Based on an interest in the intertwining of the discourse on Jewish emancipation with related discourses on emancipation in the 19th century—including the discourse on women’s emancipation, social and generational emancipation, and even the “emancipation of the flesh”—this project examines the continuation of these discursive formations after 1918. The works of many Jewish authors in the 1920s and beyond demonstrate how strongly the idea of emancipation continued to shape programmatic texts on the “Jewish question” even after the watershed of World War I. At the same time, these writings illustrate how, after 1933, conceptions of (Jewish) emancipation in the 20th century responded to the ruptures caused by the experience of exile and the Shoah. It remains to be examined by which constructs the historical discourse on the “German-Jewish,” which had nationalized the Christian-Jewish antagonism since the late 18th century and was invoked after 1945—primarily by non-Jews in an apologetic form as “German-Jewish dialogue”—has been superseded in the present. What terms can currently be used to frame a debate on “German-Jewish” issues that takes up the critical impulses and potential of contemporary German-speaking Jewish and European-Jewish research within the context of current discourses on memory theory and politics, and—particularly in light of current developments in Israel and the United States—expands upon and constructively advances this debate? The research group focuses on comparisons between the conditions, processes, consequences, and discussions surrounding Jewish and other forms of “emancipation” in France, Germany, Eastern Europe, Palestine/Israel, and other countries. With regard to Jewish emancipation, the focus is on how these differences have affected the social and legal status of Judaism as a religion and of Jews as individuals and as groups, as well as their self-understanding.

Research Group

Spokespersons:

Prof. Dr. Bettina Bannasch, University of Augsburg,

Dr. George Kohler, Director of the Joseph Carlebach Institute for Jewish Theology at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel