Gustav Freytag was not antisemitic.

Sure, he lived in Germany in the 1800s, and many Germans back then were antisemitic. But Freytag honestly believed that Jews could be excellent German citizens.

He had married a Jewish wife. He was a member of the League Against Antisemitism. He was just appalled by the ways Jews had been treated in the past by some of Germany’s Catholic extremists.

Richard Wagner, the famous composer and a virulent antisemite, wrote articles denouncing Jews. Who stepped forward to defend the Jews against these charges? Gustav Freytag, that’s who!

When he wasn’t on the pro-Jewish lecture circuit, Freytag was a writer, one of the country’s best. He was the Charles Dickens of Germany.

His most famous novel was Debit and Credit – the story of a good German lad, and some good German aristocrats, and a wicked Jewish villain, Veitel Itzig, a skulking, scheming, greedy coward, a kind of Ebeneezer Scrooge without the redemption. A man who is determined to bring down these kindly, wealthy Germans and to profit from their ruin.

Some of Freytag’s friends challenged the author about this Itzig character.

“We know you are pro-Jewish and all, but isn’t this a bit… you know… antisemitic?”

But Freytag said, “No no no. Veitel Itzig isn’t meant to represent all Jews. He’s just one person. One type of Jew.” Freytag insisted he’d met Jewish people like that. And he pointed out that there were also some good Jews in his book.

The novel was a huge success. Freytag died in 1895, but Germans kept on reading his book. They loved the story. They hated Itzig. And “Itzig” became a common taunt against Jews.

In the 1930s, under the Nazis, activists put signs on Jewish-owned shops. “Beware Itzig, go back to Palestine!” And, of course, when they didn’t go, they were rounded up and killed.

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Freytag spent years campaigning and writing against antisemitism. And he wrote one story, with one memorable Jewish villain. Long after his lectures were forgotten, his fictional villain was still influencing Germans.

Stories are that powerful.

I write for TV. A few years ago, I had a pitch meeting with a network executive. It was a typical meeting. It began with the usual chitchat, talking about a mutual friend. Then she asks the line they always ask.

“So, what have you got.”

I describe a few TV ideas I’ve been thinking about. A comedy cop shows. A comedy law show. Some others. I’m trying to sound spontaneous, although I’ve got a version in my bag where it’s all written out, with lovely matching graphics, just in case I have to leave something behind.

But I can see today’s meeting is going nowhere. She asks polite questions, but she’s bored. When a person listens to pitches for a living, it’s amazing how fast their eyes glaze over when they hear one they don’t care about!

I mention another idea. This one was about an once-successful stage magician who’s trying to resuscitate his career. For some reason, that one caught her imagination. Now there’s a different look in her eyes. It’s a trance. Staring, interested. Exactly the same you get from a child when you read them a bedtime story.

What really struck me, in that meeting, was how powerful an effect that “story trance” has on us.

Here’s a woman whose job is to listen to dozens of stories every day for a living, sifting through the good, the bad and the awful. But even for someone in the story business, stories have power of them. They can be entranced and transported just like the rest of us.

We’re wired to be fascinated by stories. We’re programmed to be sucked into a story trance. Why does it happen? How can you make it happen?

That’s what this blog is about.