This study attempts to analyze the multi-faceted and complicated relationship between the Central European, Germanic-Austrian cultural milieu and the Jewish national literature and culture which evolved within it at the turn of the last century. Issues regarding the construction and differentiation of a modern Jewish national identity and culture as an aspect of Cultural Zionism are central to this project, as are the problematical literary and cultural partnerships forged in an age of rising racialist thought, growing feminist consciousness, and increasing secularism.