A01=Leonard Barkan
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Leonard Barkan
automatic-update
bayerisches viertel
Berlin
biography
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJD
Category=HBTB
Category=JBSR
Category=JFSR1
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
cemetery
contemporary europe
COP=United States
cultural influences
culture
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
germany
heritage
history
James Simon
jew
jewish
jewishness
judaism
Language_English
nazi
PA=Available
personal recollections
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
public life
Rahel Varnhagen
religion
religious peoples
schonhauser allee
softlaunch
travel companion
understanding the city
Walter Benjamin
Product details
- ISBN 9780226010663
- Weight: 482g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 04 Nov 2016
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
What is it like to travel to Berlin today, particularly as a Jew, and bring with you the baggage of history? And what happens when an American Jew, raised by a secular family, falls in love with Berlin not in spite of his being a Jew but because of it? The answer is Berlin for Jews. Part history and part travel companion, Leonard Barkan's personal love letter to the city shows how its long Jewish heritage, despite the atrocities of the Nazi era, has left an inspiring imprint on the vibrant metropolis of today. Barkan, voraciously curious and witty, offers a self-deprecating guide to the history of Jewish life in Berlin, revealing how, beginning in the early nineteenth century, Jews became prominent in the arts, the sciences, and the city's public life. With him, we tour the ivy-covered confines of the Sch nhauser Allee cemetery, where many distinguished Jewish Berliners have been buried, and we stroll through Bayerisches Viertel, an elegant neighborhood created by a Jewish developer and that came to be called Berlin's "Jewish Switzerland."
We travel back to the early nineteenth century to the salon of Rahel Varnhagen, a Jewish society doyenne, who frequently hosted famous artists, writers, politicians, and the occasional royal. Barkan also introduces us to James Simon, a turn-of-the-century philanthropist and art collector, and we explore the life of Walter Benjamin, who wrote a memoir of his childhood in Berlin as a member of the assimilated Jewish upper-middle class. Throughout, Barkan muses about his own Jewishness, while celebrating the rich Jewish culture on view in today's Berlin. A winning, idiosyncratic travel companion, Berlin for Jews offers a way to engage with German history, to acknowledge the unspeakable while extolling the indelible influence of Jewish culture.
Leonard Barkan is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton, where he teaches in the Department of Comparative Literature along with appointments in art and archaeology, English, and classics. His books include The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism and Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture.
