Melancholy Pride : : Nation, Race, and Gender in the German Literature of Cultural Zionism / / Mark H. Gelber.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Gelber, Mark H.,
• Place / Publishing House: Tübingen : : Max Niemeyer Verlag, , [2014]; ©2000
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Edition: Reprint 2014
• Language: English
• Series: Conditio Judaica : Studien und Quellen zur deutsch-jüdischen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte , 23
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (309 p.)

This study attempts to analyze the multi-faceted and complicated relationship between the Central European, Germanic-Austrian cultural milieu and the Jewish national literature and culture which evolved within it at the turn of the last century. Issues regarding the construction and differentiation of a modern Jewish national identity and culture as an aspect of Cultural Zionism are central to this project, as are the problematical literary and cultural partnerships forged in an age of rising racialist thought, growing feminist consciousness, and increasing secularism.

This study focuses on the emergence of a modern Jewish national literature and culture within the parameters of Zionism in Vienna and Berlin at the turn of the last century. Prominent figures associated with early modern Zionism, including Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, and Martin Buber, were also writers and literary or cultural icons within the Central European, Germanic-Austrian cultural environment of the fin-de-siècle. More important, Cultural Zionism promoted young Jewish literary and artistic talent as part of its ideology of a modern Jewish Renaissance. A corpus of German-language Jewish-national poetry and literature, as well as mechanisms for its dissemination and reception, developed rapidly. Most of this literary and cultural production has been forgotten or suppressed. Productive, if often unlikely, partnerships between Jewish national poets and artists and Central European cultural figures and movements were forged in this context. Facets of Central European cultural life, which were somewhat oppositional to traditional Jewish culture were received, absorbed, or transformed within Cultural Zionism. For example, the relationship of German racialist thought and German-nationalist fraternity life to early Jewish-national expression is a largely unknown chapter of early Jewish-national cultural history. The same can be said for the impact of feminist, counter-culture, and bohemian circles in Berlin on Cultural Zionist personalities and their work.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- List of Illustrations -- Introduction. The Parameters of German Cultural Zionism: The Possibility of a Jewish-National Literature in German? -- Chapter One. The Jewish Renaissance in Vienna and Berlin: A Literature and Art for the Sake of Zion -- Chapter Two. Satisfaktionsfähigkeit and Jewish Pride: The Literary and Cultural Expressions of Jewish Students and Fraternity Life at the Turn-of-the-Century -- Chapter Three. Börries von Münchhausen and E.M. Lilien: The Genesis of Juda and its Zionist Reception -- Chapter Four. The Rhetoric of Race and Jewish-National Cultural Politics: From Birnbaum and Buber to Brieger’s René Richter -- Chapter Five. Feminist-Zionist Expression: Ideology, Rhetoric, and Literature -- Chapter Six. Eroticism and Masochism in Cultural Zionism: Else Lasker-Schiiler and Dolorosa -- Chapter Seven. “Strangers at Thy Gates”: Anti-Semitism, Philo-Zionism, and the Role of Non-Jews in Jewish-National Culture275 -- Conclusion. German Cultural Zionism, Jewish Difference, Modern Jewish Cultural Identity and National Creativity -- Selected Bibliography -- Index