Christian Wiese. Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany. Leiden: Brill, 2005. xx + 577 pp. $199.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-90-04-11962-8.

Reviewed by K. Hannah Holtschneider (University of Edinburgh)
Published on H-German (April, 2006)

The History of Jewish Studies

Challenging Colonial Discourse is the English translation of Christian Wiese's highly praised doctoral dissertation, published in 1999 as Wissenschaft des Judentums und protestantische Theologie im wilhelminischen Deutschland. Ein Schrei ins Leere?.[1] Wiese examines the encounter of Jewish Studies with Protestant theology from the perspective of Jewish Studies. This is no simple operation, as Wiese shows in analyzing how Protestant theological attitudes to the "Jewish Question" are reflected in works written by Jewish scholars in response to Protestant constructions of Jewish identity and Judaism.

This intricate narrative may be grasped more readily when viewed as the latest in a series of similar endeavors penned by a new generation of scholars in Jewish Studies. Since the end of the 1990s, contributions to the study of Jewish/non-Jewish relations in this period--such as Susannah Heschel's Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (1998), David N. Myers' Resisting History (2004), as well as works on the earlier development of the Haskalah as an engagement with the Enlightenment like Jonathan Hess' Jews, Germans, and the Claims of Modernity (2003)--have begun to recast the now much-scorned conception of Jewish history as merely reactive and thoroughly lachrymose. Instead, these newer histories reveal the ways in which Jewish movements proposed their own visions of modernity, social integration and scholarly agendas, rather than simply offering an apologetic response to those views of Jews and Judaism constructed by the dominant German non-Jewish majority. Wiese's contribution to the field is a slightly expanded and amended version of his doctoral study focusing on a range of Jewish and Protestant scholars who engaged, eyes on each others' work, with the same historical sources and contexts. It is a significant scholarly milestone that deserves sustained recognition. However, it cannot be easily accessed by students, as it presupposes a thorough knowledge of the wider political and social context of Imperial German history.

The first chapter sets the scene, clearly and succinctly placing the development of Jewish Studies in Wilhelmine Germany in the context of an analysis of the history of the Jewish community between 1890-1914, and homing in on both the development of modern antisemitism and the split between Jewish assimilationists and those who argued for the maintenance of a Jewish identity distinct from mainstream German Kulturprotestantismus. The focus of the remainder of the book is a detailed analysis of a number of key discourses in Jewish Studies: the formation of Jewish Studies, its main institutions and its representatives in the various Jewish religious movements (chapter 2); confrontations with Protestant scholarship on Jewish history (chapter 3); and debates over the historical-critical method in biblical studies and its antisemitic versions in Protestant works (chapters 4 and 5). Chapter 6 focuses the analysis on the relationship between the Liberal wings of Jewish and Protestant scholarship, which, through their perceived closeness, provide particularly poignant examples of the intensity of the scholarly debates between members of both communities. The final chapter before a summative epilogue analyzes "what effect Jewish opposition against the distorted representation of Judaism created within Protestant theology" (p. 36).

In a detailed analysis of an impressive array of sources ("Jewish and Protestant newspapers and journals," "Archival material from private collections of Jewish and Protestant scholars," "Archival materials on the institutional position of Jewish Studies" [pp. 32-33]), Wiese meticulously charts the development of the nooks and crannies of the scholarly encounter between Jewish Studies and Protestant theology in the two-and-a-half decades of Wilhelmine Germany. He presents a convincing account of how a hegemonic Protestant majority ignored the efforts of the Jewish minority to attain equal scholarly recognition in the academy. The recent revisionist trend in scholarship on the subject of German Jewish history--"reversing the gaze," as Susannah Heschel has put it--has opened many more scholarly possibilities of reading and re-reading the sources.[2] Charting the history of Jewish ambitions and frustrations should also create new opportunities to examine the projects of mainstream society and lead to a closer examination of the perception of power relationships from the perspective of the dominant community.

While there is no debate about the comprehensive nature of Wiese's research, room remains for discussion about how to interpret his findings. What would it have amounted to had Protestant theology admitted Jewish scholars on an equal footing into the academic community and responded to the desire of Jews "to influence and participate in the discourse of Protestant theology" (p. 5)? Did Protestant theologians feel threatened in their hegemonic status, and was it for this reason that Protestant scholars could or would not allow Jewish scholars to enter the academy on an equal footing, with properly recognized institutions and professorships at prestigious faculties? Marcus Pyka concludes his assessment of Wiese's book by stating that the Jewish project of pluralism was recognized, but deemed inadmissible precisely because of this recognition.[3] However, it seems to me that this hypothesis deserves deeper analysis. Would admitting Jewish interpretations of the sources into the basic scholarly canon have amounted to a betrayal of Protestant perceptions of truth, identity and social status? The creativity of "reversing the gaze" is evident in Wiese's study. A landmark in scholarship, Wiese's comprehensive review of the sources will now provide the basis for future studies to "reverse the gaze" yet again.

Notes

[1]. Christian Wiese, Wissenschaft des Judentums und protestantische Theologie im wilhelminischen Deutschland. Ein Schrei ins Leere? (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999).

[2]. Susannah Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 1ff.

[3]. Marcus Pyka, "Review of Christian Wiese, Wissenschaft des Judentums und protestantische Theologie im wilhelminischen Deutschland. Ein Schrei ins Leere?," H-Soz-u-Kult, H-Net Reviews, July 2001, http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=168311007408634 .

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Citation: K. Hannah Holtschneider. Review of Wiese, Christian, Challenging Colonial Discourse: Jewish Studies and Protestant Theology in Wilhelmine Germany. H-German, H-Net Reviews. April, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11675

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