"We Will Never Yield"

How did German Jews present their claims for equality to everyday Germans in the first half of the nineteenth century? We Will Never Yield offers the first English-language study of the role of the German press in the fight for Jewish agency and participation during the 1840s. David Meola explores how the German press became a key venue for public debates over Jewish emancipation; religious, educational, and occupational reforms; and the role of Jews in German civil society, even against a background of escalating violence against the Jews in Germany, We Will Never Yield sheds light on the struggle for equality by German Jews in the 1840s and demonstrates the value of this type of archival source of Jewish voices that has been previously underappreciated by historians of Jewish history.

"David Meola's study breaks new ground in depicting how Jews in Baden used regional and national newspapers to contest Christian definitions of Judaism.  By showcasing the confidence with which Jews engaged liberals to reorient viewpoints about Jewish civic identity, Meola underscores the importance of the public sphere as a testing ground for entry into civil society. Scholars of European and Jewish history will benefit from the study's sharp focus on the 1840s, a decade that witnessed intense debates about the extent and limits of Jewish integration into German society."—James M. Brophy, Francis H. Squire Professor, University of Delaware"With his focus on the mainstream Jewish press (as opposed to the German-Jewish press or treatises and pamphlets with a more limited audience) Meola makes several important interventions in the history of the struggle for legal emancipation and the study of Jewish self-representation in and around the 1840s."—Elizabeth Loentz, University of Illinois at Chicago

David A. Meola is the Bert and Fanny Meisler Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of South Alabama. He has published articles in the journal Antisemitism Studies, and the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook as well as several book chapters. He also served as editor for A Cultural History of Genocide in the Long Nineteenth Century.