Summary
British-born racial theorist, described as a leading antisemitic thinker, who was Franz Oppenheimer’s main target in the race debates and whose broadening of “Aryan” into a homo europaeus Oppenheimer valued while deploring his antisemitism and national chauvinism (Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, PDF p.80, p.83).
Details
- Oppenheimer would have liked Jews included in Chamberlain’s pan-Europeanism, and drew support from his supposition that Jews were a mix of “real Semites, Hittites, and maybe ‘Aryans.’” (PDF p.80).
- At the second Soziologentag (1912) Oppenheimer “quite spitefully” attacked Chamberlain in his lecture, and some of Chamberlain’s followers left the hall in protest, as the Jüdische Rundschau reported (PDF p.83).
- Oppenheimer exposed the subjectivity of his theory by noting his emphasis on dark-haired Germanic families, which made it possible to surmise his own hair colour, and repeatedly implied British-born Chamberlain was not a German (PDF p.102).
Related pages
Zionism and Cosmopolitanism: Franz Oppenheimer and the Dream of a Jewish Future in Germany and Palestine, Franz Oppenheimer, Werner Sombart, Antisemitism