The historicizing of Judaism in 19th-century Germany: Scholarly discipline and popular historical culture.

摘要

This dissertation describes the evolution and reception of German-Jewish historiography, known as Wissenschaft des Judentums (Science of Judaism), to comprehend the role the historicizing of Judaism played in the creation of modern Jewish culture in nineteenth-century Germany. Thus this study adds a previously neglected dimension to the history of Wissenschaft and sheds light on the identity formation of German-Jewry.;The study evaluates the impact historical works had on the formation of Jewish identities by analyzing these texts in respect to their understandings of Jewish history and the changing functions ascribed to historical studies, as well as to their reception. Writing from the perspective of the present and therefore always embedded in particular experiences and expectations, Jewish historians created different images of the Jewish past over the span of the nineteenth century. In light of this, Wissenschaft's reformulation of the Jewish tradition is best understood as a production that was never completed and remained in flux. Clearly distinct periods existed in the evolution of German-Jewish historiography, which were informed by common challenges, responses, and concerns.;The scholarly discipline and the popular culture interacted in numerous ways that ultimately transformed each other. Whereas Jewish historiography originally propelled the unraveling of pre-modern Jewish identities and fostered denominational fissures, it aimed in the second half of the nineteenth century to reunite German Jewry and revitalize an attachment to Judaism. Concurrently, German-Jewish popular culture refashioned itself from a hallmark of Enlightenment Bildung and religiosity to one marked by Jewish history.