1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910821918903321

Titolo

Catastrophe and Utopia : Jewish intellectuals in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s / / edited by Ferenc Laczo and Joachim von Puttkamer

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berlin, [Germany] ; ; Boston, [Massachusetts] : , : Walter de Gruyter GmbH, , 2018

©2018

ISBN

3-11-055708-8

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (355 pages)

Collana

Europas Osten im 20. Jahrhundert ; ; Band 7 =, , 2366-9489 Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century ; ; Volume 7

Disciplina

940.5318

Soggetti

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Foreword -- Table of contents -- Introduction -- Utopia as Everyday Practice -- ‘What Will Become of the German Jews?’ -- ‘Jewishness’ in the Diary of Milán Füst -- The New Type of Internationalist -- ‘Europe’ – It’s such a strange word for me! -- A Liberal Utopia Againt All Odds -- From European Fascism to the Fate of the Jews -- Across the Rupture -- From the Jewish Renaissance to Socialist Realism -- Avatars of being a Jewish Professor at the University of Bucharest in the First Half of the Twentieth Century -- On the Ice Floe: Rachel Auerbach – The Life of a Yiddishist Intellectual in Early Twentieth Century Poland -- List of Contributors

Sommario/riassunto

Catastrophe and Utopia studies the biographical trajectories, intellectual agendas, and major accomplishments of select Jewish intellectuals during the age of Nazism, and the partly simultaneous, partly subsequent period of incipient Stalinization. By focusing on the relatively underexplored region of Central and Eastern Europe – which was the primary centre of Jewish life prior to the Holocaust, served as the main setting of the Nazi genocide, but also had notable communities of survivors – the volume offers significant contributions to a European Jewish intellectual history of the twentieth century. Approaching specific historical experiences in their diverse local



contexts, the twelve case studies explore how Jewish intellectuals responded to the unprecedented catastrophe, how they renegotiated their utopian commitments and how the complex relationship between the two evolved over time. They analyze proximate Jewish reactions to the most abysmal discontinuity represented by the Judeocide while also revealing more subtle lines of continuity in Jewish thinking. Ferenc Laczó is assistant professor in History at Maastricht University and Joachim von Puttkamer is professor of Eastern European History at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and director of the Imre Kertész Kolleg.