Political and Legal History of German Jews: A Short Introduction

Assessing the role Jews played in Germany’s political and legal history remains a subject of debate. Traditional scholarship’s focus on Jews as objects of state-orchestrated violence and antisemitic discrimination often only risks disempowering them further. Political and Legal History of German Jews offers an insightful and comprehensive reassessment, shifting the focus to consider the political and legal agency Jews gained through Germany’s democratic development. Through an examination of the strategies German Jews used to interact with, and influence, policies, as well as the development of distinct Jewish political and legal frameworks, this book resituates German Jews as active and engaged political agents.

Uffa Jensen is a historian and deputy director at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technische Universität in Berlin. His research focuses on the history of antisemitism, German Jewry, psychoanalysis, emotions and visual culture. His most recent publications include; Gebildete Doppelgänger. Bürgerliche Juden und Protestanten im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen 2005), Zornpolitik (Berlin 2017), and Ein antisemitischer Doppelmord. Die vergessene Geschichte des Rechtsterrorismus in der Bundesrepublik (Berlin 2022).