Anti-Semitic attitudes in Germany between 1994 and 1998

The paper deals with the problem whether the transformation process in Germany since 1990, the year of unification of East and West Germany, has influenced the cognitive and affective structure as well as the amount of anti-Semitic attitudes. Data on these aspects come from three representative social surveys, conducted in 1994, 1996 and 1998 by three different research institutes. An ar;tempt to cumulate the three data files leads to some severe problems, referring to the (in-)comparability of sampling procedures and data collection methods. Depending on the nearly complete absence of equally measured indicators, and of differing operationalizations of the remaining, it was not possible to construct a time series chat would contain data on cognitive and affective aspects of anti-Semitism in the period studied. Nevertheless, the overall sample, which included information on 6671 respondents, was used to construct a summated scale of the amount of anti-Semitic attitudes in Germany. The data analysis yields evidence that the amount of anti-Semitic attitudes seems to increase slightly in East and to decrease slightly in West Germany. Results of a multiple regression analysis show that sociodemographic variables - gender, age, formal education, income effect the amount of anti-Semitic attitudes in both parts of Germany, but differently.