ondering the future of the German-Jewish past is not a new concept. When struggling for their rights, many German Jews reflected on the past with growing dismay, envisioning a bright future for the period after emancipation. Before the First World War it was mainly Zionist thinkers who dominated the debates about the future of the Jews. 1 Swayed by the conviction that there were no prospects for Jews in (mainly Eastern) Europe, they campaigned for a so-called national rebirth of the Jewish

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... e in what was conceived as the place of Jewish origin-the Land of Israel. After the upheavals of the First World War and during the times of uncertainty and rapid change that ensued, the need to discuss the future prospect of German Jewry seemed even more pressing. Between the end of the Great War and the rise of National Socialism in 1933, expectations of German Jews oscillated between, on the one hand, hopes for renewal and on the other hand, gloomy prophecies of disintegration. What is certain is that despite the upheavals and conflicting visions for the future, most German-speaking Jews could not imagine Germany without Jews. 2 This applies all the more to the so-called Jewish "prophets of the past, " the German-Jewish historians. 3 Thus, for example, in the first issue of the revived Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland in 1929, the historian Raphael Strauss (1887-1947) called for a review of German-Jewish historiography by acknowledging all aspects of Jewish history in Germany. 4 His plan for a more comprehensive German-Jewish historiography was based on the observation that scholarship in this field was divided between two main groups, each driven by different interests and methods of research. According to Strauss, the first group comprised Jewish scholars who were predominantly interested in intellectual study or Geistesgeschichte, while the other group comprised mainly xiv THE FUTURE OF THE GERMAN-JEWISH PAST STARTS HERE xxiv THE FUTURE OF THE GERMAN-JEWISH PAST STARTS HERE which features a Roundtable titled "Rethinking Antisemitism" that challenges scholars to reflect on the concepts, epistemologies, narratives, methodologies, and theories that animate our approach to the topic. For an interesting discussion on the tension between Jews in Germany and German Jews see Jeffrey M. Peck, Being Jewish in the New Germany (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006). 20. The Luxembourg Agreement is also available at the online project 100(0) key documents of German history in the twentieth century: https://www.1000dokumente.de /index.html?c=dokument_de&dokument=0016_lux&object=context&st=&l=de.