Europäisch-jüdische Studien – Editionen
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Edited by:
Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum in Kooperation mit dem Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg
European-Jewish Studies reflect the interdisciplinary network and competence of the “Centre for Jewish Studies in Berlin-Brandenburg” which was founded in 2011. The Centre gathers together the most important institutions working on Jewish studies in the region – including the relevant universities and establishments in Berlin and Potsdam. The interdisciplinary character of the series places particular emphasis on the way in which history, the humanities and cultural science approach the subject, as well as on fundamental intellectual, political and religious questions that inspire Jewish life and thinking today, and have influenced it in the past.
- The EDITIONS present new editions of works by outstanding Jewish authors.
- The CONTRIBUTIONS publish excellent monographs on the entire spectrum of themes from Jewish studies.
- The CONTROVERSIES deal with fundamental debates that are of contemporary and journalistic relevance.
- This series provides an interdisciplinary forum for the excellent work of the Centre for Jewish Studies, a new umbrella group including almost all the organizations in the Berlin - Brandenburg area of Germany concerned with this topic.
- The networked knowledge relating to Jewish studies in this region is unique. This series, which accepts work in German and English, provides visible evidence.
Reviews
Die Europäisch-jüdischen Studien von De Gruyter stehen in ihrer überzeugenden Dreigliederung von Kontroversen, Beiträgen und Editionen für eine neue interdisziplinäre Vernetzung und Berliner Kooperationskultur in Zeiten knapper Ressourcen am Ende der Gutenberg-Galaxis. Hier ist es noch möglich, verschüttete Dokumente deutsch-jüdischer Geschichte nachhaltig zu bergen.
Prof. Dr. Reinhard Mehring, PH-Heidelberg
Supplementary Materials
Topics
In 1892, Max Nordau (1849–1923) met Theodor Herzl, whose efforts toward the foundation of the Jewish State he supported wholeheartedly. Nordau quickly became a leader of the Zionist movement. At the first Zionist Congress in 1897, he was a major author of the Basel Program. Nordau’s speeches and newspaper articles, presented for the first time in such abundance, show him as a fearless pioneer, fighter, and admonisher.
In the last two decades a large amount of previously secret documents on Jewish issues emerged from the newly opened Communist archives. The selection of these papers published in the volume and stemming mostly from Hungarian archives will shed light on a period of Jewish history that is largely ignored because much of the current scholarship treats the Shoah as the end of Jewish history in the region. The documents introduced and commented by the editor of the volume, András Kovács, will give insight into the conditions and constraints under which the Jewish communities, first of all, the largest Jewish community of the region, the Hungarian one had to survive in the time of the post-Stalinist Communist dictatorship. They may shed light on the ways how “Jewish policy” of the Soviet bloc countries was coordinated and orchestrated from Moscow and by the single countries. The archival material will prove that the ruling communist parties were restlessly preoccupied with the “Jewish question.” This preoccupation, which kept the whole issue alive in the decades of communist rule, explains to a great extent its open reemergence in the time of transition and in the post-communist period.
The publication of Ludwig Feuchtwanger’s Jewish History has opened up access to a previously unpublished work of Jewish historiography. The author, who was an editor and brother of Lion Feuchtwanger, describes the condition of German Jewry in a historical sweep from 1200 BCE to 1250 AD. The text was written between 1935 and 1938, offering eloquent testimony to Jewish historical writing during the National Socialist period.
In a new edition, Karin Tebben presents Nordau’s best-known work “Degeneration” (“Entartung,” 1892/93), which focuses on the modern pathologies of artistic modernism. Together with Nietzsche, Nordau is one of the most influential thought leaders of a tradition that, as it developed further, had a problematic influence not only on the National Socialist organizers of the book burnings and of the “Entartete Kunst” (Degenerate Art) exhibition of 1937, but also on the Bolshevist persecution of the artistic modern or on Georg Lukács’ polemic against the avant-garde modern.
