Summary
German Zionist editor of Die jüdische Rundschau who, in Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, used Altneuland to confront antisemitic misrepresentation of Jewish colonization, most fully in his furious review of Hans Karl Hermann von Soden’s Palästina und seine Geschichte (PDF p.171, p.191-192).
Details
- Against von Soden’s claim that Bethlehem’s population had “absolutely nothing Semitic” and resembled North Italians, Loewe asserted the “remarkable Jewish type” matched precisely the inhabitants of Nazareth, Bethlehem and their vicinity, and that whoever found the Bethlehem type attractive “must just as well praise the Polish Jew” (PDF p.191).
- Loewe had earlier argued in Die Juden als Rasse that Jews were a much purer race, closer to its historical origins, than the Aryans (PDF p.191).
- He replied to von Soden’s dismissal of Jewish colonization that to oppose Zionist colonies in Palestine was to undermine German colonization, of which they were an important pillar, and challenged Germany to abandon the Christian nation-state equation of Germanness with Christianity (PDF p.192).
Related pages
Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, Altneuland (journal)