Böcker i Dialogue and Disjunction: Studies in Jewish German Literature, Culture & Thought-serien

Investigates the connections between German writers H.G. Adler and W.G. Sebald and reveals a new hybrid paradigm of writing about the Holocaust in light of the wider literary-political implications of Holocaust representation since 1945.

With the disappearance of the eyewitness generation and the globalization of Holocaust memory, this book interrogates key concepts in Holocaust and trauma studies through an assessment of contemporary German-language Jewish authors.

Examines how German-Jewish writers from Eastern Europe who migrated to Germany during or after the Cold War have widened European cultural memory to include the traumas of the Gulag.

This study investigates six German Jewish writers' negotiation of Jewish-German-Communist identity in post-Holocaust East Germany.

Traces the gradual opening of university education in Germany to Jews, its significance for assimilation to the bourgeoisie, and the legal restrictions that nonetheless barred Jewish graduates from most professional careers.

New essays by prominent scholars in German and Holocaust Studies exploring the boundaries and confluences between the fields and examining new transnational approaches to the Holocaust.In studies of Holocaust representation and memory, scholars of literature and culture traditionally have focused on particular national contexts. At the same time, recent work has brought the Holocaust into the arena of the transnational, leading to a crossroads between localized and global understandings of Holocaust memory. Further complicating the issue are generational shifts that occur with the passage of time, and which render memory and representations of the Holocaust ever more mediated, commodified, and departicularized. Nowhere is the inquiry into Holocaust memory more fraught or potentially more productive than in German Studies, where scholars have struggled to addressGerman guilt and responsibility while doing justice to the global impact of the Holocaust, and are increasingly facing the challenge of engaging with the broader, interdisciplinary, transnational field. Persistent Legacy connects the present, critical scholarly moment with this long disciplinary tradition, probing the relationship between German Studies and Holocaust Studies today. Fifteen prominent scholars explore how German Studies engages with Holocaust memory and representation, pursuing critical questions concerning the borders between the two fields and how they are impacted by emerging scholarly methods, new areas of inquiry, and the changing place of Holocaust memory in contemporary Germany. Contributors: David Bathrick, Stephan Braese, William Collins Donahue, Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Katja Garloff, Andreas Huyssen, Irene Kacandes, Jennifer M. Kapczynski, Sven Kramer,Erin McGlothlin, Leslie Morris, Brad Prager, Karen Remmler, Michael D. Richardson, Liliane Weissberg. Erin McGlothlin and Jennifer M. Kapczynski are both Associate Professors in the Department of Germanic Languages andLiteratures at Washington University in St. Louis.

Shows how making translation and its effects visible contributes to a clearer understanding of how knowledge about the Holocaust has been and continues to be created and mediated.A growing body of scholarship is making visible the contribution of translators to the creation, preservation, and transmission of knowledge about the Holocaust. The discussion has tended to be theoretical or to concentrate on exposing the "e;distorted"e; translations of texts by important witnesses such as Anne Frank or Elie Wiesel. There is therefore a need for a positive, concrete, and contextually aware approach to the translation of Holocaust testimoniesthat acknowledges the achievements of translators while being sensitive to the consequences of particular translation strategies. Peter Davies's study proceeds from the assumption that translators are active co-creators whose workdoes not simply mediate a pre-existing text, but creates a representation of that text for a new readership in a specific context. Translators of Holocaust testimonies, then, provide a form of textual commentary that works through ideas about witnessing, historical truth, and the meaning of the Holocaust. In this way they are important co-creators of knowledge about the Holocaust and its legacy. The study focuses on translations between English and German, and from other languages (principally French, Russian, and Polish) into English and German. It works through a number of case studies, showing how making translation and its effects visible contributes to a clearer understanding of how knowledge about the Holocaust has been and continues to be created and mediated. Peter Davies is Professor of German at the University of Edinburgh.

Edited volume tracing the development of a new generation of German Jewish writers, offering fresh interpretations of individual works, and probing the very concept of "e;German Jewish literature."e;The 1990 reunification of Germany gave rise to a new generation of writers who write in German, identify as both German and Jewish, and often also sustain cultural affiliations with places such as Russia, Azerbaijan, or Israel. This edited volume traces the development of this new literature into the present, offers fresh interpretations of individual works, and probes the very concept of "e;German Jewish literature."e; A central theme is the transformation ofmemory at a time when the Holocaust is moving into greater historical distance while the influx of new immigrant groups to Germany brings other past trauma into view. The volume's ten original essays by scholars from Europe and the US reframe the debates about Holocaust memory and contemporary German culture. The concluding interviews with authors Mirna Funk and Olga Grjasnowa offer a glimpse into the future of German Jewish literature. Contributors: Luisa Banki, Caspar Battegay, Helen Finch, Mirna Funk, Katja Garloff, Olga Grjasnowa, Elizabeth Loentz, Andree Michaelis-Konig, Agnes Mueller, Jessica Ortner, Jonathan Skolnik, Stuart Taberner. Katja Garloff is Professor of German and Humanities at Reed College. Agnes Mueller is the College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the University of South Carolina.

A study of the archival turn in contemporary German memory culture, drawing on recent memorials, documentaries, and prose narratives that engage with the material legacy of National Socialism and the Holocaust.With the passing of those who witnessed National Socialism and the Holocaust, the archive matters as never before. However, the material that remains for the work of remembering and commemorating this period of history is determined by both the bureaucratic excesses of the Nazi regime and the attempt to eradicate its victims without trace. This book argues that memory culture in the Berlin Republic is marked by an archival turn that reflects this shift from embodied to externalized, material memory and responds to the particular status of the archive "e;after Auschwitz."e; What remains in this late phase of memory culture is the post-Holocaust archive, which at once ensures and hauntsthe future of Holocaust memory. Drawing on the thinking of Freud, Derrida, and Georges Didi-Huberman, this book traces the political, ethical, and aesthetic implications of the archival turn in contemporary German memory culture across different media and genres. In its discussion of recent memorials, documentary film and theater, as well as prose narratives, all of which engage with the material legacy of the Nazi past, it argues that the performanceof "e;archive work"e; is not only crucial to contemporary memory work but also fundamentally challenges it. Dora Osborne is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of St Andrews.

Shows how Adler, Wander, Hilsenrath, and Klüger intertwine transgressive political criticism with the shadow of trauma, revealing new perspectives on canon formation and exclusion in postwar German literature.How did German-speaking Holocaust survivors pursue literary careers in an often-indifferent postwar society? How did their literary life writings reflect their postwar struggles? This monograph focuses on four authors who bore literary witness to the Shoah - H. G. Adler, Fred Wander, Edgar Hilsenrath, and Ruth Klüger. It analyzes their autofictional, critical, and autobiographical works written between the early 1950s and 2015, which depict their postwar experiences of writing, publishing, and publicizing Holocaust testimony.These case studies shed light on the devastating aftermaths of the Holocaust in different contexts. Adler depicts his attempts to overcome marginalization as a writer in Britain in the 1950s. Wander reflects on his failure to find a home either in postwar Austria or in the GDR. Hilsenrath satirizes his struggles as an emigrant to the US in the 1960s and after returning to Berlin in the 1980s. Finally, in her 2008 memoir, Ruth Klüger follows up her earlier, highly impactful memoir of the concentration camps by narrating the misogyny and antisemitism she experienced in US and German academia. Helen Finch analyzes how these under-researched texts intertwine transgressive political criticism with the shadow of trauma. Drawing on scholarship on Holocaust testimony, transnational memory, and affect theory, her book reveals new perspectives on canon formation and exclusion in postwar German literature.