1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910784213703321

Autore

Bos Pascale R

Titolo

German-Jewish literature in the wake of the Holocaust [[electronic resource] ] : Grete Weil, Ruth Klüger, and the politics of address / / Pascale R. Bos

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005

ISBN

1-281-36800-8

9786611368005

1-4039-7933-2

Edizione

[1st ed. 2005.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (XIV, 143 p.)

Collana

Studies in European culture and history

Disciplina

830.9/8924

Soggetti

German literature - Jewish authors - History and criticism

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction -- 2. The Jewish return to Germany -- 3. Mythical interventions -- 4. Creating address -- 5. Belated interventions.

Sommario/riassunto

Combining cultural history and literary analysis, this study proposes a new and thought-provoking reading of the changing relationship between Germans and Jews following the Holocaust. Two Holocaust survivors whose work became uniquely successful in the Germany of the 1980's and 1990's, Grete Weil and Ruth Kluger, emerge as exemplary in their contributions to a postwar German discussion about the Nazi legacy that had largely excluded living Jews. While acknowledging that the German audience for the works of Holocaust survivors began to change in the 1980's, this study disputes the common tendency to interpret this as a sign of greater willingness to confront the Holocaust, arguing instead that it resulted from a continued German misreading of Jews' criticisms. By tracing the particular cultural-political impact that Weil's and Kluger's works had on their German audience, it investigates the paradox of Germany's confronting the Holocaust without necessarily confronting the Jews as Germans. Furthermore, for the authors this literature also had a psychological impact: their 'return' to the German language and to Germany is read not as an act of mourning or nostalgia, but rather as a



public call to Germans for a dialogue about the Nazi past, as a way to move into the public realm the private emotional and psychological battles resulting from German Jews' exclusion from and persecution by their own national community.