1. See the (1956) preface to Hannah Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess, ed. Liliane Weissberg, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 82.
2. For a very fine example that documents and seeks to explain “the startling productivity of the German-Jewish symbiosis,” see David Sorkin, The Transformation of German Jewry, 1740–1840 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), especially the conclusion.
3. See George L. Mosse, German Jews Beyond Judaism (Bloomington and Cincinnati: Indiana University Press, 1985), p. ix. In his autobiography, Confronting History: A Memoir (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), Mosse writes about German Jews Beyond Judaism, that it “is certainly my most personal book, almost a confession of faith” (p. 184).
4. James Joll, Intellectuals in Politics: Three Biographical Essays (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960), pp. xii–xiii. In overall terms this portrait is accurate, yet it somewhat downplays the anti-Semitic attacks that Blum had to endure.
5. Michael A. Meyer, The Origins of the Modern Jew: Jewish Identity and European Culture in Germany, 1749–1824 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967).