Traces the gradual opening of university education in Germany to Jews, its significance for assimilation to the bourgeoisie, and the legal restrictions that nonetheless barred Jewish graduates from most professional careers. For centuries Jews in Germany were denied full rights and excluded from gentile society. At the same time, Jewish law restricted scholarship to exegesis of the Talmud. But from the late seventeenth century onward, as German universities progressively opened their doors to them, many Jews turned toward university studies. This process accelerated around 1800 once education (Bildung) assumed a central role for social ascent among the so-called Bildungsbürgertum (cultural bourgeoisie). Many Jews sought to benefit from the professional and social opportunities that university attendance enabled, but they soon discovered that while the state encouraged education as a means of the 'moral improvement' of the Jews, it was unwilling to concede them the right to
