Otto Böckel was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 populist politician who became one of the first to successfully exploit anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

 as a political issue in the country.

Path to politics

A native of Hesse

Hesse

Hesse or Hessia is both a cultural region of Germany and the name of an individual German state.* The cultural region of Hesse includes both the State of Hesse and the area known as Rhenish Hesse in the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate state...

 and a librarian by profession, he initially studied law at the University of Marburg but dropped it for volkskunde and became a noted folklorist. In 1887 he published a pamphlet, Die Juden - die Könige unserer Zeit, in which he attacked the Jews

Jews

The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...

 for their perceived dominance over German life. The same year he became the first independent anti-semite to be elected

German election, 1887

The 7th German federal election of 1887 was held on 21 February 1887.-Results:- Literature :* Specht, Fritz / Schwabe, Paul: Die Reichstagswahlen von 1867 bis 1903. Eine Statistik der Reichstagswahlen nebst den Programmen der Parteien und einem Verzeichnis der gewählten Abgeordneten...

 to the Reichstag

Reichstag (German Empire)

The Reichstag was the parliament of the North German Confederation , and of the German Reich ....

. 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

Junker

A Junker was a member of the landed nobility of Prussia and eastern Germany. These families were mostly part of the German Uradel and carried on the colonization and Christianization of the northeastern European territories during the medieval Ostsiedlung. The abbreviation of Junker is Jkr...

 und Juden, indicating his nature as an opponent of both the Jews and the big landowners. His election in Marburg

Marburg

Marburg is a city in the state of Hesse, Germany, on the River Lahn. It is the main town of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district and its population, as of March 2010, was 79,911.- Founding and early history :...

, secured at the expense of a sitting German Conservative Party

German Conservative Party

The German Conservative Party was a right-wing political party of the German Empire, founded in 1876.- Policies :It was generally seen as representing the interests of the German nobility, the East Elbian Junkers and the Evangelical Church of the Prussian Union, and had its political stronghold...

 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.

Political activity

Initially an independent at the start of the 1890s he formed his own group, the Antisemitische Volkspartei. This party ran in alliance with the Deutschsoziale antisemitische partei of Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg

Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg

Max Liebermann von Sonnenberg was a German officer who became noted as an anti-Semitic politician and publisher...

 in the 1890 election

German election, 1890

The 8th German federal election of 1890 was held on 20 February 1890.-Results:- Literature :* Specht, Fritz / Schwabe, Paul: Die Reichstagswahlen von 1867 bis 1903. Eine Statistik der Reichstagswahlen nebst den Programmen der Parteien und einem Verzeichnis der gewählten Abgeordneten...

, with the new alliance capturing five seats of which four were held by Böckel's party. As well as his political movement, Böckel also organised the Mitteldeutscher Bauernverein, an anti-semitic agrarian

Agrarianism

Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...

 movement that counted as many as 15,000 members involved co-operative and banking schemes that purposefully sought to exclude Jews. His various movements provided an early entry to politics for later figures such as Heinrich Class

Heinrich Class

Heinrich Claß was a German right-wing politician and president of the Pan-German League from 1908 to 1939. He is commonly known for his books about far-right policy, written under the pseudonym Daniel Frymann or Einhart...

.

Decline

However the Tivoli Congress

Tivoli Congress

The Tivoli Congress took place in 1892 and was named after the Tivoli Brewhouse in Berlin where the German Conservative Party first adopted anti-semitism as part of its political programme...

 killed off political Böckel's influence as the German Conservative Party adopted anti-Semitism and he rejected overtures from Theodor Fritsch

Theodor Fritsch

Theodor Fritsch, originally Emil Theodor Fritsche , was a German publisher and pundit. His anti-semitic writings did much to influence popular German opinion against Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries...

 to become part of a wider anti-semitic coalition as he disliked Fritsch personally. Böckel was replaced as leader of the independent anti-semites in 1894 by Otto Hirschel and Philipp Köhler and his influence declined. Meanwhile his agrarian group, hamstrung somewhat by Böckel's own lack of money was, much to his dismay, largely swallowed up by the Junker-controlled Agrarian League.

He lost his seat in the 1903 election

German election, 1903

The 11th German federal election of 1903 was held on 16 June 1903.-Results:- Literature :* Specht, Fritz / Schwabe, Paul: Die Reichstagswahlen von 1867 bis 1903. Eine Statistik der Reichstagswahlen nebst den Programmen der Parteien und einem Verzeichnis der gewählten Abgeordneten...

and faded into obscurity, dying in poverty.