[Anti-semitism in medicine and Jewish emancipation - the quarrel between the Gottingen obstetrician Friedrich Benjamin Osiander and his Jewish former student Joseph Jacob Gumprecht (circa 1800)].

This article analyzes the behavior of the renowned professor of obstetrics Friedrich Osiander towards his Jewish former student, the private lecturer Joseph Jacob Gumprecht. In a public academic debate between the two of them, Osiander made use of anti-Semitic arguments. He did so even though his medical ideas and practice were based on concepts of Enlightenment and especially religious tolerance. An analysis of Osiander's behavior shows that his denunciations were hardly emotional outbursts against Gumprecht. Rather, they were sober pedagogic attempts to cleanse Gumprecht from what Osiander saw as his "Jewishness", thereby helping him on his climb into bourgeois academic society. This interpretation fits well with the German "etatistic" version of Jewish emancipation: Jews were able to gain equal standing, but only under the condition of moral "improvement", or ridding themselves of all "Jewish attitudes." Thus, "Enlightened" ideas of Jewish emancipation were partly based on beliefs in Jewish moral inferiority. It is significant that the example under investigation happened in a medical faculty, since this was a prime location for acculturated Jews to meet Gentile scholars who represented the Enlightenment-influenced ideas of the times.