German-Jewish History in Modern Times. Volume 2

Emancipation and Acculturation, 1780-1871. Edited by Michael A. Mayer and Michael Brenner. The chapters by Michael Brenner and Stefi Jersch-Wenzel were translated from the German by Allison Brown.

The second of four volumes focuses on a period of fundamental political, economic, and social change that permanently transformed German Jewry. The book begins in the 1780s, with Stefi Jersch-Wenzel's discussion of Christian Wilhelm Dohm's programmatic work, On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, in Prussia, and Hapsburg Emperor Joseph II's toleration edicts, two monumental events that paved the way toward Jewish civil equality. The Jews' emancipation, however, usually depended on their willingness to reeducate themselves as Germans. Michael A. Meyer traces this transformation, revealing it as an act of both political expediency and of personal desire for acculturation. VII,421 Seiten mit Abb. und Karten, Halbleinen (Columbia University Press 1997) textsauberes Exemplar mit leichten Gebrauchsspuren, leicht berieben mit minimaler Randlädierung/clean text pages, minor traces of use, slightly rubbed with slight damage to the edge