Otto Böckel

Otto Böckel (born 2 July 1859 in Frankfurt am Main – died 17 September 1923 in Michendorf) was a German populist politician who became one of the first to successfully exploit anti-Semitism as a political issue in the country.

A native of Hesse and a librarian by profession, he initially studied law at the University of Marburg but dropped it for Volkskunde and became a noted folklorist. Böckel witnessed the economic hardship of small farmers in the Grand Duchy of Hesse and the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. This had several causes, such as falling agrarian prices due to international competition, backward production methods, uneconomic division of farmland and the rural depopulation because of industrialization. However, Böckel concluded that the real cause behind this were Jewish merchants and profiteers who had a strong position in the trade with farmers in Hesse. In 1887 he published a pamphlet, Die Juden - die Könige unserer Zeit (The Jews - the kings of our times), in which he attacked the Jews for their perceived dominance over German life. The same year he became the first independent anti-semite to be elected to the Reichstag. Böckel was elected to the Reichstag on a platform of both anti-Semitism and support for the establishment of peasant co-operatives. His slogan was Gegen Junker und Juden (Against Barons and Jews), indicating his nature as an opponent of both the Jews and the big landowners. His election in Marburg, secured at the expense of a sitting German Conservative Party member, meant that he would be the youngest member of the body and helped to secure him the nickname of the 'peasant king'. Böckel also published his own newspaper, Reichsherold, which was anti-clerical, anti-capitalist and advocated some radical democratic ideals as well as being highly anti-semitic.

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