Ernst Ehrlich was widely esteemed for his effective devotion to the causes of liberal progressive Judaism and dialogue between the faiths. An academic and a conciliator, he found his calling in re-establishing this dialogue and laying the groundwork for a renewed Jewish spirituality in postwar Europe.

Born in Berlin in 1921, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, known to friends as Lutz, studied under Leo Baeck, the celebrated liberal rabbi who represented Jews in Germany in the Weimar Republic and taught at the Hochschule für Wissenschaft des Judentums (the Higher Institute of Jewish Studies). When the Nazis closed the rabbinical seminary in 1942, Rabbi Baeck was taken to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, which he managed to survive. Ehrlich endured forced labour under the Nazis, but was on sick leave in February 1943 when the Jews were rounded up at the factories and taken to deportation centres. His mother died in Auschwitz.

Hiding with a childless German family, Ehrlich obtained forged papers and fled to Switzerland in June 1943. He and a friend posed as factory inspectors on their way to look at a factory in Singen, near the Swiss border. German officials stopped them twice but believed their story, Ehrlich told interviewers in 2004.

In Switzerland he was interned in a labour camp for three months before receiving a scholarship to Basle University, where he was awarded his DPhil in 1950. Although he and his first wife became permanent Swiss residents and settled in Reihen, a suburb of Basle, his attachment to Berlin was still strong and he returned to the city almost every year after the war.

By 1955 he was lecturing on Jewish history and religion at the universities of Berne, Basle, Zurich, Berlin and Frankfurt. His long list of honorary doctorates would include ones from the theological faculty of the University of Basle and the philosophy faculty of the Free University of Berlin.

He wrote and published on a wide array of subjects, ranging from “dream” in the Old Testament (Der Traum im Alten Testament, 1953) to a history of German Judaism and A Concise History of Israel (1962) — the only one of his principal works to be translated into English.

As a pioneer of inter-religious dialogue, Ehrlich knew and worked with some of the most influential Roman Catholics of the Second Vatican Council. In 1965 he was one of Cardinal Augustin Bea's advisers in the preparation of Nostra aetate, the document which helped to establish a fresh start in Judeo-Catholic relations. Most importantly, it rejected the age-old accusation that the Jews were responsible for the death of Christ. With the Swiss cardinal, Dr Franz König, he published a document which outlined what they saw as the shared future between Christians and Jews: Die Juden und Christen haben eine Zukunft became another key work of inter- religious dialogue. Ehrlich was also a close friend of the French cardinal and convert from Judaism, Jean-Marie Lustiger (obituary, August 9, 2007).

Both men worked tirelessly on improving relations between their respective faiths, and the fact that both men had lost their mothers in Auschwitz drew them even closer together.

In 2000 Ehrlich spoke out vocally against the proposed beatification of Pope Pius IX, whose anti-Semitism he condemned. He argued that such a move would undo the work that had been invested in improving the relationship between Roman Catholicism and Judaism.

Leo Baeck, his former teacher, founded the Continental European District of the Independent Order of B'nai B'rith in 1955. Ehrlich spent the rest of his life working on behalf of this worldwide liberal Jewish organisation, even after his retirement. He served as its European director from 1966 to 1991 and then became its honorary life vice-president. Playing a key role as a fundraiser, which enabled the organisations to run lectures, talks and a 2001 exhibition about the Jewish role in the Resistance, he also used his connections and contacts to further the group's humanitarian and charitable aims. At his request, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, will attend a B'nai B'rith event in March 2008 — it was the last such event that Ehrlich organised, shortly before his death.

Ehrlich was a member of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, and various Christian-Jewish groups. He was given countless awards for his work, both academic and religious. He won the Bishop Hemmerle Prize for furthering Jewish-Christian dialogue in 2004 and the Israel-Jacobson Prize in 2007 in recognition of his work in liberal progressive Jewish circles. In 1984 he received the Bundesverdienstkreuz, Germany's only civilian award.

He is survived by his second wife, Sylvia, and one daughter.

Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich, Jewish historian and philosopher, was born on March 27, 1921. He died on October 21, 2007, aged 86