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What can Jewish history tell us about German history? How can we understand the history of modern Germany from a Jewish perspective? And how do we bring the voices of German Jews to the fore? Germany through Jewish Eyes explores the dramatic course of German history, from the Enlightenment, through wars and revolutions, unification and reunification, Nazi dictatorship, Holocaust, and the rebuilding of a prosperous, modern democracy - all from a Jewish perspective. Through a series of chronologically ordered life-stories, Shulamit Volkov examines how the lived experience of German Jewry can provide new insights into familiar events and long-term developments. Her study explores the plurality of the Jewish gaze, considering how German Jews sought full equality and integration while attempting to preserve a unique identity, and how they experienced security and integration as well as pronounced hatred. Volkov's innovative study offers readers the opportunity to look again at the pivotal moments of German history with a fresh understanding.
‘Shulamit Volkov, one of the best historians of German antisemitism, offers us here an outstanding historical synthesis of German and Jewish history with emphasis on the Jewish perception of the evolution of Germany from the eighteenth century to our days. She deftly weaves portraits and analyses of Jewish observers from Moses Mendelssohn, to Heinrich Heine, Walther Rathenau, Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem, and even to such contemporaries as Ignaz Bubis among others, into a complex tapestry of political, social and cultural history. This work is a remarkable achievement, told in an elegant style; it is recommended for specialists and laymen alike.’
Saul Friedlander - University of California Los Angeles
‘On the basis of decades of scholarship on antisemitism and Jewish history, Shulamit Volkov now reverses the perspective and unfolds the broad and colourful panorama of the many, often contradictory ways in which Jews perceived the German lands and its people. A must-read for anyone interested in German history and a fascinating tour d'horizon for all connoisseurs of Jewish history - not just the German one.’
Stefanie Schüler-Springorum - Center for Research on Antisemitism, TU Berlin
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