The preponderance of Jews in the first generation of the German Left - Ludwig Börne, Heinrich Heine, Moses Hess, Eduard Gans, and ultimately Karl Marx himself - has often been noted, but has seldom been satisfactorily explored. This paper will approach this broad question by looking at the life and work of one of the earliest German-Jewish radical thinkers - Saul Ascher (1767-1822). Ascher was a Berlin writer best known for his Leviathan (1792), a rethinking of Judaism in Kantian terms which, in many respects, foreshadowed the later emergence of Reform Judaism. Ascher was one of the first of an important lineage of Jewish thinkers who insisted upon a vision of Jewish Emancipation that was set within a politically radical and universalistic framework.

Adam Sutcliffe is Senior Lecturer in European History at King’s College London. He specializes in the intellectual history of Western Europe and in early modern Jewish History. He is the author of Judaism and Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2003), a study of the philosophical and political significance of Judaism and Jews in European Enlightenment and Thought.

By: Diana Franklin
Last updated: Friday, 11 January 2013