GLAGAU, OTTO

GLAGAU, OTTO (1834–1892), antisemitic German writer. Glagau was born in Koenigsberg, Prussia. As a journalist and political writer he had already made quite a reputation when he began, in the Gartenlaube of 1873, a series of articles on fraudulent stock-jobbing which were so full of invective that the editor discontinued them. Glagau had lost heavily in unfortunate speculations, and was very bitter against the stock exchange. In this spirit he wrote Der Boersen- und Gruendungsschwindel in Berlin and Der Boersen- und Gruendungsschwindel in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1877), in which he made some exposures of dishonest business methods, but in general caricatured rather than described the German business world. He naturally became involved in numerous libel suits. In these books he attacked the Jews vehemently as the perpetrators of all questionable financial transactions. It may be said that these books inaugurated the antisemitic movement.