Within the debate around the political emancipation of the Jews, Bruno Bauer and those intellectuals who took part in the cultural movement of the Wissenschaft des Judentums, were on opposing sides: the former was against the recognition of a full equality, whereas the latter were active supporters of the Jewish cause. How to explain such a great divide between those who were part of the same progressive German culture inherited from the Hegelian thought? Some volumes published on the occasion of the bicentenary of the Wissenschaft des Judentums foundation and the new Italian translation of Bauer’s Die Judenfrage, give us the opportunity to reflect again on that question. The essay highlights the innovative character of those works and elaborates on that moment of German history in which a conflict exploded, presenting from its beginnings divisions that were destined to burst in the following decades.