The roots of the Kaufmann–Steinberg family in Germany reach back at least three centuries. Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries earlier generations of the two families had experienced the various phases of progress toward and obstacles to Jewish emancipation, and the gradual progression toward Jewish integration into Gentile German society. The two sisters, Selma (born 1871) and Henny (born 1875), whose lives and family are at the center of this book, were members of both the first generation of Germans to be born into a united German nation state and of German Jews to have full civil and political rights, although as women Selma and Henny did not enjoy the right to vote or eligibility for public office until the beginning of the Weimar Republic (1918–33), by which time they both were already in their 40s.

Most German Jews welcomed citizenship rights as well as the achievement of German national unification in 1871. Yet most Jews also found blending into Gentile society within a framework that safeguarded Jewish identity fraught with difficulties. The new German empire (1871–1918) expected Jewish citizens to abandon their separate status in order to play a role in the larger polity, yet most Jews also wanted to retain and sustain certain aspects of their Jewish identity. An individual's Jewish identity was defined partly by his or her level of religious observance as well as by secular beliefs.