From Boycott to Riot? Moravian Anti-Jewish Violence of 1899 and Its Background

In October 1899, numerous towns and villages in Moravia experienced anti-Jewish and anti-German violence of an unprecedented scale. While the immediate trigger event was related to the Czech-German nationality conflict and the intensifying struggle for the language of public administration in Bohemia and Moravia, this paper seeks to identify and analyze the antisemitic elements that undoubtedly motivated attacks on Jews.

The stage for the riots was set by the manipulated antisemitic trial with Leopold Hilsner, who was accused of Jewish ritual murder and sentenced to death just a few weeks earlier. The riots therefore offer an opportunity to analyze the mechanism how – in the context of smaller towns – antisemitism combined with the discourse of extreme nationalism and how such mobilization led up to the outbreak of violence.

What sets Moravia apart, is – among many other characteristics – the specific prehistory of Czech nationalist campaigns for dominance over the ethnically mixed Moravian towns, a struggle conducted from the 1880s with the help of anti-Jewish economic boycotts and antisemitic propaganda. To what degree can we trace continuity between these local traditions of antisemitism and the outbreak of riots? Did local Czech discourses help legitimize anti-Jewish violence? Moravian anti-Jewish boycotts and riots provide an excellent opportunity to study the role of antisemitism in the conditions of smaller towns, in the midst of an ethnic conflict and away from the major national urban centers, such as Prague or Vienna.