This collected volume is dedicated to Prof Hans Otto Horch on the occasion of his 65th birthday. Prof. Horch has done much to enrich the academic processing of the history of German-Jewish literature and culture. The wide range of his interests is reflected in these papers by internationally-renowned Germanists, historians and cultural researchers, who are concerned with Jewish identity against the background of Jewish-Christian relations in the German-speaking world from the Early Modern Age up to the present day.

This study on conceptual history indicates how German-Jewish authors writing between 1750 and 1850 pitted definitions of their own against the general notions of 'nation', 'fatherland', 'patriotism', and 'nationalism' emerging in that period. This process is regarded against the background of their cultural and (incomplete) legal emancipation. The definitions were influenced not least by the Jewish origins of the authors in question. As a response to the dangerous growth of nationalism in the 19th century, they are very largely geared to the cosmopolitan view of patriotism typical of the German enlightenment.