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I Das Grenzland Im Jahre 1772 annektierte das Habsburgerreich im Süden Polens gelegene Gebiete und gliederte sie als „Königreich Galizien und Lodomerien“ in seinen Herrschaftsbereich ein. Nach dem Zusammenbruch der Habsburger Monarchie im I. Weltkrieg wurde Galizien 1918 Teil des erneut unabhängigen Polen. In Ostgalizien gründeten ukrainische Nationalisten eine kurzlebige „West-Ukrainische Republik“. Im Anschluss weiterer Kampfhandlungen zwischen Polen, Ukrainern und Sowjets annektierte Polen dann ganz Ostgalizien, das von den Polen „Kleines Ostpolen“ genannt wurde, einschließlich der nördlichen Gebiete Wolhyniens (Wolyñ) und Polesiens (westliches Belorussland). Die im Gefolge des Kriegsendes neu entstandenen Grenzen wurden 1923 international anerkannt. Ostgalizien und Wolhynien wurden 1939 von der UdSSR annektiert und der ukrainischen Sowjetrepublik angegliedert. Während der deutschen Besatzung zwischen 1941–1944 war Ostgalizien Teil des von den Deutschen kontrollierten Generalgouvernements Polen. Im Anschluss an die Befreiung dieser Gebiete durch die Rote Armee kam Ostgalizien wiederum an die ukrainische Sowjetrepublik. Seit der ukrainischen Unabhängigkeit 1991 ist es Teil der West-Ukraine (zusammen mit Wolhynien, dem nördlichen Teil der Bukowina und der Transkarpaten oder früher auch Ruthenien genannten Region). Das ehemalige ostgalizische Grenzlandgebiet erstreckt sich von der im Norden gelegenen Kreishauptstadt L'viv (Lwów, Lvov, Lemberg) bis zu der im Süden gelegenen, der ehemaligen österreichischen Provinz Bukowina zugehörigen Stadt Chernivtsi (Chernovtsy, Czernowitz, Cernăuti), von der Bergkette der Karpaten im Westen bis zum Fluss Sbrutsch (Zbrucz, Pruth) und zu den Ebenen von Podolien im Osten. Es handelt sich um ein Gebiet, das berühmt, aber durchaus auch berüchtigt ist.

The Holocaust was a rupture in civilisation – a Zivilisationsbruch – , a shattering of ontological certainty. The perception of the event enshrined in the notion of “rupture in civilisation” is the result of both the historical and the conceptual engagement with the event. Its manifest content seeks to combine two ways of discerning which are in fact opposed to one another: a particular one and a universal one. The particular perspective reflects the experience undergone by Jews as Jews of having been destroyed everywhere and solely because of their belonging, i.e. because of their alleged origin. It was hence the experience of being exposed to total extermination without any reason. Never before had anything of this kind taken place: a rupture in civilisation, carried out upon the Jews. The significance of the concept is further-reaching, however. The concept of rupture in civilisation seeks to denote the indeed singular circumstance of the extermination of human persons by human persons as the transgression of all the ethical and instrumental limits of comportment which had hitherto been considered as certain and secure. Transgression of this kind marks a rupture in civilisation that is carried out upon all humankind. The phenomenon of the crime against humanity experienced by the Jews can, however, be split and regarded from those two opposing perspectives: one that argues historically and that is above all adopted by the victims, while the other is an anthropologically inclined perception of the events which rather reaches further into a universal domain. The latter focuses on the significance of the events for the species as such. These perspectives are necessarily unequal. They may even work against other.

Early in the year 2000, Paul Mendes-Flohr suggested to me that we invite Paul Ricœur to Jerusalem to engage in discussions with the researchers of the Rosenzweig Centre. At the time, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Maria Diemling, and I were participating in a Sonderforschungsbereich on Jewish and Christian thought, in collaboration with Bonn University. We considered that Ricœur's work on hermeneutics and his studies of history and memory coupled with his interest in the philosophy of religion had much in common with our research. After corresponding with Ricœur, I traveled to Paris, to Ricœur's residence in the community of the Murs Blancs in order to prepare the symposium. Ricœur had just finished his book La mémoire , l'histoire , l'oubli and he suggested that we base our work in the planned meeting in Jerusalem on the second section of the book. He said that he was exhausted and felt empty, after completing the manuscript. Nonetheless, his conversation was animated, touching on geo-political aspects of the war in what was formerly Yugoslavia and speculating on the reasons why armed conflict often originated and spread from the Balkans. Ricœur had given a paper to the research group of the Rosenzweig Centre, at the invitation of Stéphane Mosès, in December 1994. He was excited about coming to Jerusalem. I returned to Jerusalem with a typescript of the section of the book we were to discuss, and we prepared for the meeting in regular sessions of the research group.

I The intellectual relations between Heidegger and Arendt The publication of the correspondence between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt in Germany in 1998 contributed new insight into the relations between these two 20th century thinkers. Arendt was Heidegger's student in Marburg in the mid-1920s and the correspondence has confirmed the intimate character of their relationship during this period. Subsequently, Arendt moved to Heidelberg to work with Karl Jaspers. Following Heidegger's support of the Hitler regime as rector of Freiburg University in 1933–1934, communication ceased between Arendt and Heidegger and, during these years, Arendt emigrated, first to France and then to the United States. After the Second World War, the silence between them continued for a period of five years. During this period Arendt published an article highly critical of Heidegger's writings, entitled “What is Existenz-philosophy?” (1946), in which she argued that Heidegger's thought belonged to the contemplative metaphysical tradition inaugurated by Plato that she saw it as her task to overcome. The Hannah Arendt – Martin Heidegger Briefwechsel has also documented the fact that in February 1950 Arendt and Heidegger once again resumed their friendship, which lasted for the remainder of their lives.

I Ricœur's account of the distinction between phenomenological and cosmological time My theme concerns the notions of time and space in Ricœur's thought with special emphasis on its relation to Phenomenology. As I understand it, in Temps et récit and again in La mémoire , l'histoire , l'oubli Ricœur proposes an opposition between subjective/phenomenological time and objective/cosmological time. In La mémoire , l'histoire , l'oubli he introduces a parallel distinction between lived space and geometrical space. We can state Ricœur's position in Husserlian terms and say that he is developing different regional ontologies, while I shall argue in these remarks that a certain fundamental ontology is required which will unify these different notions of space and different notions of time. Cosmic time is characterised by Ricœur as constituted by the distinction between earlier and later and by a general notion of the instant. The phenomenological notion of time is characterised by the distinction between the past and the future and its privileged instant is the present. In the third part of Temps et récit Ricœur argues for the autonomy of each notion. This autonomy is a necessary step in developing a third notion of historical time as a bridge between these two notions, the cosmic and the phenomenological.

I Westjuden, Ostjuden, and the Place of Yiddish During the First World War, the young Gershom (Gerhard) Scholem (1897–1982) published a typically forceful critique of three recent works of translation from Yiddish into German. His article, “Zum Problem der Übersetzung aus dem Jidischen [sic]” [On the Problem of Translating from Yiddish] (1917), reveals important dimensions of the cultural place of Yiddish in this period. Of general importance for understanding the development of Scholem's conception of language, the article and the exchange that it inspired also show in particular how, even within the camp of those sympathetic or devoting themselves to greater understanding of the Ostjuden, in some cases also converting their sympathy into practical action, there were widely differing approaches to the correct means and method by which this should be achieved.

I Politics and “exilic” experience One remarkable aspect of this “Myth of Exile” is that it served two conflicting purposes: through its mystical interpretation of exile as action instead of suffering, it could rouse the people to hasten the coming of the Messiah [… ] But [… ] it served equally well the needs of the disillusioned people, who, having lost the Messianic hope, wanted a new, more general justification of exile, of their inactive existence and mere survival.

Eine große Leidenschaft von Siegfried Kracauer war es, mit jüngeren, gleichsam noch unfertigen Denkern zu „symphilosophieren“. Dies hat etwa in den neueren Adorno-Biographien zu vielerlei Spekulationen und mitunter schlüpfrigen Anspielungen auf vermeintliche homoerotische Beziehungen zwischen Kracauer und Adorno geführt – Spekulationen, die sich nur im Deutschen Literaturarchiv überprüfen ließen, da das Material bislang nicht zitiert werden darf. Der Briefwechsel mit Leo Löwenthal legt nahe, dass es sich bei seiner Vorstellung vom „Symphilosophieren“ tatsächlich um eine subtile geistige Homoerotik handelt, mehr aber auch nicht. Geradezu beschwört wird „das Philosophieren zu zweien, das immer und ewig schön“ sei. Am 16. Oktober 1921 schreibt Kracauer: „Träumen Sie nicht auch jeden Menschen in seiner Art vollendet?“ Um der Perfektionierung des Leo Löwenthal willen scheut er auch vor sachlich scharfer Kritik nicht zurück, die sich jedoch mit unverbrüchlicher persönlicher Loyalität paart. Zu den Aspekten, die die frühen Briefe Kracauers so lesenswert machen, gehört es, wie er den jungen Löwenthal von der Bahn eines „wilden“, schwärmerischen Messianismus zu einer säkularen Wahrnehmung religiöser Inhalte zu lenken versucht.