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Chamberlain, Houston Stewart

The 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia

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Anglo-German musical critic and anti-Semitic writer; born Sept. 9, 1855, at Portsmouth, England; son of Admiral W. C. Chamberlain. He received his early education abroad, being sent to France, where he went to school at Versailles. Subsequently he removed to Switzerland and studied science at Geneva University, and finally he settled in Austria, where he became privat-docent in philosophy at the University of Vienna.

Besides several works on Richard Wagner, from whom he probably imbibed much of his anti-Semitism, he has attracted attention by his chief work, "Die Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts," Munich, 1899; 4th ed., 1902. In this he regards all history as a conflict between the Aryans and the Semites; the latter being regarded as a special genus, "homo Syriacus," of which the Jew, "homo Judaicus," is a typical species. Race rules history; and the influence of the Semites in the early forms of Christianity broke down the ancient world, which had to be revived by the new blood of Germanism against which the Roman Catholic Church is perpetually struggling in order to introduce once more the abstract universalism of the Semite. Chamberlain dreads a world-supremacy on the part of the Jews, and attacks in every way their intellectual, moral, and religious qualities. While evincing great admirationfor the character and views of Jesus, so great is his anti-Semitic bias that he denies Jesus' Jewish origin.

Chamberlain's journalistic style and wide generalizations have attracted considerable attention, especially in German-Jewish journalism, as can be seen from the accompanying bibliography.