Although the Jewish population of Germany made up only one percent of the total German population and never exceeded 625,000 members (with significantly fewer by 1933), it was a model for Jews throughout Europe and North America in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. German Jewish models of religious affiliation, historiography and scholarly research, political engagement, and professional life helped to shape Jewish identity in the modern era far beyond the borders of Germany. It is certainly possible to speak of a transnational history of German Jewry, and with this wide-ranging book—part of Ferdinand Schöningh's seven-volume, thematically organized series “Perspektiven deutsch-jüdischer Geschichte”—Tobias Brinkmann wishes to refocus the story of German Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness, transcending the nation-state paradigm. Additionally, based on language and culture alone, Brinkmann's circle of “German” Jewry includes innumerable Jews outside the post-1871 Reich, particularly in Austria-Hungary and America. He argues that the transnational influence of German Jewry was a function of several phenomena. Jews from Germany participated in the leadership of many transnational Jewish organizations. Germany's position as an international cultural and scholarly center drew foreign Jewish intellectuals who were exposed to trends and debates among German Jewry. Moreover, many thousands of German Jews migrated to the New World in the nineteenth century and shaped nascent Jewish life there.

Brinkmann's survey of German Jewish transnationalism begins with migration in the early and mid-nineteenth century, when sailing ships brought tens of thousands of Jews—mainly from central Europe—to America, before steamships brought millions more from eastern Europe. He likens this phenomenon to contemporary migration from the countryside to the cities in Germany, transforming German Jewry into an overwhelmingly urban population. In both cases, Jews from the same region, if not village, often would form a society (Heimatverein or Landsmannschaft) in the city to help to ease the transition and to preserve the traditions of the erstwhile home. Meanwhile, before 1914 German Jews were prominent in transnational Jewish organizations, such as the Zionist Organization, which Brinkmann ascribes to the German Reich's international influence after 1871. The reputation of Germany's universities and the widespread use of German in worldwide scholarly circles only enhanced the international standing of German Jewry and exposed innumerable non-German Jews to the ways of German Jewry. Emigrants took German-style Reform Judaism with them to America, where it established its deepest and most enduring roots, but many eastern European Jews, educated in Germany, also took some German traditions with them to America.

Relations between German Jews and eastern European Jews form a major theme of Brinkmann's examination, and relations were poor on both sides of the Atlantic. Inside Germany, native Jews used regulations to disenfranchise immigrants within the Jewish community, often with official connivance. Before 1914, however, Germany was more frequently a way station to the New World for Jews from Russia and Poland rather than their final destination. That situation changed in the 1920s with the enactment of highly restrictive immigration laws in the United States. In America, “German Jews” (Brinkmann uses the English expression) formed Jewry's social and economic elite, and they had no great love for their more religious, less westernized coreligionists from eastern Europe. Nonetheless, in contrast to Germany, the American state did not interfere in religious communities' internal disputes, and cities had no single official Jewish community. Since observant newcomers were under no compulsion to join existing religious congregations, they formed their own. In time, their sheer numbers overwhelmed the German-descended Jews, and immigrants from eastern Europe or their descendants eventually assumed leadership of virtually all American Jewish institutions. Resentments did not die easily, however, and German Jews fleeing Hitler did not always find a warm welcome from American Jews of eastern European descent. Indeed, Brinkmann's section on the obstacles that confronted potential emigrants from Nazi Germany is a highlight of the book, and he recounts some of their experiences abroad. Brinkmann, an expert on German Jews in Chicago, examines the American case more extensively than the others, with German Jewry in Palestine (later Israel) unfortunately receiving much less attention.

After World War II, Germany once more became a site of immigration and transit, first for eastern European Jewish Holocaust survivors and later for former Soviet Jews. One should not conflate Germany as a place with Germany as a culture, however. While Brinkmann devotes considerable attention to eastern European Jewish displaced persons (DPs), it is doubtful whether they absorbed much “Germanness” before migrating to Israel, America, or other lands. On the other hand, the children and grandchildren of DPs who remained in Germany adopted a German or hybrid cultural identity. Nonetheless, this group receives almost no consideration, and concerning the Bonn Republic, the narrative concentrates more on the government's handling of the legacy of the Nazi past and ties to Israel.

Germany has long been a nexus for important trends and phenomena in Jewish religious, political, and social life, giving German Jewishness a very transnational cast. Brinkmann's survey does a very fine job of elucidating many aspects of this history; however, it does have a few weaknesses. It has only a brief bibliography and minimal footnotes. At times, it reads like a Who's Who of Jews variously connected to Germany, Germanness, or the interests of Jews in Germany, including figures as disparate as Nathan Marcus Adler, Leo Jogisches, Jacob Schiff, Joseph Roth, and Heinz Berggruen. Indeed, a Personenregister would have been helpful. (There is an Ortsregister.) Brinkmann excels in cataloging the various phenomena that create German Jewish transnationalism, but the lack of a conclusion or epilogue to pull them together is a deficit. Still, with this highly readable volume, Tobias Brinkmann has helped to realign the view of German Jewish history as a multifaceted, multidirectional story with implications far beyond the borders of Germany per se.