Review of: Kristoff Kerl: Männlichkeit und moderner Antisemitismus. Eine Genealogie des Leo Frank-Case, 1860er-1920er Jahre. Köln u.a.: Böhlau Verlag 2017.

Abstract

In 1915, Jewish factory director Leo Frank was lynched by a mob of Anglo-American men after he had been found guilty for the murder of a young Anglo-American female worker. Through an intersectional analysis, Kristoff Kerl shows how during the course of the scandal, which has become the most renowned example of antisemitic violence in the USA, former set pieces merge into a coherent antisemitic worldview. The background to this was a sense of crisis in the Southern states since the end of the civil war: industrialization, urbanization, the emancipation of slaves, and the rising numbers of female paid labor were interpreted by Anglo-Americans as an attack on their masculinity. The fight against the Jew Frank became a fight for the reinstatement of the hegemonic gender hierarchy.