ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the most important episodes and writings of the controversy in December 1879. According to Moritz Lazarus, the controversy raised the fundamental question about the nature of nationality. Were the Jews a separate nation from the Germans? That posed the question what constitutes a nation? Lazarus contended that a nation was formed by self-consciousness and language, which made the Jews part of Germany, since they spoke German and were self-conscious as German. Treitschke countered that religion too was central to national identity, so that the Jews could not be considered German. The chapter considers two further contributions to the Jewish cause: that of the Polish rabbi Adolph Radin and the converted Jew Paulus Cassel.
