Saul Ascher’s early writings on religious philosophy were clearly influence by Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy. In the 1790s, however, one can discern that Ascher was beginning to break with Kant in certain ways, for example, in his direct criticism in 1794 of the antisemitic elements in Kant’s religious criticism of 1793. Ascher’s work on the sociology of revolutions of 1799/1802 already contains abolitionist elements and his turn away from the categorical imperative. This essay lays out the shift in Kant’s influence on Ascher’s philosophical works of the 1790s.

After their founding in 1923/24, the two organizations ‘Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold’ [Black, Red and Gold Banner of the Reich] and ‘Republikanischer Schutzbund’ [Republican Protective League] found themselves in a similar situation. Both rallied primarily Social Democrats against anti-democratic movements to defend the Weimar Republic. There was a difference, though: whereas the Reichsbanner assessed political hatred against Jews as an instrument of fascist and German nationalist parties and reacted to antisemitic propaganda during the 1920s, the Schutzbund did not deal intensively with antisemitism. This article examines both organizations’ defense strategies against antisemitism and analyzes their self-perceptions alongside the political configurations that gave rise to the Reichsbanner’s and the Schutzbund’s counterstrategies.