This book is an erudite literary study of the uneasy position of the Jews in Germany and Austria from the first pleas for Jewish emancipation during the Enlightenment to the eve of the Holocaust. Drawing on a wide range of literary texts, Ritchie Robertson offers a close examination of attempts to construct a Jewish identity suitable for an increasingly secular world. No other study by a single author deals with German-Jewish relations so comprehensively and over such a long period of literary history. "Robertson's work offers a well-versed survey and provides, despite his disclaimer, a comprehensive view of the topic that leaves only the field of postwar German literature untouched."-- The Jewish Quarterly Review A stimulating and thoughtful approach to the Jewish Question in modern Germany and Austria Ritchie Robertson is a Reader in German and Fellow at St. Johns College in Oxford.