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"Identity or History?" is a unique study of Marcus Herz, a Jewish philosopher and doctor in late eighteenth-century Berlin, and of German-Jewish culture at the end of the Enlightenment. More than a biography, this book explores questions of German -Jewish identity and of the discrepancies between Enlightenment theory and practice. Martin Davies draws parallels between Herz's personal life and Prussian politics and culture to make sense of the end of the eighteenth century when Enlightenment tradition and Romantic thought coincided. With his wife Henriette de Lemos, who held one of the most elegant salons of the time, Marcus Herz was a prominent figure in the intellectual and social life of the Prussian capital. Yet like many intellectuals who tried to put into practice Enlightenment ideas that were losing validity in the 1770s and 1780s, he has been virtually ignored by traditional histories. Davies follows Herz's demise from the historical record by describing him in relation to the cultural and social contexts of those who overshadowed him: Kant, Mendelssohn, and Schleiermacher and the different dimensions of historical time and cultural values they represent. Davies also argues that even though Herz was not a philosophical genius, he ought not to be deprived, as he has been, of an authentic presence in history, or of a historical identity of his own. Drawing on primary sources and a number of modern theories of history, particularly those of Wilhem Dilthey, Charles Péguy, Walter Benjamin, Hayden White, and Michel Foucault, who themselves reappraise the manner in which historical change is described, Davies offers a critique of intellectual history which regards history as the province of "great minds" where cultural values mesh with social practice to form historical traditions. Identity or History? attempts to reconstruct Herz's cultural and social identity from his misunderstandings of the movements in which he participated and to infer from his contradictions the coherence of his intellectual positions. Davies illustrates that the contradictions that mark Herz's life and works are symptomatic for his position as a German Jew and for his time. This volume creates a portrait of a once prominent, now obscure personality, largely by means of his reactions to events and ideas, rather than through his own initiatives. By focusing on Marcus Herz and his complex identity, Davies uncovers an important history of German-Jewish identity and underscores the discrepancies between Enlightenment theory and pratice.
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