This book investigates a central contradiction in the Enlightenment thinking of emancipatory
German women's writing of the nineteenth century. Ida von Hahn-Hahn Fanny Lewald and Ottilie
Assing wrote passionate arguments in favor of the emancipation of women Jews and blacks
promoting Enlightenment ideals of human worth and social contribution. They protested these
groups' exclusion from social participation on the basis of purportedly natural criteria such
as gender or race. However their rhetoric of emancipation also relied on racializing discourse
demonstrating that these women writers too frequently supported social equality at the
expense of another excluded group. The author develops her argument by analyzing Hahn-Hahn's
fiction and travel writings set in the Middle East Lewald's novels and letters about women and
Jews in Germany and Assing's «Reports from America» in favor of the abolition of African
slavery in the United States. This wide-ranging comparative study offers a unique insight into
German women's contribution to emancipatory struggles around the world.
