Emancipation went hand-in-hand with assimilation. See Napoleon’s questions to the “Sanhedrin” he forced to assemble – do you consider Frenchmen your brothers? Would you marry them?
On the other hand, we can’t blame solely “emancipators” for the damage to the community. German reformers felt a need to bring modern education, medicine, jobs to their Eastern brothers…If our communities were able – at the time – to absorb the new knowledge without compromising Yiddishkeit, then – maybe – the Yidden would be less prone to assimilate. This is a simplistic statement, of course, given the novelty of the situation and oppressive regimes we lived under, but still worth pondering.