The Introduction opens with an attempt to explain the rift that has developed between German history and German-Jewish history since the early attempts at writing academic history, during the early nineteenth century. This happened despite the fact that the two historiographies developed in parallel from the beginning, chronologically and methodically, and continued to exist well into the post-Second World War years, both in Germany and elsewhere. Social history in Germany and in the United States was eventually crucial for changing this paradigm, and the post-modern turn increased our interest in the history of minorities. Finally, gender history helped not only in adding previously neglected sectors of society into the grand narrative, but also in changing this narrative altogether. Now it could be seen from different perspectives, and in our case it is indeed being seen through Jewish eyes.

The epilogue looks at what of Baeck’s thought remains relevant by turning to the presence of empire and the memory of genocide today. This is done by looking at institutions that bear Baeck’s name, including the Leo Baeck House in Berlin, the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, and the Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles. The latter stands for the tradition of ethical monotheism and resistance to state power. The LBI represents the creative legacy of German Jewry, and the concern with the writing of history, that Baeck embodied. Finally, the Leo Baeck House stands for the vexed relation between postcolonial thought and the memory of the Holocaust in the contemporary public sphere in Germany, as expressed in a recent debate around the work of Achille Mbembe. I contend that the fact that Baeck, and other German-Jewish thinkers, are often treated without regard to the imperial context has a corollary in contemporary debates in Germany about the relation between the colonial past and the memory of the Holocaust. Such heated debates, for example, the Mbembe Affair, show that the intertwining of the Jewish and Colonial Question is still very much a German Question.