Rebirth of a Culture

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.

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.

Introduction
Dagmar Lorenz

German-Jewish Writing and Culture Today

Chapter 1. The Monster Returns: Golem Figures in the Writings of Benjamin Stein, Esther Dischereit, and Doron Rabinovici
Cathy S. Gelbin

Chapter 2. Hybridity, Intermarriage, and the (Negative) German-Jewish Symbiosis
Petra Fachinger

Chapter 3. A Political Tevye? Yiddish Literature and the Novels of Stefan Heym
Richard Bodek

Chapter 4. Anti-Semitism because of Auschwitz: An Introduction to the Works of Henryk M. Broder
Roland Dollinger

The Case of Austria

Chapter 5. "What once was, will always be possible:" The Echoes of History in Robert Menasse’s Die Vertreibung aus der Hölle
Margy Gerber

Chapter 6. Austria’s Topography of Memory: Heldenplatz, Albertinaplatz, Judenplatz, and Beyond
Eva Kuttenberg

Chapter 7. The Global and the Local in Ruth Beckermann’s Films and Writings
Hillary Hope Herzog

Transatlantic Relationships

Chapter 8. The Holocaust Survivor as Germanist: Ruth Kluger and Marcel Reich-Ranicki
Benjamin Lapp

Chapter 9. Transatlantic Solitudes: Canadian-Jewish and German-Jewish Writers in Dialogue with Kafka
Iris Bruce

Chapter 10. A German-Jewish-American Dialogue?: Literary Encounters Between German Jews and Americans in the 1990s
Todd Herzog

Jewish Writers in Germany and Austria

Chapter 11. "Attempts To Read The World": An Interview with the Writer Barbara Honigmann
Bettina Brandt

Chapter 12. Behind the Tränenpalast
Esther Dischereit

Chapter 13. Germans Are Least Willing to Forgive those who Forgive Them: A Case Study of Myself
Jeanette Lander

Chapter 14. Mishmash und Mélange
Doron Rabinovici

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index