ABSTRACT
Gentile attitudes to Jews in Enlightenment Germany serve to illustrate two basic positions on toleration which have reappeared in present-day debates on multiculturalism. To many spokesmen of the Enlightenment, a toleration based ultimately on indifference seemed the best escape from the religious conflict that had ravaged sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. In eighteenth-century Germany, as in Austria, the most obvious candidates for religious and social toleration were the Jews. The representation of Christianity is hardly unbiased. With the few decent Christian characters, the Templar and the Lay-Brother, their decency is shown as conflicting with the obligations of their religion; Daja illustrates naive superstition, the Patriarch intolerant bigotry. Modern Judaism, as opposed to that of Old Testament times, was widely seen by Enlighteners as a narrow, ungenerous religion, in which futile reasoning took the place of emotion.
