This study analyses the German-Jewish symbiosis as a historical phenomenon that made a significant contribution to Germany's cultural flowering in connection with the emergence of an educated middle-class (Bildungsb rgertum) around 1800. It began when German culture had to be 'invented' in order to free itself from the supremacy of French culture. In political, cultural, and linguistic terms Germany had nothing that could truly be called 'national', and precisely the same applied to the Jews as well. The educated middle-classes were kept remote from political life by the German Sonderweg and did not engage with anti-Jewish tendencies. The study discusses the development of this symbiosis up to its dissolution in a European framework, on the one hand, and as a result of Zionism on the other.