Relating the Holocaust to poetic and aesthetic phenomena has often been considered taboo, as only authentic testimony, documents, or at least ‘unliterary’, prosaic approaches were seen as appropriate. However, from the very beginning of Holocaust literature and culture, there were tendencies towards literarization, poetization, and ornamentalization. Nowadays, aesthetic approaches—also in provocative, taboo-breaking ways—are more and more frequently encountered and seen as important ways to evoke the attention required to keep the cataclysm alive in popular memory. The essays in this volume use examples predominantly from Polish, Czech, and German Holocaust literature and culture to discuss this controversial subject. Topics include the poetry of concentration camp detainees, lyrical poetry about the Holocaust, poetic tendencies in narrative literature and drama, ornamental prose about the Holocaust, and the devices and functions of aestheticization in Holocaust literature and culture.

The work presented in the volume in fields of the humanities and social sciences is based on 1) the notion of the existence and the "describability" and analysis of a culture (including, e.g., history, literature, society, the arts, etc.) specific of/to the region designated as Central Europe, 2) the relevance of a field designated as Central European Holocaust studies, and 3) the relevance, in the study of culture, of the "comparative" and "contextual" approach designated as "comparative cultural studies." Papers in the volume are by scholars working in Holocaust Studies in Australia, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Serbia, the United Kingdom, and the US.

Even seventy-five years after the end of World War II, the commemorative cultures surrounding the War and the Holocaust in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe are anything but fixed. The fierce debates on how to deal with the past among the newly constituted nation states in these regions have already received much attention by scholars in cultural and memory studies. The present volume posits that literature as a medium can help us understand the shifting attitudes towards World War II and the Holocaust in post-Communist Europe in recent years. These shifts point to new commemorative cultures shaping up ‘after memory’. Contemporary literary representations of World War II and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe do not merely extend or replace older practices of remembrance and testimony, but reflect on these now defunct or superseded narratives. New narratives of remembrance are conditioned by a fundamentally new social and political context, one that emerged from the devaluation of socialist commemorative rituals and as a response to the loss of private and family memory narratives. The volume offers insights into the diverse literatures of Eastern Europe and their ways of depicting the area’s contested heritage.

Jewish life in Europe has undergone dramatic changes and transformations within the 20th century and also the last two decades. The phenomenon of the dual position of the Jewish minority in relation to the majority, not entirely unusual for Jewish Diaspora communities, manifested itself most distinctly on the European continent. This unique Jewish experience of the ambiguous position of insider and outsider may provide valuable views on contemporary European reality and identity crisis. The book focuses inter alia on the main common denominators of contemporary Jewish life in Central Europe, such as an intense confrontation with the heritage of the Holocaust and unrelenting antisemitism on the one hand and on the other hand, huge appreciation of traditional Jewish learning and culture by a considerable part of non-Jewish Europeans. The volume includes contributions on Jewish life in central European countries like Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Austria, and Germany.

The volume offers an overview of the diverse Jewish experiences in Southeastern Europe from the 19th to the 21st centuries, and the various forms and strategies of their representation in literature, the arts, historiography and philosophy. Southeastern Europe is characterized by a high degree of ethnical, religious and cultural diversity. Jews, whether Sephardim, Ashkenazim or Romaniots – settling there in different periods – experienced divergent life worlds which engendered rich cultural production. Though recent scholarly and popular interest in this heterogeneous region has grown impressively, Jewish cultural production is still an under-researched area. The volume offers an overview of the diverse Jewish experiences in Southeastern Europe from the 19th to the 21st centuries, and the various forms and strategies of their representation in literature, the arts, historiography and philosophy, thus creating a dialogue between Jewish studies, Balkan studies, and current literary and cultural theories.

Edited volume tracing the development of a new generation of German Jewish writers, offering fresh interpretations of individual works, and probing the very concept of "German Jewish literature."

Even seventy-five years after the end of World War II, the commemorative cultures surrounding the War and the Holocaust in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe are anything but fixed. The fierce debates on how to deal with the past among the newly constituted nation states in these regions have already received much attention by scholars in cultural and memory studies. The present volume posits that literature as a medium can help us understand the shifting attitudes towards World War II and the Holocaust in post-Communist Europe in recent years. These shifts point to new commemorative cultures shaping up ‘after memory’. Contemporary literary representations of World War II and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe do not merely extend or replace older practices of remembrance and testimony, but reflect on these now defunct or superseded narratives. New narratives of remembrance are conditioned by a fundamentally new social and political context, one that emerged from the devaluation of socialist commemorative rituals and as a response to the loss of private and family memory narratives. The volume offers insights into the diverse literatures of Eastern Europe and their ways of depicting the area’s contested heritage.

This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Between Religion and Ethnicity: Twentieth-Century Jewish Émigrés and the Shaping of Postwar Culture" that was published in Religions

Zitovás literary analysis starts at the interface of Czech and German literature in the first half of the twentieth century. Thomas Mann's novel Joseph and His Brothers is set in comparative relation to Ivan Olbracht's prose texts Nikola ?uhaj loupe?ník and Golet v údolí. Olbracht translated three volumes of Mann's Joseph's tetralogy parallel to the composition of his own prose works. Zitová examines the influence of Olbracht's translation work on his own work. Zitovás literaturwissenschaftliche Analyse setzt an einer Schnittstelle der tschechischen und deutschen Literatur in der ersten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts an. Thomas Manns Roman Joseph und seine Brüder wird vergleichend in Beziehung gesetzt zu Ivan Olbrachts in den dreißiger Jahren entstandenen Prosatexten Nikola ?uhaj loupe?ník und Golet v údolí. Olbracht übersetzte parallel zur Abfassung seiner Prosawerke insgesamt drei Bände aus Manns umfangreicher Josephs-Tetralogie. Diese Übersetzertätigkeit blieb, wie Zitová aufzeigt, nicht ohne Einfluss auf sein eigenes Schaffen. Das Buch knüpft an eine von Jirí Opelík geschriebene Studie Olbrachts reife Schaffensperiode sub specie seiner Übersetzungen aus Thomas Mann und Lion Feuchtwanger (1967) an, in der dieser tschechische Literaturwissenschaftler das Thema eröffnete. Mit Zitovás Tiefenanalyse schließt sich diese germanobohemistische Forschungslücke.