Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

64 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

Although the Verein could never achieve more than a fraction of the grand

plan it drafted for itself, the important point is that the role the Vereinler wrote

for themselves was that of Jewish civil servants. They envisioned themselves

using expertise—universal Bildung and Wissenschaft—to mediate between Jew-

ish particularity and the presumed universality of the state. Hegel’s conception

of the bureaucracy as a universal class provided a key theoretical ingredient of

the Vereinler’s self-image. Their expertise as producers of universal Wissenschaft

could legitimize, if not simply double as, administrative competence. With hy-

pertrophied faith in Wissenschaft, the Vereinler envisioned themselves as uni-

versal Jewish civil servants, mediating between the Jewish community and a

nebulous entity that was, certainly, the state but was also, at times, the father-

land, Europe, or the age.

Jewish and Other Hegelians: A Comparative Perspective

The Verein’s Jewish Hegelians tried to map out a place for themselves in Hegel’s

state because the philosophical politics Hegel offered was preferable to the ever-

receding horizon of possibilities for young Jewish intellectuals in Restoration

Prussia. It is important to appreciate, however, that this gray area between real

Prussian, and theoretical Hegelian, politics was not a uniquely Jewish space

to inhabit. Toews analyzes Gans together with other young intellectuals who

embraced Hegelianism between 1817 and 1823 : Johannes Schulze, Friedrich

Förster, Leopold Henning, Heinrich Leo, and Friedrich Wilhelm Carové.

These Hegelian disciples’ political orientations varied widely in their relation

to the Restoration Prussian state, yet each of them interpreted the political land-

scape in Prussia through the lens of Hegelian theory. Two aspects of this wider

group’s engagement with Hegel cast light on the Vereinler’s uses of the master

thinker. First, Hegelian theory profoundly inflected how several members in this

group understood the nature and significance of the work in which they were

engaged. Second, the group was ideologically diverse; there was no unified po-

litical tendency among 1820 s “Hegelians.”

Until the Lex Gans of August 1822 , the Hegelian Vereinler could continue to

believe—although it became increasingly difficult for them to do so—that the

academy would be a key institution through which Jews would become fully in-

tegrated into the state. The Hegelian significance that several Vereinler attached

to their activities as teachers and researchers lies on a continuum with the self-

interpretations of their non-Jewish Hegelian academic counterparts. Schulze

provides an especially illuminating comparison. He remained a close friend of

Hegel and understood his reorganizing of Prussia’s system of higher education