Language:
English
Year of publication:
1996
Titel der Quelle:
Culture and Catastrophe
Angaben zur Quelle:
(1996) 85-96
Keywords:
Zühlsdorff, Volkmar von
;
Broch, Hermann, Correspondence
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
Abstract:
The 1945-1949 correspondence between the Austrian (Jewish) novelist Hermann Broch and his friend Volkmar von Zuehlsdorff (a publicist and, later, West German diplomat) provides us with a view of the moral, political and existential issues that confronted thinking people in the attempt to create a new postwar democratic Germany. Broch and Zuehlsdorff debated the question of German guilt and responsibility; the extent of internal opposition to Hitler; the uniqueness (or otherwise) of Nazi crimes; the prospects for German democratization, and the dangers of Nazi recrudescence; the nature of Allied behavior and retribution; the conduct and disposition of Jewish Displaced Persons; the dilemma of returning to Germany - both of them spent the war years in the USA - and the meaning and implications of exile. The correspondence also wrestled with the complexities of "coming to terms" with a compromised national past. It is permeated by a tension over the possibilities and limits of mutual empathy in the face of atrocity, and a tussle over Jewish and German claims to victimization. For the historian, the Broch-Zuehlsdorff exchange constitutes a compelling study in the embryonic construction of divergent, and always passionately charged, post-Nazi "German" and "Jewish" stances, perceptions and memories.
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