Summary
Franz Oppenheimer’s term for Jews as a Mediterranean archetype, introduced to normalise Jewish history within the Mediterranean merchant peoples of antiquity and to place that history in a European narrative (Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, PDF p.99-100).
Details
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The dark-skinned complexion of the homo meditarraneus, Oppenheimer suggested, caused Jews to stand out among the fair-skinned inhabitants of the northern lands and so to be more susceptible to being hated (PDF p.99).
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The concept drew from Max Weber’s reading of ancient Israel among its Mediterranean neighbours; Oppenheimer imagined Jews even incorporating merchant peoples such as the Phoenicians through mass conversions, and blonde Khazars assimilating through conversion, decreasing supposed Jewish homogeneousness (PDF p.99).
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Against the northern homo europaeus septentrionalis, Oppenheimer questioned whether physiognomic differences sufficed to exclude the Jewish homo meditarraneus from a European race divided into northern and southern species (PDF p.99-100).
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The work spells the term “Meditarraneus” as printed throughout: in the section heading (PDF p.98), the Contents (PDF p.10) and the body term “homo meditarraneus” (PDF p.99).
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In Chapter 2’s conclusion Oppenheimer cast doubt on Chamberlain’s Germanness to question his insider capacity to recognise a “real German”, and in his poem “Germanomaniacs” the Jewish homo meditarraneus figures as a man of the colonised south against the northern race that made “The White Man’s Burden” its job (PDF p.103, p.106-107).
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In Chapter 5 the concept is used, although not by name, to establish the bridge function of Jews between Europe and the Middle East and their claimed superior capability as colonists over Northern Europeans: Warburg argued even Russian Jews could readapt to warm climates due to their racial origin from the Mediterranean’s warmest regions, claimed Jews comprised “the only remnant of early colonization by the white race, even in genuinely tropical Surinam”, and held Jews would make better cotton producers than Africans, whom he stigmatized as innately lazy; Axel Preyer likewise held Jews and other homo meditarraneus would make better settlers of tropical and subtropical areas than Germans as a people (PDF p.204-206).
Related pages
Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, Franz Oppenheimer, Max Weber, Antisemitism