Details

Abstract / Summary

The modern German-Jewish experience through the rise of Nazism in 1933 was characterized by an explosion of cultural and intellectual creativity. Yet well after that history has ended, the influence of Weimar German-Jewish intellectuals has become ever greater. Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Franz Rosenzweig, and Leo Strauss have become household names and possess a continuing resonance. Beyond the Border seeks to explain this phenomenon and analyze how the German-Jewish legacy has continuingly permeated wider modes of Western thought and sensibility, and why these émigrés occupy an increasingly iconic place in contemporary society. Steven Aschheim traces the odyssey of a fascinating group of German-speaking Zionists--among them Martin Buber and Hans Kohn--who recognized the moral dilemmas of Jewish settlement in pre-Israel Palestine and sought a binationalist solution to the Arab-Israel conflict. He explores how German-Jewish émigré historians like Fritz Stern and George Mosse created a new kind of cultural history written against the background of their exile from Nazi Germany and in implicit tension with postwar German social historians. And finally, he examines the reasons behind the remarkable contemporary canonization of these Weimar intellectuals--from Arendt to Strauss--within Western academic and cultural life. Beyond the Border is about more than the physical act of departure. It also points to the pioneering ways these émigrés questioned normative cognitive boundaries and have continued to play a vital role in addressing the predicaments that engage and perplex us today.

Field of Interest

Global Issues

Author

Steven E. Aschheim, 1942-

Copyright Message

Copyright © 2007 by Princeton University Press

Content Type

Book

Warning: Contains explicit content

No

Format

Text

Page Count

209

Publication Year

2007

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Place Published / Released

Princeton, NJ

Subject

Global Issues, World History, Social Sciences, History, Individual and Groups Rights, Religion and Belief Systems, Migration and Diaspora, Borders and Identity, Germany and its Borders, Cultural identity, Immigration and emigration, Holocaust, 1939-1945, World War II, 1939-1945, Politics & Policy, Sociology, Direitos Individuais e de Grupo, Derechos del Individuo y de Grupos, Religião e Sistemas de Crença, Religión y Sistemas de Creencias, Migración y Diáspora, Migração e Diáspora, Israel-Palestina, Alemania, Alemanha, Deutschland, Israel-Palestine, Germany, Germans, Jews, Israelis, Jewish Americans, 21st Century in World History (2001– ), 20th Century in World History (1914--2000)

Keywords and Translated Subjects

Direitos Individuais e de Grupo, Derechos del Individuo y de Grupos, Religião e Sistemas de Crença, Religión y Sistemas de Creencias, Migración y Diáspora, Migração e Diáspora, Israel-Palestina, Alemania, Alemanha, Deutschland