"Ich wäre ein Judenfeind?": Zum Antijudaismus in Friedrich Schleiermachers Theologie und Pädagogik (review)

Matthias Blum's important book takes on the task announced in its subtitle of documenting and analyzing the antijudaism of Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology and theory of education. The book argues that extant German scholarship minimizes Schleiermacher's complicity in the tragic story of German antijudaism and that his educational theory, by incorporating his Christian apologetic views regarding human inwardness and development, further extends his social and political antijudaism.

Published in a series that treats the history of educational theory, the book is organized into two distinct sections: The first, pp. 1-97, treats anti-judaic themes, metaphors, directly stated arguments, and social-political positions in Schleiermacher's career. The second section, pp. 98-208 maintains that Schleiermacher's educational theory is intimately related to his theology, hence—by extension—similarly antijudaic, and even more wide-reaching in its impact. A set of conclusions, pp. 209-229, places the discussion within the thorny context of Jewish history in Germany and in the West generally. In all this, Blum rightly contends that the pre-Auschwitz legacy matters deeply and dearly for a proper understanding of the tragic dimensions of Jewish existence within Germany.

The first section covers a range of topics from Schleiermacher's corpus: a set of his aphorisms on Jewish emancipation; his On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers and Letters on the Occasion of the Political-Theological Task and the Open Letter on Jewish Householders, both from 1799; the Brogi-Klaatsch affair of 1812 at the university of Berlin in which Fichte resigned as rector when the faculty senate punished both perpetrator and victim of a student anti-Jewish provocation, while Schleiermacher thought punishment was only deserved by the victim; various of the theologian's mature works, including sermons and his dogmatic theology, The Christian Faith.

The second major section claims that the educational theory of Schleiermacher is so freighted with implications and assumptions of his theology that it constitutes a second level—if you will—of ongoing antijudaism. Much less well-known in English-speaking circles, the posthumously published pedagogical thought of Schleiermacher remains a significant influence upon German pedagogy and educational theory. The premier theologian of modern Protestant liberalism also counts in his homeland as the founder of modern pedagogy.

Few English-speaking scholars have covered the major German literature on Schleiermacher and the Jews. Readers of this review may wish to be aware that Julie Klassen and I have co-translated Schleiermacher's Letters on the Occasion, plus the opinions of the surrounding Judaic and Christian discussion partners (David Friedländer, Wilhelm Abraham Teller) in the 1799 debate regarding Jewish emancipation for Hackett Publishing, 2004 (not Cambridge, as cited in Blum). At one level Matthias Blum has issued a challenge that we all need to take seriously. Invoking the familiar distinction between antisemitism and antijudaism (opposition based on theological difference, not racial, ethnic, or national prejudices), his work makes clear that theological supersessionism (and the anti-legalism of Pauline tradition) by invalidating Judaism as religion contributes to broader, virulent denials of the legitimacy of Jewish existence.

At the same time, this book also needs to be read with a slightly raised eyebrow as a full depiction of Schleiermacher (1768-1834) as philosopher, theologian, and Berlin public intellectual in the midst of Jewish contemporaries. The author's methodology and assumptions contribute to a portrait of Schleiermacher in which the nuances of his time and place are underplayed to conform with a general picture of his work as hostile to Judaism. That is done at a price. If we give up distinguishing various aspects of antijudaism, then all criticism of the tradition is virulent in its nature, including the voices of Jews who were themselves wrestling with orthodox forms of their religion in its modern setting. Blum's book does not study Schleiermacher's teaching within the tormented...