Pfitzner's views on "the Jewish Question" were both contradictory and illogical. He viewed Jewishness as a cultural trait rather than a racial one. A 1930 statement that caused difficulty for him in the pension affair was that although Jewry might pose "dangers to German spiritual life and German Kultur," many Jews had done a lot for Germany and that antisemitism "per se" was to be condemned. He was willing to make exceptions to a general policy of antisemitism. For example, he recommended the performance of Marschner's opera "Der Templer und die Jüdin" based on Scott's "Ivanhoe", protected his Jewish pupil Felix Wolfes of Cologne, along with conductor Furtwängler aided the young conductor Hans Schwieger, who had a Jewish wife, and maintained his friendship with Bruno Walter and especially his childhood journalist friend Paul Cossman, a "self-loathing" non-practicing Jew who was incarcerated in 1933.