Three-Way Street: Jews, Germans, and the Transnational

by Jay Howard Geller, Leslie Morris

Overview

As German Jews emigrated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and as exiles from Nazi Germany, they carried the traditions, culture, and particular prejudices of their home with them. At the same time, Germany—and Berlin in particular—attracted both secular and religious Jewish scholars from eastern Europe. They engaged in vital intellectual exchange with German Jewry, although their cultural and religious practices differed greatly, and they absorbed many cultural practices that they brought back to Warsaw or took with them to New York and Tel Aviv. After the Holocaust, German Jews and non-German Jews educated in Germany were forced to reevaluate their essential relationship with Germany and Germanness as well as their notions of Jewish life outside of Germany.
 
Among the first volumes to focus on German-Jewish transnationalism, this interdisciplinary collection spans the fields of history, literature, film, theater, architecture, philosophy, and theology as it examines the lives of significant emigrants. The individuals whose stories are reevaluated include German Jews Ernst Lubitsch, David Einhorn, and Gershom Scholem, the architect Fritz Nathan and filmmaker Helmar Lerski; and eastern European Jews David Bergelson, Der Nister, Jacob Katz, Joseph Soloveitchik, and Abraham Joshua Heschel—figures not normally associated with Germany. Three-Way Street addresses the gap in the scholarly literature as it opens up critical ways of approaching Jewish culture not only in Germany, but also in other locations, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472130122
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	09/21/2016
Series:	Social History, Popular Culture, And Politics In Germany
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jay Howard Geller is Samuel Rosenthal Professor of Judaic Studies and Associate Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University.
 
Leslie Morris is Associate Professor of German at the University of Minnesota.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction Jay Howard Geller Leslie Morris 1

Part 1 To Germany, from Germany: The Promise of an Unpromised Land?

1 Love, Money, and Career in the Life of Rosa Luxemburg Deborah Hertz 23

2 The "Triple Immersion": A Singular Moment in Modern Jewish Intellectual History? Alan T. Levenson 46

3 Yiddish Writers/German Models in the Early Twentieth Century Jeffrey A. Grossman 66

4 The Symphony of a Great Heimat: Zionism as a Cure for Weimar Crisis in Lerski's Avodah Ofer Ashkenazi 91

Part 2 Germany, the Portable Homeland

5 "I Have Been a Stranger in a Foreign Land": The Scholem Brothers and German-Jewish Émigré Identity Jay Howard Geller 125

6 Lost in the Transnational: Photographic Initiatives of Walter and Helmut Gernsheim in Britain Michael Berkowitz 144

7 Transnational Jewish Comedy: Sex and Politics in the Films of Ernst Lubitsch-From Berlin to Hollywood Richard W. McCormick 169

8 America Abandoned: German-Jewish Visions of American Poverty in Serialized Novels by Joseph Roth, Sholem Asch, and Michael Gold Kerry Wallach 197

9 "Irgendwo auf der Welt": The Emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany as a Transnational Experience Joachim Schlör 220

10 Transnational Jewish Refugee Stories: Displacement, Loss, and (Non)Restitution Atina Grossmann 239

Part 3 A Masterable Past? German-Jewish Transnationalism in a Post-Holocaust Era

11 "Normalization and Its Discontents": The Transnational Legacy of the Holocaust in Contemporary Germany Karen Remmler 261

12 Between Memory and Normalcy: Synagogue Architecture in Postwar Germany Gavriel D. Rosenfeld 277

13 Klezmer in the New Germany: History, Identity, and Memory Raysh Weiss 302

14 (Trans)National Spaces: Jewish Sites in Contemporary Germany Michael Meng 321

Contributors 341

Index 345

Editorial Reviews

A much-needed, original analytic approach that helps reframe conventional studies of German-Jewish history. Beyond merely comparing German-Jewish culture to Jewish culture elsewhere, it combines cutting-edge research with fresh readings of well-known works and sites viewed through an effective transnational lens. As a result, the book offers important new insight into German Jewish experiences through smart essays on a range of subjects including architecture, literature, film, photography, and history.”
—Lisa Silverman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

From the Publisher