Women and Jews in imagined communities: their legal and political situation in German and Italian nation-building

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article discusses the legal and political status of women and Jews during the phase of German and Italian nation-building, addressing both the lack of participation as well as the strategies of historical actors who hoped to be accepted as equal members of the national community. It focuses on a number of exemplary protagonists whose initiatives demonstrate the options Jewish women in particular had for participating in the development of national consciousness. Their twofold outsider status as women and Jews led to different models of identities between national and Jewish loyalties. In this context, the central importance of secular Jewish identities will be considered, an approach that allows for a differentiated way of looking at the potential and the weaknesses of different ideologies of integration. These have yet to be considered from a comparative German–Italian perspective although they indicate the ‘divided union of wills’ of the two nations.