Christian Wilhelm von Dohm

His work, On the Civil Improvement of the Jews, went on to influenced the process of Jewish emancipation.

The son of a Lutheran pastor at Lemgo's St. Mary's Church [de], he was a radical advocate for Jewish emancipation.

In 1781, Dohm published a two-volume work entitled Ueber die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden ("On the Civil Improvement of the Jews"), which argued for Jewish political equality on humanitarian grounds.

In 1786 he was ennobled (untitled nobility), gaining him the nobiliary particle von before his surname.

Dohm acknowledged many of the "negative characteristics" that were troubling to liberal minded Enlightenment philosophers – moral corruption, clannish and unsociable behaviors, unproductive and primarily commercial occupations – but he argued these traits were the product of centuries of oppression by Christians and the coercive power of Talmudic Judaism over the Jewish community.