Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany

Jay Howard Geller is Samuel Rosenthal Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.  He is the author of The Scholems: A Story of the German-Jewish Bourgeoisie from Emancipation to Destruction (Cornell University Press, 2019) and Jews in Post-Holocaust Germany, 1945-1953 (Cambridge University Press, 2005), as well as co-editor Three-Way Street: Jews, Germans, and the Transnational (University of Michigan Press, 2016).Michael Meng is Associate Professor of History at Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina. He is the author of Shattered Spaces: Encountering Jewish Ruins in Postwar Germany and Poland (Harvard University Press, 2011) and co-editor of Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland (Indiana University Press 2015) and co-editor of Modern Germany in Transatlantic Perspective (Berghahn Books, 2017), among other publications on modern European intellectual and cultural history.

"An original and important book." - Guy Miron "A most welcome addition to the field, Rebuilding Jewish Life in Germany expands on the existing literature in crucial ways, allowing us to understand better the communal affairs, ideological proclivities, and identity politics of Jews in both Germanies after 1945." - Anthony D. Kauders (author of Democratization and the Jews: Munich 1945-1965) "If Jews are the canaries in the coalmine of German democracy, then this book chronicles the strength of their song. Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, these essays lay bare the trauma, conflicts, and remarkable resilience of Germany’s Jews. They are a must-read for anyone interested in the health of German democracy and its Jewish community." - Jonathan R. Zatlin (author of The Currency of Socialism: Money and Political Culture in East Germany) "The academic prose is readable in this well-edited collection, and authors work to clarify the sometimes confusing cultural and political aspects of the communities and literary productions they study. This makes several chapters particularly suitable for undergraduate reading, inviting junior scholars to investigate the field further. Recommended." (Choice) "Provides important contributions to studies of post-1949 German Jewry in two key arenas: its chronological focus, which incorporates the 1990s and 2000s within the scope of postwar history, and its embrace of multiple academic disciplines, including literature studies, film and television studies, sociology, and history." (Central European History) "The editors rightly advocate to overcome the national perspective in the presentation of European-Jewish history and to replace it with a transnational comparative approach." (Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft)

• Contents  Introduction  Jay Howard Geller and Michael Meng  Chapter 1: The Politics of Jewish Representation in Early West Germany  Jay Howard Geller  Chapter 2: We have the right to exist here: Jewish Politics and the Challenges of Wiedergutmachung in Post-Holocaust Germany  Andrea A. Sinn  Chapter 3: Bernhard Brilling and the Reconstruction of Jewish Archives in Postwar Germany  Jason Lustig  Chapter 4: Whose Heritage?: Early Postwar German-Jewish History as Remigrants’ History-The Case of Hamburg  Miriam RÜrup  Chapter 5: Migration, Memory and New Beginnings: The Postwar Jewish Community in Frankfurt am Main  Tobias FreimÜller  Chapter 6: Helmut Eschwege and Jewish Life in the German Democratic Republic  Alexander Walther  Chapter 7: Learning Years on the Path to Dissidence: Stefan Heym’s Friendship with Robert Havemann and Wolf Biermann  Cathy S. Gelbin  Chapter 8: Ernst Bloch’s Eschatological Marxism  Michael Meng  Chapter 9: Diasporic Place-Making in Barbara Honigmann  Katja Garloff  Chapter 10: Tur Tur’s Lantern on a Tiny Island: New Historiographical Perspectives on East German Jewish History  Constantin Goschler  Chapter 11: Community Responses to the Immigration of Russian-Speaking Jews to Germany, 1990–2006  Joseph Cronin  Chapter 12: Policing the East: The New Jewish Hero in Dominik Graf’s Crime Drama Im Angesicht des Verbrechens  Jill Suzanne SmithChapter 13: “You are my liberty:” On the Negotiation of Holocaust and Other Memories for Israelis in BerlinIrit Dekel  Epilogue  Jay Howard Geller and Michael Meng