Skip to main content

Emancipation and Law

On the History of Jurisprudence and Jewish Equal Rights – Book Launch and Panel Discussion (video recording available, in German)

That all people are equal before the law is a fundamental principle of the constitutional state. But how does the abstract claim to equality relate to the concrete right to diversity? Since the Enlightenment, legislation and the rule of law have been at the center of Jewish people's struggle for emancipation and acceptance. Not least because of this, many of them chose to study jurisprudence. After all, the subject provided not only access to new fields of activity but also contained the liberal promise of equal rights.

recording available

Map with all buildings that belong to the Jewish Museum Berlin. The W. M. Blumenthal Academy is marked in green

Where

W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
Klaus Mangold Auditorium
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin (Opposite the Museum)

Video recording from 26 Apr 2022, in German; Jewish Museum Berlin

Using the example of numerous Jewish legal scholars, legal historian Michael Stolleis and historian Till van Rahden trace the history of law from the 18th century onward in their volume Emanzipation und Recht (Emancipation and Law) in its close interconnection with the history of Jewish emancipation.

Podium: Shulamit Volkov (Tel Aviv University), Raphael Gross (Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin), Catherine Newmark (philosopher and journalist); moderator: co-editor Till van Rahden (Université de Montréal)

Red and blue German language book cover titled Emancipation and Law: On the History of Jurisprudence and Jewish Equality, edited by Till van Rahden and Michael Stolleis

Book cover; Vittorio Klostermann Verlag

Where, when, what?

  • When Tue 26 Apr 2022, 7 pm
  • Where W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
    Klaus Mangold Auditorium

    Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
    (Opposite the Museum)

    See location on map

Video Recordings: Watch Past Museum Events (70)

Share, Newsletter, Feedback