page_title: Arthur Trebitsch
section_title: Theories
hierarchical_section_title: Arthur Trebitsch / Theories
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover of "Geist und Judentum".
context_page_description: Arthur Trebitsch was an Austrian writer and racial theorist, known for being an antisemite of Jewish origin. He offered his services to help the fledgling Nazis to write their antisemitic literature, and was an influence on the early development of the Austrian branch of the Nazi party.
context_section_description: Trebitsch's theories were first articulated in his 1919 book Geist und Judentum. According to Trebitsch Jewish presence in Europe was fundamentally destructive to the spirit ("geist") of the Aryan peoples. The Jews were an "Ungeist" within Europe which must be excised. However, he believed that an antitoxin works best when it is derived from the toxin itself. People of Jewish ancestry who reject Judaism, such as himself, will be the spiritual force to destroy the corrupting influence of the Jewish presence in Europe. Jesus Christ was the archetype of a Judaised Aryan who had overcome and rejected the Jewishness within himself. The Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe were the antithesis of this, representing the "toxin" itself in its most virulent form. They had to be forcibly expelled from Europe, though a few might be absorbed into the Aryan population after a long period of forced labour eradicated the Jewishness from their souls.
  While Aryans possessed a "primary" creative intellect, Jews were only capable of "secondary" thinking, taking original ideas and adapting them. In doing so, they introduced a degenerating element which corrupted thought. Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis epitomised this, as it demonstrated an "erotomania" typical of the Jewish mind.
caption: Trebitsch's book Geist und Judentum
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