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This book explores in a comparative approach the astounding medial variety and intermedial interleaving of cultural engagements with the subject of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple by the Romans in nineteenth-century Germany. Its main argument is that the pervasive discursive presence of the historical occurrence constitutes a significant but so far largely neglected arena for the negotiation of shifting German and Jewish imaginaries in which both German and Jewish creative minds engaged. Interpreted as pivotal not only for the progression of the history of salvation but also of universal history and responding to such decisive socio-cultural and political developments as the Kulturkampf and the rise of nationalism and antisemitism, the profusion of cultural engagements with the subject reveals its frequently contradictory polyvalence in the tense atmosphere of national unification, the negotiation of religious and national identities, and the positioning of the Jewish other; but also as a vehicle of Jewish self-definition and self-assertion in a period of proliferating antisemitism. The book addresses a broad readership of scholars of the culture of the nineteenth century, of intermediality, and of antisemitism.
About the author
Axel Stähler, University of Bern, Switzerland.
Summary
This book explores in a comparative approach the astounding medial variety and intermedial interleaving of cultural engagements with the subject of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple by the Romans in nineteenth-century Germany. Its main argument is that the pervasive discursive presence of the historical occurrence constitutes a significant but so far largely neglected arena for the negotiation of shifting German and Jewish imaginaries in which both German and Jewish creative minds engaged. Interpreted as pivotal not only for the progression of the history of salvation but also of universal history and responding to such decisive socio-cultural and political developments as the Kulturkampf and the rise of nationalism and antisemitism, the profusion of cultural engagements with the subject reveals its frequently contradictory polyvalence in the tense atmosphere of national unification, the negotiation of religious and national identities, and the positioning of the Jewish other; but also as a vehicle of Jewish self-definition and self-assertion in a period of proliferating antisemitism. The book addresses a broad readership of scholars of the culture of the nineteenth century, of intermediality, and of antisemitism.
Report
"This magisterial study links the development of cultural attitudes in 19th-century Germany to shifting trends in German and Jewish imaginaries of the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in the first century. It is, to say the least, an extremely ambitious and worthy project. The use of the destruction of Jerusalem so brilliantly interwoven by Stähler is a quintessential example of how a past event plays an outsize role in configuring the position of the Jews in a foreign environment. (...) Stähler's project is a tour de force that will be important to scholars in modern European cultural production." - Jacob Lassner, Phillip M. and Ethel Klutznick Professor Emeritus of Jewish Civilization in the departments of History and Religion of Northwestern University, USA.
