Saul Ascher

[citation needed] At the Wartburg Festival book-burning on 18 October 1817, Ascher's work "Die Germanomanie" ("The German Mania") was included within the books burned at the event.

[citation needed] Ascher wrote both serious, complex pieces and simpler journalism as a correspondent, contributor and member for various magazines and publications, including the Berlin Monatsschrift, Berlin Archive of Time and Taste, Eunomia, General Literary Newspaper of Halle, Morning Paper for the Educated Classes of Cotta, Miscellany for New World Client by Zschokke, and the Journal de l'Empire.

In 1799, his work "Ideen zur natürlichen Geschichte der politischen Revolutionen" ("Ideas on the natural history of political revolutions) was banned.

Historically, Ascher clearly lagged behind other contemporary representatives of emancipation, being ironically documented by Heinrich Heine in his work "Harz Journey" as a "doctor of reason".

[citation needed] Walter Grab [de] was the first to analyse and discuss the life and works of Ascher in detail in a 1977 essay, sourcing a dissertation by Fritz Pinkuss (on Moses Mendelson) from 1928.

[citation needed] The famous Stalinist Playwright from the GDR, Peter Hacks made a case for recognising and politically evaluating Ascher's place in history.

In the context of modern scholarship on Romanticism, anti-Semitism and their relationship, Ascher is viewed as a counterpoint to Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim (see Puschner's study "Literature").

[citation needed] Ascher's negative evaluation of Kantian rationalism—especially in its formulation by Fichte—as a "science of hating Judaism", has been credited by historian David Nirenberg as foresight into the development of a pseudo-science of Antisemitism that translated the Christian dialectic of supersession into the discourse of critical reason.