This article focuses on the representation of Jews in the Finnish general press before the Second World War. The data comprise of 313 texts gathered from newspapers and magazines that were targeted at general audiences and that appeared between the years 1821–1936. The texts were examined on three levels: First, the upfront topics pertaining to Jews were identified and grouped under 12 themes. Second, the tone of the mentions was evaluated as positive, neutral, or negative. Third, underlying assumptions, opinions and attitudes expressed aside the upfront topics were identified from the texts. Until recent decades, the idea in Finland has been that there was hardly any antisemitism in the country before or during the Second World War. As new research has emerged, this view has repeatedly been challenged. However, research on the general media’s representation of Jews has remained scarce. This article aims at filling this gap. In doing so, it offers a view on how Jews were seen and discussed in the Finnish society at large. So far, the studies on pre-WWII media have concluded that antisemitism was limited to far-right or ultranationalist papers. This article ends up with the opposite conclusion.

Meri Genetz (1885–1943) was a Finnish painter, esotericist, and a spiritual seeker. Around 1925, she began truly dedicating herself to spiritual seeking and started to make notes of her studies in black notebooks. This article will go through four of those notebooks which today offer a vivid picture of Genetz’s seeking between the years 1925 and 1943. In the beginning, Genetz acquainted herself with Gnosticism, Theosophy, and Kabbalah, as well as the works of Christian mystics, such as Emanuel Swedenborg and Jakob Böhme, the writings of, for example, Paracelsus, and texts attributed to the mythic figure Hermes Trismegistus. Gradually Genetz started to outline her own views, ideas, and theories regarding higher truth and spiritual wisdom. In the beginning of the 1930s her main quest came to be to find her ‘other half’ and become whole. She started attending Spiritualist séances, where she would ask about her other half and discuss the state of her soul, the souls of others, her art and marriage, and the books she had read. In time, Genetz’s quest for true wisdom and self-fulfilment became more and more restless and impatient. When she died in 1943, she was still seeking.