Prussian emancipation of Jews followed from equal-citizenship ideology, not economic interest

Evidence

Although a majority of the Berlin bankers of the time were Jews, the Prussian reforms did not require any considerable financial help from them. The outspoken sympathies of the Prussian reformers, their advocacy of Jewish emancipation, was the consequence of the new equality of all citizens, the abolition of privilege, and the introduction of free trade. They were not interested in the preservation of Jews as Jews for special purposes. Their reply to the argument that under conditions of equality “the Jews might cease to exist” would always have been: “Let them. How does this matter to a government which asks only that they become good citizens?” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 127

Categorization

• XREF: Precursors Arendt’s later argument that the nation-state’s universalist frame simultaneously absorbs and erases the Jew as such — connects to her treatment of ‘exceptions’ and to Zygmunt Bauman’s modernity-and-antisemitism thesis.