Yiddish in Weimar Berlin : at the crossroads of diaspora politics and culture
The essays in the volume provide a multifaceted portrait of the lives of Yiddish-speaking eastern Jews in Berlin between the wars. Estraikh and Krutikov have arranged the articles in roughly chronological order. The book begins with an introduction giving historical background that sets the tone for the paradox of the lives of these emigrés in Berlin. The authors focus on individual intellectuals, poets and journalists who were among the many who fled to Berlin following the rise of the Soviet Union. They were often ignored by the Haskalah influenced, secular German Jews and lived in a poor section of the city. Several essays extol the many Yiddish presses and the temporary blossoming of literary achievement. One of the great strengths of this collection is that the community is shown in its diversity. There are those who are moving into mainstream German society or preparing to move on to France or America. There are politically active people who have little religious identification and there are radical Zionists. It is impossible to read these fascinating glimpses into Yiddish life in Berlin without a sense of dread, knowing the future. The studies here presented add an important component to the understanding of the Weimar Republic
Print Book, English, 2010
Modern Humanities Research Association ; Maney Pub., London, Leeds, 2010
History
xv, 270 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm.
9781906540708, 1906540705
470693041
Introduction : Yiddish on the Spree / Gennady Estraikh
Deciphering the hieroglyphics of the metropolis : literary topographies of Berlin in Hebrew and Yiddish modernism / Shachar Pinsker
A Yiddish poet engages with German society : A.N. Stencl's Weimar period / Heather Valencia
'Like fires in overgrown forests' : Moyshe Kulbak's contemporary Berlin poetics / Jordan Finkin
Belarus in Berlin, Berlin in Belarus : Moyshe Kulbak's Raysn and Meshiekh ben-Efrayim between nostalgia and apocalypse / Marc Caplan
'The air outside is bloody' : Leyb Kvitko and his pogrom cycle 1919 / Sabine Koller
A warm morning gown and a shawl from Berlin : Liebe Zaltsman's Yiddish letters to Helene Koigen / Verena Dohrn
The Berlin bureau of the New York Forvets / Gennady Estraikh
Max Weinreich in Weimar Germany / Amy Blau
Reports from the 'Republic Lear' : David Eynhorn in Weimar Berlin 1920-24 / Anne-Christin Sass
Jewish universalism, the Yiddish encyclopedia, and the Nazi rise to power / Barry Trachtenberg
Yiddish, the storyteller, and German-Jewish modernism : a new look at Alfred Döblin in the 1920s / Jonathan Skolnik
Between literature and history : Israel Joshua Singer's Berlin novel The family Carnovsky as a cul-de-sac of the German-Jewish 'symbiosis' / Elvira Grözinger
Unkind mirrors : Berlin in three Yiddish novels of the 1930s / Mikhail Krutikov