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TheRevolution of 1848 has proven to be a continuously interesting field for historical research. Whether one sees it as a turning point where German history failed to turn, as an uprising bungled by a bunch of impractical professors, as a revolution undermined by ethnic hostility, or as a revolution which failed because it ignored the problems of the lower classes, the question of its failure has been almost as fruitful a focus of research as other countries' successful revolutions. Historians have also been attracted to it because it seems to provide outlines and previews of future events in German history. It marks, we are told, the growing politicization of the masses, the birth of social conflict, the inception of national struggles, or the first sign of the liberals' political cowardice.

Theodor Mommsen called him "the most German man." TheIsraelitnoted that he had never stepped forward as a Jew. Ernest Hamburger writes that he was the only Jewish deputy who omitted the usual declaration about his religious allegiance in the parliamentary manual. "It was without significance for him." In his will he requested that "no religious ceremony take place since this is absolutely contrary to my conviction." And even after his death, when his brother Rudolf established a fund of ten thousand marks for the Berlin Jewish community, it was specified that books could be distributed to talented children except those who attended religious schools. Thus we have a picture of Ludwig Bamberger, the most German man or at least a completely emancipated Jew.