DECKERT, JOSEPH°

DECKERT, JOSEPH° (1846–1901), Catholic priest in Vienna and antisemitic agitator. He propagated the view that antisemitism was compatible with Catholicism. Resurrecting the blood libel , he brought out a pamphlet on Simon of trent in 1893; later that year he published in Vaterland an account by the apostate paulus meyer of a ritual murder which Meyer had allegedly witnessed in his native Ostrov in 1875. The rabbis whom he had named sued for libel, and Deckert, Meyer, and the journal's editor were found guilty and fined. Deckert's inflammatory sermons were the subject of frequent interpellations in parliament, and his travesty of the "Lord's Prayer" directed against the Jews was confiscated. However, in a trial for sedition (1896) he was acquitted. Deckert's antisemitic writings include Kann ein Katholik Anti-semit sein (1893) and Tuerkennoth und Judenherrschaft (18945). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J.S. Bloch, My Reminiscences, 2 (1923), 365–575; F. Heer, Gottes erste Liebe (1967), 355, 375; H.L. Strach, Das Blut (1911), 126, 160–1; E. Weinzierl, in: K.H. Rengstorf (ed.), Kirche und Synagoge, 2 (1970), 510–3.