>>509578861
However, the so-called natural and rational religion (of "Deism") is not a religion at all, but at most a beautiful morality. As Adolf Bartels rightly says, our current defensive struggle is less against Lessing himself, who will retain his significant place in our literary history, than against the growing cult of Lessing and the Lessing legend in the 19th century; the increasing glorification of Lessing kept pace with the growing power of Judaism. Not only the Jews Borne, Heine, Graetz, Engel have celebrated him excessively, but also respected German professors, among them Erich Schmidt.

The goal that Moses Mendelssohn pursued was the complete equality of Jews (((without them ceasing to be Jews))): thus a preference. Behind the 1781 publication of the secret councilor Dohm's "On the Civil Improvement of the Jews," which caused an enormous stir, stood (((Moses Mendelssohn))). The Jews of all Europe looked to him as their strong advocate. His significance for the history of Judaism cannot be overestimated.


The result of the connection between Judaism and Germanness that began with him was that we Germans surrendered our national identity to the cosmopolitan ideas of humanity, while the Jews asserted themselves, and Jewish thought penetrated ever wider circles. Although they remained primarily brokers of culture at that time, they made themselves masters of culture, and in 1912 a Jew was allowed to declare: "Jews manage the intellectual property of a people that denies us the right and the ability to do so." - The incursion of Judaism into our literature has made Berlin a Jewish city. Here, above all, developed the shallow superficiality and omniscience, the arrogance and cheekiness. Berlin was the New Jerusalem for the "Reform Jews," for the presumptuous "Enlighteners," who can neither become Germans nor want to.

>>509480462
What were the conditions in the 15th to 18th century? The states of Western and Central Europe had exercised their undeniable right to expel foreigners. Instead of settling in the East, where there was plenty of space, and dedicating themselves to agriculture or a trade, the Jews behaved like people who want to enter a park where a sign at the entrance reads "Entry for strangers prohibited." They want to remain "strangers," but do not want to be treated as "strangers." They managed to sneak in here and there. The ongoing wars of modern times, the financial needs of kings, princes, and city authorities, and the rising luxury opened the gates for them.

Indeed, Luther had warned seriously and loudly against the Jews in his later years. But that was forgotten; at times one gets the impression that the Jews were seen as allies in the fight against Rome. However, how little they were affected by the great intellectual movement of the Renaissance, Humanism, and the Reformation is evident from the fact that it was precisely in the 16th century that the Shulchan Aruch was written down, which establishes all areas of practical Jewish religious law in brief form. Here we encounter a completely foreign spirit that deeply offends our German sensibility.