Language:
English
Year of publication:
1986
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish Quarterly Review
Angaben zur Quelle:
77,2-3 (1986-1987) 119-148
Keywords:
Becker, Jurek,
;
Hilsenrath, Edgar
;
Jewish literature History and criticism
;
Antisemitism in literature
;
German literature History and criticism
Abstract:
Remarks on the persistence of the stereotype of the polluted and polluting secret discourse of the Jew in postwar German literature, particularly in the works of Günter Grass. In "The Tin Drum" (1958) the Jewish toy-dealer Sigismund Markus speaks a Yiddishized German and, although a positive figure, he is shown as a ridiculous character cut off from his own culture by conversion. In "Dog Days" (1963) two friends, a Jew and a German, speak a secret language invented by the Jew until he is betrayed by his friend who joins the Hitler Youth and turns against him. Traces the influence of the ideas of Otto Weininger and Alfred Döblin on Grass. Examines the reaction of two Jewish survivors writing in German, Jurek Becker and Edgar Hilsenrath, to these stereotypes. In their works on Jewish themes they question and reverse stereotypes in order to illuminate the problem of their identity as Jews and survivors. However, their identity as Jewish writers, unacceptable in today's Germany, prevented recognition of a German-Jewish element in postwar German fiction.
Note:
Especially on Jurek Becker and Edgar Hilsenrath.
,
A slightly revised version appeared in German as "Jüdische Schriftsteller und deutsche Literatur: Antisemitismus und die verborgene Sprache der Juden" in "Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie" 107 (1988), and in his "Rasse, Sexualität und Seuche" (1992) 253-281. A shorter German version appeared in "Edgar Hilsenrath, das Unerzählbare erzählen" (1996).
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