The Chains Are Broken

Originally published in 1964, this further volume in Poul Borchsenius’ history of the Jewish people, is the story of the emancipation from the time when the Jews lived a segregated life in the ghetto, until the Age of Enlightenment they achieved equality. This was the time of Moses Mendelssohn, the famous philosopher and of the poet Heinrich Heine who gave expression to contemporary thought in his lyrical poetry. It was also the time when the Rothschild dynasty became an economic and political factor in contemporary Europe, and the Dreyfus Affair promoted a new wave of antisemitism. In Eastern Europe, particularly, antisemitism took a violent turn, and it was this that made the founder of Israel, Theodor Herzl, begin to agitate for the establishment of a Jewish national state.