ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies several factors and discusses how they affected the Hungarian reception of German ideologies, thus illuminating the question of what specific weight should be attributed to the German experience in Hungarian developments. The role of mediator between Germany and Hungary played by Prague in the diffusion of the Haskalah, was assumed by Vienna in the spread of Reform. For the course that the Reform movement was to take in Hungary, the decisive step was the invitation of Isaac Noah Mannheimer to Vienna. In Germany, Reform ideology and institutions were to a great extent the response to an already changing reality. A comparison with the pace of modernization of Hungarian Jewry strengthens the impression that German Jewry had undergone far-reaching changes already before midcentury. In contrast, the social structure of Hungarian Jews favored the maintenance of a traditional society.
