Walther Rathenau attained unprecedented achievement as a German Jew, rising to War Minister in WWI and Foreign Minister during the Weimar Republic. In the weeks before his assassination, he increasingly received viciously anti-Semitic attacks from the far Right. Asking a friend why he was hated, he was told “Simply because you are a Jew, and successful in managing Germany’s foreign policy, you are a living contradiction of the anti-Semitic theories of the harmful effect of Judaism on Germany.”
Knowing that his life was in danger, he refused police protection. On 24 June 1922, three assassins, members of the Ultra Nationalist Organisation Consul, assassinated Rathenau as he was driven in an open car from his house to the Foreign Office in Wilhelmstrasse.
The talk will be held held upstairs in the Irish Jewish Museum on Sunday, 26 November 2017 at 3pm.