One evening in early April 1922, Walther Rathenau received a visitor. Around eight o’clock Albert Einstein rang the bell at his front door. He had brought with him Kurt Blumenfeld, the chairman of the Zionist Association for Germany. And a clear message: As natural as it was for Rathenau to be a German, for the anti-Semites he would always remain a stranger as a Jew. As Foreign Minister, in the highest political office that a Jew had ever held in Germany, he not only endangered his own life, according to Einstein, but also that of German Jews. Einstein and Blumenfeld tried to persuade the German foreign minister to resign from his post. It turned out to be a very long evening. The two gentlemen only left the villa in Grunewald long after midnight – without having achieved anything. Rathenau remained in office, and two months later he was dead. Shot by right-wing extremists, who put into practice the escalating anti-Semitic rhetoric: “Blast that Walther Rathenau, the goddamned Jew pig.”
From Eisner to Selensky: Anti-Semitism against Jewish politicians. – Culture
