ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book introduces a number of Jewish figures who have been chosen because their respective contributions correspond decisively with the main events of German intellectual history. It could arouse the suspicion that it is meant to assert, as apologia, that the Jews "have always been there too." It is easy to see that an apology is not out of the question. Nor is it decisive whether or not the topics to which these Jews devoted themselves were substantively Jewish. For the trajectory of personal emancipation, whether a specific figure is of eastern or western Jewish heritage is, in every case, an essential distinguishing characteristic. The Jew who immigrated to Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century moved suddenly from one historical period into another; such was the experience of Salomon Maimon and, in a certain sense, Lassalle.
