“I decide who is a Jew,” declared Karl Lueger, the mayor of Vienna in 1895, known for a political career built on virulent antisemitism. His statement reflected a disturbing reality, because by the turn of the 20th century, being “Jewish” had become less about religion or heritage and more a catch-all label for anyone cast as an outsider.
Fueled by the rise of eugenics and racial pseudoscience, figures like Georg Ritter von Schönerer portrayed Jews as an “alien” race, using nationalist ideology to justify excluding them from public life. It was just a blueprint for the antisemitism that led to the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, stripping Jews of civil rights and marking a dark turning point in Nazi Germany.
Click through the gallery to see how ideology became oppression and how Germany legally stripped Jews of their rights.