Die Anfänge der ›jüdischen Moderne‹ in der Aufklärungszeit. Zum Diskurs zwischen Moses Mendelssohn und Christian Wilhelm Dohm

Abstract This contribution locates the beginnings of emancipation of Central-European Jews with the development of social and cultural modernisation. In order to explain this, I will show facts and conditions of the discourse between on the one hand Christian Wilhelm Dohm, as an enlightened Prussian public official and on the other hand philosopher Moses Mendelsohn. I will place this discourse in the centre of my treatise and I will ask in how far it effected a breakthrough of modernisation. My subject will in particular be the coming into view and including of the public; and also, the cameralistic ideas of the benefit of marginalised parts of the population. In addition, the impetus for the debate deriving from conditions in Alsace. And finally, the question in what way the ideas of Dohm and Mendelsohn, although not identical, make a distinction from former ideas of Jewish equality. Even though complete legal emancipation of Jews was another century in coming this initial trigger resulted in decisive criteria and keywords for the oncoming debate.