Having been born a servant, I love freedom more than you. Indeed, having learned slavery, I love freedom better than you. Having been born without a fatherland, I long for it with a burning passion you will never know. And because the world of my birth was no larger than the ghetto [Judengasse,] beyond whose sealed gates was to be found my great abroad, the city no longer suffices as my fatherland, nor the countryside, nor the province; only the whole great fatherland bounded by its language – that I will call home.
—Ludwig Börne, Briefe aus Paris: 74. Brief (1833) in: Sämtliche Schriften vol. 3, p. 511 (S.H. transl.)
