Abstract: This paper looks at how historical museums in Germany that are not Holocaust or Jewish museums represent Jews. It examines the permanent and temporary exhibitions, as well as their visitors’ experiences, at the two largest national and state-sponsored historical museums: the House of History in Bonn and the German Historical Museum in Berlin. I first analyze the ways in which Jewish symbols and images of Jews tell the story of the Holocaust’s aftermath in those museums. The article then focuses on a temporary exhibition, ‘Shalom: Three Photographers See Germany,’ at the Bonn House of History (August 2015–June 2016). I suggest that the exhibitions create directed viewing, whereby the visitors look at Jews and project the experience of viewing Holocaust images. I argue that as they are presented and viewed in the ‘Shalom’ exhibition, Jews undergo temporal displacement whereby their subject position and possible roles both in remembering and in being remembered are limited. I conclude by showing that Jews, as well as other Holocaust victim groups and migrant groups in Germany today, are not equal subjects of memory, meaning both that their subjectivity as participants in the public sphere is limited to specific roles, times and spaces, and that inter-subjective communication about their representation is limited.
Abstract: In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
In the mid-1940s, a little girl on the South Side of Chicago really, really wanted a Christmas tree. This commonplace request was complicated by just one thing: the girl, like most of her neighbors, was Jewish. The temper tantrum must have been ferocious, because the girl somehow got her mother to give in. A tree was procured and smuggled down the alley into the apartment, lest the neighbors get wind of the shande. The girl enjoyed her Christmas tree, alongside her Hanukkah menorah, until one day she developed a fever, and the tree was hastily stuffed into a closet before the pediatrician, Dr. Rosen-bloom, arrived.
The stress of this secret Christmas was ultimately too much bother, so this would be my mother’s one and only “Chrismukkah” celebration. Of course, she didn’t know to call it that, nor did she know that craving a Christmas tree placed her on a historical continuum with her German-Jewish ancestors, some of whom might have celebrated the hybrid holiday called “Weihnukka” (from Weihnachten, German for “Christmas.”) Weihnukka was not an actual holiday but referred instead to the practice of some assimilated—but not converted—Jews who adopted Christmas rituals in the private sphere. In some German-Jewish bourgeois homes of the Wilhelmine era, trees, advent calendars, wreaths and other, mostly superficial trappings of the holiday co-existed, if not usurped, the rituals of Judaism’s winter holiday, Hanukkah. To the extent the term was used at all, Weihnukka was probably mostly heard mockingly by Jews who were embarrassed by this behavior.1 The Christmas these Jews celebrated was less about the birth of Jesus Christ than it was about fitting in with neighbors. Christmas was widely seen as belonging to and defining of the German nation rather than a religious festival, and therefore celebrating the holiday was just something that “real” Germans did, regardless of their religion. While some German-Jews no doubt experienced feelings of embarrassment, even shame, at assimilating Christmas into their family traditions, others achieved what was certainly the main objective: a sense of normalcy as Germans while maintaining self-identification as Jewish.
For one assimilated Jewish-German child, Christmas was so fully part of his normal family life that the tree in the gute Stube appeared without question each December. It was only after National Socialist racial laws required him to attend special Jewish-only schools that he learned that Jews actually celebrate Hanukkah, not Christmas. Not coincidentally, these are the recollections of Michael Blumenthal, a Jew from Oranienburg, just north of Berlin, who would escape fascism and later became Treasury Secretary under U.S. President Jimmy Carter and who now heads the Jewish Museum Berlin.2 The cultural-historical oddity of German-Jewish Christmas celebrations was the subject of a temporary exhibit at the museum. The show, titled “Weihnukka: Geschichten von Weihnachten und Chanukka” (Chrismukkah: Stories of Christmas and Hanukkah), was on display from October 2005 to January 2006. Now, even several years later, it is apparent that the Weihnukka show can be read as a significant moment along a line of the continuity and discontinuity of Jewish, German, and “Jewish-German” identity.
The exhibit mostly featured artifacts and texts documenting nineteenth-and early-twentieth- century holiday practices, explaining Hanukkah for non-Jewish museum visitors, and casting Christmas as a celebration in the German-nationalist context of the era.3 While the fraught navigation of Jewish-German identity in Gründerzeit Germany is at the core of the exhibit, what captured my attention were the elements of contemporary American popular culture used to conclude the show. The museum administration contends that they were included merely to bring this cultural history up to date for visitors.4 This was no doubt their intention, and yet I will argue that these American aspects of the Weihnukka exhibit have important functions and meanings beyond the superficial level of visitor experience. I look back, then, at this exhibit, in order to interrogate its implications for global identity and even the traditional idea of diaspora in the context of today’s German-Jewish community, and what this temporary exhibit tells us about the ongoing function of the Jewish Museum Berlin...
Abstract: Editorial:
The articles published here first appeared in 1998 and 1999 in "TRIBÜNE: Zeitschrift zum Verständnis des Judentums", a German-language quarterly journal dedicated to fostering an understanding of Judaism, on the occasion of the 60th year anniversary of Reich Pogrom Night on Nov. 9, 1938. About 500,000 Jews lived in Germany at the onset of Nazi terror. Only 12,000 remained after the liberation of the concentration camps in May 1945.
Survey responses have always estimated the number of Jews living in the Federal Republic of Germany as much too high. While the number of Jews living in Germany remained constant at 30,000 for decades, the respondents of surveys constantly placed this number at between 100,000 and 1,000,000. German Unification itself did little to change the number of Jews in Germany, as there were only about 350 members of the small Jewish communities in the former East Germany. It was first the commencement of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union beginning in 1990 that served to revive and transform the Jewish community in Germany with its disproportionately top-heavy demographic scale. Almost 100,000 Jews live in Germany today.
For a long time, Jews living in Germany refused to define themselves as 'German Jews,' and insisted instead on their proverbial 'sitting upon packed luggage.' A growing trust in German democracy, connections to the cities in which they live, and the example set by Ignatz Bubis, the late and former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, who declared himself a 'German citizen of Jewish belief,' lead many to accept Germany as their new home. Unfortunately, ongoing anti-Semitic agitation, as well as the ill-considered and fundamentally exclusionary description of Jews as 'Jewish fellow citizens,' does shake the Jewish community in its new-found trust. This is why, in one of his last interviews with TRIBÜNE, Bubis responded to the condition of acceptance and discrimination with the words, 'Minor disturbances are to be overcome.'
Jewish life in Germany and abroad is accompanied by right-wing extremism and anti-Semitic troublemaking especially on Jewish days of commemoration. Although German society and politics is going to great lengths in coming to terms with the Nazi past, Jewish history, the many-faceted cultural and social developments of Jewish communities in post-war Germany, and even the present situation for Jews living in Germany, remains a book of seven seals. Nevertheless, Jewish life in 'the former land of the perpetrators' is an intimate part of the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, founded more than 50 years ago.
That the judgment of Germany has undergone transformation in spite its Nazi past and the persistence of right-wing extremism in every-day life is the result of the honest efforts of German institutions and the general public in responsibly and thoroughly coming to terms with this past. As Paul Spiegel, the new president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, emphasized in an interview with TRIBÜNE, the most obvious sign of Jewish trust in the Germany is the increasing number of Jews living here, which will soon reach 120,000 with the influx of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. Even into the late 1970s, Jews living abroad, especially in Israel, could hardly muster understanding for those choosing to settle in Germany. The address of the former Israeli ambassador to Germany, Avi Primor, at the presentation of the German edition of the present book in November 1999, was an indication of Germany's gradually changing image even in Israel.
Contained in this anthology are poignant essays and articles from renowned authors which characterize Jewish life in Germany after the Holocaust as an aspect of democratic society. At the center of this book are the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust, their wounds and identity problems, as well as yesterday's and today's anti-Semitism. Jewish youth, religion, social work and Eastern European immigrants are also central themes. Finally, a number of exemplary Jewish communities in eastern and western Germany are portrayed.
Our aim is to help non-Jews, not only in Germany, but all around the world, understand the sensitivities and hopes of Jews in Germany at the dawn of the 21st century, more than a half a century after the Holocaust.
We extend our thanks the Public Relations Office of the Federal Republic of Germany (Berlin), as well as the ZEIT-Foundation Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius (Hamburg), DaimlerChrysler (Stuttgart) and especially Volkswagen (Wolfsburg), whose generous support made this English translation possible.
Contents
10 Chancellor Gerhard Schröder Words of Greeting
13 Otto R. Romberg/Susanne Urban-Fahr Editorial
15 Avi Primor Preface
I New Beginning After the Shoah
20 Ignatz Bubis He Who Bilds a Home, Intends to Stay
30 Paul Spiegel Soon 120,000 Jews in Germany
34 Gerhard Schröder Fifty Years Central Council
38 Hanno Loewy Unanswered Questions
48 Michael Brenner Epilogue or Preface?
57 Robert Guttmann Without Beginning, Without End
II Past and Present
66 Wolfgang Benz Reactions to the Holocaust
76 Kirsten Serup-Bilfeldt Why Little Ochs Had to Die
81 Heiner Lichtenstein Nazi Trials
89 Ulrich Renz The Right to Citizenship
93 Rainer Erb “Good” and “Bad” Jews
98 Henryk M. Broder The Ignominious Intellectual
102 Alphons Silbermann What Does “Auschwitz” Mean Today
III East and West
110 Andreas Nachama East and West
119 Hanna Struck Jews in Mecklenburg & Pornerania
129 Lothar Mertens Optimistic Expectations
135 Ursula Homann Jews in the State of Hesse
144 Roberto Fabian The Challenge of Inheritance
155 Ludger Heid Jewish Communities in the Ruhr
163 Herzs Krymalowski Developing Potential
171 Christophe Baginski Ignorance or Goodwill?
IV Religion and Social Life
176 Moritz Neumann Secular or Religious Community?
185 Benjamin Bloch Zedaka - Charity and Social Justice
195 Dalia Moneta Displaced People
207 Rachel Heuberger Jewish Youth in Germany
217 Willi Jasper/Bernhard Vogt Integration and Self-Assertion
228 Elena Solomonski Acceptance or Emancipation?
V Culture
240 Leibl Rosenberg Jewish Culture in Germany Today
257 Cilly Kugelmann Jewish Museums in Germany
255 Susanne Urban-Fahr Jewish Press - Jews in the Press
266 Anneliese Rabun Architectural Form and Expression
Abstract: Editorial:
Die hier veröffentlichten Beiträge erschienen zuerst 1998 und 1999 in 'TRIBÜNE. Zeitschrift zum Verständnis des Judentums' anlässlich des 60. Jahrestages der Reichspogromnacht vom 9. November 1938. Zu Beginn des NS-Terrors hatte mehr als eine halbe Million Juden in Deutschland gelebt. Nach der Befreiung im Mai 1945 waren es noch etwa 12 000.
Die Zahl der in der Bundesrepublik lebenden Juden wurde in Umfragen stets viel zu hoch geschätzt. Statt der konstanten Zahl von 30 000 lagen die Angaben zumeist zwischen Hunderttausenden und Millionen. Auch die deutsche Einheit änderte nichts an der Zahl der Juden in Deutschland, denn in den wenigen jüdischen Gemeinden in der DDR hatte es nur knapp 350 Mitglieder gegeben. Erst die 1990 einsetzende Zuwanderung von Juden aus den Nachfolgestaaten der ehemaligen Sowjetunion belebte und veränderte die überalterte jüdische Gemeinschaft in Deutschland. Heute leben hier etwa 75 000 Juden.
Lange Zeit bezeichneten sich Juden, die in Deutschland lebten, nicht als 'deutsche Juden', sondern beharrten darauf, unverändert auf den berühmten 'gepackten Koffern' zu sitzen. Das gewachsene Vertrauen in die deutsche Demokratie, ihre Verbundenheit mit den Städten, in denen sie leben, sowie das beispielhafte Bekenntnis von Ignatz Bubis, er sei 'deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens', machten Deutschland für viele zu einer neuen Heimat. Nicht selten wird aber leider dieses neu gewachsene Gefühl durch antisemitische Hetze und die unüberlegte, grundsätzlich ausgrenzende Bezeichnung von Juden als 'jüdische Mitbürger' ins Wanken gebracht. Deshalb reagierte Bubis in einem seiner letzten Gespräche mit TRIBÜNE auf den Zustand zwischen Akzeptanz und Diskriminierung mit den Worten ?Erschütterungen sind zu überstehen.
Jüdisches Leben in Deutschland wird hierzulande und im Ausland, besser gesagt: weltweit vor allem zu Gedenktagen, nach rechtsradikalen Ausschreitungen oder antisemitischen Vorfällen registriert. Obwohl es vielfältige Bemühungen gibt, sich in Politik und Gesellschaft mit der NS-Vergangenheit auseinanderzusetzen, blieben und bleiben die jüdische Geschichte, die Entwicklung der Gemeinden sowie die facettenreiche kulturelle und vielschichtige soziale Situation der Nachkriegsjahre, aber auch der Gegenwart ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln. Die Situation der Juden im einstigen "Land der Täter" ist jedoch auch ein Stück Geschichte der vor 50 Jahren gegründeten Bundesrepublik.
Mit kompetenten Beiträgen namhafter Autorinnen und Autoren versuchen wir in diesem Sammelband, das jüdische Leben nach dem Holocaust aufzufächern, das mittlerweile Bestandteil der demokratischen Gesellschaft geworden ist. Es geht um jüdische Überlebende und ihren Wunden, von Identitätsproblemen und Antisemitismus, aber auch um die jüdische Jugend, um Religion und jüdisches soziales Engagement, um osteuropäische Einwanderer - und schließlich werden einige exemplarische Gemeinden in Ost- und Westdeutschland porträtiert.
Wir möchten Nichtjuden in Deutschland wie auch in anderen Ländern helfen, einen Blick auf jüdische Befindlichkeiten und die Hoffnungen der Juden in Deutschland 55 Jahre nach Ende des Holocaust an der Schwelle zum 21. Jahrhundert, zu werfen.
Inhalt:
9 Vorwort
11 Editorial
I Neuanfang nach der Schoah
14 Ignatz Bubis, Erschütterungen sind zu überstehen
25 Hanno Loewy, Jüdische Existez in Deutschland
35 Michael Brenner, Epilog oder Neuanfang
45 Robert Guttmann, Ohne Anfang und ohne Ende
II Vergangenheit und Gegenwart
54 Wolfgang Benz, Reaktionen auf den Holocaust
64 Kirsten Serup-Bilfeldt, Warum der kleine Ochs sterben musste
69 Heiner Lichtenstei,n NS-Prozesse
77 Ulrich Renz, Das Recht auf den Pass
81 Rainer Erb, Klischees über >>gute<< und >>böse<< Juden
86 Henryk M. Broder, Der Vordenker als Wegdenker
90 Alphons Silbermann, Was bedeutet >>Auschwitz<< heute?
III Ost und West
98 Andreas Nachama, Ost und West
108 Hanna Struck, Juden in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
118 Lothar Mertens, Optimistische Erwartungen
124 Ursula Homann, Juden in Hessen
134 Roberto Fabian Ein Erbe als Herausforderung
146 Ludger Heid Jüdische Gemeinden im Ruhrgebiet
154 Herzs Krymalowski Perspektiven entwickeln
162 Christophe Baginski Ignoranz oder Wohlwollen?
IV Religion und Soziales
166 Moritz Neumann Gemeinschaft oder Gemeinde?
176 Benjamin Bloch Zedaka - die Gerechtigkeit
186 Dalia Moneta Displaced People
199 Rachel Heuberger Jüdische Jugend in Deutschland
209 Willi Jasper/Bernhard Vogt Integration und Selbstbehauptung
221 Elena Solomonski Akzeptanz oder Emanzipation?
V Kultur
234 Leibl Rosenberg Jüdische Kultur in Deutschland heute
244 Cilly Kugelmann Jüdische Museen in Deutschland
251 Susanne Urban-Fahr Jüdische Presse - Juden in der Presse
263 Joseph Deih Jüdische Studien in Deutschland
279 Anneliese Rabun Gestaltung und Ausdruck
Abstract: Germany today boasts the fastest growing population of Jews in Europe. The streets of Berlin abound with signs of a revival of Jewish culture, ranging from bagel shops to the sight of worshipers leaving synagogue on Saturday. With the new energy infused by Jewish immigration from Russia and changes in immigration and naturalization laws in general, Jeffrey M. Peck argues that we must now begin considering how Jews live in Germany rather than merely asking why they would choose to do so.
In Being Jewish in the New Germany, Peck explores the diversity of contemporary Jewish life and the complex struggles within the community-and among Germans in general-over history, responsibility, culture, and identity. He provides a glimpse of an emerging, if conflicted, multicultural country and examines how the development of the European Community, globalization, and the post-9/11 political climate play out in this context. With sensitive, yet critical, insight into the nation's political and social life, chapters explore issues such as the shifting ethnic/national makeup of the population, changes in political leadership, and the renaissance of Jewish art and literature. Peck also explores new forms of anti-Semitism and relations between Jews and Turks-the country's other prominent minority population.
In this surprising description of the rebirth of a community, Peck argues that there is, indeed, a vibrant and significant future for Jews in Germany.
Abstract: In the English-speaking world, it is generally believed that there are very few Jews living and thriving in Germany. Yet, there has been an unlikely postwar history 1945-2001 that has been somewhat repressed in North America and the United Kingdom. While most people are well-informed about the Holocaust and the consequences that this tragic event has had for the world, very few people know that there has been a steady increase in the population of Jews in Germany since 1945 and that there is a flourishing 'Jewish' culture, certainly a relatively strong Jewish presence, in Germany today. Does this development mean that Jews are playing a significant role in German social life? Does this mean that the great German-Jewish relationship, often referred to as a kind of symbiosis, has re-emerged despite the odds against it? The sixteen essays in this book written by the leading critics in the field cover the fascinating changes that have been made in German society since 1945 in the Jewish communities, literature, theater, film, architecture, and other areas of interest including an examination of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Austria. For anyone interested in reading about the unpredictable transformations in German-Jewish relations since 1945, Unlikely History will provide information and insights into a history that needs to be told to bring about greater understanding of Jews and Germans in contemporary Germany.
Abstract: Ten authors from five countries present a variety of fresh analyses of the strategies Germans have adopted in coping with the Nazi past. Through historical, sociological, educational, and cultural approaches the unresolved tensions existing in German society – between the will to be accepted as an integral part of western civilization and to put the Nazi chapter in general and the Holocaust in particular behind, on the one hand, and an awareness of responsibility combined with recurring, sometimes sudden, manifestations of long-term results and implications of the past, on the other – are analyzed. Through its multifaceted approach, this book contributes to a better understanding of present-day German society and of Germany’s delicate relationships with both the United States and Israel.
Contents: Dan Michman: Introduction – Jeffrey Herf: The Holocaust and the Competition of Memories in Germany, 1945-1999 – Gilad Margalit: Divided Memory? Expressions of a United German Memory – Y. Michal Bodemann: The Uncanny Clatter: The Holocaust in Germany before Its Mass Commemoration – Inge Marszolek: Memory and Amnesia: A Comment on the Lectures by Gilad Margalit and Michal Bodemann – Chris Lorenz: Border-crossings: Some Reflections on the Role of German Historians in Recent Public Debates on Nazi History – Dan Diner: The Irreconcilability of an Event: Integrating the Holocaust into the Narrative of the Century – Michael Brenner: The Changing Role of the Holocaust in the German-Jewish Public Voice – Shlomo Shafir: Constantly Disturbing the German Conscience: The Impact of American Jewry – Yehuda Ben-Avner: Ambivalent Cooperation: The German-Israeli Joint Committee on Schoolbooks – Yfaat Weiss: The Vague Echoes of German Discourse in Israel.
Abstract: Das Konzept der Diaspora hat in den vergangenen Jahren in der akademischen Diskussion eine hohe Konjunktur erfahren. War der Bedeutungsgehalt des Begriffs historisch auf die klassischen Fälle von teils gewaltsamer Vertreibung, teils freiwilliger Neusiedlung der jüdischen und griechischen, sowie schließlich der armenischen Gemeinden beschränkt, so bezieht er sich inzwischen auf quasi alle außerhalb ihres ursprünglichen Territoriums lebenden ethnischen Gruppen (Tölölyan 1991). Dieser Schritt markiert einen sowohl theoretischen wie auch politischen Einschnitt, der in einem engen Zusammenhang mit den Debatten über die kulturellen Effekte der Globalisierung steht. Die Wiederkehr der Diaspora kann gewissermaßen als exemplarische Repräsentation einer Vergesellschaftungsform verstanden werden, die mit unseren nach wie vor territorial verorteten Kategorien bricht und in ihren transnationalen Bezügen die Grenzen eines „methodologischen Nationalismus“ (Beck 2004) aufzeigt. Das begriffliche Gegenüber der Diaspora bildet demzufolge der Nationalstaat. Anschließend an den postkolonialen Diskurs scheinen diasporische Gemeinschaften als alternative Entwürfe deterritorialisierter kultureller Identitäten auf, die im strikten Gegensatz zu nationalstaatlich organisierten Gesellschaften konstruiert sind (vgl. Appadurai 1994; Clifford 1997; kritisch dazu Anthias 1998). Wie ich im Folgenden zeigen möchte, übersieht diese behauptete Fundamentalopposition, dass und in welcher Weise Migrationspopulationen nach wie vor durch nationalstaatliche Regimes und deren institutionelle Zwänge gekennzeichnet sind. Im Unterschied zu einer Position, die insbesondere das kosmopolitische und grenzüberschreitende Potenzial von Diaspora-Gemeinschaften unterstreicht, will ich insofern gerade auf deren Einbettung in jeweils nationalstaatliche Rahmen verweisen, in und gegenüber denen die lokalen Diasporas ihre kulturelle Eigenständigkeit zu behaupten versuchen. Ein solches Vorgehen ist mit der migrationssoziologischen Annahme verknüpft, dass Einwanderung als Prozess aufzufassen ist, den sowohl die aufnehmende Gesellschaft als auch die Immigranten selbst strukturieren. Es handelt sich dabei nicht um einen symmetrischen Prozess, sondern um einen zu Lasten der Einwanderer ungleich gewichteten, denn diese müssen auf die politischen und symbolischen Ordnungsmuster Bezug nehmen, die in den verschiedenen Aufnahmegesellschaften maßgeblich sind (Bauböck 1992). Diesem Spannungsverhältnis soll am Beispiel der Migration russischsprachiger Juden nach Deutschland nachgegangen werden.
Abstract: The Jewish Museum Berlin (JMB) is a dynamic, performative space that negotiates between representing the Jew as an integral part of German history and as ultimate Other. While this tension has been documented through the political history of the museum (Lackmann 2000; Pieper 2006; Young 2000), we focus on the dynamics of guided tours and special events. We claim that guiding and festival events at JMB marginalise Holocaust memory and present an image of Jews of the past that promotes a multicultural vision of present-day Germany. In guiding performances, the identity of the guide as German/Jewish/Muslim is part of the guiding performance, even when not made explicit. By comparing tour performances for various publics, and the 'storytelling rights' granted by the group, we witness how visitors' scripts and expectations interact with the museum's mission that it serve as a place of encounter (Ort der Begegnung). As German-Jewish history at JMB serves primarily as a cosmopolitan template for intercultural relations, strongly affiliated local Jews may not feel a need for the museum. Organised groups of Jews from abroad, however, visit it as part of the Holocaust memorial landscape of Berlin, while many local Jews with weaker affiliations to the Jewish community may find it an attractive venue for performing their more fluid Jewish identities – for themselves and for others.
Abstract: An unexpected immigration wave of Jews from the former Soviet Union mostly in the 1990s has stabilized and enlarged Jewish life in Germany. Jewish kindergartens and schools were opened, and Jewish museums, theaters, and festivals are attracting a wide audience. No doubt: Jews will continue to live in Germany. At the same time, Jewish life has undergone an impressing transformation in the second half of the 20th century– from rejection to acceptance, but not without disillusionments and heated debates. And while the ‘new Jews of Germany,’ 90 percent of them of Eastern European background, are already considered an important factor of the contemporary Jewish diaspora, they still grapple with the shadow of the Holocaust, with internal cultural clashes and with difficulties in shaping a new collective identity. What does it mean to live a Jewish life in present-day Germany? How are Jewish thoughts, feelings, and practices reflected in contemporary arts, literature, and movies? What will remain of the former German Jewish cultural heritage? Who are the new Jewish elites, and how successful is the fight against anti-Semitism? This volume offers some answers.
Table of Contents:
Preface: A Word from the Editors of this Volume - 1
Legacy, Trauma, New Beginning after ‘45: German Jewry Revisited
Michael Wolffsohn: Jews in Divided Germany (1945–1990) and Beyond Scrutinized in Retrospect 13
Michael Elm: The Making of Holocaust Trauma in German Memory: Some Reflection about Robert Thalheim’s Film And Along Come Tourists 31
Julius H. Schoeps: Saving the German-Jewish Legacy?On Jewish and Non-Jewish Attempts of Reconstructing a Lost World 46
Migration as the Driving Factor of Jewish Revival in Re-Unified Germany
Eliezer Ben-Rafael: Germany’s Russian-speaking Jews: Between Original, Present and Affective Homelands 63
Julia Bernstein: Russian Food Stores and their Meaning for Jewish Migrants in Germany and Israel: Honor and ‘Nostalgia’ 81
Elke-Vera Kotowski: Moving from the Present via the Past to Look toward the Future: Jewish Life in Germany Today 103
Fania Oz-Salzberger: Israelis and Germany: A Personal Perspective 117
Culture and Arts – Reflecting a New Jewish Presence
Hanni Mittelmann: Reconceptualization of Jewish Identity as Reflected in Contemporary German Jewish Humorist Literature 131
Karsten Troyke: Hava Nagila: A Personal Reflection on the Reception of Jewish Music in Germany 142
Zachary Johnston: Aliyah Le Berlin: A Documentary about the Next Chapter of Jewish Life in Berlin 152
Ghosts of the Past, Challenges of the Present: Germany Facing Old-New Anti-Semitism
Monika Schwarz-Friesel: Educated Anti-Semitism in the Middle of German Society: Empirical Findings 165
Günther Jikeli: Anti-Semitism within the Extreme Right and Islamists’ Circles 188
H. Julia Eksner: Thrice Tied Tales: Germany, Israel, and German Muslim Youth 208
Towards New Shores: Jewish Education and the Religious Revival
Olaf Glöckner: New Structures of Jewish Education in Germany 231
Walter Homolka: A Vision Come True: Abraham Geiger and the Training of Rabbis and Cantors for Europe 244
Authors and Editors 251
Index 254
Names Index 257
Abstract: How was it possible that a new and sizeable Jewish community developed after the Holocaust in Germany of all places? Jews, Germans, Memory undertakes to assess the past, present, and future of German-Jewish relations in the light of recent political changes and the opening up of historical resources. This welcome new volume investigates how the groundwork was laid for the new Jewish community in the post-war period, with different objectives by Jewish leaders and German politicians. Its contributors touch upon history, literature, the media, ethnicity, politics, and social movements, and attempt to answer the question of how Jews are sociallyconstructed and how the glorious German Jewish past and the Holocaust have been remembered in the course of recent decades. In recent years, German Jewry has seen fundamental transformations with the influx from Eastern Europe and a new leadership in the community. A new self-definition, even self-assurance and reappraisal in Israel and elsewhere, has evolved. Historians, scholars of cultural studies, and those interested in debates on memory and ethnicity will all find something of interest in this diverse volume. Jews, Germans, Memory joins in debate Michael Brenner, Micha Brumlik, Dan Diner, Cilly Kugelmann, and Martin Low-Beer, among the most prominent younger Jewish intellectuals in Germany today, with others who have long observed Germany from both inside and outside: Y. Michal Bodemann, John Borneman, Andrei Markovits, Robin Ostrow, Moishe Postone, Frank Stern, and Jack Zipes
