Language:
English
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
German Quarterly
Angaben zur Quelle:
80,4 (2007) 427-448
Keywords:
Arnim, Ludwig Achim,
;
Antisemitism in literature
;
German literature History and criticism
Abstract:
Analyzes Arnim's simultaneous attraction to and repulsion from Jews and Judaism. His contradictory attitude emerges most clearly in a series of writings he completed in 1811, just before the 1812 Prussian emancipation edict which he opposed. He favored gradual emancipation of the Jews, only after their religious conversion and cultural assimilation. He was a co-founder of the Christian-German Table Society, an alternative to the early Romantic salons often hosted by Jewish women, which excluded both women and Jews from its membership. Examines an antisemitic speech delivered by Arnim at the Table Society in 1811, "Über die Kennzeichen des Judenthums"; a prose fragment, "Die Versöhnung in der Sommerfrische" (ca. 1811); and his novella "Die Majorats-Herren" (1819), in which Jews and Judaism are blamed for the ills of modernity. In some of his literary works, Jews initially appear to be deserving of love from Christians, but they ultimately fail to integrate into Christian society. The latter two works, portraying Christian-Jewish love stories (which were very prevalent at the time), express ambivalence and uncertainty at a time when Jewish acculturation and German nationalism were emerging at the same time.
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