The German-Jewish Dialogue Reconsidered: A Symposium in Honor of George L. Mosse

About the Author The Editor: Klaus L. Berghahn is Professor of German at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His fields of research include German literature since 1750, literary criticism and theory, and German-Jewish history. He has taught as a visiting professor at universities in the United States, Germany, and Israel. He is currently working on a book titled Jerusalem: Judaism and Tolerance in the Age of Englightenment. Product Description Was there a German-Jewish dialogue? This seemingly innocent question was silenced by the Holocaust. Since then, it is out of the question to take comfortable refuge to a distant past when Mendelssohn and Lessing started this dialogue. Adorno/Horkheimer, Arendt, and above all Scholem have repeatedly pointed out, how the noble promises of the Enlightenment were perverted, which led to a complete failure of Jewish emancipation in Germany. It is against this backdrop of warning posts that we dare to return to an important chapter of Jewish culture in Germany. This project should not be seen, however, as an attempt to idealize the past or to harmonize the present, but as a plea for a new dialogue between Germans and Jews about their common past. From the Publisher Was there a German-Jewish dialogue? This seemingly innocent question was silenced by the Holocaust. Since then, it is out of the question to take comfortable refuge to a distant past when Mendelssohn and Lessing started this dialogue. Adorno/Horkheimer, Arendt, and above all Scholem have repeatedly pointed out, how the noble promises of the Enlightenment were perverted, which led to a complete failure of Jewish emancipation in Germany. It is against this backdrop of warning posts that we dare to return to an important chapter of Jewish culture in Germany. This project should not be seen, however, as an attempt to idealize the past or to harmonize it with the present, but as a plea for a new dialogue between Germans and Jews about their common past.