Joyce Maier wrote:

>Beethoven was as "antisemitic" as most of his contemporaries, but by no
>means in our sense of the word!  Some regrettable events DID happen since
>Beethoven's days...

I think you have come close to the heart of the matter.  As the historian
Goldhagen has pointed out (perhaps exaggeratedly, as his critics claim),
German culture had a strain that could be called antisemitic since Luther,
and even before him, and this was part of the atmosphere that even a
Beethoven unconsciously breathed.  And the horrors of the Holocaust did
clear the air in this respect.  Since our idea of antisemitism today is
inescapably influenced by that event, it is hard to have a historically
accurate understanding of any comments about Jews or Judaism people made
before the twentieth century.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]