The Mismeasure of the Jew

Abstract

A review of four books that aim to assess “the Jew” during the Nazi era. Peter Alan Steinweis' Studying the Jew: Scholarly Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany is an elegant book that describes the story of the corruption, misuse, and betrayal of four scholarly domains—race science, religious studies, history, and sociology— by its own practitioners during the Nazi period. Richard T. Gray's About Face: German Physiognomic Thought from Lavater to Auschwitz provides a detailed, non-narrative history of modern efforts to interpret human beings' desires and internal character based on their body. Michael Mack's German Idealism and the Jew: The Inner Anti-Semitism of Philosophy and German Jewish Responses examines the role of philosophy in advancing conceptions of Jewish otherness, which were different from each other but reaffirmed Judaism's fundamental alterity. Thomas Mittmann's Vom “Günstling” zum “Urfeind” der Juden reveals the role played by Nietzsche in radicalizing anti-Semitic discourse, and focuses on the various ways in which Nietzsche's oracular but ambiguous pronouncement shifted meaning from Nietzsche's time until the Nazi period.