In this pathbreaking work, Dagmar Herzog situates the birth of German liberalism in the religious conflicts of the nineteenth century.

During the years leading up to the revolutions of 1848, liberal and conservative Germans engaged in a contest over the terms of the Enlightenment legacy and the meaning of Christianity—a contest that grew most intense in the Grand Duchy of Baden, where liberalism first became an influential political movement.

Bringing insights drawn from Jewish and women’s studies into German history, Herzog demonstrates how profoundly Christianity’s problematic relationships to Judaism and to sexuality shaped liberal, conservative, and radical thought in the pre-revolutionary years.

In particular, she reveals how often conflicts over the private sphere and the "politics of the personal" determined larger political matters.