Rebirth of a Culture: Jewish Identity and Jewish Writing in Germany and Austria today

Published by Berghahn Books 2008

Rebirth of a Culture

Jewish Identity and Jewish Writing in Germany and Austria today

Edited by: Hillary Hope Herzog , Todd Herzog and Benjamin Lapp

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780857450289

Overview
Contents

About this book

After 1945, Jewish writing in German was almost unimaginable—and then only in reference to the Shoah. Only in the 1980s, after a period of mourning, silence, and processing of the trauma, did a new Jewish literature evolve in Germany and Austria. This volume focuses on the re-emergence of a lively Jewish cultural scene in the German-speaking countries and the various cultural forms of expression that have developed around it. Topics include current debates such as the emergence of a post-Waldheim Jewish discourse in Austria and Jewish responses to German unification and the Gulf wars. Other significant themes addressed are the memorialization of the Holocaust in Berlin and Vienna, the uses of Kafka in contemporary German literature, and the German and American-Jewish dialogue as representative of both the history of exile and the globalization of postmodern civilization. The volume is enhanced by contributions from some of the most significant representatives of German-Jewish writing today such as Esther Dischereit, Barbara Honigmann, Jeanette Lander, and Doron Rabinovici. The result is a lively dialogue between European and North American scholars and writers that captures the complexity and dynamism of Jewish culture in Germany and Austria at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Author / Editor information

Hillary Hope Herzog is an Assistant Professor in German Studies at the University of Kentucky. She has written articles on a wide range of topics, including Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian-Jewish culture, and Irmgard Keun. She is currently working on a book about Austrian-Jewish culture from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Todd Herzog is an Associate Professor in the Department of German Studies at the University of Cincinnati. He has authored articles on contemporary German-Jewish and Austrian-Jewish literature, crime films and techniques of criminal investigation, and theories of cultural hybridity. He is co-editor (along with Sander Gilman) of A New Germany in a New Europe (Routledge, 2001) and author of Crime Stories (Berghahn, 2009).

Benjamin Lapp is currently Associate Professor of History at Montclair State University and lives in New York City. His publications include Revolution from the Right: Politics, Class and the Rise of Nazism in Saxony, 1919-1933 (Humanities Press/Brill, 1997). He is now pursuing a research project on Holocaust survivors in the United States.

Hillary Hope Herzog is an Assistant Professor in German Studies at the University of Kentucky. She has written articles on a wide range of topics, including Arthur Schnitzler, Austrian-Jewish culture, and Irmgard Keun. She is currently working on a book about Austrian-Jewish culture from the end of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Reviews

“This incredibly useful and interesting book brings together contributions from scholars and writers who have been working on the dynamic changes in Austrian and German Jewish writing over the last few decades.” · H-Net, Habsburg

“Without exception, all contributions constitute informative, well-researched and reasonably argued pieces of scholarship…thoughtfully conceived and carefully edited, adding up to an informative source book with a useful index of names and topics.” · German Studies Review

"...it is an outstanding piece of scholarship, focusing on an important emerging topic within contemporary German literature." · Guy Stern, Distinguished Professor, Wayne State University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Dagmar C. G. Lorenz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I German-Jewish Writing and Culture Today
1 The Monster Returns: Golem Figures in the Writings of Benjamin Stein, Esther Dischereit, and Doron Rabinovici Cathy S. Gelbin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
2 Hybridity, Intermarriage, and the (Negative) German-Jewish Symbiosis Petra Fachinger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
3 A Political Tevye? Yiddish Literature and the Novels of Stefan Heym Richard Bodek Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	52
4 Anti-Semitism because of Auschwitz: An Introduction to the Works of Henryk M. Broder Roland Dollinger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
Part II The Case of Austria
5 “What once was, will always be possible” The Echoes of History in Robert Menasse’s Die Vertreibung aus der Hölle Margy Gerber Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
6 The Global and the Local in Ruth Beckermann’s Films and Writings Hillary Hope Herzog Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	100
Part III Transatlantic Relationships
7 The Holocaust Survivor as Germanist: Marcel Reich-Ranicki and Ruth Kluger Benjamin Lapp Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
8 Transatlantic Solitudes: Canadian-Jewish and German-Jewish Writers in Dialogue with Kafka Iris Bruce Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
9 A German-Jewish-American Dialogue? Literary Encounters between German Jews and Americans in the 1990s Todd Herzog Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	143
Part IV Jewish Writers in Germany and Austria
10 “Attempts to Read the World” An Interview with Writer Barbara Honigmann Bettina Brandt Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
11 Behind the Tränenpalast Esther Dischereit Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
12 Germans Are Least Willing to Forgive Those Who Forgive Them: A Case Study of Myself Jeannette Lander Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
13 Mischmasch or Mélange Doron Rabinovici Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	189

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 198
Keywords: Jewish Studies; Cultural Studies (General); Literary Studies

eBook

Published: August 1, 2008
ISBN: 9780857450289