Language:
English
Year of publication:
2021
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Contemporary History
Angaben zur Quelle:
56,4 (2021) 931-949
Keywords:
Mosse, George L.
;
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Appreciation
;
Jewish historians History 20th century
;
Jewish refugees
;
Jews Civilization
;
Jews, German Historiography
Abstract:
George L. Mosse belongs to the extremely productive generation of scholars to whom we owe fundamental insights into general and German-Jewish contemporary history. They fled Hitler in childhood and adolescence and received their academic training not in the country and language of their birth, but in exile. In the context of this generational experience, this essay explores the very real and symbolic significance that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had for this generation throughout their lives. poet “It argues that the poet and his works deeply shaped émigré self-perception, in which one opposed the notion that the hyphen between “German-Jewish” indicated any separation.”. For George L. Mosse, as well as for many of his fellow historians in exile, Goethe was therefore the symbol of the own, the inner, not the acquired knowledge of others. It was a cosmopolitan, almost Jewish Goethe who was defended even after the catastrophe, because culture was not conceived in the fateful category of limited national property.
DOI:
10.1177/00220094211018500
URL:
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