no more than two Jews were allowed to walk abreast

"In the eighteenth century, the independent Hanseatic port city of Hamburg had the largest number of Jews - eight thousand, or 6 percent of the population as a whole. The ghetto had been abolished in 1671. Jews were free tolive everywhere in the city. West of Hamburg, Bremen the nearest self-governing Hanseatic port city, was completely off-limits to Jews, as was Lübeck in the north. Hanover belonged to the English Crown and allowed a handful of rich Jews with princely clients to live there. The university, said to be the most liberal in Germany, banned Jewish students, as did all other German universities. Medical faculties that admitted a Jew or two were notable exceptions. The large number of German universities (compared with only two in England) reflected the political fragmentation and perhaps a more widespread cult of learning. German jews intent on acquiring a higher education had to go to Holland or farther afield to Italy. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Kant permitted a few young Jews to attend his philosophy seminars in Königsberg as nonmatriculated students. They could graduate only if they converted.

In the eighteenth century, Frankfurt was perhapes the most oppressive place for Jews in Western Europe. Only Rome and the Papal States treated Jews as harshly. (...)

Frankfurt was one of several free imperial cities, governed by an oligarchy of patrician families. A general fear of Jewish rivalry must have been a contributing factor to the continuing harshness of the city council's restrictive measures. Jews were allowed to enter the Christian quarters only on business, never for leisure. Inside the Christian quarters, no more than two Jews were allowed to walk abreast, and for some reason they were not entitled to carry walking sticks. Nor cold they use the sidewalks. At the cry "Jud, mach mores", roughly, "Jews, pay your dues" - they would have to take off their hats, step aside, and bow. They were banned at all times from the vicinity of the cathedral and could enter the town hall only through a back entrance. Not all these restrictions were enforced and some were observed only sporadically. But until the French Revolution, all public gardens were closed to Jews (as they would be two centuries later under the nazis). An appeal to end this particular restriction, unparalleled in Germany, was dismisses in 1770 by the city council as one more proof of the "boundless arrogance of this nation.""

                              Amos Elon, The Pity Of It All - A portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch 1743 -1933, Picador, 2002, pp. 25-27.                                     

Os filósofos e o nazismo (3)

"O limite moral dos nazis

(…) Havia também uma versão altamente distorcida da filosofia moral de Kant. Eichmann, durante o interrogatório, afirmou acreditar no “cumprimento do dever”: “ é, de facto, a minha norma. Tomei o imperativo kantiano como a minha norma, e fi-lo há muito tempo atrás. Orientei a minha vida por aquele imperativo, e continuei a fazê-lo nos sermões que dava aos meus filhos quando percebia que eles se estavam a desencaminhar.”…
Kant, que acreditava que as pessoas devem ser tratadas como fins em si mesmas e não como meios, teria ficado chocado com este kantiano. Todavia, há um lado da filosofia moral kantiana ao qual os nazis podiam reclamar uma certa adesão: refiro-me à ênfase colocada na obediência incondicional às regras. De acordo com Kant, as regras morais seriam geradas de forma puramente racional, de uma forma que é independente do seu impacto nas pessoas. E devem ser obedecidas por puro dever, em vez de por simpatia com as pessoas. Agir motivado por um sentimento de simpatia é, para Kant, agir por inclinação em vez de por dever, e por isso agir assim não tem valor moral. Os Nazis produziram uma variante sinistra desta moral austera e fechada sobre si.”

(Glover, J., Humanity - A moral history of the twentieth century, Yale U. P. 2001, p.357, tr. LFB)