Nächstenliebe in the Age of Nationalism: Reclaiming a Jewish Emotion between the Fin-de-Siècle and the First World War

Abstract

Abstract This article asks why the concept of ‘Nächstenliebe’ or ‘love of neighbour’ became a source of contestation between Jewish and Christian intellectuals between the fin-de-siècle and the First World War. For some Christian intellectuals, highlighting differences between an apparently more expansive Christian love of neighbour and an allegedly narrower Jewish conception could provide a novel means of questioning how fully Jews could belong as members of German society. As the article shows, Jewish intellectuals did not simply seek to counter those definitions that claimed a moral superiority for Christian Nächstenliebe, however. Some went further and argued that Jewish ideas of neighbourly love were actually the more cosmopolitan, in contrast to Christian conceptions that had become increasingly self-serving and sectarian. In some instances, these Jewish intellectuals used such arguments about love of neighbour to make the case for Zionism. The article then investigates how the First World War affected these ideas about Nächstenliebe. It suggests that the war furthered the ‘negative integration’ of German society in ways that left little room for love between diverse kinds of German.