The article examines the historical and cultural background for the blatantly anti-Jewish argumentation of the political agitator and writer William Marr in his programmatic pamphlet,,Der Judenspiegel". Attention will be paid in particular to the events and procedures within the contemporary Jewish community in Hamburg. The,,Judenspiegel" clearly exhibits the close relationship between the struggle for the equal civil rights of the German Jews and the development of the modern anti-Semitic ideology.