From the contact with each other : the intellectual and his opponent

Das Wort „Intellektueller“ macht nach wie vor Schwierigkeiten. Die Vokabel, als Typusbezeichnung gebraucht, gibt immer wieder zu Missverständnissen Anlass. Im „Großen Brockhaus“ von 1928 sind Intellektuelle noch „Gebildete, geistige Oberschicht, Verstandesmenschen“, auch von Menschen „höherer geistiger Vorbildung“ ist in anderen Brockhaus-Lexika die Rede. Schlägt man allerdings im Band 5 des „Großen Brockhaus“ (16. Auflage, 1954) unter dem Stichwort „Intellektueller“ nach, findet man eine Definition – oder besser Behauptung –, die irritiert. Intellektueller, heißt es da, ist „ein Mensch, der seinem Verstande nicht gewachsen ist“. Ob hier ein Mitarbeiter dem Brockhaus einen Streich gespielt hat, der von der Redaktion nicht bemerkt, oder das Lexikon seine Benutzer verulken wollte, war und ist nicht zu ermitteln. In der 17. Auflage des „Großen Brockhaus“ von 1970 ist der Intellektuelle jedenfalls wieder, auf Normalmaß gebracht, ein Mensch, der seinem Verstande doch wieder gewachsen ist und „den rationalen Verstandeskräften den Vorzug vor Wille, Gemüt und Gefühl gibt“

English: English

Ever since the publication of Dohm’s Ueber die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden (On the Civil Improvement of the Jews) in 1781, which argued for Jewish political equality on humanitarian grounds, more and more voices joined those demands. Prominent among them was David Friedländer, a friend and disciple of Moses Mendelssohn. One of the leading figures of the Berlin Haskalah, he worked towards establishing equal legal status for Jews in Prussia. Friedländer did not accept the given view of his times, the antithesis of Jew and German. For him only the antithesis Jew–Christian existed and even that he tried to reconcile by finding common ground in a religion of reason, the groundwork of which he laid out in an Open Letter in 1799. What he proposed at that time may have been illusionary, but it certainly met with approval in enlightened Jewish circles. Friedländer therefore not only stands for those who dared to break with the traditions, but also for the generation of those who consciously aimed at the denationalization of traditional Judaism – and thus decided in favour of the confessionalization and the Germanness of the Jews

Pioneers of Zionism: Hess, Pinsker, Rülf Messianism, Settlement Policy, and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The emerging Jewish national consciousness in Europe toward the end of the 19th century claims many spiritual fathers, some of which have been seriously underestimated so far. Zionist intellectuals such as Moses Hess, Leon Pinsker and Isaac Rülf were already committed to the self-liberation of the Jewish people long before Theodor Herzl. Their experiences and observations brought them to believe that the emancipation and integration of Jews were not realistically possible in Europe. Instead, they began to think in national and territorial terms. The author explores the question as to what extent religious messianism influenced the ideas of these men and how this reflects in today's collective Israeli consciousness. In a comprehensive epilogue, Julius H. Schoeps critically correlates ideas of messianic salvation, Zionist pioneer ideals, the settler's movement before and after 1967, and the unsolved conflict between Israelis and Palestinians which has been lasting for over 100 years