the German monk: "Luther's apparently benevolent attitude was not in any meaningful sense 'pro-Jewish'; he was moved to act as a 'friend of the Jews' not out of respect for Judaism, but from a thirst to redeem them by destroying Judaism."¹⁵ Hugo Valentin made a similar point: "But when the Jews declined to accept Christianity in its Lutheran Form, thus disappointing Luther's hopes, he was seized with indignation. All his inherited hatred of the Jews burst out in full flame. They poisoned the wells, committed ritual murder, practiced the black arts, reviled Christianity...¹⁶ It was from 1523 until his death (1546) that Luther was a man possessed; a man who saw his mission, his Christian duty, to denounce Jews and to have them driven from Germany. Nothing was too vile or too heinous to be done or said about the Jews.

Luther wrote in 1532 that "If I find a Jew to baptize, I shall lead him to the Elbe bridge, hand a stone around his neck and push him into the water..." ¹⁷Then in 1537, Luther was successful in having all Jews expelled from Saxony. He noted his feelings of being kindly disposed to Jews; however, he held that such kindness must be used as a tool to convert them and not to confirm their errors. ¹⁸ We may surmise, therefore, that the expulsion of Jews from Saxony was an act of "generosity". Again in late December in 1539, the Protestant reformer boldly declared: "I cannot convert the Jews. Our Lord Christ did not succeed in doing so; but I can close their mouths so that there will be nothing for them to do but lie upon the ground."¹⁹

The argument cannot be made that Luther's call for violence and terror against the Jews was simply idiosyncratic. He was like other reformers of his day; they were prone to cursing and blaspheming; they denounced each other as devils and idolaters. In fact, Luther's violent character was displayed for all of the Germanies when he called for the murder of the peasants en mass. In his small tract entitled Against the Murdering Thieving Hordes of Peasants he urged the authorities, with a pathological tenacity, to hack, stab, smite and kill every one of them. ²⁰ Some members of the nobility were shocked by Luther's call for murder.

Equally shocking was Luther's "magnum opus," Against the Jews and Their Lies, written in 1542. In this work of 200 pages, he hammered his theme of violence and destruction:

First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools...
Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed...
Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which adultery, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them... Fourth, I advise that their Rabbis be forbidden to teach
Fifth, I advise that safe conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews.
Sixth, I advise that all cash and treasure of silver be taken from them... Seventh,... let whoever can, brimstone and pitch upon them .... Let them be driven like mad dogs out of the land.²¹

Luther's hatred for the Jews was all consuming. His religious/political message embodied the total negation of their humanity. A few months later, Luther reached a new abyss: a vile and obscene critique of Jewish behavior.

"...Cursed goy that I am, I cannot understand how they manage to be so skillful, unless I think Judas Iscariot hanged himself, his guts burst and emptied. Perhaps the Jews sent their servants with plates of silver and pots of gold to gather up Judas' piss with other treasures, and they and drank his offal,...²²

Even the rude remarks of St John Chrysostom (344 - 407), patriarch of Constantinople, paled into moderation:

"The Jews are the most worthless of all men they are lecherous, greedy, rapacious- they are perfidious murderers of Christians, they worship the devil, their religion is a sickness__"²³

But Luther moved the attacks on the Jews to a new level. Jews ate feces and drank urine (the engraving over the bridge at Frankfort). The Jews were so vile, they should be treated as mad dogs and exterminated. Clearly, no pope or any church father ever wrote or expressed the outrageous sickness that Luther trumpeted for ²⁴ This scene spoke volumes about the revulsion for Jews in Germany. Luther was therefore socialized in this revulsion, and he communicated it to others by his actions, writings, and conversations.

In his last sermon, four days before he died, Luther spoke with passion about the "obdurate" Jews. These stubborn and hard-hearted Jews that he was unable to convert, must still be driven out of Germany. His early successes of Jewish expulsions were not enough. Now he demanded that Jews must be ousted from all Germany territory. His final demand was in keeping with his German/Christian heritage; a heritage rich in abusive exploitation of Jews; a heritage surfeit with malicious rumors and gossip that caused many Jewish deaths; a heritage that was even Hitler came to glorify and to use as a part of his final solution.

Before, we explore Luther's contributions to Nazism, he must be compared to two other leading protestant reformers. Zwingli²⁵ and Calvin ²⁶ were just as intolerant as Luther if you disagreed with their opinions and ideas. All three, of course, attacked and denounced each other as devil worshippers, blasphemers and sinners. In fact, they all condoned the death penalty for "heretics" or the "enemies" of God. Zwingli and Calvin were equally hostile to Jews; however, they did not share Luther's obsession with the Jews. ²⁷ Indeed, in their writings, some of their remarks were anti-semitic. Nonetheless, the obscene attacks on Jews which Luther championed, were completely absent from their major treatises.

If one read Luther's "treatise", Against the Jews and Their Lies with the "eyes" of Hitler, we can understand why the German monk was so appreciated and so often quoted. During the Nazi, regime all of Luther's works of which remained dormant for centuries, were widely circulated with Hitler's approval. Did not Luther struggle for many years to have all of the Germanies free of Jews? Did he not call for the burning of Jewish synagogues, schools and prayer books? Did he not call for the confiscation of Jewish wealth and the destruction of their homes? Did he not view Jews as grotesque, loathsome and revolting devils worthy only of annihilation? The last point is the essence of the Nazi's love affair with Luther. The Jew as the "thing" to hate was always permissible. Luther and Hitler shared this abnormal "hatred for Jews. It was permissible to hate Jews all over Germany in the 1530s and in the 1940s.

As historian Hannah Vogt noted: "A perusal of antisemetic literature (the word was first used in 1880) shocks the reader into recognizing that here the old religious hatred re-appears in modern guise".²⁸ Precisely, Nazism absorbed all of the hellish acts of the past, including Luther's sick religious demands, and turned these dreadful notions into a 20th century program of technologically efficient murder. Remember: The Jew was the thing to hate. Therefore, anti-Semitism was the most fundamental feature of the Nazi "Weltanschauung". It was the fuel that propelled all racist acts and legislation. Vogt provided a close inspection of these laws and stated:

"[A] discriminatory measure introduced in August 1938 made it obligatory for Jews to use only Jewish first names,...²⁹ a string of similar antisemitic decrees followed upon the assassination of Ernst Vom Rogh,... It started with the burning down of synagogues in Germany... 267 synagogues went up in flames that night... 20,000 Jews were arrested... ³⁰ Other orders followed... the exclusion of Jews from German economic life, and then Jews were forbidden to engage in business or crafts... The Minister of Education ordered the removal of Jewish pupils from German schools. Many cities established a so called Jew ban which meant Jews were forbidden to enter certain residential sections...³¹ In September 1941, the Jewish Star Decree followed, according to which Jews 6 years and over had to wear in public were made of yellow material...³²

Vogt' s list of acts and incidents constraining Jews was not unique to Germany. During the 1530's in Spain, Portugal, France, England and Austria "Jew bans" existed. Luther approved of such bans. Since he was viewed by many as a renowned religious leader and national hero of the Fatherland, the Nazi regime seized Luther's writings to provide greater legitimacy for their actions. In fact, Thomas Mann noted that Luther and Hitler shared a demonic psychological universe. At the center of their universe stood the Jew. Both hated Jews.

References furnished on request.

©2000-2005 by Morris R. Johnson