"Featuring essays by scholars of history, literature, television, and sociology, Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany illuminates important aspects of Jewish life in Germany since 1949, including institution building, the internal dynamics and changing demographics of the Jewish community, and the central role of Jewish writers and public intellectuals."--
Contributors to this book are international scholars in Jewish identity in Germany, cultural sociology, German studies, Judaic studies, history, and Holocaust studies. They provide new perspectives on the history of Jews in post-WWII Germany and the reestablishment of Jewish life and institutions in postwar German. In addition to shedding light on the experiences of Jews in postwar Germany, the book considers factors related to German politics, society, and culture after Nazism, looking especially at themes of nationalism, memory, migration, freedom, and difference in the postwar era. The book opens with a literature review of previous scholarship. Subjects discussed include the reconstruction of Jewish archives in postwar Germany, and community responses to the immigration of Russian-speaking Jews to Germany after 1990. Many chapters are built around the thought of key figures including Bernhard Brilling, Helmut Eschwege, Stefan Heym, Ernst Bloch, and Barbara Honigmann. B&w photos, illustrations, and images are included. Annotation ©2020 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, 100,000 Jews live in Germany. Their community is diverse and vibrant, and their mere presence in Germany is symbolically important. In Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany, scholars of German-Jewish history, literature, film, television, and sociology illuminate important aspects of Jewish life in Germany from 1949 to the present day. In West Germany, the development of representative bodies and research institutions reflected a desire to set down roots, despite criticism from Jewish leaders in Israel and the Diaspora. In communist East Germany, some leftist Jewish intellectuals played a prominent role in society, and their experience reflected the regimes fraught relationship with Jewry. Since 1990, the growth of the Jewish community through immigration from the former Soviet Union and Israel have both brought heightened visibility in society and challenged preexisting notions of Jewish identity in the former land of the perpetrators.
Featuring essays by scholars of history, literature, television, and sociology, Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany illuminates important aspects of Jewish life in Germany since 1949, including institution building, the internal dynamics and changing demographics of the Jewish community, and the central role of Jewish writers and public intellectuals.
