The title of this volume, which deals with the Jewish question and with the Jews in Prussia, translates as "Complete negotiations first combined Prussian federal state parliament over the Emancipation question of the Jews..."

The first 54 pages are entitled Entwurf einer Verordnung, die Berhältnisse der Juden betressend [draft of a regulation]; the next 461 pages are under the half-title: Gutachten der Abtheilung der Herren-Curie und Verhandlungen derselben über die Emancipationsfrage der Juden. Vom 14. bis 17. Juni 1847. [the negotiatons over the question of Emancipation of the Jews].

Jews in Prussia - The short reign of Frederick William II. (1786-97) brought some slight relief to the Jews, as the repeal of the law compelling the buying of china, for which repeal they had to pay 4,000 thaler (1788). Individual regulations issued for various communities, as for Breslau in 1790, still breathed the medieval spirit; and a real change came only when Prussia, after the defeat at Jena (1806), inaugurated a liberal policy, a part of which was the edict of March 11, 1812, concerning the civil status of the Jews. Its most important features were the declaration of their civic equality with Christians and their admission to the army. They were further admitted to professorships in the universities, and were promised political rights for the future.

The reaction following the battle of Waterloo and the fact that Frederick William III. (1797-1840) was himself a strict reactionary caused a corresponding change of conditions. Still the edict of 1812 remained valid with the exception of section viii., declaring the right of the Jews to hold professorships; this the king canceled (1822). But the law was declared to apply only to those provinces which had been under Prussian dominion in 1812; and so it came that twenty-two anomalous laws concerning the status of the Jews existed in the kingdom. This condition, aggravated by such reactionary measures as the prohibition against the adoption of Christian names (1828), led first to the promulgation of the law of June 1, 1833, concerning the Jews in the grand duchy of Posen -this was from the start a temporary measure - and finally to the law of July 23, 1847, which extended civil equality to all Jews of Prussia and gave them certain political rights. Although the constitutions of 1848 and 1850 gave the Jews full equality, the period of reaction, beginning in the fifties, withdrew many of these rights by interpretation.

Frederick William IV. (1840-61), who declared in the beginning of his reign that he desired to exclude the Jews from military service, believed strongly in a "Christian" state. When his brother William I. (1861-88) became regent conditions began to improve; Jews were admitted to professorships and to the legal profession, but remained still practically excluded from military careers and from the service of the state. The last vestige of medievalism disappeared with the abolition of the Oath More Judaico in 1869. The history of the Jews in Prussia since 1870 is practically identical with that of the Jews of Germany.