Yiddish for Spies, or the Secret History of Jewish Literature, Lemberg 1814
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Ofer Dynes
Abstract
This article has two goals: first, it aims to solve a mystery in Yiddish studies by identifying the previously unknown author of one of the earliest Eastern European modern literary texts in Yiddish, and reconstructing the historical context in which he wrote the text. Second, it will show how this archival-biographical discovery sheds new light on the history of Eastern European Jews during the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815) as well as on the rise of Haskalah literature. Finally, as the title of this article suggests, I will argue that there was a direct link between narration and denunciation, between the Austrian imperial interest in collecting insider information about the Jews and the turn to writing literature in Jewish languages.
Acknowledgments
This paper was developed for a panel at the conference “Yiddish Culture in Past and Present Scholarship: Histories, Ideologies, Methodologies” (Jerusalem, May 2015). I wish to thank the convener of the conference, Aya Elyada, and the participants, as well as Christoph Augustynowicz, Israel Bartal, Matthias Kaltenbrunner, Boerries Kuzmany, Adam Stern, Sunny Yudkoff, Ruth Wisse, Steve Zipperstein, and the two anonymous reviewers, for their comments and advice. Research for this paper was funded by the “Galicia and Its Multicultural Heritage” Forum at the University of Vienna.
German title page of Johann Eduard Sack’s Yiddish Poem, Lemberg 1814.
A page from Sack’s Yiddish poem; the footnotes include German explanations of the text for the non-Jewish reader.
© 2016 by De Gruyter
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Special Section: Yiddish in German and German-Jewish Culture, Edited by: Aya Elyada
- Introduction
- Early Ashkenazic Poems about the Binding of Isaac
- Yiddish for Spies, or the Secret History of Jewish Literature, Lemberg 1814
- From Shtetl to Ghetto: Recognizing Yiddish in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums
- Other Contributions
- Re-education of German POWs as a German-Jewish Task: The Case of Adolf Sindler
- „Der Jude, der in deutschem Geist macht.“‡ Das Hegelbuch Franz Rosenzweigs und seine Wirkung
- Vom Gott der Aufklärung zum Gott der Religion: Franz Rosenzweigs Brief an Rudolf Ehrenberg vom September 1910 und sein Kampf gegen die Geschichte als Theodizee
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Special Section: Yiddish in German and German-Jewish Culture, Edited by: Aya Elyada
- Introduction
- Early Ashkenazic Poems about the Binding of Isaac
- Yiddish for Spies, or the Secret History of Jewish Literature, Lemberg 1814
- From Shtetl to Ghetto: Recognizing Yiddish in the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums
- Other Contributions
- Re-education of German POWs as a German-Jewish Task: The Case of Adolf Sindler
- „Der Jude, der in deutschem Geist macht.“‡ Das Hegelbuch Franz Rosenzweigs und seine Wirkung
- Vom Gott der Aufklärung zum Gott der Religion: Franz Rosenzweigs Brief an Rudolf Ehrenberg vom September 1910 und sein Kampf gegen die Geschichte als Theodizee
