Leon Pinsker'sAutoemancipation!and the Emergence of German as a Language of Jewish Nationalism

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the role of the German language in early Jewish nationalism. It focuses on the publication, reception, and afterlife of the pamphletAutoemancipation!, published in 1882 by Leon Pinsker, a Russian Jewish doctor. The first Jewish nationalist pamphlet to be written in German by a Russian Jew, its rhetoric and terminology tapped into various Jewish and European discourses of emancipation. Pinsker not only challenged the legal-political conception of emancipation as it had been commonly used in German-Jewish discourse, but also mobilized its social and revolutionary connotations, which had been associated with radical European political movements since 1848. Moreover,Autoemancipation!marked a shift in Jewish political culture with regard to the potential function of the German language. Since the late eighteenth century and through the nineteenth century, German had a controversial status in Central and Eastern European Jewish societies given its association with Jewish Enlightenment, religious reform, secularization, and assimilation. Pinsker was the first to use German as a transnational language aimed at promoting the Jewish national cause. In this respect,Autoemancipation!set in motion a process whereby German became the chief language of Jewish nationalist activism.