Most publications that address the fate of Jews in Germany primarily focus on the period between 1939 and 1945. This book is different: it starts much earlier and primarily deals with the question of the origins of the German-Jewish dilemma. The two authors, a German and a Jew, embarked on a quest for traces and uncovered early common roots. They discovered much that connected them over the centuries, but also some things that divided them. Overall – as is particularly evident here – it was a path of symbiosis, of mutually fruitful complementarity, documented by numerous achievements and accolades in science, art, and politics. Around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, Jews in Germany were largely assimilated; they felt completely German, as various sources and testimonies attest. The uniqueness of this compilation is enhanced by contemporary comments from Jewish newspapers and magazines published from 1850 until their prohibition in 1938, which are individually portrayed in the appendix. At the same time, this work is a social study that illustrates, through historical developments, how totalitarian ideologies insidiously unfold, and why hatred, incitement, and radicalism of any kind always lead to ruin. The hardcover edition of this work is included in the collections of the Israeli National Library Yad Vashem, Oxford University, the Sorbonne in Paris, the Library of Congress, and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, as well as various U.S. universities, including Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford.