Publisher Description

The success of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners(1997) and the heated debates that followed its publication exposed once again Germany's long tradition of anti-Semitism as a major cause of the Holocaust. Goldhagen, like many before him, drew a direct and irresistible line from Luther's pamphlets against the Jews to Hitler's attempted annihilation of European Jewry. This collection of new essays examines the thesis of a universal anti-Semitism in Germany by focussing on its greatest author, Goethe, and seeing to what extent some scholars are justified in accusing him of anti-Semitism. It places the reception of Goethe's works in a broader historical context: his relationship to Judaism and the Jews; the reception of his works by the Jewish elite in Germany, the reception of the 'Goethe cult' by Jewish scholars; and the Jewish contribution to Goethe scholarship. The last section of the volume treats the Jewish contribution to Goethe's fame and to Goethe philology since the 19th century, and the exodus of many Jewish authors and scholars after 1933, when they took their beloved Goethe into exile. When a few of them returned to Germany after 1945, it was to a country that had lost Goethe's most devoted audience, the German Jews.

KLAUS L. BERGHAHN and JOST HERMAND are professors of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Table of Contents

Patterns of Childhood: Goethe and the Jews - Klaus L. BerghahnGoethe and the Concept of Bildungin Jewish Emancipation - Ehrhard BahrDemarcations and Projections: Goethe in the Berlin Salons - Barbara HahnA View from Below: H. Heine and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Jost HermandCultural History as Enlightenment: Remarks on Ludwig Geiger's Experiences of Judaism, Philology, and Goethe - Christoph KoenigWaiting for Goethe: Goethe Biographies from Ludwig Geiger to Friedrich Gundolf - Brenda MachoskyWaiting for Goethe: Goethe Biographies from Ludwig Geiger to Friedrich Gundolf - Marcel RotterWaiting for Goethe: Goethe Biographies from Ludwig Geiger to Friedrich Gundolf - Hope HagueFrom the Pedestal to the Couch: Goethe, Freud, and Jewish Assimilation - Robert C. HolubUpholding the Ideals of the "Other Germany": German-Jewish Goethe Scholars in U.S. Exile - Gisela Hoecherl-Alden"Humanitätssalbader": Goethe's Distaste for Jewish Emancipation and Jewish Responses -The Insufficient as Event: Goethe Lesson at the Frankfurt School - Karla L. Schultz

Review

This volume is an essential contribution to the question of the ... much-discussed 'Jewish-German symbiosis. * ETUDES GERMANIQUES *

Review Text

This volume is an essential contribution to the question of the ... much-discussed "Jewish-German symbiosis." ETUDES GERMANIQUES

Review Quote

This volume is an essential contribution to the question of the ... much-discussed "Jewish-German symbiosis." ETUDES GERMANIQUES

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