In his small essay collection with the programmatic title German Jews beyond Judaism (Cincinnati/Bloomington, 1985), the late George L. Mosse stressed the cultural dimension of Jewish emancipation in the German context. Jews became Germans by replacing traditional Judaism with the universal and inclusive Enlightenment ideal of Bildung, which developed almost into a new “religion” for bourgeois German Jews. When all German Jews were finally emancipated in 1871, the large majority belonged to the Bürgertum, which can be loosely translated as bourgeoisie. The German term Bürgertum, however, refers not simply to the socioeconomic position but also to a very specific set of values and forms of behavior, underpinned by constant education and achievement—to Bildung. The very broad Verbürgerlichung (embourgeoisement), in two to three generations, of a hitherto marginalized and destitute group is indeed remarkable in the larger European context. “The Pity of it All,” to borrow from the title of Amos Elon's remarkable synthesis of the “German-Jewish Epoch” (New York, 2002), was that in 1933 many of the truest German Bürger still loyal to the universal Bildungsideal were German Jews. They, Mosse emphasized, “more than any other single group, preserved Germany's better self across dictatorship, war, holocaust, and defeat.”