Goethe in German-Jewish Culture
Regular price
€92.99
Anti-Semitism
Category=DSB
Category=DSBF
Category=DSC
Category=JBCC
Category=JBSR
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
German-Jewish Culture
Goethe
Hitler
Jewish scholars
Literary influence
Product details
- ISBN 9781571133236
- Weight: 488g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 May 2001
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
New essays examining Goethe's relationship to the Jews, and the contribution of Jewish scholars to the fame of the greatest German writer.
The success of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners(1997) and the heated debates that followed its publication exposed once again Germany's long tradition of anti-Semitism as a major cause of the Holocaust. Goldhagen, like many before him, drew a direct and irresistible line from Luther's pamphlets against the Jews to Hitler's attempted annihilation of European Jewry. This collection of new essays examines the thesis of a universal anti-Semitism in Germany by focussing on its greatest author, Goethe, and seeing to what extent some scholars are justified in accusing him of anti-Semitism. It places the reception of Goethe's works in a broader historical context: his relationship to Judaism and the Jews; the reception of his works by the Jewish elite in Germany, the reception of the 'Goethe cult' by Jewish scholars; and the Jewish contribution to Goethe scholarship. The last section of the volume treats the Jewish contribution to Goethe's fame and to Goethe philology since the 19th century, and the exodus of many Jewish authors and scholars after 1933, when they took their beloved Goethe into exile. When a few of them returned to Germany after 1945, it was to a country that had lost Goethe's most devoted audience, the German Jews.
KLAUS L. BERGHAHN and JOST HERMAND are professors of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
