Fragile Spaces: Forays into Jewish Memory, European History and Complex Identities

Steven E. Aschheim

Open Access Published by De Gruyter 2018

Fragile Spaces

Forays into Jewish Memory, European History and Complex Identities

Steven E. Aschheim
Funded by: Knowledge Unlatched

Volume 8 in the series Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110596939

Overview
Contents

About this book

This book consists of a range of essays covering the complex crises, tensions and dilemmas but also the positive potential in the meeting of Jews with Western culture. In numerous contexts and through the work of fascinating individuals and thinkers, the work examines some of the consequences of political, cultural and personal rupture, as well as the manifold ways in which various Jewish intellectuals, politicians (and occasionally spies!) sought to respond to these ruptures and carve out new, sometimes profound, sometimes fanciful, options of thought and action. It also delves critically into the attacks on liberal and Enlightenment humanism. In almost all the essays the fragility of things is palpably present and the book touches on some of the ironies, problematics and functions of responses to that condition. The work mirrors the author's ongoing fascination with the always fraught, fragile and creatively fecund confrontation of Jews (and others) with European modernity, its history, politics, culture and self-definition. In a time of increasing anxiety and feelings of fragility, this work may be helpful in understanding how people at an earlier (and sometimes contemporary) period sought to come to terms with a similar predicament.

Author / Editor information

This book consists of a range of essays covering the complex crises, tensions and dilemmas but also the positive potential in the meeting of Jews with Western culture. In numerous contexts and through the work of fascinating individuals and thinkers, the work examines some of the consequences of political, cultural and personal rupture, as well as the manifold ways in which various Jewish intellectuals, politicians (and occasionally spies!) sought to respond to these ruptures and carve out new, sometimes profound, sometimes fanciful, options of thought and action. It also delves critically into the attacks on liberal and Enlightenment humanism. In almost all the essays the fragility of things is palpably present and the book touches on some of the ironies, problematics and functions of responses to that condition. The work mirrors the author's ongoing fascination with the always fraught, fragile and creatively fecund confrontation of Jews (and others) with European modernity, its history, politics, culture and self-definition. In a time of increasing anxiety and feelings of fragility, this work may be helpful in understanding how people at an earlier (and sometimes contemporary) period sought to come to terms with a similar predicament.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Preface and Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
1. Introduction Open Access Download PDF	1
Part I History, Memory and Genocide
2. The Dialectic of Enlightenment Revisited Open Access Download PDF	7
3. Why the Germans? Why the Jews? The Perennial Holocaust Question Open Access Download PDF	33
4. Lessons of the Holocaust: A Critical Examination Open Access Download PDF	50
5. Empathy, Autobiography and the Tasks and Tensions of the Historian Open Access Download PDF	67
Part II Culture and Complex Identities
6. The Weimar Kaleidoscope – And, Incidentally, Frankfurt’s Not Minor Place In It Open Access Download PDF	83
7. The Avant-Garde and the Jews Open Access Download PDF	103
8. Vienna: Harbinger of Creativity and Catastrophe Open Access Download PDF	124
Part III Politics
9. Between the Particular and the Universal: Rescuing the Particular from the Particularists and the Universal from the Universalists Open Access Download PDF	141
10. Zionism and Europe Open Access Download PDF	163
11. Gershom Scholem and the Left Open Access Download PDF	178
Part IV Scholarly Dilemmas and Personal Confrontations
12. Between New York and Jerusalem: Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt Open Access Download PDF	199
13. An Unwritten Letter from Victor Klemperer to Hannah Arendt and Gershom Scholem Open Access Download PDF	209
14. Moshe Idel and the Critique of German Jewry Open Access Download PDF	224
15. On Grading Jewishness: Pierre Birnbaum’s Geography of Hope Open Access Download PDF	233
16. The Memory Man: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Fallen Jew Open Access Download PDF	238
17. Of Memory, History – and Eggplants: The Odyssey of Saul Friedländer Open Access Download PDF	246
18. The Modern Jewish Medici: Salman Schocken between Merchandise and Culture Open Access Download PDF	255
19. Hans Jonas and his Troubled Century Open Access Download PDF	259
20. Islamic Jihad, Zionism, and Espionage in the Great War Open Access Download PDF	263
Copyright Acknowledgements Open Access Download PDF	273
Index Open Access Download PDF	274
About the Author Open Access Download PDF	281

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Scholars and students of German and European History, Jewish studies, modern intellectual history and cultural studies.
Pages
- Front matter: 10
- Main content: 279
Keywords: Germans; Jews; Holocaust; Intellectuals

eBook

Published: September 24, 2018
ISBN: 9783110596939

Hardcover

Published: September 24, 2018
ISBN: 9783110595451

Paperback

Published: July 6, 2020
ISBN: 9783110709766