ABSTRACT
This chapter considers one of the most remarkable and neglected antisemitic writers of the 1870s: Constantine Frantz. Frantz was an outsider in his age, who shunned all political parties. Yet he was well-connected and well-known, having conversed with Metternich, Bismarck and Louis Napoleon, and having had a close friendship with Richard Wagner. Frantz was a trained philosopher and wrote a system of absolute idealism. His antisemitism grew from the important role he gave to Christianity in his system: there could only be one public religion, which had to be Christian. Frantz also wrote much on political philosophy. He was an advocate of federalism, which opposed the centralized nationalism of the age. This chapter considers all Frantz’s important philosophical and political writings, and it shows how his antisemitism grew from them.
