German-Jewish aphorists depict the self-understanding of German Jews in all its contradictory diversity, from Western Jewish liberalism to orthodoxy, from solidarity to demarcation, from straightforward assimilation to Zionism and Jewish-Israeli national consciousness. The biographical character in question portrays a tense and grievously experienced duality. The phenomenon concerning the reflection from the outside ought not to be neglected. As far as implication is concerned, aphorism is undoubtedly "not a Jewish invention" (Kunert). Nevertheless, many constitutive elements of the genre encounter a specific disposition: introspection, which feeds off the aggression of its surroundings, the provocative wit of the one who believes himself to have been deemed an outsider, scepticism and disillusionism, paradox and dialectics, as well as the relationship to writing and language.
