ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the intellectual development of Wilhelm Marr, who was one of the most notorious antisemitic publicists. Marr is often misunderstood in the secondary literature: he is treated as the father of racial antisemitism and as the creator of the word “antisemitism”. But Marr did not invent that term, whose use was widespread before him; and his antisemitism turned racial only in his later years. Marr is in the left-wing tradition of Marx and Bauer, who opposed Jewish liberation on the grounds that there should not be liberation of any special group but only the liberation of the whole of humanity. Marr’s origins go back to the Young Germany movement in Switzerland, where he was a leader of one of its factions. Marr’s political views were fundamentally anarchist, and he opposed socialism on the grounds that he gave too much authority to the state. This chapter analyzes Marr’s early anarchist writings and shows how his antisemitic activities grew out of them.
