![Die Geheimnisse der Weisen von Zion, herausgegeben von Gottfried zur Beek [i.e. Ludwig Müller]](https://exhibits.library.jhu.edu/files/fullsize/a14a8b72055c063744bc0674fded416c.jpg "Die Geheimnisse der Weisen von Zion, herausgegeben von Gottfried zur Beek [i.e. Ludwig Müller]")
![Die Geheimnisse der Weisen von Zion, herausgegeben von Gottfried zur Beek [i.e. Ludwig Müller]](https://exhibits.library.jhu.edu/files/fullsize/0773ddebfb049cefc35b1b9319d03e3f.jpg "Die Geheimnisse der Weisen von Zion, herausgegeben von Gottfried zur Beek [i.e. Ludwig Müller]")
Anonymous, Die geheimnisse der weisen von Zion (Charlottenburg,1919)
The first German edition of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, originally written in Russian in 1903 and based on an earlier French work of short fiction. The Protocols purported to reveal a plot by Jewish elites to achieve global domination. Despite being discredited almost immediately, the book proved a grimly effective anti-Semitic tool in the years leading up to the Holocaust. Here the cryptic “S.S.G.G” represents a coded version of the Vehmegericht, an intolerant and menacing secret medieval German tribunal revived as a secret society in the 19th century.