THE CIRCUMSTANCES of this sermon were intensely dramatic. Once again, as in the Napoleonic era, Europe had been plunged into war, with the outbreak of hostilities between France and Prussia commencing in late July 1870. A string of German victories reached its climax, after a fierce battle, with the fall of the French fortress of Sedan on 2 September. For France, this was one of the most humiliating disasters in its history: the Emperor Napoleon III surrendered to the Prussian King William I, with the loss of forty generals and almost 100,000 French soldiers. Two days later, the Third French Republic was declared in Paris. The German army continued its onslaught deep into French territory.

Needless to say, the citizens of the two principal combatant nations—Jews and non-Jews alike—perceived these events in dramatically different ways. From France, we have reports such as the following, published in the London Jewish Chronicle of 19 August 1870 (p. 10): ‘a special religious service was held on the 7th of August … at the Consistorial Temple, Paris, when prayers were offered up for the French army. After an animated allocution of the Grand Rabbi, Zadoc Kahn, a collection was made for the wounded’; and, from the French periodical Archives Israélites of 1 October (p. 603): ‘Sermons suffused with a great love for our dear fatherland were delivered by the Rabbis during the two days of Rosh Hashanah … [who] knew, through their animated tone, how to inspire the courage of those who would take part in the defense of the capital, and to calm the fears of their families with reassuring words.’ Unfortunately, texts of such French sermons from the actual period of the war do not appear to be extant. What we do have is sermons of great pathos and patriotism delivered in the ‘Temple of Sedan’ on the anniversaries of the fateful battle, examples of memorialization at the lieu de mémoire.

The German legacy is richer. Sermons delivered by Rabbis Salomon Ohlenburg and Moritz Rahmer (who edited a homiletical periodical) on 27 July 1870, the national day of prayer proclaimed at the beginning of the war, were published soon afterwards.