Between German and Hebrew : : The Counterlanguages of Gershom Scholem, Werner Kraft and Ludwig Strauss / / Lina Barouch.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus eBook-Package 2016
• VerfasserIn: Barouch, Lina,
• Place / Publishing House: München ;, Wien : : De Gruyter Oldenbourg, , [2016]; ©2016
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (XII, 195 p.)

This book traces the German-Hebrew contact zones in which Gershom Scholem, Werner Kraft and Ludwig Strauss lived and produced their creative work in early twentieth-century Germany and later in British Mandate Palestine after their voluntary or forced migration in the 1920s and 1930s. Set in shifting historical contexts and literary debates – the notion of the German vernacular nation, Hebraism and Jewish Revival in Weimar Germany, the crisis of language in modernist literature, and the fledgling multilingual communities in Jerusalem, the writings of Scholem, Kraft and Strauss emerge as unique forms of counterlanguage. The three chapters of the book are dedicated to Scholem’s Hebraist lamentation, Kraft’s Germanist steadfastness and Strauss’s polyglot dialogue, respectively. The examination of their correspondences, diaries, scholarship and literary oeuvres demonstrates how counteractive writing practices helped confront concrete and metaphorical crises of language to produce compelling alternatives to literary silence, amnesia or paralysis that were prompted by cultural marginality and dislocation.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Table of Contents -- Note on Transliteration -- Abbreviations of Selected Primary Sources -- Introduction -- I. Gershom Scholem: Language between Lamentation and Retaliation -- II. Werner Kraft: “Singing a Lost World” -- III. Ludwig Strauss: Polyglot Dialogue and Parody -- Conclusion: The Eyes and Ears of Language -- Appendices -- Bibliography -- Index