Fantasies of Jewish Power: Religion and State in German Jewish Writing from Mendelssohn to Schoenberg

This dissertation examines how early twentieth-century German and Austrian Jewish authors Lion Feuchtwanger, Theodor Herzl, Hugo Bettauer, and Arnold Schoenberg engaged with the vexing problem known as the "Jewish question." These writers lived as citizens in their native lands, but in their fictional works, they reflected on Jewish political power and imagined ways in which Judaism/Jewishness might be reconciled with the state. These fantasies of Jewish power, as I call them, reconceive the relationship between Judaism and the state and map out possible futures for Jews in the modern world. Literature thus served as a forum for meditation on Jewish identity and on challenges that the secular state presented to Jews. German Jewish writing critically regarded the promise of social acceptance on the part of non-Jews as Jews gained rights, and its literary fantasies gave Jews hope when anti-Semitism was on the rise.;I attribute German Jewish writers' continued concern with the problem of Jewish political power in part to the legacy of Moses Mendelssohn, whose theological-political treatise, Jerusalem, posited radical redefinitions of Judaism. With these unconventional, sometimes counterfactual conceptions, Mendelssohn sought to show that Judaism did not hinder Jews' participation in civil society. This rhetorical strategy employed fantasies of Jewish power for political ends. In turn, these fantasies invited the further generation of fantasies about Jewish identity, Jewish statehood, and political behavior.;This dissertation brings Mendelssohn into dialogue with twentieth-century German Jewish writers through fantasies of Jewish power, but also through a historical discourse of the non-Jewish imagination that I call the fear of Jewish power, a repertoire of stereotypes expressing anxiety about sharing political space with Jews. While this discourse first appeared in the eighteenth century, it endured for over a century after its inception. Both Mendelssohn and German Jewish writers who inherited his legacy were acutely aware of the fear of Jewish power, and it informed their conceptions and fantasies about Judaism/Jewishness and the state.