Page 42 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

usury. Or should rather a foreign, immigrant people rule over us,
and indeed not through greater strength, courage and virtue but
through money whose acquisition he seems to love most of all? But
not through violent persecutions and plundering must one free
oneself from the Jewish nuisance but by cutting off all usury and
harmful cheating from the Jews and by urging them to useful work
on the field and in the workshops". 51 But these and similar projects
led, as also elsewhere, to nothing. If one browses through the pages
ofthe Annals ofNuremberg and asks oneselfwhat indeed had moved
the citizens to expel the Jews in 1499, the laconic answer is: "The
Jews settled in Nuremberg had it very good. They became
increasingly more arrogant and unrestrained. The immoderate usury
that they conducted, the insatiable greed that they devoted themselves
to, the calumny of the Christians, the daily increase in numbers,
finally made it irksome to the council and the citizenry to
accommodate among themselves such guests and leeches harmful
to commerce". 52 If in earlier times already different economic and
religious questions had broken out on account of the uprisings, one
saw that the problem was not to be solved with these and, in 1499,
the Jews were led out under military protection (so that nothing bad
happened to them) from the city "in which they had lived for so
long and in which they had acquired such great wealth through
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devouring usury". That this complaint was totally justified can be
45
Dr. Arthur Ruppin similarly admits in Die Juden in der Gegenwart that the
separation ofthe Jews was "first a voluntary" and only later "a forced" one. [Arthur
Ruppin (1876-1943) was a German Zionist who directed the Palestinian office of
the World Zionist Organisation in Jaffa from 1908 and held the chair of the
department of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1 926. For the
envisaged Israeli state he advocated a eugenic selection of inhabitants and also
contributed to the founding of the kibbutz programme. His book Die Juden in der
Gegenwart was published in 1904.]
30
[Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516) was a German abbot, historian and occultist.]
51
According to Liebe, op.cit, p.32.
52
Wurfel, Historische Ncichrichten von der Judengemeinde in Niirnberg,
Nuremberg, 1775, p. 83. [Andreas WtirfePs study, Historische Ncichrichten von
der Juden-Gemeinde, welche ehehin in der Reichsstadt Niirnberg emgericht
gewesen, ctberAo. 1499 ctusgeschqffet worden, was published in 1755.]
53
Wiirfel, op.cit., p. 85.
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