37 pages • 1 hour read
Helmut Walser SmithThe Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Butcher’s Tale and Other Stories”
Journalists gather in Konitz to cover the case, seeing in it the possibility for a “public sensation […] a spectacle like a Wagnerian opera” (56). One of them is antisemitic newspaper editor Wilhelm Bruhn. Bruhn meets with Gustav Hoffmann and publishes in his newspaper a petition of Hoffmann detailing reasons for his innocence and for Adolf Lewy’s guilt. Appealing to his professional expertise as a butcher, Hoffmann argues that Winter’s murder could only have been done by a kosher butcher, and that Lewy’s house was conveniently placed to carry out the crime. He points a finger at Lewy’s son Moritz as an accomplice in the murder. Hoffmann offers detailed theories about the roles that Bernhard Masloff, Anna Ross, Plath the tailor, and Wolf Israelski might have played in planning and executing the murder and in disposing the body. Hoffmann portrays himself as a victim of a Jewish conspiracy: “The Jews need a Christian butcher on whom to pin their own guilt” (61). Hoffmann’s petition is widely distributed and read in West Prussia that summer, transfixing the minds of local public (68).
At this point, Smith backs up and covers the testimony offered by the bricklayer Bernhard Masloff. Masloff came to the police nine days after Winter’s murder and offered the following story about the night of the murder:
On his way home after having had several drinks at local pubs, Masloff passed by Lewy’s house and heard strange conspiratorial noises inside. Then Masloff saw Lewy stepping outside the house and heard him utter the phrase “Nothing shall be known” (69). Although at first Masloff’s story does not impress the police, the journalist Bruhn urges Masloff to tell it again after the arrest of Hoffmann in May. This time, Masloff amends several details of the story. He now claims that he saw two men come out of Lewy’s house carrying a heavy package and heading for the Mönchsee.
Masloff’s mother-in-law Anna Ross also offers testimony. Ross runs a maid service for several families in Konitz including the Lewys. She claims that she and her daughter Martha (Masloff’s wife) discovered among the Lewy’s laundry a handkerchief embroidered with the initials “E.W.,” a white watch chain like the one Ernst Winter possessed, and a cigar case with a picture of Winter inside.
Most professional observers are not impressed by the Masloff/Ross testimony. The pair has a bad reputation in town—Masloff a man with an alcohol addiction and a violent streak, and Ross’s daughters having prior police records. The entire family is notorious for being dysfunctional, violent, and mendacious. Nevertheless, most of the townsfolk side with Masloff and Ross because their story confirms their prejudices about the case.
Inspector Johann Braun calls the Masloff/Ross testimony a “powerful tissue of lies” (75), and he arrests them and charges them with perjury. In their subsequent trial, antisemitic prosecutors call witnesses to corroborate the Masloff/Ross side of the events and incriminate Lewy. Although the jury finds Masloff and Ross guilty, the trial serves to elevate their stories and other rumors surrounding the case, cementing them as truth in the minds of the public. The result is a growing “civil war” in Konitz pitting the Christian defenders of Hoffmann against the Jews. A number of townspeople come forward with wild stories of Jewish conspiracies, creating Collective Narratives rooted in antisemitic myths and stereotypes.
Chapter 2 Analysis
In this chapter Smith describes the dynamics of antisemitism in the Konitz case in terms of how stories, myths and rumors work on the mind: “Stories took hold of and transfixed the population of Konitz. Stories are fundamental to the way we understand ourselves and our world” (68).
From the start, outside journalists move into the town to influence and drive the narrative. The journalist Wilhelm Bruhn meets with citizens at taverns and encourages gossip about the case. The public reaction to the case reassumes age-old suspicions, anxieties, and stereotypes about Jews. For example, there are rumors of secret vaults in the basement of the synagogue where the murder was supposedly plotted. The Jews are conceived as wily, treacherous, clannish, and obsessed with money and Christian blood, harkening to the theme of The Power and Symbolism of Blood. Romantic or sexual relationships between Jews and Christians are considered deeply taboo, and transgressing this boundary can have severe consequences.
The German jury system is biased toward antisemitism. There is no allowance for a trial to be moved to neutral ground in cases where the local population is blatantly partial. Since juries are not screened for bias, it is easy to assemble a jury stacked with antisemites.
The machinations of journalists and the added Masloff/Ross testimony contribute to a growing “us versus them” mentality in Konitz, approaching the level of a civil war. Citizens come forward with fantastical stories incriminating the Jewish community, coming seemingly from their wild imaginations. The stories create a collective narrative, resembling a fictional plot as conceived by a novelist. The story has a protagonist (Hoffmann) and a villain (Lewy). The former is a clean, virtuous, upstanding model citizen; the latter comes from a dark underworld and is not even pictured or photographed. The Christians in these stories speak in articulate paragraphs, while the Jews repeat curt and secretive phrases (“Nothing shall be known”).
These Collective Narratives grow within an atmosphere of suspicion rooted in a fundamental breakdown in trust. Hoffmann and Lewy are emblematic of this. Although both men share the same profession and live on the same street, they seem to inhabit different worlds. Christian townspeople treat their Jewish neighbors like strangers, engaging in The System of Othering. An atmosphere has been created where there is no truth and no faith in one’s fellow human.
Smith implies that the title of his book, The Butcher’s Tale, could serve as a label for the complex of stories and mythology put forth by those siding with Gustav Hoffmann in the Konitz case.
