German speaking Jews were force behind European unity
A little-remembered Jewish culture in Germany and Austria between the 1870s and 1930s was a hotbed of ideas which drove the formation of the European Union, according to new research.
Literary and film scholar Dr Cathy Gelbin from The University of Manchester says cosmopolitan German speaking Jewish intellectuals, many of whom met in the coffee houses of Berlin, Vienna and Prague, were among the first to see their identity as European.
Her co-author on the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded study is the eminent cultural and literary historian Professor Sander Gilman from Emory University in Atlanta. (more…)