This text examines attempts to construct a Jewish identity suitable for an increasingly secular world. He examines both literary portrayals of Jews by Gentile writers - whether antisemitic, friendly, or ambivalent - and efforts to reinvent Jewish identities by the Jews themselves.

Introduction ; Enlightenment; German Jewry before Emancipation; How the Enlightenment saw the Jews; Lessing and Toleration; Emancipation: Dohm versus Humboldt; Moses Mendelssohn and the Rational Jew; Mendelssohns Legacy ; Liberalism; Jews and Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century; Schnitzler: Liberalism and Irony; The European Humanism of Stefan Zweig; Freud: Science versus Religion ; Antisemitism; Varieties of Antisemitism; Literary Images of the Jew ; Assimilation; The Meaning of Assimilation; Self-Hatred; Hyperacculturation ; Dissimilation; The Jewish Renaissance; The Eastern Jews; The Jew as Oriental ; Zionism ; Abbreviations ; Select Bibliography

`Review from previous edition Robertson does an admirable job in identifying and analyzing the complex development of 'the Jewish Question.'' Mitchell B. Hart, Religious Studies Rev. Vol.26, No.4, Oct. 00. `This book will be valuable to beginning and advanced students and specialists of modern Jewish and modern German history and literature.' Mitchell B. Hart, Religious Studies Rev. Vol.26, No.4, Oct. 00. `It can be mined for its extensive translations and summaries and engaged with as a masterful synthesis and interpretation of the major themes and dilemmas of modern Jewish and European history.' Mitchell B. Hart, Religious Studies Rev. Vol.26, No.4, Oct. 00. `the reader will appreciate Robertson's fresh insights and his ability to synthesize and elucidate a vast body of primary and secondary sources.' I. Di Maio, Choice, June 2000. `a whole series of stories, richly heterogenous in nature ... his account of Mendelssohn's career, and of his family's history, is admirably fair and illuminating. Robertson's is a magisterial work. He has read everything, and summarises it well' Anthony Julius, The Times, 29/07/99 `Robertson's tireless labour ... Robertson's scholarly work deserves a place in every university library.' Edward Timms, THES

A stimulating and thoughtful approach to the 'Jewish Question' in modern Germany and Austria An erudite examination of the literary texts which shaped Jewish identities before the Holocaust No other study by a single author deals with German-Jewish relations so comprehensively and over such a long period of literary history

A stimulating and thoughtful approach to the 'Jewish Question' in modern Germany and Austria An erudite examination of the literary texts which shaped Jewish identities before the Holocaust No other study by a single author deals with German-Jewish relations so comprehensively and over such a long period of literary history