The ferocity of the Nazi attack upon the Jews took many by surprise. Volkov argues that a new look at both the nature of antisemitism and at the complexity of modern Jewish life in Germany is ...required in order to provide an explanation. While antisemitism had a number of functions in pre-Nazi German society, it most particularly served as a cultural code, a sign of belonging to a particular political and cultural milieu. Surprisingly, it only had a limited effect on the lives of the Jews themselves. By the end of the nineteenth century, their integration was well advanced. Many of them enjoyed prosperity, prestige, and the pleasures of metropolitan life. This book stresses the dialectical nature of assimilation, the lead of the Jews in the processes of modernization, and, finally, their continuous efforts to 'invent' a modern Judaism that would fit their new social and cultural position.
Prophets of the past Brenner, Michael; Steven Rendall
2010., 20100802, 2010, 2010-08-02
eBook
Prophets of the Past is the first book to examine in depth how modern Jewish historians have interpreted Jewish history. Michael Brenner reveals that perhaps no other national or religious group has ...used their shared history for so many different ideological and political purposes as the Jews. He deftly traces the master narratives of Jewish history from the beginnings of the scholarly study of Jews and Judaism in nineteenth-century Germany; to eastern European approaches by Simon Dubnow, the interwar school of Polish-Jewish historians, and the short-lived efforts of Soviet-Jewish historians; to the work of British and American scholars such as Cecil Roth and Salo Baron; and to Zionist and post-Zionist interpretations of Jewish history. He also unravels the distortions of Jewish history writing, including antisemitic Nazi research into the "Jewish question," the Soviet portrayal of Jewish history as class struggle, and Orthodox Jewish interpretations of history as divinely inspired.
These seven studies analyze interpretations of ancient Jewish history by prominent Jewish scholars in the German world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although focusing on diverse figures and ...episodes, they all argue that these scholars’ views on the Jews’ responses to Hellenistic and Roman rule, while built upon the ancient sources, were nurtured by contemporary notions concerning the options available to Jews living in a non-Jewish world.
Uncovering a history buried by different nationalist narratives (Jewish, Israeli, Arab and Palestinian) this book looks at how the late Ottoman era set the stage for the on-going Palestinian-Israeli ...conflict.
Judenfeindschaft erhielt im 19. Jahrhundert eine neue Dimension in Gestalt des rassistisch und sozialdarwinistisch argumentierenden "modernen Antisemitismus", der sich als Resultat angeblicher ...wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis produzierte. Zu den Vätern gehörten Arthur Graf Gobineau und Richard Wagner. Vor allem aber waren es Autoren wie Wilhelm Marr, Otto Glagau, Eugen Dühring, Theodor Fritsch und viele andere, die in Traktaten und Pamphleten zur "Judenfrage" eine Rassentheorie begründeten, die dann als Teil der Ideologie des Nationalsozialismus Wirkung hatte und im Völkermord an den Juden Europas endete. Die meisten der antisemitischen Autoren des 19. Jahrhunderts sind längst vergessen, ihre Schriften sind weit verstreut oder gar nicht mehr greifbar, die Wirkung hält freilich an. Die Mikrofiche-Edition macht 544 Schriften zur "Judenfrage", zwischen 1780 und 1918 erschienen, als Quellenkorpus zur Antisemitismus- und Vorurteilsforschung wieder zugänglich. Die Edition wird durch einen Begleitband mit einer wissenschaftlichen Einleitung von Wolfgang Benz und einer Bibliographie der verfilmten Schriften erschlossen.
In this groundbreaking book, David Roberts sets out to demonstrate the centrality of the total work of art to European modernism since the French Revolution. The total work of art is usually ...understood as the intention to reunite the arts into the one integrated whole, but it is also tied from the beginning to the desire to recover and renew the public function of art. The synthesis of the arts in the service of social and cultural regeneration was a particularly German dream, which made Wagner and Nietzsche the other center of aesthetic modernism alongside Baudelaire and Mallarmé.
The history and theory of the total work of art pose a whole series of questions not only to aesthetic modernism and its utopias but also to the whole epoch from the French Revolution to the totalitarian revolutions of the twentieth century. The total work of art indicates the need to revisit key assumptions of modernism, such as the foregrounding of the autonomy and separation of the arts at the expense of the countertendencies to the reunion of the arts, and cuts across the neat equation of avant-gardism with progress and deconstructs the familiar left-right divide between revolution and reaction, the modern and the antimodern. Situated at the interface between art, religion, and politics, the total work of art invites us to rethink the relationship between art and religion and art and politics in European modernism.
In a major departure from the existing literature David Roberts argues for twin lineages of the total work, a French revolutionary and a German aesthetic, which interrelate across the whole epoch of European modernism, culminating in the aesthetic and political radicalism of the avant-garde movements in response to the crisis of autonomous art and the accelerating political crisis of European societies from the 1890s forward.
Port Jews Cesarani, David
2002, 20140404, 2014-04-04, 20020101
eBook
The history of Jews in cosmopolitan maritime trading centres is a field of research that is reshaping our understanding of how Jews entered the modern world. These studies show that the utility of ...Jewish merchants in an era of European expansion was vital to their acculturation and assimilation.
Halperin traces the persistence of traditional class structures during the development of industrial capitalism in Europe, and the way in which these structures shaped states and state behavior and ...generated conflict. She documents European conflicts between 1789 and 1914, including small and medium scale conflicts often ignored by researchers and links these conflicts to structures characteristic of industrial capitalist development in Europe before 1945. This book revisits the historical terrain of Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation (1944), however, it argues that Polanyi's analysis is, in important ways, inaccurate and misleading. Ultimately, the book shows how and why the conflicts both culminated in the world wars and brought about a 'great transformation' in Europe. Its account of this period challenges not only Polanyi's analysis, but a variety of influential perspectives on nationalism, development, conflict, international systems change, and globalization.
European Jewish history from 1789–1939 supports the view that construction of national identities even in secular liberal states was determined not only by modern considerations alone but also by ...ancient patterns of thought, behaviour and prejudice. Emancipation stimulated unprecedented patriotism, especially in wartime, as Jews strove to prove loyalty to their countries of citizenship. During World War I, even Zionists split along national lines, as did families and friends. Jewish patriotism was interchangeable with nationalism inasmuch as Jews identified themselves with national cultures. Although emancipation implied acceptance and an end to anti-Jewish prejudice in the modern liberal state, the kaleidoscopic variety of Jewish patriotism throughout Europe inadvertently undermined the idea of national identity and often provoked anti-Semitism. Even as loyal citizens of separate states, the Jews, however scattered, disunited and diverse, were made to feel, often unwillingly, that they were one people in exile.
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