Jewish pasts, German fictions : history, memory, and minority culture in Germany, 1824-1955 /
Skolnik, Jonathan,1967-author.
"Jewish Pasts, German Fictions is a pioneering account of how German-Jewish writers used images from the Spanish-Jewish past to define their place in German culture and society. Jonathan Skolnik argues that Jewish historical fiction was a form of cultural memory that functioned as a parallel to the modern, demythologizing project of secular Jewish history writing. What did it mean for a minority to imagine its history in the majority language? Skolnik makes the case that the answer lies in the creation of a German-Jewish minority culture in which historical fiction played a central role. After Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Jewish writers and artists employed images from the Sephardic past to grapple with the nature of fascism, the predicament of exile, and the destruction of European Jewry in the Holocaust. He goes on to show that this past not only helped Jews to make sense of the nonsense, but also served as a window into the hopes for integration and fears about assimilation that preoccupied German-Jewish writers throughout most of the nineteenth century. Ultimately, Skolnik positions the Jewish embrace of German culture not as an act of assimilation but a reinvention of Jewish identity and historical memory."--page [4] of cover.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-255), chronology, and index.
Introduction : Jewish cultural memory and the German historical novel -- Jewish history under the sign of secularization : Berthold Auerbach's Spinoza (1837) -- "Who learns history from Heine?" : Wissenschaft des Judentums and Heinrich Heine's Der Rabbi von Bacherach (1840) -- Minority culture in the age of the nation : Jewish historical fiction in nineteenth-century Germany -- German modernism and Jewish memory : Else Lasker-Schüler's Der Wunderrabbiner von Barcelona (1921) -- "Where books are burned" : Jewish memories of inquisition and expulsion in Nazi Germany and in exile -- Epilogue : post-Holocaust echoes.
"Jewish Pasts, German Fictions is a pioneering account of how German-Jewish writers used images from the Spanish-Jewish past to define their place in German culture and society. Jonathan Skolnik argues that Jewish historical fiction was a form of cultural memory that functioned as a parallel to the modern, demythologizing project of secular Jewish history writing. What did it mean for a minority to imagine its history in the majority language? Skolnik makes the case that the answer lies in the creation of a German-Jewish minority culture in which historical fiction played a central role. After Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Jewish writers and artists employed images from the Sephardic past to grapple with the nature of fascism, the predicament of exile, and the destruction of European Jewry in the Holocaust. He goes on to show that this past not only helped Jews to make sense of the nonsense, but also served as a window into the hopes for integration and fears about assimilation that preoccupied German-Jewish writers throughout most of the nineteenth century. Ultimately, Skolnik positions the Jewish embrace of German culture not as an act of assimilation but a reinvention of Jewish identity and historical memory."--page [4] of cover.
Jews in literature.
Jewish historical fiction, German
German fiction
German fiction
Collective memory and literature
Sephardim in literature.