(Working title)
The project explores the relationship between the (historical) Enlightenment and the debates surrounding the so-called “Jewish Question” in German-speaking countries during the 19th century. The aim is not merely to trace the intellectual history and theoretical frameworks through which the possibility of legal and political equality for Jews in bourgeois society was debated, but also to examine the diverse and often contradictory claims to emancipation that emerged during this period.
The central thesis of the dissertation is that public debates—both Jewish and non-Jewish—on this issue already reflect the limits and conditions of Enlightenment-driven universalism. These early discussions anticipate and, in part, reappear in later civil rights movements of the 20th century, though under different historical and ideological premises.