From the Marian Apparitions to Blood Libel: Christian Opposition to State Authority In his book The Butcher’s Tale, Helmut Smith, a history professor at Vanderbilt University, recounts the events in the small town of Konitz in east Germany, “[a] group of young men, trailed by women and children, marched to the synagogue. Breaking inside, they smashed the wooden pews, yanked down the lamps, ripped apart the drapes, and tore pages out of the holy books. Fortunately, the Torah rolls had already been moved to a safe place, a precaution taken after the initial attempt to burn down the synagogue on the preceding Thursday night. The temple, the Dansiger Zeitung reported, now ‘resembled a ruin’” (52). While these anti-Semitic acts of violence seem…show more content… On March 11, 1900, a Christian boy named Ernst Winter was murdered in the small town of Konitz, and over the following days, severed body parts were discovered throughout town (Smith, The Butcher’s Tale 17). After the discovery of these body parts, accusations of blood libel quickly surfaced, and schoolchildren would sing, “The Jews in Konitz have slaughtered a Christian boy and have baked the Matzo in blood” (qtd. in Smith, The Butcher’s Tale 18). Blood libel, a centuries-old superstition propagated by the Catholic Church, declared that Jews perform ritual murder of Christian children in order to use their blood to bake matzo for Passover (18). Due to the lack of progress in the investigation of Ernst Winter’s murder, the townsfolk of Konitz grew increasingly agitated. The county official, Baron Gottlieb von Zedlitz, wrote that “nearly the whole population of the town of Konitz as well as its hinterlands is convinced that Winter was a victim of Jewish ritual murder” (qtd. in Smith, The Butcher’s Tale 28-29). There were two butchers in Konitz, one Jewish named Adolph Lewy and one Christian named Gustav Hoffmann (pgs?). Hoffmann published his “Petition of the Konitz Butcher Gustav Hoffman Pertaining to the Matter of the Winter’s Murder” in Wilhelm…show more content… The town of Konitz is in the eastern German Empire in what is now Poland and consisted of both Protestant and Catholic Christians (Smith, The Butcher’s Tale 168). This is confirmed by the map of the geographical distribution of Protestants and Catholics in 1890, in which the eastern reaches of the German Empire exhibit the presence of Catholics (Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict 2-3). However, the majority of participants in the violent rioting in Konitz were Protestant, so the Catholic explanation is not sufficient (Smith, The Butcher’s Tale 168-169). The prevalence of anti-Semitism during this time period likely contributed the most to the perception of persecution amongst Konitz Christians. Jews were stereotyped as powerful Germans in control of many areas of the economy and government and used their influence to better themselves and harm non-Jews. In 1879, Herinrich von Treitschke, a prominent German historian, famously exclaimed that “The Jews are our misfortune!” and described Jews as “hustling, pands-peddling youths, whose children and children’s children will someday command Germany’s stock exchanges and newspapers” (Levy). Furthermore, von Treitschke claims “the Semites bear a heavy share of guilt for the falsehood and
