This volume contains the lectures delivered at a symposium of the Faculty of Humanities at Vienna University on the fiftieth anniversary of the Anschluβ. It includes twenty articles: ten on historical topics, five on Germanic philology, two on the Yiddish language, and three on art history. They are arranged alphabetically and not by subject, but this review is arranged in the latter manner. Articles are written in German, except where otherwise noted.

Two very prominent experts in Jewish history, whose loss we have since had to mourn, initiate the series of historical contributions: Bernhard Blumenkranz of Paris and Frantfisek Graus of Basle. The former (pp. 17-26) deals with distorted and incorrect descriptions of historical facts: the role of Archbishop Agobard of Lyons, the ineradicable misunderstanding of Pertz concerning (Villa) Iudeis in Richer of St Rémy as ‘Jewish physicians’, the alleged participation of Jews in the slave trade conducted by the Verdun merchants, and Jews as smallholders in early medieval Burgundy. Graus (pp. 53-66) again addresses fundamental problems, objecting to the construction of a continuous history of the Jewish people as a ‘nation in the diaspora’ by ‘nationalizing the past in a modernistic way’. For him the history of the Jews cannot be mastered either by limiting it to the reactions of the other inhabitants of the regions in which they lived or by idealizing it in a naïve and apologetic way. In contradistinction to this approach Graus points to the possibilities of a new medieval discipline that proceeds by analysing the results of socio-historical research, by seeking to grasp the mentality of past cultures, and by trying to complete the fragmentary picture by comparison with the fate of other marginalized and persecuted groups as well. For Graus the disintegration of social and economic structures as well as the claim to exclusiveness made by both major religions necessarily resulted in mutual delimitation and exclusion. However, the intensity of productive Jewish-Christian coexistence, which functioned rather well during long periods of time, should not be underestimated. Modern antisemitism, unlike medieval anti-Judaism, rested on the new ideological foundation of racism.

Apart from those two all-embracing themes, other authors concentrate on certain geographical regions or on special topics.