The notorious Judensau

"In Prussian and other German records Jews were often referred to as a nation, a term that had as yet no political connotation. Derived from the Latin natio, it was originally a genealogical-historical term loosely used by Saint Jerome in his Latin translation of the New Testament to denote non-Christians - that is "others." Its politicization (as in the French "la nation") came only during the French Revolution. In Berlin "nation" and "colony" were used interchangeably in speaking of the local Jewish or Huguenot community.

There were never a total expulsion of the Jewish "nation" from Germany, as there was from England and Spain, perhaps because there was no unified state and no central power or perhaps because German Jews were so few and impecunious. Local expulsions and massacres occurred every now and again. Jews were occasionally accused of poisoning wells, using Christian blood for sacramental purposes, and stealing Christian babies to circumcise them. The notorious Judensau (Jews sow) was a common subject of Christian religious art and propaganda. Bas-relief and cartoons of the Judensau - always shown with bearded rabbis who suck and lick its excrement, the scene watched over approvingly by Satan - were dispalayed in the great cathedrals and domes of Magdeburg, Regensburg, Freising, outside the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg (where Luther posted his ninety-five theses), and in churches and public places elsewhere. Renditions of the Judensau legitimized atavistic fears and deadly superstitions and helped perpetuate them from generation to generation. A famous Judensau was displayed on the main bridge leading into the city of Frankfurt, affixed there not by some bigoted individual but by "the city government". The city was still paying for its upkeep when Goethe was a child, and he remembered being traumatized by it."

                               Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 22-23