German Jews Beyond Judaism

by George L. Mosse

Based on the author's Efroymson lectures at Hebrew Union College. Jews were emancipated at a time when high culture was becoming an integral part of German citizenship. German Jews felt a powerful urge to integrate, to find their Jewish substance in German culture and craft an identity as both Germans and Jews. George Mosse argues that they did this by adopting the concept of Bildung―the idea of intellectual and moral self-cultivation―and combining it with key Enlightenment ideas such as optimism about human potential, individualism and autonomy, and a connection between knowledge and morality through aesthetics. Personal friendships could be devoted to common pursuit of Bildung and become a means of overcoming differences, becoming a means for integration into German society. Mosse traces how Jewish artists, writers, and thinkers actively sought to participate in German culture and communicate these ideals through popular culture, scholarship, and political activity. From the historical biographies, novels, and short stories of Stefan Zweig and Emil Ludwig; to the psychoanalysis of Freud, which sought to subject irrationality to reason; to the revolutionary thought of Walter Benjamin―Jews sought to influence a mass political culture that was fast drifting into irrationality. As individualism was subsumed into nationalism, and eventually the German political right’s racist version of nationalism, German-Jewish dialogue became more difficult. Jews remained idealistic as German society became less rational, their ideas corresponded less and less to the realities of German life, and they drifted out of the mainstream into an intellectual isolation. Yet out of this German-Jewish dialogue, what had once been part of German culture became a central Jewish heritage.

Genres: Germany, Jewish

98 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

German-born American social and cultural historian.

Mosse authored 25 books on a variety of fields, from English constitutional law, Lutheran theology, to the history of fascism, Jewish history, and the history of masculinity.

He was perhaps best-known for his books and articles that redefined the discussion and interpretation of Nazism.

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim but information-dense book is an impressive overview of German Jewish intellectual history. As the title suggests, Mosse focuses on secular Jews, but his real focus is a secular idea, Bildung, or education. German Enlightenment thinkers argued that everyone can and must cultivate his mind, and so education rather than ancestry or group membership should determine success. Jews ranging from Orthodox to irreligious fell in love with this idea; they who were only recently granted equal civil rights saw a path to achievement that didn’t penalize their longstanding social exclusion. But precisely as Bildung became a bedrock of German Jewish identity, this meritocratic idea lost favor among other Germans. Enterprising individualism felt like an inadequate philosophy with which to face the social and economic issues that assailed Germans after World War I. German Jews’ failure to see that their intellectual worldview was no longer widely shared blinded them to the coming dangers.

[Young Eagle 于高鹰 · Rating 4 out of 5]

德国犹太人信奉德意志启蒙主义的“教化”(Bildung)理想，将歌德、席勒、莱辛奉为自己的主保圣人，对德国文化的归属感与宗教宽容和普遍人性的信念在他们那里是一体的。然而到了二十世纪，德国人自己抛弃了启蒙主义，转而追随非理性的生命哲学，仍旧抱持十九世纪自由主义的犹太人反倒成了过时的异类，进一步加剧他们的疏离。卡西尔与弗洛伊德的思想都可以理解为启蒙理性绝望地试图理解无意识大众运动的努力。我们会悖谬地发现，歌德与康德的德意志人文主义传统，其最后的继承者，正是被德国人自己排斥的犹太人。很难不将其视为有关边缘群体身份认同问题的一个永不过时的寓言。