Despite the revival of intellectual history in recent years, there is still relatively little research into German-Jewish intellectual history between 1933 and 1938. The present work studies for the first time the important discussions of the period from the debate between Leo Strauss and Julius Guttmann, Alexander Altmanna (TM)s contribution to a oeJewish theology, a to the reception of the work of Franz Rosenzweig and Martin Heidegger as well as the works of David Baumgardt and Fritz Heinemann. Many now forgotten texts of those discussions have been made accessible here. All the leading figures presented in this study were sooner or later forced to choose between a oephilosophya and a oelaw.a

Thomas Meyer, PhD in Philosophy and Contemporary German Literature (Munich 2003), wrote his dissertation on Ernst Cassirer's theory of "Kulturphilosophie." In 2006 he published an intellectual biography of Cassierer which was nominated for the 2006 "Deutschen Buchpreis." From 2005-2007 Meyer taught at the universities of Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. Since 2007 he has worked as a research associate at the Simon-Dubnow-Insitute for Jewish History and Literature in Leipzig.