Pub Date : 2020-11-01DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa011
{"title":"Index to Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, vol. 65","authors":"","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa011","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"126 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123938865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa006
Susanne Korbel
This article presents findings on encounters between Jews and non-Jews in the context of daily life in Vienna between 1900 and 1930. In the early twentieth century, the Habsburg capital underwent tremendous population growth, which increased the opportunities among its inhabitants of interreligious and cultural interactions, but also confronted them with a housing shortage. Up to twenty per cent of the population had to share housing or even beds with their fellow citizens. Those who could afford more comfortable living conditions, such as private apartments, also shared them with non-family members. The middle and upper classes employed domestics who lived with the families they worked for and had rooms within the family apartments. Homes thus provided spaces in which Jewish and non-Jewish relations thrived. This article sheds light on the range of encounters that took place in homes, how Jewishness and gender were negotiated in such encounters, whether relations were formed as a consequence, and, if so, what they looked like. Based on a close examination of memoirs, novels, and court records, I argue that the range of Jewish and non-Jewish relations was much broader than historiography has hitherto suggested, due to the shared experiences triggered by the urban making of Vienna. Fin-de-siècle Vienna provided a pluricultural urban setting characterized by a new quality of mobility. A large number of people, Jews and non-Jews alike, were on the move, new professions emerged, and increasing possibilities for leisure and entertainment spread along the Danube. These developments occurred in a climate of antisemitism, popularized and * Research for this article was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), grant P31036-G28. I wish to thank Gabriel Finder, Klaus Hödl, Joachim Schlör, and the anonymous referees for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 1 Moritz Csáky, ‘Hybride Kommunikationsräume und Mehrfachidentitäten. Zentraleuropa um 1900’, in Elisabeth Röhrlich (ed.), Migration und Innovation um 1900. Perspektiven auf das Wien der Jahrhundertwende, Vienna 2016, pp. 65–97. The concept of pluriculturalism builds on the assumptions of multiculturalism, although, in an attempt to overcome the problematic singularity of the concept of multiculturalism, scholars have begun to focus on how cultures resonate, interact, and merge through mutual mediation, rather than merely tolerating one another or coexisting. See Anil Bhatti, ‘Plurikulturalität’, in Johannes Feichtinger and Heidemarie Uhl (eds), Habsburg neu denken. Vielfalt und Ambivalenz in Zentraleuropa—30 kulturwissenschaftliche Stichworte, Vienna 2016, pp. 171–180. 2 Mary Gluck, The Invisible Jewish Budapest: Metropolitan Culture at the Fin de Siècle, Madison 2016; Klaus Hödl, Entangled Entertainers: Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, New York 2019; Susanne Winner of the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook Essay Pri
这篇文章展示了1900年至1930年间维也纳日常生活中犹太人和非犹太人相遇的发现。在20世纪初,哈布斯堡王朝的首都经历了巨大的人口增长,这增加了其居民之间宗教和文化交流的机会,但也面临着住房短缺。多达20%的人口不得不与同胞同住,甚至同床。那些能够负担得起私人公寓等更舒适生活条件的人,也会与非家庭成员合租。中产阶级和上层阶级雇佣家仆,这些家仆与他们为之工作的家庭住在一起,并在家庭公寓里有房间。因此,住宅为犹太人和非犹太人的关系提供了蓬勃发展的空间。这篇文章揭示了在家庭中发生的一系列遭遇,犹太身份和性别是如何在这种遭遇中协商的,是否因此形成了关系,如果是这样的话,它们是什么样子的。基于对回忆录、小说和法庭记录的仔细研究,我认为犹太人和非犹太人关系的范围比史学迄今所认为的要广泛得多,因为维也纳的城市建设引发了共同的经历。芬-de- si<e:1>维也纳提供了一个多元文化的城市环境,其特点是新的流动性。大量的人,包括犹太人和非犹太人,都在迁徙,新的职业出现了,越来越多的休闲和娱乐方式沿着多瑙河传播。这些发展发生在反犹太主义的氛围中,这篇文章的研究是由奥地利科学基金(FWF)资助的,拨款P31036-G28。我要感谢Gabriel Finder、Klaus Hödl、Joachim Schlör和匿名审稿人对本文早期草稿的有益反馈。除非另有说明,所有的翻译都是我自己的。1 . Moritz Csáky, Hybride Kommunikationsräume和Mehrfachidentitäten。《1900年的欧洲中心》,见伊丽莎白Röhrlich(编),《1900年的移民与创新》。透视auf das Wien der Jahrhundertwende,维也纳2016,pp. 65-97。多元文化主义的概念建立在多元文化主义的假设之上,然而,为了克服多元文化主义概念的奇异性问题,学者们开始关注文化如何通过相互调解产生共鸣、互动和融合,而不仅仅是相互容忍或共存。见Anil Bhatti, ' Plurikulturalität ',见Johannes Feichtinger和Heidemarie Uhl(编),Habsburg newdenken。《中欧文化与文化》,维也纳,2016,第171-180页。2玛丽·格拉克,《看不见的犹太人布达佩斯:芬兰的大都会文化》,麦迪逊,2016;克劳斯Hödl,纠缠的艺人:犹太人与流行文化in fin -de- si<e:1>维也纳,纽约2019;本作品采用知识共享署名-非商业-非衍生品4.0国际许可协议。市长卡尔·卢格将宗教运动转变为种族主义运动,从而为社会所接受。这种对犹太人的强烈仇恨根植于一种被称为“现代反犹太主义”的生物学思想。“雅利安段落”(arierparagraph)将犹太学生从兄弟会中驱逐出去,与反犹太主义协会(Verein zur Abwehr des antisemiitismus)等机构竞争。尽管如此,日常生活为居民提供了似乎无穷无尽的机会,让犹太人和非犹太人相遇,这是由这座城市的脉搏滋养的。人口的大量增长使维也纳成为一个拥有200多万居民的大都市,导致市民不得不与其他市民共享住房。绝大多数人与同一层楼甚至整栋楼的邻居共用厕所。他们从走廊里的“Bassena”(公共水池)取水,孩子们在院子里玩耍,成年人聚集在“Zimmer”、“k<e:1>切”或“Kabinett”(房间、厨房和连接的房间,当时构成了许多维也纳公寓)。那些能负担得起更舒适的条件的人,与家人和其他人一起住在私人公寓里。上流社会和普通中产阶级家庭都雇佣家政工人——女佣、保姆、看护者——这些人与他们为之工作的家庭住在一起,并在他们家里有房间。在这篇文章中,我探索了维也纳的公寓和共用卧室等私密空间,作为促进犹太人和非犹太人相遇的场所,并研究了犹太性和性别作为空间体验的重叠。
{"title":"Spaces of Gendered Jewish and Non-Jewish Encounters: Bed Lodgers, Domestic Workers, and Sex Workers in Vienna, 1900–1930*","authors":"Susanne Korbel","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa006","url":null,"abstract":"This article presents findings on encounters between Jews and non-Jews in the context of daily life in Vienna between 1900 and 1930. In the early twentieth century, the Habsburg capital underwent tremendous population growth, which increased the opportunities among its inhabitants of interreligious and cultural interactions, but also confronted them with a housing shortage. Up to twenty per cent of the population had to share housing or even beds with their fellow citizens. Those who could afford more comfortable living conditions, such as private apartments, also shared them with non-family members. The middle and upper classes employed domestics who lived with the families they worked for and had rooms within the family apartments. Homes thus provided spaces in which Jewish and non-Jewish relations thrived. This article sheds light on the range of encounters that took place in homes, how Jewishness and gender were negotiated in such encounters, whether relations were formed as a consequence, and, if so, what they looked like. Based on a close examination of memoirs, novels, and court records, I argue that the range of Jewish and non-Jewish relations was much broader than historiography has hitherto suggested, due to the shared experiences triggered by the urban making of Vienna. Fin-de-siècle Vienna provided a pluricultural urban setting characterized by a new quality of mobility. A large number of people, Jews and non-Jews alike, were on the move, new professions emerged, and increasing possibilities for leisure and entertainment spread along the Danube. These developments occurred in a climate of antisemitism, popularized and * Research for this article was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), grant P31036-G28. I wish to thank Gabriel Finder, Klaus Hödl, Joachim Schlör, and the anonymous referees for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 1 Moritz Csáky, ‘Hybride Kommunikationsräume und Mehrfachidentitäten. Zentraleuropa um 1900’, in Elisabeth Röhrlich (ed.), Migration und Innovation um 1900. Perspektiven auf das Wien der Jahrhundertwende, Vienna 2016, pp. 65–97. The concept of pluriculturalism builds on the assumptions of multiculturalism, although, in an attempt to overcome the problematic singularity of the concept of multiculturalism, scholars have begun to focus on how cultures resonate, interact, and merge through mutual mediation, rather than merely tolerating one another or coexisting. See Anil Bhatti, ‘Plurikulturalität’, in Johannes Feichtinger and Heidemarie Uhl (eds), Habsburg neu denken. Vielfalt und Ambivalenz in Zentraleuropa—30 kulturwissenschaftliche Stichworte, Vienna 2016, pp. 171–180. 2 Mary Gluck, The Invisible Jewish Budapest: Metropolitan Culture at the Fin de Siècle, Madison 2016; Klaus Hödl, Entangled Entertainers: Jews and Popular Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, New York 2019; Susanne Winner of the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook Essay Pri","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"209 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124701085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-07-29DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa004
Sarah Wobick-Segev
In late 1933, Stefan Zweig stood before a committee to aid German Jews, and pleaded for immediate action to help German-Jewish children find new homes abroad. This article examines Zweig’s call to accept refugees within his larger quest to promote a humanist and universalist Europe. His goal was not merely intended to help individual Jewish children enjoy happier childhoods in other parts of the world, but a collective task to combat hatred. Stefan Zweig’s humanism and cosmopolitanism expressed themselves in a pedagogic and educational mission that was based on a particularly Jewish commitment to Bildung and took two major forms—a literary one (as seen in his historical-biographical writings) and an activist one (in his speeches, interviews and newspaper writings). The two expressions worked in tandem and reflected the same message and concerns. Moreover, both reflected his general aim to promote and help realise an alternative, humanist Europe; one in which the healthy and happy future of Jewish youth (and others) would be ensured.
{"title":"Fighting Hatred and Teaching Love in a ‘World that is Common to us all’: Recontextualizing Stefan Zweig’s Pedagogy of Humanism","authors":"Sarah Wobick-Segev","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In late 1933, Stefan Zweig stood before a committee to aid German Jews, and pleaded for immediate action to help German-Jewish children find new homes abroad. This article examines Zweig’s call to accept refugees within his larger quest to promote a humanist and universalist Europe. His goal was not merely intended to help individual Jewish children enjoy happier childhoods in other parts of the world, but a collective task to combat hatred. Stefan Zweig’s humanism and cosmopolitanism expressed themselves in a pedagogic and educational mission that was based on a particularly Jewish commitment to Bildung and took two major forms—a literary one (as seen in his historical-biographical writings) and an activist one (in his speeches, interviews and newspaper writings). The two expressions worked in tandem and reflected the same message and concerns. Moreover, both reflected his general aim to promote and help realise an alternative, humanist Europe; one in which the healthy and happy future of Jewish youth (and others) would be ensured.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"44 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130616526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-26DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa002
Amy Hill Shevitz, Susanne Hillman
The Jewish family was foundational to philosopher and theologian Franz Rosenzweig’s understanding of Jewish life. This article examines his view of the Jewish family in the light of two memoirs, only recently translated into English, written by his mother, Adele Alsberg Rosenzweig, with whom he had a very close yet contentious relationship. The memoirs illustrate the historical contexts of both Adele’s and Franz’s generations, as well as the personal, familial contexts in which Franz was raised, and are thus a good starting point from which to examine the significance of the Jewish family in his experience and thought.
{"title":"Franz Rosenzweig, Adele Alsberg Rosenzweig, and the German-Jewish Family*","authors":"Amy Hill Shevitz, Susanne Hillman","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The Jewish family was foundational to philosopher and theologian Franz Rosenzweig’s understanding of Jewish life. This article examines his view of the Jewish family in the light of two memoirs, only recently translated into English, written by his mother, Adele Alsberg Rosenzweig, with whom he had a very close yet contentious relationship. The memoirs illustrate the historical contexts of both Adele’s and Franz’s generations, as well as the personal, familial contexts in which Franz was raised, and are thus a good starting point from which to examine the significance of the Jewish family in his experience and thought.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130065913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-04-24DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa003
Amir Engel
The fact that bizarre intellectual trends and teachings, like occultism, parapsychology, and neopaganism played an important role in modern German culture is thoroughly documented by scholars of German history. Experts on German-Jewish history, however, still tend to describe German-Jewish culture as one formed around the ideals of ‘Bildung’ and the Enlightenment. As a result, German-Jewish occultism, mysticism, and other non-Enlightenment texts and authors have received relatively little scholarly attention. The present article aims to help correct this bias by introducing a new framework for the study of German-Jewish culture, and by examining an all but forgotten case study: Meir Wiener and his work. After introducing the term ‘Western esotericism’, developed by scholars of religious studies, the article uses it to explore two of Meir Wiener’s strangest and virtually forgotten works. Wiener, it is shown, produced fantastically esoteric works in the context of German expressionism and Kabbalah studies, which better represent their time and place than scholars have thus far acknowledged.
{"title":"German-Jewish Esotericism: The Case of Meir Wiener’s Expressionist Kabbalah","authors":"Amir Engel","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The fact that bizarre intellectual trends and teachings, like occultism, parapsychology, and neopaganism played an important role in modern German culture is thoroughly documented by scholars of German history. Experts on German-Jewish history, however, still tend to describe German-Jewish culture as one formed around the ideals of ‘Bildung’ and the Enlightenment. As a result, German-Jewish occultism, mysticism, and other non-Enlightenment texts and authors have received relatively little scholarly attention. The present article aims to help correct this bias by introducing a new framework for the study of German-Jewish culture, and by examining an all but forgotten case study: Meir Wiener and his work. After introducing the term ‘Western esotericism’, developed by scholars of religious studies, the article uses it to explore two of Meir Wiener’s strangest and virtually forgotten works. Wiener, it is shown, produced fantastically esoteric works in the context of German expressionism and Kabbalah studies, which better represent their time and place than scholars have thus far acknowledged.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127898638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article deals with some unexplored Jewish resp.onses to the volkish elements in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. Heidegger’s idiosyncratic and deeply philosophical account of volkism stood at the heart of his political support of National Socialism and of his exclusion of the Jews from the ontological task of thinking. This article demonstrates, however, that some of Heidegger’s Jewish readers identified with volkish moments in his philosophy and found these to be pertinent to their own condition as Jews in the modern world. This was made possible by the fact that, within the intellectual climate in which Heidegger’s thinking took shape, the volkish lexicon (Volk, Gemeinschaft, ‘fate’, ‘destiny’, and even ‘struggle’) was commonplace, indicated no clear association with any certain political view, and, indeed, was a central organ through which Jews made sense of their own existence and historical and political situation. Thus, while Heidegger’s volkism led to a philosophical marginalization of Jews, the multifariousness and widespread currency of volkish thinking brought some Jewish readers to recognize their shared conceptual horizon with Heidegger and to differentiate between Heidegger’s practical politics, which were anti-Jewish and loathsome, and his volkism, which was seen as fitting and useful for the Jewish case.
{"title":"Between Exclusion and Intersection: Heidegger’s Philosophy and Jewish Volkism1","authors":"Daniel M. Herskowitz","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybz018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybz018","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article deals with some unexplored Jewish resp.onses to the volkish elements in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy. Heidegger’s idiosyncratic and deeply philosophical account of volkism stood at the heart of his political support of National Socialism and of his exclusion of the Jews from the ontological task of thinking. This article demonstrates, however, that some of Heidegger’s Jewish readers identified with volkish moments in his philosophy and found these to be pertinent to their own condition as Jews in the modern world. This was made possible by the fact that, within the intellectual climate in which Heidegger’s thinking took shape, the volkish lexicon (Volk, Gemeinschaft, ‘fate’, ‘destiny’, and even ‘struggle’) was commonplace, indicated no clear association with any certain political view, and, indeed, was a central organ through which Jews made sense of their own existence and historical and political situation. Thus, while Heidegger’s volkism led to a philosophical marginalization of Jews, the multifariousness and widespread currency of volkish thinking brought some Jewish readers to recognize their shared conceptual horizon with Heidegger and to differentiate between Heidegger’s practical politics, which were anti-Jewish and loathsome, and his volkism, which was seen as fitting and useful for the Jewish case.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115237687","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-02-03DOI: 10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa001
Kerstin Schoor
This article explores the self-conceptions of German Jews in National Socialist Germany in the context of a critical rereading of 1930s receptions of the German and European Enlightenment. The transformation of the Jewish community and Jewish culture into a part of bourgeois society had taken place in the course of the German and European Enlightenment, from its beginnings to the foundation of the German Empire in 1871. The efforts of the Jewish minority to ‘emancipate’ itself from any form of heteronomy from around 1820—to become self-reliant and responsible citizens in thought and deed—had become a kind of symbol for the progressive reasoning of the Enlightenment. Consequently, given the aggressive antisemitic policies of the National Socialist state, the German-Jewish relationship to the Enlightenment in internal and public debates after 1933 must be viewed as key when exploring the externally damaged self-conceptions of large parts of the German-Jewish minority. For the writers and artists of Jewish descent examined in this article, the relationship to the Enlightenment—and to German and Jewish culture—was once more open to debate.
{"title":"The Crisis of Enlightenment: Jewish Discourses on German Cultural Traditions in National Socialist Germany","authors":"Kerstin Schoor","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybaa001","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores the self-conceptions of German Jews in National Socialist Germany in the context of a critical rereading of 1930s receptions of the German and European Enlightenment. The transformation of the Jewish community and Jewish culture into a part of bourgeois society had taken place in the course of the German and European Enlightenment, from its beginnings to the foundation of the German Empire in 1871. The efforts of the Jewish minority to ‘emancipate’ itself from any form of heteronomy from around 1820—to become self-reliant and responsible citizens in thought and deed—had become a kind of symbol for the progressive reasoning of the Enlightenment. Consequently, given the aggressive antisemitic policies of the National Socialist state, the German-Jewish relationship to the Enlightenment in internal and public debates after 1933 must be viewed as key when exploring the externally damaged self-conceptions of large parts of the German-Jewish minority. For the writers and artists of Jewish descent examined in this article, the relationship to the Enlightenment—and to German and Jewish culture—was once more open to debate.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127792600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
President Ronald Reagan and Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s visit to the military cemetery at Bitburg in May 1985 was covered extensively by the international media, and gave rise to a vigorous debate about the place of the National Socialist past in German memory, as well as the dignity accorded to Holocaust victims and survivors. The Jewish voices in this debate were overwhelmingly North American. However, what few have considered thus far is why a perceived insult to Jewish memory in Germany should not also have affected Jews who were living in Germany. Consequently, this article looks at the Bitburg debate from a German-Jewish perspective. What role did the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (ZdJ) play in the debate? And what effects, if any, did it have on Jewish life in West Germany, and on the emergence of a new Jewish activism in Germany over the longer term?
{"title":"The Bitburg Affair and the Beginnings of Jewish Activism in 1980s West Germany*","authors":"J. Cronin","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybz017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybz017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 President Ronald Reagan and Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s visit to the military cemetery at Bitburg in May 1985 was covered extensively by the international media, and gave rise to a vigorous debate about the place of the National Socialist past in German memory, as well as the dignity accorded to Holocaust victims and survivors. The Jewish voices in this debate were overwhelmingly North American. However, what few have considered thus far is why a perceived insult to Jewish memory in Germany should not also have affected Jews who were living in Germany. Consequently, this article looks at the Bitburg debate from a German-Jewish perspective. What role did the Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland (ZdJ) play in the debate? And what effects, if any, did it have on Jewish life in West Germany, and on the emergence of a new Jewish activism in Germany over the longer term?","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126133536","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyses the role of the Jüdischer Volksrat—the Jewish People’s Council—in Posen/Poznań between 1918 and 1920. In establishing this institution, Zionist activists gained a significant amount of influence in a traditionally German-acculturated Jewish space during the period of transition from German to Polish rule in the city. Claiming to represent the city’s ‘third nation’ and making demands for Jewish national autonomy, the Jüdischer Volksrat was instrumental in reshaping intercommunity relations and the Jews’ place in society, winning the support of sizeable sections of the Jewish population. This article argues that these successes can be attributed not to the reception of grand ideological concepts of Jewish nationalism, but rather to the fact that Jüdischer Volksrat activists played a central role in people’s everyday lives. They provided economic support, food deliveries, legal aid, and collective security, thereby placing themselves at the centre of the community. The article shows, however, that contrary to activists’ hopes, support for the Volksrat did not necessarily mean an immediate acceptance of Jewish-national concepts. As the debates around the establishment of a Jewish school illustrate, support for national claims and institutions was primarily situational and related to immediate local pressures.
{"title":"Jewish Nationalism and Indifference between Posen and Poznań: The Jewish People’s Council, 1918–1920*","authors":"Jan Rybak","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybz015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybz015","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article analyses the role of the Jüdischer Volksrat—the Jewish People’s Council—in Posen/Poznań between 1918 and 1920. In establishing this institution, Zionist activists gained a significant amount of influence in a traditionally German-acculturated Jewish space during the period of transition from German to Polish rule in the city. Claiming to represent the city’s ‘third nation’ and making demands for Jewish national autonomy, the Jüdischer Volksrat was instrumental in reshaping intercommunity relations and the Jews’ place in society, winning the support of sizeable sections of the Jewish population. This article argues that these successes can be attributed not to the reception of grand ideological concepts of Jewish nationalism, but rather to the fact that Jüdischer Volksrat activists played a central role in people’s everyday lives. They provided economic support, food deliveries, legal aid, and collective security, thereby placing themselves at the centre of the community. The article shows, however, that contrary to activists’ hopes, support for the Volksrat did not necessarily mean an immediate acceptance of Jewish-national concepts. As the debates around the establishment of a Jewish school illustrate, support for national claims and institutions was primarily situational and related to immediate local pressures.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"59 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115235448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article reconstructs the friendship between the Romantic author Clemens Brentano and the Jewish salonnière Rahel Levin, and explores her motivations for maintaining a friendship with him in spite of his public and private attacks on contemporary Jews, including her. Through analysis of his 1811 speech at the Christlich-deutsche Tischgesellschaft and the letters they exchanged, the article shows how limited Levin’s options were for balancing her identity as a Jew with her social and intellectual ambitions.
{"title":"The Troubled Friendship of Clemens Brentano and Rahel Levin in the Shadow of the Christlich-deutsche Tischgesellschaft*","authors":"D. Hertz","doi":"10.1093/leobaeck/ybz010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/ybz010","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article reconstructs the friendship between the Romantic author Clemens Brentano and the Jewish salonnière Rahel Levin, and explores her motivations for maintaining a friendship with him in spite of his public and private attacks on contemporary Jews, including her. Through analysis of his 1811 speech at the Christlich-deutsche Tischgesellschaft and the letters they exchanged, the article shows how limited Levin’s options were for balancing her identity as a Jew with her social and intellectual ambitions.","PeriodicalId":391272,"journal":{"name":"The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123062890","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}