"Perhaps A Very Curious Document Will Emerge for Posterity on the State of Mind Around the Year 1893": Hermann Bahr's Interviews on Antisemitism

Hermann Bahr's Der Antisemitismus: Ein Internationales Interview (1894) is a forgotten study that offers a wide tapestry of insights into a problem that does not seem to go away. What is remarkable about this work is that it does not follow a scientific or scholarly template, i.e., it does not attempt to include a cross section of the population of a given country or a specific target group across many countries, but, instead, interviews the best and the brightest of the European intelligentsia of the time, irrespective of political affiliation or ideology. Writers as diverse as Henrik Ibsen, August Bebel, Theodor Mommsen, and Edmond Picard discuss four central questions: What is the nature of antisemitism? What are its causes? What is a Jew? And finally, what can be done to combat antisemitism?