Climate Change, Frankenstein’s Monster and the HEP HEP Riots of 1819 (Part 2)

(Part 2 of 2)

Not only was the language and conceptual constructs of anti-semitism not at the disposal of the HEP HEP agitators, but neither was the whole library of racial literature and theory. It would be another forty years (1859) before Charles Darwin’s paradigm-shifting magnum opus, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, would be published. Count de Gobineau’s vastly influential theory of racism and Aryan superiority, “An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Race” would not find daylight until 1848. Nor had the great composer and impresario Richard Wagner’s 1850 vicious and anonymously-penned attack, “Judaism in Music” been published. And we have not yet reached the still truly landmark works of pseudo-literature and bogus scholarship that would follow in the coming decades; works that would contribute so formatively to shaping the genocidal mindset of Europe. Likewise, the English-born Nazi admiring Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s 1899 world bestseller “The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century” and the great 20th century masterpiece of forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, which held the entire post World War One reading public in diabolical and conspiratorial thrall, were still awaiting their fateful hour. And further towards our own times, the odious Nazi  philosopher, the Baltic German Alfred Rosenberg’s “The Myth of the 20th Century”, a self-conscious emulation of Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s bestseller, was awaiting the toxic miasma of the 20th century for its bloody birth. Both Houston Chamberlain’s “Foundations” (Richard Wagner’s future son-in-law and a key figure in Hitler’s Bayreuth Opera cult it should be noted) and the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” outline an alternative and compelling counterfactual history of Jewish ambition and a grand design to seize control of Germany and the world. The obscene, pornographic, racially sexualized graphic language of cartoons and caricature of Julius Streicher’s 1923 newspaper “Der Sturmer” had not yet been formulated in 1819  to mould the imagination of naive and credulous youth, nor had the sophisticated and vile  language of well-drawn character, metaphor, satire and simile of Jewish anti-semitic hatred, been scribbled by some of Europe’s leading writers and poets, such as the celebrated French writer Louis-Ferdinand Celine or the American poet laureate and Nazi collaborator Ezra Pound, on offer to pollute the minds of the more sophisticated and educated elements of the general public with a deluge of stereotypes and hateful imagery. 

It is the lack of any ability to describe and contextualize the HEP HEP events and the failure of the riot’s instigators to instrumentalize their hatred that has caused the event to be left out of the historical picture; a picture and timeline that leads from the high civilization of Europe to the death factories and charnel houses of the mid-20th century Auschwitz and Buchenwald.

Another aspect of the lacunae in creating a historical picture of the HEP HEP riots is the reaction of the Jewish community itself and an effort by the Jewish community to sweep aspects of the riots under the historical carpet.  From what can be gathered from stray historical sources, it appears that the target of attack of the rioters, at least initially, was a particular strata of the Jewish community, ostensibly small and medium-size lenders and bankers, who rather than rolling over notes and mortgages payable, executed on their security and took possession of quite a number of prominent properties, estates, mansions, commercial buildings and dwellings all over Germany. A previously unseen scale and spectrum of Jewish wealth was now prominently on display, and often quite luxuriantly at the time of weddings and other celebrations. These displays of wealth were previously strictly limited, taxed and controlled by sumptuary laws, barring any display of ostentatious wealth in clothing, jewelry, banquets, carriages and gifts amongst many other modest stipulations that extended to silverware and cutlery and even tablecloths. The victims of the initial riots were not the great Jewish figures of high finance or the owners of large merchant/traders but families that had nonetheless grown quite wealthy or at least relatively wealthy vis-a-vis other merchants and burghers. These displays of wealth and what they entailed were a source of considerable rage and envy particularly in the face of inflation, the complete scarcity of coin, crop failures, and starvation-like conditions brought on by the climatic effects of the Indonesian volcano.  

What is covered up and whitewashed in all of this, is that this now impatient, upwardly mobile and striving element of the Jewish commercial community, having been directly exposed to the violent mob, ran in absolute terror to the baptismal font and in very large numbers. There was no mass martyrdom and collective suicide as had occurred in the “German Crusade” of 1096 in the old medieval Jewish Rhineland communities of Speyer, Worms and Mainz and other towns. The 1819 conversions bear a certain historical resemblance, although on a much smaller scale, to the mass conversions in 1391 in Spain. It is apparent that these converted families, once the violence had calmed down found themselves ostracized and despised by the Jewish community, and unwelcome and alienated from the gentile community to whom they had sworn religious fealty in panic and fear. With much of their wealth intact one can see a unique out-migration of these families, migrating as entire extended families to the industrial cities of England, the United States, Argentina, Brazil and also interestingly and quite significantly to the Orient, especially to China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Penang, Batavia and elsewhere. Marrying often amongst themselves these HEP HEP refugees formed a significant commercial diaspora that has been entirely overlooked as far as I can see in historical treatments. I am not aware of any scholarly research or even a single well-written monograph on the contributions of these early German-Jewish networks and the remarkable individuals that composed them. One sees these converted Jewish expatriates everywhere in England, America and in the Orient and at the forefront of many modern commercial and technical developments.

Many of the German immigrants fleeing to the United States in the face of the failed liberal revolutions of 1848 were surprised and astonished to see the pews in the German Lutheran Church’s full of their lost Hebrew brethren. These converted Jews would often substitute culture for religion; as American immigrants these nominally converted Jews were deeply involved everywhere in the promotion of German culture by way of sponsoring and organizing conservatories, theatre programs, opera societies, German literary and philosophical circles, and German language schools for their children. Many prominent German Americans have their roots in these early converted Jewish immigrant communities. 

A single individual example can suffice to demonstrate the huge role that these victims of the HEP HEP riots subsequently played in the major developments of the 19th century. The example that I cite here is Gustav Christian Schwabe. The middle name “Christian” incidentally is a common name assigned by the Church to Jewish converts in Germany and in other countries. The conversion naming ‘rules’ for Jews vary across Europe, Poland and Russia.  In the Lithuanian Polish Empire, for instance, converted Jews would typically adopt the family name of the sponsoring figure, usually a member of the gentry or an aristocrat who would act as the converted individuals’ Godfather, religious surety and guarantor of their true faith and seeing that their charge would keep the Christian rites and fully abandon all Judaic practices.  Rich or notable Jews would often be baptized by bishops and in the case of extremely wealthy Jewish magnates in Rome by the Pope whose papal name the convert would then acquire. There are many examples of these conversions. The vastly wealthy 11th century progenitor of the great Pierleoni family, the Roman Jewish Croesus, and patriarch of a family that would exert great influence on the Papacy (possibly to this very day) and for centuries acted as a defender of the Popes against the Holy Roman Emperors, was converted and given the name Leo de Benedicto, in that he was baptized by Pope Leo IX himself amidst much pageantry.  Such was the convention. 

The singular exemplar of the HEP HEP generation that I cite here is the German immigrant and Liverpool merchant, Gustav Christian Schwabe. The entire Schwabe family converted en mass in the year 1819. Schwabe and his many cousins and relatives would, and it is no exaggeration to say, alter the industrial and commercial landscape of the 19th century. 

Gustav Schwabe and his family members, principally Edward Boustead, initially formed a trading and banking firm known as Boustead and Schwabe. Boustaed who was from the same milieu was initially engaged to be married to Gustav’s Schwabe’s sister Fanny Schwabe. Fanny Schwabe, however, after some kind of family scandal, would instead marry her own cousin Moritz Wolff (father of Gustav Wolff of Harland and Wolff shipbuilding  fame).  Boustead and Schwabe (and later with the Sykes family) would go on to develop commodity markets that would have global economic ramifications.  Boustead and Schwabe functioned also as a merchant bank competing with Jardine Matheson and providing at the same time the financial basis for a large range of activities. 

As a trading and merchant entity, Boustead and Schwabe is credited with bringing the specific rubber cultivars from the Kew botanical garden to Malyasian. This rubber variety has been the basis of the entire Malaysian rubber industry.  Boustead and Schwabe were also significantly involved in establishing Singapore as the world’s foremost exporter of tin after starting a smelter on the island of Pulau Brani, which would go on to produce the finest tin in the world (so called Straits Tin). Boustead and Schwabe had close to 149,000 acres across 48 plantations under cultivation in Malaysia. Additionally, Schwabe personally  co-owned and  financed the Bibby Shipping Lines, one of the world’s oldest continually operating  freight forwarding companies. The company is historically credited with pioneering  the first shipment of crude oil and one of the first firms to utilize the Suez Canal upon completion.  Bibby & Sons is still in existence to this day.  

More importantly, and of enormous historical significance, Schwabe would also finance and invest in Robert Stephenson and his son George Stephenson’s Steam Engine concern, the first manufacturer of steam engines in the world. Stephenson would go on to build one third of Great Britain’s railway system. George Stephenson is generally considered to be one of the greatest engineers of the 19th century. Stephenson’s invention, which is epochal, would provide a prime power source that would alter global civilization and provide power for the first time beyond the capacity of human and animal (oxen/ horse) muscle and sinew. Schwabe would signally assist with selling steam locomotives and railways to Russia, Egypt and other countries, resulting in considerable economic transformation. 

Of equal significance Schwabe would partner and almost entirely finance Thomas Ismay’s White Star steamship line, a deal that was worked out famously while playing a game of billiards. Ismay’s White Star steamship line would grow to become the most prominent shipping and passenger companies in the world, universally renowned for its legendary steamship liners, including such iconic ships as the SS Atlantic, SS Republic, SS Titanic and SS Britannic. These ships would fundamentally alter transoceanic travel.  By way of a structured and formal arrangement, the builder of all of these iconic ships would be the Belfast-based firm of his nephew Gustav Woolf (his sister Fanny’s son), of Harland and Wolf. Edward James Harland was Schwabe’s longtime protege and he had nurtured Harland’s career at every step since first encountering him as a 15 year old apprentice while working for the Stephenson’s engineering firm. Harland and Wolff would entirely reshape Northern Ireland and Great Britain’s industrial landscape. The great steamships built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard were the largest, most sophisticated and complex industrial creations in human history. These great steam shipliners had a consciousness altering impact, I would argue, on Western Civilization and society, catapulting human engineering capability, and human possibility itself,  to an entirely new level. The engineering and building of these great ships represent an extraordinary achievement not just within the scope of British industrial development but within the ambit of the most important technical achievements of human civilization.

The HEP HEP riots are an inexplicable cataract in Jewish history. There might have been no other such near cataclysm in Jewish history that was so narrowly averted. The riots, if one wants to use this name, came very close to seeing all of European Jewry go up in flames. The riots are an historical precursor to the Kristallnacht explosion of 1938 and the Holocaust that would follow. The riots once commenced quickly spread throughout Germany. 

The Jewish population as of 1800 world-wide was not more than 2.5 million, having grown from less than 1 million in 1700.  The locus and centre of the world’s Jewish population in 1800 were the 300 or so member states of the Holy Roman Empire, a number that would be reduced to 39 confederate States after 1815. In no community were the numbers of Jews more than a few thousand. Berlin’s Jewish population was approximately 3,292 in 1812, Frankfurt’s population in 1800 less than 3,000, Hamburg’s less than 6,000, Hanover’s 500, Breslau’s 3,255 in 1810, Cologne’s was just 19 souls,  Munich’s just 170 in 1790. Many of these communities were reconstituted from communities that had been expelled from the same territories in the 15th century. The modern origins of most German Jewish communities stretch not back further than the period after the end of the forty year War in1648. Desperate for funds and with a populace that lacked all credit, tiny numbers of Jewish families were allowed to re-settle across the Germanic States under very restricted and onerous terms in the 17th century. It was these very communities that had struggled to reestablish themselves that were almost wiped out by the events of 1819. 

Very little is clear about what happened during the riots. What is clear is that the pogrom like violence left German Jews terrorized and deeply traumatized. The cause and triggering event is still not known. A debtors uprising is one possible explanation. A very large number of people fell into default. Perceived Jewish ascendancy is another explanation.  Supposed aggrandizement and the flaunting of sumptuary laws may have played a part. The execution and repossession of property, particularly large houses, mansions and estates was certainly a source of anger, envy and resentment. With certainty one can say that the populations were exhausted by the Napoleonic Wars. It is suggested here in this essay that a  climatic event leading to crop failure, famine and disease may have been the decisive and major precipitating factor.  

It is a near miracle that all of European Jewry was not destroyed by the events of 1819. Utterly dependent on the authorities for their protection, very little stood in the way of the physical destruction of isolated Jewish communities. The complete despoliation and looting of all Jewish wealth was a seeming given at the time of the riots. That the communities managed to maintain their gold bullion, coin,  loan books, pawns, and collateral is quite remarkable. Such mass attacks in the past, such as the immensely destructive Khmelnytsky pogrom of 1648 have typically left the attacked communities in complete penury and impoverishment.

If the events of 1819 had been allowed to run their course the entire trajectory of Jewish history would have been thrown off, the great migration to America post 1880 would have never  happened, the Zionist movement would have  been stillborn and impossible and the mobilization of Jewish capital for Europe’s industrialization and modernization would  have been impossible and unavailable. Furthermore none of the Jewish talent and genius which was to so utterly transform the 19th and 20th centuries would have been able to come to the fore. Not only would have the Jewish people been historically sidelined but human history itself would have taken a very different course. Europe would not have achieved its notable advancements and breakthroughs and the world would have been a much poorer and a culturally and intellectually reduced place. The 19th and 20th century accelerations would not have occurred. 

Jewish historiography has really failed to grapple with the true dimensions of the HEP HEP riots. There also seems to have  been an effort to deliberately whitewash the large number of conversions of petrified and terrified individuals, desperate to survive and to hang onto their wealth and new found property outside of the Ghetto. That a large percentage of the very wealthiest strata abandoned the Jewish faith and then faced  the combined ostracism and alienation from both Jews and Gentiles alike has not been acknowledged let alone studied as far as I can see. The short capsule sketch of Gustave Christian Schwabe, shows how monumentally productive these alienated individuals were in paving the way for some of the most important capitalist and industrial developments of the 19th century. Why has this fascinating network of individuals not been examined? This lack of attention is an oversight of significant proportions.

Zionism is a civilizational scale project. Its inherent goals and tasks will bring it into contact with every major philosophical and political issue and economic problem confronting human survival and prosperity for the foreseeable future.  Like any great civilizational construct Zionism and its manifestation in the State of Israel cannot be separated from the world within which we live and all of the forces and cycles that bear down on mother earth, including the geochemical, solar, nuclear and atmospheric conditions that have shaped our planetary and biological evolution. Mankind avoids the natural world at its own peril. Climatic shifts in temperature, even temporary ones as we saw with the 1815 volcanic eruption in Indonesian can have profound consequences. Natural disasters and climatic  events could be more determinative with regard to the future of Israel than the changing constellation of enemies in the immediate neighbourhood. The Levant and the Middle East are particularly vulnerable and extremely sensitive to small perturbations in temperature and climate. The Syrian revolution was partially (if not largely) driven by drought in the North East grain growing areas, leading to the mass migration of very poor agrarian people to Syrian cities with attendant political and social consequences. 

Another year without a summer, may occur at any time. And the dreamy artists locked inside, may like Byron and Mary Shelley biding their time, but perhaps less philanthropically inclined, might devise a real monster, neurally and physically capable and fully instantiated in matter with a malignant intelligence far more frightening than the one conjured up by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein creation. Such a creature might yet be unleashed on our world.

Israel as a beacon and sentinel for mankind must be vigilant and must be at the forefront of protecting mother earth and her billions of dependent denizens. Israel and the Jewish people with its unmatched reservoirs of talent, genius and compassion must live up to this task. 

*Dedicated to the memory of Elchanan Kalmanson, 42 years of age and a father of five from the Judean Hills community of Otniel, who upon hearing about the terrorist attack of October 7th drove 61 miles to the community of Be’eri. He lost his life while saving others. May his memory be a blessing and may he never be forgotten.