Hep-Hep riots

The Hep-Hep riots from August to October 1819 were riots against Jews, beginning in the Kingdom of Bavaria, during the period of Jewish emancipation in the German Confederation. The antisemitic communal violence began on August 2, 1819, in Würzburg and soon reached the outer regions of the German Confederation. Many Jews were injured and much Jewish property was destroyed, although no deaths were reported.

The devastating riots or pogroms took place during a period of heightened political and social tension, shortly following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the great famine of 1816-17, and on the eve of the repressive Carlsbad Decrees. In many German cities, emancipation of the Jews had only begun in recent years, after centuries of living in the countries of Central Europe as non-citizens with restricted rights. The status of Jews varied throughout the 36 independent German states and free cities; some had revoked the recent Napoleonic era emancipation edicts, others maintained them officially but ignored them in practice. In most German territories, Jews were excluded from posts in public administration and the army and forbidden to hold teaching positions in schools and universities.

Jewish representatives formally demanded emancipation at the Congress of Vienna (1815), and German academics and politicians alike responded with vicious opposition. The Jews were portrayed to the public as "upstarts" who were attempting to take control of the economy, particularly the financial sector. Antisemitic publications became common in the German press. Influenced by the Haskalah, as well as the French Revolution with its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and other advancements in civil rights, many Jews and equal rights activists began to demand citizenship and equal treatment. As Jewish Emancipation progressed, German Jews were becoming competitors for Christian guilds in the economy. Immediately before the riots began, the Bavarian Diet had completed a debate on further emancipation of the Jews throughout the Kingdom. Amos Elon writes in his 2002 book The Pity of It All: A History of the Jews in Germany, 1743–1933:

In some places, attempts were made to return Jews to their old medieval status. The free city of Frankfurt reinstated parts of the medieval statute that restricted the rights of Jews. As of 1816 only twelve Jewish couples were allowed to marry each year. The 400,000 gulden the community had paid the city government in 1811 in return for its emancipation were declared forfeited. In the Rhineland, which had reverted to Prussian control, Jews lost the citizenship rights they had been granted under the French and were no longer allowed to practice certain professions. The few who had been appointed to public office before the war were summarily dismissed.

"Hep-Hep" was the perpetrators' derogatory rallying cry. The most likely explanation is that it was based on the traditional herding cry of German shepherds. Another hypothesis suggests that it is an acronym from the Latin "Hierosolyma est perdita" ("Jerusalem is lost"), said (without verifiable evidence) to have been a rallying cry of the Crusaders. The "acronym theory" was attributed to a single letter published in a British newspaper on 28 August 1819, some weeks after the riots. Cornell's Michael Fontaine disputes this etymology, concluding that the "acrostic interpretation ... has no basis in fact." Ritchie Robertson also disputes the "false etymology" of the acronym interpretation, citing Katz.

The riots began on 2 August 1819 in Würzburg. After several days troops were called in. The Jewish population fled the city and spent several days in tents in the vicinity.

The riots swept through other Bavarian towns and villages, then spread to Bamberg, Bayreuth, Darmstadt, Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Frankfurt, Koblenz, Cologne and other cities along the Rhine, and as far north as Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck.

In some towns, the police appeared too late or stood by idly while the mob raged through the streets. In towns where the militia arrived promptly, the riots were put down relatively quickly. In Heidelberg the police were tardy in their response, but two professors and their students took the law into their hands and prevented a bloody riot. They restrained the culprits and made citizen's arrests. With the exception of Heidelberg, townspeople generally remained passive bystanders.