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On the Jews and Their Lies (Template:Lang-de) is a treatise written in January 1543 by Martin Luther, the German theologian, in which he advocated harsh persecution of the Jewish people, including that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, prayerbooks destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. It argued that Jews should be shown no mercy or kindness, should have no legal protection, and that these "poisonous envenomed worms" should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. It is regarded as one of the most notorious anti-Semitic tracts ever written. Four centuries later, the Nazis used quotations from this pamphlet, which was cited by the publisher of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer during the Nuremberg trials, to justify the Final Solution.

Background and synopsis

Further information: Martin Luther and the Jews

On the Jews and Their Lies, published three years before Luther's death in 1546, expressed fear that Jews were successfully converting Christians to Judaism and wrote that he wished to be identified among those in opposition to them: "I had made up my mind to write no more either about the Jews or against them. But since I learned that these miserable and accursed people do not cease to lure to themselves even us, that is, the Christians, I have published this little book, so that I might be found among those who opposed such poisonous activities of the Jews who warned the Christians to be on their guard against them."

Luther stated in his introductory remarks to On the Jews and Their Lies that he was writing in response to an anti-Christian pamphlet, unidentified by historians, written by an unidentified Jew or Jews, sent to him by Count Wolfgang Schlick of Falkenau.

In the treatise, Luther wrote that Jews are devils, blasphemers, and liars who "lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it," a "miserable, blind and senseless" people, "nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury." "God and all the angels dance when farts." They should be "toss out ... by the seat of their pants," and "eject ... forever from this country." God's anger with them is "so intense that gentle mercy will only tend to make them worse and worse, while sharp mercy will reform them but little. Therefore, in any case, away with them!"

He wrote that synagogues and Jewish schools must be set on fire to "bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them." Their houses must be "razed and destroyed," their "prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them ... their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb," their money, gold and silver confiscated, and no safe conduct on the highways be available to them, because they have "no business in the countryside, since they are not lords, officials, tradesmen, or the like. Let them stay at home ..."

Jerusalem was destroyed over 1400 years ago, and at that time we Christians were harassed and persecuted by the Jews throughout the world for about 300 years ... During that time they held us captive and killed us ... So we are even at fault for not avenging all this innocent blood of our Lord and of the Christians which they shed for 300 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and the blood of the children they have shed since then ... We are at fault in not slaying them.

Influence on modern anti-Semitism

Some historians believe that this book laid the groundwork for modern "racial" anti-Semitism -- that is, persecution of Jews because of their supposed ethnic traits.

Robert Michael, Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, has observed that "Luther wrote of the Jews as if they were a race that could not truly convert to Christianity. Indeed, like so many Christian writers before him, Luther, by making the Jews the devil's people, put them beyond conversion". Michael noted that in a sermon of September 25 1539, "Luther tried to demonstrate through several examples that individual Jews could not convert permanently, and in several passages of The Jews and Their Lies, Luther appeared to reject the possibility that the Jews would or could convert."

Franklin Sherman, editor of volume 47 of the American Edition of Luther's Works in which On the Jews and Their Lies appears, states that Luther's writings against the Jews are not "merely a set of cool, calm and collected theological judgments. His writings are full of rage, and indeed hatred, against an identifiable human group, not just against a religious point of view; it is against that group that his action proposals are directed." Sherman continues, "Luther cannot be distanced completely from modern antisemites." Regarding Luther's treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies, Karl Jaspers wrote, "Da steht das ganze Program der Nazi Zeit schon" ("There you already have the whole Nazi program").

Other scholars assert that Luther's anti-Semitism as expressed in On the Jews and Their Lies is based on religion. Luther historian Roland Bainton stresses the religious component to Luther's position:

His position was entirely religious and in no respect racial. The supreme sin for him was the persistent rejection of God's revelation of himself in Christ. The centuries of Jewish suffering were themselves a mark of the divine displeasure. They should be compelled to leave and go to a land of their own. This was a program of enforced Zionism. But if it were not feasible, then Luther would recommend that the Jews be compelled to live from the soil. He was unwittingly proposing a return to the condition of the early Middle Ages, when the Jews had been in agriculture. Forced off the land, they had gone into commerce and, having been expelled from commerce, into money lending. Luther wished to reverse the process and thereby inadvertently would accord the Jews a more secure position than they enjoyed in his day.

Regardless of the nature of Luther's hostility towards the Jews, his views laid the groundwork for the racial European anti-Semitism, which emerged in the 19th century. Paul Halsall writes:

although Luther's comments seem to be proto-Nazi, they are better seen as part of tradition of Medieval Christian anti-semitism. While there is little doubt that Christian anti-Semitism laid the social and cultural basis for modern anti-Semitism, modern anti-Semitism does differ in being based on pseud-scientific notions of race. The Nazis imprisoned and killed Jews who had converted to Christianity: Luther would have welcomed them.

Impact on Nazi ideology

Four centuries after it was written, the Nazis cited Luther's treatise to justify the Final Solution. Some scholars have attributed the Final Solution directly to Luther. Others oppose this point of view.

Julius Streicher, the Nazi publisher of the anti-Semitic Der Stürmer, cited On the Jews and Their Lies during the Nuremberg trials: "Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants' dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In the book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent's brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them ..."

Martin Bertram, the 20th century Lutheran scholar who translated the treatise in Luther's Works into English notes that "t is impossible to publish Luther's treatise today ... without noting how similar to his proposals were the actions of the National Socialist regime in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. On the night of November 9-10, 1938, the so-called Kristallnacht, for example, 119 synagogues in all parts of Germany, together with many Jewish homes and shops, were burned to the ground."

The first physical violence against the Jews under Hitler's government came on November 9-10 on Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) where the Nazis killed Jews, shattered glass windows, and destroyed hundreds of synagogues, just as Luther had proposed. In Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, he writes:

"One leading Protestant churchman, Bishop Martin Sasse published a compendium of Martin Luther's antisemitic vitriol shortly after Kristallnacht's orgy of anti-Jewish violence. In the foreword to the volume, he applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day: 'On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.' The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words 'of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews'".

Many of the events of Kristallnacht echoed material in The Jews and Their Lies. Walter Buch, the head of the Nazi Party court, admitted Luther's influence on Nazi Germany, in Richard Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich, "When Luther turned his attention to the Jews, after he completed his translation of the Bible, he left behind "on the Jews and their Lies" for posterity". Buch then said, "Many people confess their amazement that Hitler preaches ideas which they have always held.... From the Middle Ages we can look to the same example in Martin Luther. What stirred in the soul and spirit of the German people of that time, finally found expression in his person, in his words and deeds".

Selected Quotes

"Oh, that was too insulting for the noble blood and race of Israel, and they declared, 'He has a demon' (Matthew 11:18) Our Lord also calls them a 'brood of vipers'; furthermore, in John 8 he states: 'If you were Abraham's children, you would do what Abraham did.... You are of your father the devil.' It was intolerable to them to hear that they were not Abraham's but the devil's children, nor can they bear to hear this today."

"There, Jew, you have your boast, and we Gentiles have ours together with you, as well as you with us. Now go ahead and pray that God might respect your nobility, your race, your flesh and blood."

"They boast of their race and of their descent from the fathers, but they neither see nor pay attention to the fact that he chose their race that they should keep his commandments."

"Therefore it is not a clever and ingenious, but a clumsy, foolish, and stupid lie when the Jews boast of their circumcision before God, presuming that God should regard them graciously for that reason, though they should certainly know from Scripture that they are not the only race circumcised in compliance with God's decree, and that they cannot on that account be God's special people."

"There is one thing about which they boast and pride them selves beyond measure, and that is their descent from the foremost people on earth, from Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and from the twelve patriarchs, and thus from the holy people of Israel. St. Paul himself admits this when he says in Romans 9:5 Quorum patres, that is, 'To them belong the patriarchs, and of their race is the Christ,' etc."

"They are the boastful, arrogant rascals who to the present day can do no more than boast of their race and lineage, praise only themselves, and disdain and curse all the world in their synagogues, prayers, and doctrines. Despite this, they imagine that in God's eyes they rank as his dearest children."

"They turned a deaf ear to us in the past and still do so, although many fine scholarly people, including some from their own race, have refuted them so thoroughly that even stone and wood, if endowed with a particle of reason, would have to yield.

"Furthermore, as Gabriel says, he must have come from among their people, undoubtedly from the royal tribe of Judah. Now it is certain that since Herod's time they had had no king who was a member of their people or race."

"This was accomplished despite the fact that the other faction, the blind, impenitent Jews — the fathers of the present-day Jews — raved, raged, and ranted against it without letup and without ceasing, and shed much blood of members of their own race both within their own country and abroad among the Gentiles, as was related earlier also of Kokhba."

Luther's sources

According to Martin Bertram, who translated On the Jews and their lies for the American Edition (vol. 47), Luther used the following sources:

• Burgos, Paul of. Scrutinium Scripturarum ("Investigation of the Scriptures").
• Lyra, Nicholas of. Pulcherrimae quaestiones Iudaicam perfidam in catholicam fide improbantes ("Most Excellent Inquiries Rejecting Judaic Falsities by the Catholic Faith").
• Margaritha, Anthony. Der gantz Jüdisch glaub ("The Entire Jewish Faith").
• Porchetus, Salvagus. Victoria adversus impios Hebraeos ("Victory over the godless Hebrews")

In the text itself Luther makes mention of these sources by naming their authors.

See also

• Anti-Semitism
• History of the Jews in Germany
• Martin Luther
• Martin Luther and the Jews
• On the Jews and Their Lies (excerpts)

Notes

1. Michael, Robert. "Luther, Luther Scholars, and the Jews," Encounter 46:4, (Autumn 1985), p.342.
2. Michael, Robert. "Luther, Luther Scholars, and the Jews," Encounter 46:4, (Autumn 1985), p.343.
3. ^ Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971)
4. Richard Steigmann-Gall,The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.), 33. "On the Jews and Their Lies is one of the most notorious antisemitic tracts ever written, especially for someone of Luther's esteem."
5. ^ Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, Vol. 12, p. 318, Avalon Project, Yale Law School, April 19, 1946)
6. Luther's Works, Martin Bertram, trans., Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, 47:137
7. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies quoted in Michael 1985, pp. 343-4. The original German of this quotation is: "So ists auch unser schuld, das wir das grosse unschüldige Blut, so sie an unserm Herrn und den Christen bey dreyhundert jaren nach zerstoerung Jerusalem, und bis daher, an Kindern vergossen (welchs noch aus jren augen und haut scheinet) nicht rechen, sie nicht todschlahen"
8. Michael, Robert, "Christian racism, part 2", H-Net Discussions Networks, 2 Mar 2000.
9. Helmut T. Lehmann, gen. ed., Luther's Works, Vol. 47: The Christian in Society IV, edited by Franklin Sherman, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), iii.
10. quoted from Franklin Sherman, Faith Transformed: Christian Encounters with Jews and Judaism, edited by John C Merkle, (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2003), 63-64.
11. Bainton, Roland. Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther, (Nashville:Abingdon Press, 1978), 299.
12. Paul Halsall's introduction of excerpts of On the Jews and Their Lies
13. William Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 91, 236
14. Uwe Siemon-Netto, The Fabricated Luther: The Rise and Fall of the Shirer Myth, (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1995), 17-20.
15. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 47:268, note 173.
16. Goldhagen , Daniel Jonah. "Hitler's Willing Executioners". p.178
17. Steigmann-Gall, Richard. "The Holy Reich". p.226
18. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works Vol. 47, The Christian in Society, IV, ed. Franklin Sherman, Helmut T. Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, p.141.
19. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works Vol. 47, The Christian in Society, IV, ed. Franklin Sherman, Helmut T. Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, p.149.
20. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works Vol. 47, The Christian in Society, IV, ed. Franklin Sherman, Helmut T. Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, p.174.
21. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works Vol. 47, The Christian in Society, IV, ed. Franklin Sherman, Helmut T. Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, p.152.
22. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works Vol. 47, The Christian in Society, IV, ed. Franklin Sherman, Helmut T. Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, p.140.
23. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works Vol. 47, The Christian in Society, IV, ed. Franklin Sherman, Helmut T. Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, p.156.
24. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works Vol. 47, The Christian in Society, IV, ed. Franklin Sherman, Helmut T. Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, p.176.
25. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works Vol. 47, The Christian in Society, IV, ed. Franklin Sherman, Helmut T. Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, p.250.
26. Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies, Trans. Martin H. Bertram, in Luther's Works Vol. 47, The Christian in Society, IV, ed. Franklin Sherman, Helmut T. Lehmann. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971, p.299.
27. ^ Pelikan, Jaroslav & Lehmann, Helmut (eds). Luther's Works. Vol. 47: "The Christian in Society" IV, Sherman, Franklin (ed) (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 121-306, especially, 130-31, 137-38.
28. Brecht, Martin, James L. Schaaf, trans., Martin Luther, 3:346.

English-language translations

• Luther, Martin. On the Jews and Their Lies (1543). Translated by Martin H. Bertram. Luther's Works Volume 47: The Christian in Society IV. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971.
• The Jews and Their Lies, Liberty Bell Publications, 2004. ISBN 1593640242

External links

• On the Jews and their Lies (excerpts) at Medieval Sourcebook

• 1543 books
• Anti-Semitism
• Martin Luther
• Philosophy books