University of Frankfurt
Die Konstruktion jüdisch kollektiver Identität am Beispiel des Rabbiners Dr. Ludwig Philippson
This dissertation examines the construction of Jewish collective identity in 19th-century German-speaking Jewry, using the example of the rabbi, publicist, and reformer Ludwig Philippson (1811–1889). The starting point is the question of how Judaism redefined itself under the conditions of the Enlightenment, emancipation, nation-building, and social modernization without relinquishing its autonomy. Central to the thesis is the argument that Jewish reforms cannot be understood primarily as acts of adaptation to the majority society, but rather as an expression of a self-assured search for new forms of Jewish self-identification. In particular, the spaces for communication, memory, and education created by Philippson—the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, his Bible translation, his religious writings, and his contributions to Jewish historical and commemorative culture—are analyzed as media of identity formation.
Theoretically, this study draws on concepts of collective identity, particularly Bernhard Giesen’s reflections on boundary-drawing, coding, and social change. The analysis demonstrates how Philippson sought to productively navigate the tension between Jewish particularity and universalist claims, thereby devising a form of Jewish belonging within modern society. Originally, the project was conceived as a more comparative study. In addition to Ludwig Philippson, literary and cultural mediators such as Torquato Tasso were to be included in the analysis in order to examine different forms of the construction of cultural identity and collective memory in a comparative manner. In the course of the research, however, the focus shifted increasingly to Philippson and the German-Jewish reform discourses of the 19th century.
Another key source for this work is a previously unpublished letter by Franz Kafka from 1924. The ambivalence expressed therein—between a sense of belonging to bourgeois society and the persistent experience of potential exclusion—appears as a belated echo of the questions that had already preoccupied Philippson and his generation. Kafka thus becomes a kind of echo of the “educated doppelgänger,” whose emergence had accompanied the Jewish reform movements of the 19th century.
Publications
Jungheim, Elias S. (2023): „Ambivalente Nachbarschaft. Das deutsche Judentum zwischen neuen Existenzerfahrungen und christlicher Hegemonie“, in: Randhofer, Regina / Lange, Carsten / Eberl-Ruf, Kathrin (Hg.), Jüdisches Leben in Sachsen-Anhalt. Kultur – Musik – Gelehrsamkeit, Halle (Saale), S. 211–233.
Jungheim, Elias S. (2021): „Die »Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums« als Medium der Umcodierung“, in: Marten-Finnis, Susanne / Nagel, Michael (Hg.), Die historische deutsch-jüdische Presse: Forum, Sprachrohr, Quellenfundus, Bremen, S. 45–54.
Jungheim, Elias S. (2020): „Erich Fromms Judentum bis zum Jahre 1926“, in: Fromm Forum 24, S. 8–23.
Pfender, Elias S. (2016): „Fritz Bauer – Sein Mut und die Notwendigkeit zum Widerstand: [I]m aufrechten Gang seiner Pflicht“, in: Latenz. Journal für Philosophie und Gesellschaft, Arbeit und Technik, Kunst und Kultur 1, S. 243–256.