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Top Aide for a Senator Pushing a Permitting Bill Was Also on Staff at a Pipeline Company
(insideclimatenews.org)
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(This takes approximately six minutes to read.)
Quoting Gideon Reuveni’s Consumer Culture and the Making of Modern Jewish Identity, pgs. 131–135:
In Germany, at least, the identification of Jewish parvenus with the new resorts was explicit. Asserting that it was “not a luxury resort, [and was] free of Jews” (Kein Luxusbad, Judenfrei), a resort on the small island Hiddensee in the Baltic Sea distanced itself from the negative image of a Jewish consumer interested only in luxury.³⁶
The image of the Jewish social climber was coupled with other fears about “inappropriate and vulgar” Jewish behavior. In an 1882 letter to his wife, the popular German novelist Theodor Fontane described the Jews he met during his holiday on the North Sea island of Norderney as “cheeky,” and “obtrusive” and having “ugly crook faces.”³⁷ As this language makes clear, for some, Jews were not welcome in such exclusive locales as holiday resorts.³⁸
Political beliefs, social bigotries, and economic interests contributed to patterns of Jewish consumption to varying degrees. In the case of both Jewish and antisemitic businesses we might expect group solidarity as well as political outlook to overcome economic interests. But what about the majority of businesses, which operated according to free market forces?
Restaurants, hotels, and resorts had to be attentive to the changing demands of their customers in order to stay afloat. Aiming to secure a solid pool of regular clients, these consumer-oriented tourist businesses were intent on addressing specific target groups with their marketing materials. This consumer-oriented attentiveness makes the marketplace a sensitive seismograph of social change and cultural trends. By providing an economic pretext for banning Jewish vacationers, antisemitism became an “issue” in the marketing strategy of the tourist industry.
The same economic logic that had once positively targeted Jews as holidaymakers with ample pocketbooks now led some businesses to meet the demand for vacation places that were guaranteed to be free of Jews. Before the Great War the number of facilities banning Jews was not high, but it was substantial enough that in 1905, the Centralverein noted that “in the land of poets and thinkers,” a goodly number of baths and spas publicly proclaimed that they do not welcome Jewish guests.³⁹
After the Great War, calls to ban Jewish holidaymakers increased, and as the 1930s approached, the number of facilities declaring themselves “free of Jews” grew.⁴⁰ There are several reasons for this development. During the Weimar years, the tourism industry greatly expanded. With many more people traveling, the relative significance of the Jewish tourists among the holidaymakers declined.
But more choice for consumers meant more competition among holiday providers who found themselves under growing pressure to differentiate themselves, often by excluding Jews. The stifling economic conditions of the Weimar years and the political instability of the Republic were further factors rendering Jews “questionable” for the tourist industry.
In 1922 one hotel owner reported to the banker and Centralverein member Oscar Schueller that he got into serious trouble with some of his regular guests because of Jewish families who spent their summer holidays in his hotel. Urging Schueller not to take his decision personally, but to look at it from a purely business perspective, he bluntly explained, “since I am obviously keen to continue welcoming my regular [non-Jewish] customers every summer, I have decided not to take Jewish guests in my hotel any longer.”⁴¹ A year later the swastika featured on the advertising material of this hotel.
Cynical as this statement may be, at least this hotel owner took the time and had the courtesy to explain his choice. In many other cases the position of the hotel was not as upfront. Often, private people wrote to the Centralverein to inquire about a specific facility’s policy toward Jewish guests. In 1930, the Centralverein received a complaint about a hotel in the spa city of Wiesbaden. The owner of the hotel had allegedly declined to do business with Jewish-owned companies, stating that Germans “should only buy from German businesses.”⁴²
At the same time, the letter-writer made clear, the hotel had frequently advertised in the Jewish press, including in the CV-Zeitung. Furthermore, at least half of the hotel’s customers were Jews. Such an ambiguous situation explains the need for more information on the hotel’s policies.
For their part, Jews wanted to spend their holidays in a safe and relaxing atmosphere without being confronted by questions about their belonging.⁴³ In response, several Jewish organizations created a kind of a databank of places where Jews were not welcome. In addition to these lists of antisemitic hotels that had been published regularly in the Jewish press since the turn of the century, the Centralverein set up a special travel service in the early 1930s to offer updated information, free of charge, on tourist facilities hostile to Jews.⁴⁴
These “blacklists” illuminated the equivocal position of Jewish consumers in Germany in the interwar years. With the growing numbers of the facilities enumerated on the blacklists, hotel owners became increasingly aware of these registers. Their dramatically differing responses are preserved in the Centralverein archive.⁴⁵
Taken as a whole we can discern three major responses of hotel owners to being included on these registers. The first, and most common, reaction was indignation and protest to being included on the list of antisemitic establishments. In 1922, for example, the bureau investigated the case of Herr J. Most, owner of the Sanssouci hotel in the mountain area of Saxony. Most had allegedly advised one of his Jewish guests “to return to Jerusalem” and told another that he no longer wanted Jewish guests in his hotel. Most admitted that he might have said these things but claimed that he had acted rashly. Arguing that his words by no means reflected his attitude to Jews, he expressed his genuine interest in having Jewish guests continue to stay in his hotel.⁴⁶
An even more intriguing example is a letter sent to the Centralverein at the beginning of summer 1927 by Georg Hübner, the owner of a small hotel in Bad Salzschlirf, a spa town in a Catholic area near the city of Fulda in central Germany. Hübner vehemently protested against his hotel being included on the list of antisemitic hotels, claiming that this classification breached his rights as a business owner. He even threatened to take legal action against the Centralverein for the losses he suffered as a result. Hübner admitted that he had a “nationally minded” (National eingestellt) son but made it clear that his son’s political orientation did not reflect his own and that it was he, and not the son, who ruled the roost in the business.⁴⁷
In another interesting case, the Centralverein responded to a hotel owner’s complaint by explaining that the hotel had been put on the list in 1927 after it was determined that it advertised itself as a “pure Christian establishment” (Rein christliches Haus). The hotel owner replied that Jews were equally welcome as Christians in his house and explicitly asked for the name of his establishment to be removed from the list.⁴⁸
In some spa towns, including Bad Salzuflen in North Rhine-Westphalia, the local Jewish community protested against the blacklists, complaining that these registers generated a misleading impression of their town as hostile to Jews. In Bad Salzuflen, one letter-writer admitted, there were a few antisemitic establishments, but the majority of hotels welcomed Jews and some of them even offered Kosher food.⁴⁹
Some hotel owners made their protests public. In an announcement with the title “correction” (Berechtigung) published in the advertising section of the CV-Zeitung at the end of November 1930, the Park Hotel Kaiserhof in Frankfurt counteracted claims that Hitler stayed in the hotel. These rumors, the statement asserted, were not only false but did not reflect the political attitude of the hotel owner.
Not all responses to the blacklisting of antisemitic hotels were negative. Some hotel owners approved the inclusion of their establishment on the register of antisemitic hotels, while others simply ignored these lists. Rarer still was the request to be included on the blacklists, but this happened too.
In his comprehensive discussion of so-called spa antisemitism, Jacob Borut reports on a resort in the Thuringian forest that filed a complaint in 1926 to Centralverein officials for not being included on the list of the hotels hostile to Jews. Borut uses this and other similar examples as evidence of the rapid advance of antisemitism from the mid-1920s.
Beyond the standard explanations for the rise of antisemitism following the Great War, focusing on economic adversity, social instability, and political radicalization, there was a strong commercial basis for the rise of anti-Jewish sentiment that has been underappreciated in the historical literature. The tendency of modern consumerist society to address and promote identities made the marketplace an arena in which the question of belonging became a contentious issue.
(Emphasis added.)
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Credit: u/FutureMartian97
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https://bsky.app/profile/abetsukasa.bsky.social/post/3n26wyjv2pk2k
also https://bsky.app/profile/frieren.websunday.net
This is the official account for the manga series "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End" (original story by Kanehito Yamada, art by Tsukasa Abe), currently serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday. Editorial staff will tweet updates and other information. Volume 15, special edition, prelude 2, Werewolf, and coloring book are now on sale! The third season of the TV anime, "The Golden Land Arc," will air in October 2015. [2027, idk how the auto translate got that wrong of all things]
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[Jack Congram] China Opens Jupiter Mission, Callisto Lander to Worldwide Partners
(www.china-in-space.com)
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