The study examines the relationship of German Romantic writers to Judaism based on recent nationalism research. The insight, propelled by historiography and sociology, that nations are not natural entities but must be understood as social constructions, also sheds new light on the often marginalized anti-Jewish statements of Romantics such as Arnim, Brentano, Arndt, or Adam Müller in literary studies. The denunciation of the alleged "Jewish essence" serves the Romantics to develop a positive counter-image of the "German." This occurs in Prussia at a time when the long-suppressed Jewish minority finally gains a better legal status through the Emancipation Edict of 1812. The aforementioned authors are staunch opponents of this process, both in essayistic and fictional texts.