UW Press: Book Title

German Jews Beyond Judaism
George L. Mosse
With a critical introduction by David J. Sorkin

“Immensely stimulating, rich in information and insight. A master of surprising detail, Mosse maintains a broad vision that is ever alert to the moral questions and occasional light bequeathed to us by history.”
—Studies in Contemporary Jewry

Crafting identities as both Germans and Jews

First published in 1985, German Jews Beyond Judaism is George L. Mosse’s sweeping exploration of German Jewish secular identity across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Germany, Jews were emancipated at a time when cultural education was becoming an integral part of German society. They felt a powerful urge to find their Jewish substance within German culture and thus craft an identity as both Germans and Jews. Mosse argues that they did so by adopting the concept of Bildung—the idea of intellectual and moral self-cultivation—combined with key Enlightenment ideals of human potential, individualism, and the connection between knowledge and morality through aesthetics. He traces how Jewish artists, writers, and thinkers actively sought to participate in German culture through popular culture, scholarship, and political activity. Despite the eventual dissolution of German-Jewish dialogue due to the emergence of a virulently racist nationalism, important Jewish heritage emerged as a result of this attempt to integrate both identities.

German Jews Beyond Judaism was, in Mosse’s own estimation, his “most personal book, almost a confession of faith.” David J. Sorkin’s new critical introduction illustrates how Mosse’s life and values both shaped and exemplified his historical analysis and offers potential meanings of his intellectual legacy for the present day.

George L. Mosse (1918–99) was a legendary scholar, teacher, and mentor. A refugee from Nazi Germany, in 1955 he joined the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he was both influential and popular. Mosse was an early leader in the study of modern European cultural and intellectual history, the study of fascism, and the history of sexuality and masculinity. Over his career, he authored more than two dozen books.

“A small book that analyzes a very large idea, the sustaining idea, in fact, of the German Jewish community in the century and a half that saw its emergence into the modern world and its ultimate dispersion and destruction. . . . A moving elegy to the ideals of this now defunct community.”
—The American Scholar

Also by George L. Mosse
Masses and Man Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality George L. Mosse With a critical introduction by Enzo Traverso	Confronting the Nation Jewish and Western Nationalism George L. Mosse With a critical introduction by Shulamit Volkov