The articles in this volume derive from a German Research Council-funded project devoted to the study of discourses in German Jewish journals and the tensions they reflect between acculturation, anti-Semitism, and the quest for Jewish identity. The undertaking was initially inspired by the conviction that an analysis of Jewish periodicals is an especially promising way of reconstructing essential and existential issues concerning Jewish minorities in German-speaking countries on all important political and cultural fronts, without evening out the immediacy of the debates in favour of abstract theories. Central to the project are the debates on the First Zionist Conference in Basle and the issue of the 'Eastern Jews' in the First World War.

This study examines the only extant Arthurian romance in German Jewish (AWiduwiltA / AArtushofA) and its links with Wirnt von Gravenberc's AWigaloisA. Central concerns are German-Jewish and Jewish-German literary transfer and aspects of the history of reception and impact of AWiduwiltA and AArtushofA. The protagonist was designed to figure as a 'Jewish Arthurian knight', which indicates that as early as the 14th/15th century there was a Jewish upper class using literature as a means of social participation and representation.