The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town [Hardcover]

Helmut W. Smith (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 039305098X | ISBN-13: 978-0393050981 | Publication Date: January 2002 | Edition: 1

In 1900, in a small country town in the eastern reaches of the German Empire, a German boy is found frozen beneath the ice. He has been brutally murdered, the blood drained from his dismembered body. The crime resembles traditional blood libel accusations against the Jews. When a Jewish butcher is accused of committing the murder, the town explodes in an anti-Semitic fervour. Using vast amounts of previously undiscovered material, Helmut Walser Smith, a professor of German history, has pieced together the web of false stories and accusations, the abundance of rumour and malice that engulfed this Prussian town. Reminiscent of a true historical thriller in its dramatic intensity, The Butcher's Tale presciently anticipates the Nazi pogroms that would descend on Germany three decades later.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Two residents out for a stroll in Konitz, Germany, in March 1900, discovered a carefully tied package in a nearby lake. Its contents, the upper torso of a missing youth, set off a chain of events that brought national attention to an unremarkable village on the eastern edge of the Austro-Prussian empire. After weeks in which no suspect or motive was offered, the vacuum began to fill with rumor; the flames were fanned by the arrival on the scene of anti-Semitic journalists, and soon most of Konitz was convinced that the death was a Jewish ritual murder. A police inspector from Berlin suspected the town's Christian butcher; he and his allies in turn accused the Jewish butcher. Mobs began a series of violent acts against Konitz's Jews, and the Prussian army was called in to quell the violence. Smith, who teaches German history at Vanderbilt, does a masterful job exploring the history of the blood libel (the charge that Jews commit ritual murder of Christian children), as well as of community and how people band together to bring about great good or in the case of Konitz genuine evil. Yet, Smith argues that Konitz should be seen as a case study of "process," of how different forces came together to make "latent anti-Semitism manifest," causing peaceful townspeople to turn on their neighbors. Drawing on a remarkably detailed documentary record, Smith analyzes social, class and other factors in the violence the role of the middle vs. working classes, Protestants vs. Catholics and in an original piece of analysis, shows how the townspeople's response was itself a form of ritual murder. Although classed by the publisher as history/Judaica, this powerful volume will also appeal to true-crime readers and anyone interested in the dynamics that can turn a peaceful community into a place of hatred and violence. Map, illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The invocation of the term ritual murder seems an echo of a distant, barbaric past, the stuff of superstition and wild fancy. Yet in eastern Germany, at a time characterized by industrialization and scientific advancement, such barbaric echoes resounded all too often. In this book, Smith (German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870-1914) explores the murder of young Ernst Winter in the West Prussian town of Konitz on March 11, 1900. Though the authorities suspected the Christian butcher, Gustav Hoffmann, the Christian townspeople suspected a Jewish conspiracy to kill Winter and acquire his Christian blood for their Passover matzo. It is remarkable in this pre-Hitlerian Germany that the government actually protected Konitz's Jews from the angry rioters and refused to entertain the absurd idea of ritual murder. Smith has painstakingly explored the motives of all key actors in this drama. Text and bibliography are both copiously annotated. Imbued with an appropriately eerie atmosphere, this is a murder mystery with no solution, a striking re-creation of a gruesome and sad episode. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Michael F. Russo, Louisiana State Univ. Lib., Baton Rouge
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (January 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039305098X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393050981
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,050,342 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent look at a historical true crime incident, August 17, 2002

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Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town (Hardcover)

In March 1900 in Konitz, Prussia, two townsfolk find a package containing the upper body of a missing young man. Other body parts wrapped inside packing paper typically used for meat are subsequently found throughout the town. Though the authorities believe the local Christian butcher killed the lad, rumors abound even way beyond the town's borders that the Jews performed an ancient ritual using the blood of Christians in the baking of Passover matzo. Taken seriously by many Christians, riots and other violent acts against the Jewish community occurred.

THE BUTCHER'S TALE is an excellent look at a true crime incident that led to unproved accusations followed by anti-Semitic rioting and acts of violence against the Jewish population. Dr. Helmut Walser Smith provides deep insight into the historical evidence, especially collected in minute detail by the police and uses this anecdotal case to prove the "process" of turning personal bias and local quarrels into a structured vicious attack on a weaker relation in this case the Jews. Generalizations can be drawn from this powerful work that takes a specific medieval belief applied at the beginning of the twentieth century and yet the use of accusing a scapegoat seems so commonplace throughout the world of today.

Harriet Klausner

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One if the best history books, May 5, 2004

By 

Paola (Gurabo, Puerto Rico Puerto Rico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town (Hardcover)

I was recently assigned to read this book for a World Civilizations history course in college, and I was surprised by how interesting it turned out to be.
The author offers historical facts and evidence of a supposed 'ritual murder' in Konitz, a German town. But it reads like a suspense story that makes you want to keep reading to know what happened.
I strongly recommend this book to those interested in anti-Semitism and history.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but could be even better, November 26, 2009

By 

Fabert (New York City, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town (Paperback)

This is a good book, though I believe it could have been even better. The story that is being told here is quite an important one. It has been rather neglected in modern history books (which is why Smith's book fills a gap), but in the years and even decades immediately after Winter's murder the incident was debated endlessly in newspapers and anti-Semitic literature. The Nazi propaganda paper 'Der Stürmer' even ran a long serial about it towards the end of World War II, trying to whip up as much frenzy of racial hatred as possible. In the main, this story is retold quite competently in 'The Butcher's Tale.' And whoever reads the book will learn all that is necessary about it, in full detail.

Smith is a historian who was here given the opportunity to write for a wider audience. I wonder if the publishers had a hand in prompting him to tailor his prose for that purpose. I'm all in favor of micro-history, and I'm certainly not complaining that the work is too detailed. But I suspect that to a degree, effective communication has here been sacrificed on the altar of cheap suspense. We do not know who murdered Winter, and though I have no quarrel with Smith for not revealing this until the end (usually, readers want their crime stories to have a resolution, after all), I sometimes felt that he was at pains to obscure this in order to maintain his readers' interest.

Another drawback is that Smith's tone can at times be rather moralistic, even preaching, though always in a subtle manner. From the start I had the feeling that the only person in Konitz Smith knew for sure couldn't be the murderer was the Jewish butcher, the man whom the anti-Semites pointed to as their scapegoat. The scapegoating certainly did take place, and that is also, indeed, the main lesson to be learned from this story. But by focusing almost exclusively on this most crude and immediate aspect of the anti-Semitic response, Smith fails to see the other ways in which anti-Jewish propaganda could utilize these events. Often, indeed, Smith's account reads rather like the sometimes overly apologetic reporting offered in the liberal press at the time. And it was often at this type of reporting that the conservatives and anti-Semites could strike most effectively, charging that while they (the conservatives) were not pointing their fingers at anyone but merely pleading for a fair investigation and eventual trial, the liberals were obstructing this by sermonizing about how the murderer must under no circumstances be the Jewish butcher. They would say, in effect, that the 'blood libel' was not an argument that they used, but that the liberals used. Certainly, this was all fundamentally dishonest, as they were indeed counting on the more rabble-rousing brand of anti-Semites to do the dirty work, while leaving the more subtle, 'intellectual' propaganda to them. The point here is merely that Smith misses this secondary type of propaganda by exclusively concentrating on the primary type.

Still, this is a good--and easy--read.