Catastrophe and Utopia : : Jewish Intellectuals in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s / / ed. by Ferenc Laczo, Joachim von Puttkamer.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2018 Part 1
• MitwirkendeR: Gantner, Eszter,; Koeltzsch, Ines,; Laczó, Ferenc,; Lazaroms, Ilse Josepha,; Quinkenstein, Małgorzata,; Royer, Clara,; Scheibner, Tamás,; Schein, Gábor,; Szymaniak, Karolina,; Vulesica, Marija,; Waldman, Felicia,
• HerausgeberIn: Laczo, Ferenc,; von Puttkamer, Joachim,
• Place / Publishing House: München ;, Wien : : De Gruyter Oldenbourg, , [2017]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: Europas Osten im 20. Jahrhundert : Schriften des Imre Kertész Kollegs Jena , 7
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (VIII, 355 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Foreword -- Table of contents -- Introduction -- Part I: The Rupture of 1933 and New Expressions of Jewishness in the Age of Nazi Germany -- Utopia as Everyday Practice -- ‘What Will Become of the German Jews?’ -- ‘Jewishness’ in the Diary of Milán Füst -- Part II: Modernity and the Search for Identity -- The New Type of Internationalist -- ‘Europe’ – It’s such a strange word for me! -- Part III: Unprecedented Catastrophe and Lines of Discursive Continuity -- A Liberal Utopia Againt All Odds -- From European Fascism to the Fate of the Jews -- Across the Rupture -- Part IV: From Utopias to Post-war Trajectories -- 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