"We Will Never Yield": Jews, the German Press, and the Fight for Inclusion in the 1840s

by David A. Meola

Overview

How did German Jews present their claims for equality to everyday Germans in the first half of the nineteenth century? We Will Never Yield offers the first English-language study of the role of the German press in the fight for Jewish agency and participation during the 1840s.
 
David Meola explores how the German press became a key venue for public debates over Jewish emancipation; religious, educational, and occupational reforms; and the role of Jews in German civil society, even against a background of escalating violence against the Jews in Germany.
 
We Will Never Yield sheds light on the struggle for equality by German Jews in the 1840s and demonstrates the value of this type of archival source of Jewish voices that has been previously underappreciated by historians of Jewish history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253065223
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	04/04/2023
Series:	German Jewish Cultures
Pages:	270
Sales rank:	685,612
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David A. Meola is the Bert and Fanny Meisler Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of South Alabama. He has published articles in the journal Antisemitism Studies, and the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook as well as several book chapters. He also served as editor for A Cultural History of Genocide in the Long Nineteenth Century.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Note on Translation
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. The Development of Jewish Life and the German Newspaper during the Early Nineteenth Century
2. Jewish Emancipation in the Badenese and German Press
3. Jewish Religious Reform in the German and Badenese Press
4. The Fight for Jewish Admission to Constance in the Bodensee Press, 1846
Conclusion: Fighting for Inclusion in Vormärz German Society
Appendix A: Badenese Rabbinical Ordinance (1824)
Appendix B: Published Will and Testament of Salomon Heine
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

James M. Brophy

David Meola's study breaks new ground in depicting how Jews in Baden used regional and national newspapers to contest Christian definitions of Judaism.  By showcasing the confidence with which Jews engaged liberals to reorient viewpoints about Jewish civic identity, Meola underscores the importance of the public sphere as a testing ground for entry into civil society. Scholars of European and Jewish history will benefit from the study's sharp focus on the 1840s, a decade that witnessed intense debates about the extent and limits of Jewish integration into German society. 

Elizabeth Loentz

With his focus on the mainstream Jewish press (as opposed to the German-Jewish press or treatises and pamphlets with a more limited audience) Meola makes several important interventions in the history of the struggle for legal emancipation and the study of Jewish self-representation in and around the 1840s.

Editorial Reviews

"David Meola's study breaks new ground in depicting how Jews in Baden used regional and national newspapers to contest Christian definitions of Judaism.  By showcasing the confidence with which Jews engaged liberals to reorient viewpoints about Jewish civic identity, Meola underscores the importance of the public sphere as a testing ground for entry into civil society. Scholars of European and Jewish history will benefit from the study's sharp focus on the 1840s, a decade that witnessed intense debates about the extent and limits of Jewish integration into German society."—James M. Brophy, Francis H. Squire Professor, University of Delaware

"With his focus on the mainstream Jewish press (as opposed to the German-Jewish press or treatises and pamphlets with a more limited audience) Meola makes several important interventions in the history of the struggle for legal emancipation and the study of Jewish self-representation in and around the 1840s."—Elizabeth Loentz, University of Illinois at Chicago

From the Publisher