Carl scholl, Gustav Struve, and the problematics of philosemitism in 1840s Germany: Radical Christian dissent and the reform Jewish response

Abstract

The 1840s were a crucial moment in the development of Jewish-Christian relations in Germany. One reason for this was that the 1840s were a period of tremendous internal struggle within Christianity. On the one hand, the 1840s saw the successful revival of conservative theological trends within both Protestantism and Catholicism, as well as the politicization of this religious conservatism; the calculated deployment of anti-Jewish rhetoric was an important feature of the new religious right's bid for political influence.1 On the other hand, specifically in reaction to this rise of neoorthodoxy, the 1840s also witnessed the emergence of a liberal-left Christian dissenting movement; the dissenters split from the established Protestant and Catholic churches and founded democratically run congregations dedicated to individual freedom of belief, cross-confessional cooperation, and the separation of church and state. The most basic reason for the emergence of dissent lay in the widely felt need to create an organized humanist form of Christianity. The dissenters sought to provide individuals with a tolerant, supportive community in which they could combine reason and spirituality and express a faith that was no less fervent despite its disgust at the hierarchical control and rigidly exclusivist doctrines the Catholic church in particular was promoting. As Hermann Greive has pointed out, these movements have in retrospect been seen, "quite wrongly, as fringe movements," whereas in actuality they represented "an elementary outburst of enlightened religiosity arousing an exceptionally wide response in the ranks of the petty and