Language:
English
Year of publication:
2002
Titel der Quelle:
Arche Noah
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2002) 289-303
Keywords:
Schocken, Salman,
;
Schocken Verlag (Berlin, Germany)
;
Jews History 1933-1939
Abstract:
Discusses the Schocken publishing house as part of Salman Schocken’s longtime efforts to contribute to German Jewish revival and safeguard the Jews' achievements. In 1933 Shocken unveiled his plans to launch a monthly quasi-periodical to give a firm foundation to Jewish "Bildung". Schocken Verlag was then a small business in Berlin, but the threat Hitler posed to German Jewry dramatically changed the scope of the operation. Jewish writers who previously wrote for German publishing houses had to find their inspiration and readers in the Jewish community. They were helped by Shocken’s decision to use his department store fortune to massively subsidize Jewish literature and culture. The books in the "Bücherei" series began to come out in 1934; by the time of the company’s forced closure in 1939 it comprised nearly 100 volumes. The books reflect the eclectic nature of Schocken’s German-Jewish canon, which had little in common with the notion of a single, stable ethnic or racial identity. However, the series had a secret political dimension, constituting a form of Jewish spiritual resistance. After the closure of Shocken Verlag in Berlin, a shipment of 200,000 books was distributed amongst German-speaking Jews in Palestine, and materials from the "Bücherei" found their way to new publishing ventures. Throughout the 1930s-40s Schocken built up the Hebrew-language newspaper "Haaretz", and established his publishing house in Tel-Aviv. In 1945 he founded the "Shocken Books" company in New York. In all of these projects, his vision of German-Jewish culture continued to thrive in English and Hebrew.
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