It was founded by Zecharias Frankel in Dresden in 1851, following the suppression of Zeitschrift für die Religiösen Interessen des Judenthums in 1846.
[2] It was founded to serve as the organ of what Frankel called the "positive-historical school" in Jewish life and scholarship, which took up a middle position between Reform as represented by Abraham Geiger, and Orthodoxy as interpreted by Samson Raphael Hirsch and Azriel Hildesheimer.
This type of Judaism, conservative in its approach to Jewish observance and ritual but undogmatic in matters of scholarship and research, was taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary at Breslau, founded in 1854 with Frankel as head; the Monatsschrift was intimately though not formally connected with this Seminary and drew its editors and contributors mainly from the ranks of its lecturers and alumni.
inclusive, being assisted by Pinkus Frankl of the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums in vols.
Since Jan., 1904, the Monatsschrift has appeared as the organ of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums.