Making German Jewish Literature Anew

Katja Garloff

Description

In Making German Jewish Literature Anew, Katja Garloff traces the emergence of a new Jewish literature in Germany and Austria from 1990 to the present. The rise of new generations of authors who identify as both German and Jewish, and who often sustain additional affiliations with places such as France, Russia, or Israel, affords a unique opportunity to analyze the foundational moments of diasporic literature. Making German Jewish Literature Anew is structured around a series of founding gestures: performing authorship, remaking memory, and claiming places. Garloff contends that these founding gestures are literary strategies that reestablish the very possibility of a German Jewish literature several decades after the Holocaust.

Making German Jewish Literature Anew offers fresh interpretations of second-generation authors such as Maxim Biller, Doron Rabinovici, and Barbara Honigmann as well as of third-generation authors, many of whom come from Eastern European and/or mixed-religion backgrounds. These more recent writers include Benjamin Stein, Lena Gorelik, and Katja Petrowskaja. Throughout the book, Garloff asks what exactly marks a given text as Jewish—the author's identity, intended audience, thematic concerns, or stylistic choices—and reflects on existing definitions of Jewish literature.

Introduction
Part I: Performing Authorship
1. Authorial Self-Fashioning in Second-Generation Writers: Maxim Biller, Esther Dischereit, and Barbara Honigmann
2. Playing with Paratext: Benjamin Stein's Die Leinwand
Part II: Remaking Memory
3. Memory and Mobility: The Novels of Doron Rabinovici
4. Memory and Similarity: Katja Petrowskaja's Vielleicht Esther
Part III: Claiming Places
5. Returning: Diasporic Place-Making in Barbara Honigmann
6. Transitioning: Migration Narratives in Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich
7. Arriving: Arrival Stories in Lena Gorelik, Dmitrij Kapitelman, and Jan Himmelfarb
Conclusion
Notes
Index

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Jewish
• Germán
• Jews
• German
• European

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 06 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253063748
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

GERMAN JEWISH CULTURES
Editorial Board:
Matthew Handelman, Michigan State University
Iris Idelson-Shein, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Samuel Spinner, Johns Hopkins University
Joshua Teplitsky, Stony Brook University
Kerry Wallach, Gettysburg College
Sponsored by the Leo Baeck Institute London

This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2022 by Katja Garloff
Cover image: Lynne Avadenka, Sudden Heart from Dan Pagis: Six Poems (2007)
Photo credit: R. H. Hensleigh
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-06371-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-253-06372-4 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06373-1 (e-book)
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I Performing Authorship
1 Authorial Self-Fashioning in Second-Generation Writers: Maxim Biller, Esther Dischereit, and Barbara Honigmann
2 Playing with Paratext: Benjamin Stein s Die Leinwand
Part II Remaking Memory
3 Memory and Mobility: The Novels of Doron Rabinovici
4 Memory and Similarity: Katja Petrowskaja s Vielleicht Esther
Part III Claiming Places
5 Returning: Diasporic Place-Making in Barbara Honigmann
6 Transitioning: Migration Narratives in Vladimir Vertlib and Julya Rabinowich
7 Arriving: Arrival Stories in Lena Gorelik, Dmitrij Kapitelman, and Jan Himmelfarb
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T HIS BOOK WAS BORN OUT OF THE SPIRIT of collaboration. It began with a seminar, titled German Jewish Literature after 1945: Working through and beyond the Holocaust, that Helen Finch, Erin McGlothlin, Agnes Mueller, and myself organized at the 2014 German Studies Association Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. After three days of spirited discussions, we were still debating whether and how the years 1989-91 marked a caesura in the development of German Jewish literature after the Holocaust. There was no doubt that postreunification Germany was seeing a wave-in fact, several waves-of literary publications by self-identified Jewish authors, and that there was much that was novel and exciting about their writing. The time seemed to have arrived for taking stock and reflecting more deeply on this new German Jewish literature.
In the years after that first seminar, the discussion continued in panels and seminars at the GSA and the Association for Jewish Studies Conferences and the biennial Workshop in German Jewish Studies at Duke University and Notre Dame University. A volume of essays I coedited- German Jewish Literature after 1990 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018)-was one of the tangible results of this ongoing conversation. My deepest thanks are due to all who participated in it: to the coeditor of the book, Agnes Mueller; to its contributors, Luisa Banki, Caspar Bettegay, Helen Finch, Elizabeth Loentz, Andree Michaelis-K nig, Jessica Ortner, Jonathan Skolnik, and Stuart Taberner; to the editors of the series in which it appeared, Erin McGlothlin and Brad Prager; and to other panelists and respondents who added valuable insights, including Sarah Horowitz, Michael Levine, Leslie Morris, Anna Parkinson, Leo Riegert, Rebekah Slodounik, Corey Twitchell, and Sebastian Wogenstein. Without the inspiration of this network of scholars who simultaneously and enthusiastically turned their attention to contemporary German Jewish literature, I would never have attempted to write this book. The project also benefitted from the ideas and comments of other colleagues and interlocutors in German Jewish studies and related fields, including Leslie Adelson, William Donahue, Helga Druxes, Stefani Engelstein, Abigail Gillman, Sander Gilman, Jeffrey Grossman, Martha Helfer, Paul Reitter, Maria Roca Lizarazu, Sven-Erik Rose, and Scott Spector. Sadly, my longtime friend and mentor Jonathan Hess, a towering presence in German Jewish studies, passed away much too early in 2018. We are still mourning the loss of this brilliant scholar, beloved colleague, and genuine Mensch.
At a crucial juncture of this project, I became the lucky recipient of a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies and a research grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), which allowed me to spend the year of 2018-19 in Germany. I would like to thank all the people who made that stay possible, productive, and thoroughly enjoyable: Doerte Bischoff (University of Hamburg) and Kerstin Schoor (European University Viadrina Frankfurt, Oder) sponsored my DAAD application, invited me to lectures, and gave me access to the resources of their institutions. During the year, I also received speaking invitations from Irmela Marei Kr ger-F rhoff (Free University of Berlin), Robert Gillett and Godela Weiss-Sussex (University of London), and Ruth von Bernuth and Eric Downing (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). I fondly remember the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg, where I gave a talk and attended several others, as a site of lively debate about German Jewish culture and history. It was there, as well as at a few other Berlin institutions, that I first met several contemporary scholars who gave fresh impulses to this project, including Yael Almog, Micha Brumlik, Max Czollek, and Yael Kupferberg. Throughout my time in Berlin, I cherished the intellectual conversations with my dear friends Eva Lezzi, Dagmar Deuring, Cornelia Manikowsky, Andree Michaelis-K nig, and Christoph Schulte.
Back in Portland, Reed College provided the stimulating and supportive environment I needed to finish this book. My departmental colleagues past and present-Jake Fraser, lker G kberk, and Jan Mieszkowski-have long modeled exciting interdisciplinary approaches to German studies. I take much inspiration from other Reed friends and (current and former) colleagues-including Diego Alonso, Michael Breen, Ann Delehanty, Jacqueline Dirks, Elizabeth Duquettte, Ariadna Garc a-Bryce, Marat Grinberg, Jing Jiang, Dana Katz, Laura Arnold Leibman, Mary Ashburn Miller, Geraldine Ondrizek, Paul Silverstein, Steven Wasserstrom, and Catherine Witt-who manage to combine original scholarly or artistic work with an unwavering commitment to teaching. I would also like to thank my students at Reed, who continue to inspire me with their curiosity, hard work, and intellectual courage. One of these students, Nathan Modlin, assisted me in the final phase of manuscript preparation by drafting translations and checking the bibliography. The Dean s Office of Reed College generously funded his work as well as several research trips I undertook to Germany.
I would like to express my appreciation to everyone who helped turn the manuscript into an actual book: to Kerry Wallach, who invited me to submit the manuscript for consideration in the German Jewish Cultures series, to the staff at Indiana University Press, including Gary Dunham, Carol McGillivray, and Laura Larsen, who made editing and publication a smooth, efficient, and enjoyable process. I am especially grateful to Lynne Avadenka, who gave me permission to use her lithograph Sudden Heart as the cover image for this book. Sudden Heart is part of a series of collages which the artist created from maps included in a 1910 Baedeker Guide to Southern Germany, in response to the poetry of Dan Pagis.
Finally, heartfelt thanks to my family, both in Germany and the United States. My parents, my siblings, and their partners and children are a constant reminder of how family ties and love can flourish over geographical distance. My greatest debts are to my husband, Asher Klatchko, and our son, Yona. Having lived through a family tragedy, they know more than most people about the importance of new beginnings. I marvel every day at their resilience, their spiritedness, and their creativity. This book is for them.
Earlier versions of the following chapters of this book have been previously published: Chapter 1 in German Jewish Literature after 1990 , ed. Katja Garloff and Agnes Mueller (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018); Chapter 2 in Persistent Legacy: The Holocaust and German Studies , ed. Erin McGlothlin and Jennifer M. Kapczinski (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2016); Chapter 5 in Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany , ed. Jay Howard Geller and Michael Meng (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020). I would like to thank the publishers for permission to reprint this material.
Throughout this book, I use published English translations whenever possible. All other translations are mine.

INTRODUCTION

There are a number of drawers I can be put in and taken out of at will. For example, in one review I was referred to as a Russian living in Austria, which is valid, even if it is not the entire truth. Additionally, I was a Russian writer, an Israeli living in Germany, a Jewish-German writer of Russian descent, an Austrian Russian, a German Jew, and even a Hebrew author, although I can just barely formulate a couple of pleasantries in that language. 1
Vladimir Vertlib
Thus, in a public lecture, Vladimir Vertlib, who was born in Russia to Jewish parents, resides in Austria, and writes in German, characterizes the reception of his literary work. The lengthy list of descriptors in this passage reminds us that in their efforts to label the author, critics easily confuse aspects of national, cultural, linguistic, and religious be