These essays analyze the problems which have affected the evolution of German-Jewish relations since the Enlightenment, showing how the project of emancipation was subverted by countercurrents of antisemitism and anxieties about national identities in a society in the throes of modernization. It emphasises the importance of social and historical context, offering a differentiated account of the difficulties of emancipation, the sense of alienation which is such a characteristic feature of German-Jewish discourse, and the culmination of various forms of anti semitism in the politcs of persecution and genocide. THe close focus on specific journals and inistutions, writers and texts reveals the tortous complexity of German-Jewish relations, with a final emphasis on resistance, survival and commemoration.

This book describes the assimilation and acculturation of a small minority who immigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century and again in the twentieth century. Gerhard Falk focuses on refugees who fled from Nazi tyranny in the 1930s, immigrated to America, and succeeded despite immense obstacles. This book includes a review of the most prominent academics that made major contributions to science, medicine, art, and literature in America. The German Jews in America demonstrates that America is still the land of opportunity for everyone who makes an effort, no matter what their religion, ethnicity, or race. In addition, this book is a key to understanding immigration and the role of community in providing the support needed in becoming an American.

German Jews faced harsh dilemmas in their responses to Nazi persecution, partly a result of Nazi cruelty and brutality but also a result of an understanding of their history and rightful place in Germany. This volume addresses the impact of the anti-Jewish policies of Hitler’s regime on Jewish family life, Jewish women, and the existence of Jewish organizations and institutions and considers some of the Jewish responses to Nazi anti-Semitism and persecution. This volume offers scholars, students, and interested readers a highly accessible but focused introduction to Jewish life under National Socialism, the often painful dilemmas that it produced, and the varied Jewish responses to those dilemmas.

No other single author has so commanding a critical presence across so many disciplines within the arts and humanities, in so many national contexts, as Walter Benjamin (1892-1940). The belated reception of his work as a literary critic (dating from the late 1950s) has been followed by a rapid series of critical receptions in different contexts: Frankfurt Critical Theory and Marxism, Judaism, Film Theory, Post-structuralism, Philosophical Romanticism, and Cultural Studies.This collection brings together a selection of the most critically important items in the literature, across the full range of Benjamin's cultural-theoretical interests, from all periods of the reception of his writings, but focusing upon the most recent, to produce a comprehensive overview of the best critical literature.

By illustrating the quintessentially different self-perceptions of three German writers of Jewish background, all born in or around 1880 in Berlin, this book examines a range of German-Jewish identities in a socio-cultural context in Wilhelmine Germany. Moritz Goldstein (1880-1977), the conflict of his dual identity and the interplay between being a German writer and a cultural Zionist is covered first. Particular attention is given to the genesis of his essay 'Deutsch-jüdischer Parnaß' with its call for Jews to vacate their seats in German literary culture. The range of positions unfolding in the debate, following its publication in 'Der Kunstwart' in 1912, serves to illustrate the spectrum of German-Jewish self-definition at the time. In the second part, the writings of Julius Bab (1880-1955) are examined in so far as they shed light on his advocation of a synthesis of 'Deutschtum' and 'Judentum'. The far side of the spectrum of German-Jewish self-definition is represented by Ernst Lissauer (1882-1937), who propagated complete assimilation, considering the Jewish element as an obstacle which had to be overcome on the road to 'Deutschtum'. This study depicts how external cultural and political influences shaped the transformation of their ideas of what it meant to be Jewish in Germany and how they responded to increasing anti-Semitism. By recognising the way in which the individual's cultural identity was constantly refashioned in the face of external challenges, a fuller understanding of the evolving self-perception of German Jews is reached.

Nearly one hundred thousand German Jews fought in World War I, and some twelve thousand of these soldiers lost their lives in battle. This book focuses on the multifaceted ways in which these soldiers have been remembered, as well as forgotten, from 1914 to the late 1970s. By examining Germany's complex and continually evolving memory culture, Tim Grady opens up a new approach to the study of German and German-Jewish history. In doing so, he draws out a narrative of entangled and overlapping relations between Jews and non-Jews, a story that extends past the Holocaust and into the Cold War.

These essays by eminent European intellectual and cultural historian Anson Rabinbach address the writings of key figures in twentieth-century German philosophy. Rabinbach explores their ideas in relation to the two world wars and the horrors facing Europe at that time. Analyzing the work of Benjamin and Bloch, he suggests their indebtedness to the traditions of Jewish messianism. In a discussion of Hugo Ball's little-known Critique of the German Intelligentsia, Rabinbach reveals the curious intellectual career of the Dadaist and antiwar activist turned-nationalist and anti-Semite. His examination of Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" and Jaspers's The Question of German Guilt illuminates the complex and often obscure political referents of these texts. Turning to Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment, Rabinbach offers an arresting new interpretation of this central text of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. Subtly and persuasively argued, his book will become an indispensable reference point for all concerned with twentieth-century German history and thought. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1997. These essays by eminent European intellectual and cultural historian Anson Rabinbach address the writings of key figures in twentieth-century German philosophy. Rabinbach explores their ideas in relation to the two world wars and the horrors facing Europe

This work provides a history of Jewish writing and thought in the German-speaking world. Written by 118 scholars in the field, the book is arranged chronologically, moving from the 11th century to the present. Throughout, it depicts the contribution that Jewish writers have made to German culture and at the same time explores what it means to the other within that mainstream culture.

Die Reihe Europäisch-Jüdische Studien repräsentiert die international vernetzte Kompetenz des »Moses Mendelssohn Zentrums für europäisch-jüdische Studien« (MMZ). Der interdisziplinäre Charakter der Reihe, die in Kooperation mit dem Selma Stern Zentrum für Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg herausgegeben wird, zielt insbesondere auf geschichts-, geistes- und kulturwissenschaftliche Ansätze sowie auf intellektuelle, politische, literarische und religiöse Grundfragen, die jüdisches Leben und Denken in der Vergangenheit beeinflusst haben und noch heute inspirieren. Mit ihren Publikationen weiß sich das MMZ der über 250jährigen Tradition der von Moses Mendelssohn begründeten Jüdischen Aufklärung und der Wissenschaft des Judentums verpflichtet. In den BEITRÄGEN werden exzellente Monographien und Sammelbände zum gesamten Themenspektrum Jüdischer Studien veröffentlicht. Die Reihe ist peer-reviewed.

This volume offers a dialogue with and through the medieval informed by cultural categories of performativity and simultaneity in on-line media, architecture, film, poetry, and social formations. The articles depart from Medievalism Studies and attempt to answer questions such as: How do medievalists, artists, writers, and entertainment industries communicate, replicate, and evoke medieval formations? How do national and transnational discursive fields relate to understandings of the medieval in its many unstable states? Where are the communal memory sites and what functions do they serve for those who are associated with them? Where are the medieval disjunctions and conjunctions of race, ethnicity and time in a settler society? And what do place, nature, and landscape have to do with it?