Fraenkel Prize 2012: Economic Trust and Anti-Semitic Violence

Stefanie Fischer presents her Fraenkel Prize-winning entry.

In 1934, a member of the Nazi-dominated city council of Gunzenhausen complained: “We need the Jews, because I have still not been able to sell my cattle without the Jews. Christian traders, in contrast, only offer overpriced cows, which Jews do not do.” The statement reveals much about the relationships between Jews, non-Jews and Nazis in the German countryside which the historian Stefanie Fischer has explored in her research. The Jewish cattle traders had been crucial to the German agro-society until the Nazi seizure of power. The business relationships between Jewish cattle traders and farmers were based on mutual trust which the Nazis tried to undermine with Antisemitic distrust from very early on. Stefanie Fischer will show how the trust relationships started to change under the influence of Antisemitic violence and how they finally came to an end in 1939.

Stefanie Fischer has recently earned a PhD from the Center for Research on Antisemitism/Technical University Berlin. Her thesis, on which this talk is based, was awarded The Wiener Library's Fraenkel Prize in 2012.

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