The 19th- and 20th-century relationship between European culture, German history and the Jewish experience produced some of the West's most powerful and enduring intellectual creations - and, perhaps in subtly paradoxical and interrelated ways, the 20th century's darkest genocidal moments. This collection of essays explores the flashpoints of this vexed relationship.

In the past decades the “German-Jewish phenomenon” (Derrida) has increasingly attracted the attention of scholars from various fields: Jewish studies, intellectual history, philosophy, literary and cultural studies, critical theory. In all its complex dimensions, the post-enlightenment German-Jewish experience is overwhelmingly regarded as the most quintessential and charged meeting of Jews with the project of modernity. Perhaps for this reason, from the eighteenth century through to our own time it has been the object of intense reflection, of clashing interpretations and appropriations....