Place
Frankfurt פרנקפורט
The old community of the Judengasse and the city of R. Hirsch, who offered Orthodoxy a way to live in the new world without dissolving into it.
The Frankfurt community is among the oldest in Germany; its Judengasse was for centuries both home and cage — the gates were locked at night and on Christian holidays.
In the nineteenth century the city became the site of the central German argument. R. Samson Raphael Hirsch led the congregation that separated from the liberal one and formulated Torah im derech eretz: secular learning and a share in the country's life, with full observance. German Orthodoxy grew from here.
On the timeline
5566 · 1806 CEThe Chatam Sofer and the Orthodox Response to Reform5551 · 1791 CEThe Haskalah, Moses Mendelssohn and the Emancipation of French Jewry5108 · 1348 CEThe Black Death and the Massacres of 5108
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The Nineteen Letters on Judaism — R. Hirsch's book, where modern German Orthodoxy begins
- Horeb — his account of the commandments as a coherent system
Basis: documents and evidence.