Biological Segregation: The Role of Keim in Jud Süß

Last Spring, I watched Jud Süß for the National Imagination course. We had a guest speaker come in to explain to us the concept of keim, and I thought it might be interesting to some of you, so I dug up my old notes.

The emergence of the German Wissenschaft in the 19^th century became proof enough for many citizens of who belonged in their nation, and who did not. In Jud Süß, the German nation is unified through a widespread fear of the unknown “other” race and its influence on the common culture.

A nation can be made to be racially defined when biology is used as a category of life. Organic unity, a concept closely tied with a fascist nation, consists of a people united by jus sanguines – by their particular lineage or blood. This biological racism most strongly showed itself throughout history in the German nation in the form of anti-Semitism.

The concept of keim, a “seed” of sorts embedded within each race, is one of the founding principals of the notion of a biologically unified nation. The purity of a race, according to this concept, lies in its blood. The keim of each race can be either degenerative, or able to reach its full potential. Being determined that Jews had a degenerate seed, and were fully able to degrade a pure seed, members of the German nation grew frightened of “mixing” races, and possibly being the cause of destruction of their own race.

Immanuel Kant, though not the first to be anti-Semitic, was indeed the first to scientifically approach the subject, and soon after coined the term keim. Once anti-semitism made its way to the United States in the 1880s-90s, Americans gave a legal foundation to the concept, which then found its way back to Germany. The new “proven” knowledge of keim further united Germans within their particular racial category. This racial unification is shown in Jud Süß as the vallant, brave men in the council sacrifice themselves for the betterment of the country, while the Jews with their “degenerate seed” try everything in their power to destroy what harmony is there. Similarly, Oppenheimer’s attraction towards Dorothea is unacceptable because her father is unwilling to let the Jewish keim become intertwined with the pure, noble blood of his family. The Germans at the end of Harlan’s film were unified by opposing Süß Oppenheimer’s sin of attempting to degenerate the Aryan seed.

The German nation in Harlan’s film is unified by a generalized fear of the unknown “other” race, in this case being the Jews. What the German citizens fear, more so than the actual Jewish people, is the Semitic influence on the common culture. The popular belief of the German citizens in the film (and indeed the impression left on the viewer) was that the Jews were aiming to completely shift the culture of Germany by expanding their own population and performing continual cultural attacks upon them.

Oppenheimer in particular was credited with disrupting the purity of the German rationale, and provoking the nation into a state of wishing for unification through “One folk, one empire, one leader.” The alarm at the potential influence of alternate races on their treasured German culture propelled the fascist unification forward, prompting citizens of that nation to believe that their noble, virtuous, and honorable lifestyles were direly threatened.