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Writing for the masses: Heinrich Graetz, the popularization of Jewish history, and the reception of National Judaism.
No full textThis dissertation examines the role that Heinrich Graetz played in the popularization of Jewish history. Prior to Graetz, Jewish history had been read by only a small number of scholars and enlighteners. Following the publication of his Geschichte der Juden, and then later his Volksthumliche Geschichte der Juden, Jewish history was promoted for all Jews as a way of strengthening their Jewish consciousness, and his works were considered essential for any Jewish library. Graetz's placement of the Jewish nation at the center of his History, an approach I have called National Judaism, played a crucial role in how his History was received. National Judaism represents an important stage in the development of Jewish nationalism, one that both differed from Zionism, as well as resisted its teleology.The first half of the dissertation explores the process by which Graetz's History became part of the modern Jewish canon. This History , which combined the traditional values of Hokhmat Yisra'el scholars in the Austro-Hungarian Empire with modern German historical methodology, represented a third way in Jewish historiography. With its nation-centered narrative and subjective approach to historical writing, it was bridge for the cultural values of Hokhmat Yisra'el to be presented to Western European Jews. It became the catalyst for prompting Jews to read their own history and for changing the way Jewish history was written, and through its translations into French, English, Russian, Hebrew, and Yiddish, transmitted these values to much of the Jewish world.The second half of the dissertation looks at the particular role played by National Judaism in the reception of Graetz's History among two distinct and often opposing groups: German-Jewish reformers and Zionists. In both cases, the determining factor in their response to Graetz's History was his emphasis on the continuing importance of the Jewish nation. For the reformers, for whom such a national conception was impossible, Graetz was labeled as "Polish," and his History as anti-German. The Zionists, on the other hand, saw in Graetz's National Judaism a forerunner of their own form of Jewish nationalism and claimed both Graetz and his History for Zionism.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 2003.School code: 0031
Station identification: The culture of Yiddish radio in New York, 1923--1947.
No full textThe coincident rise of the radio as a medium of popular culture and the end of large-scale immigration to the United States provides an aperture for examining the processes and practices by which immigrants made sense of America. These immigrants cultivated particular ethnic practices in response to the experience of immigration that framed their new American environment in culturally familiar terms. Primarily an English-speaking medium, broadcast radio brought popular American culture into immigrant homes. However, during the 1920s and 1930s, the evolving structure of American radio included numerous opportunities for immigrant communities to air their own messages in their own languages, to an ethnically, linguistically, and geographically limited population. Alongside its English language counterpart, Yiddish language radio in New York fostered a vibrant popular culture constructed out of conversations among broadcasters and performers who spoke Yiddish, audiences who understood it, sponsors who sought to capitalize on it, and evolving federal agencies that sought to regulate it. The interests of these respective and occasionally overlapping groups shaped the aural culture that enabled Jewish immigrants and their children negotiate their newly American lives in Yiddish and in English. However, language proved only one of the areas in which the culture of Yiddish language radio fostered a vital set of cultural practices. The presence of Yiddish speakers on the air begged questions regarding the relationship between ethnicity and religion for Jewish immigrants, as the nature of Jewish life in America continued to evolve. While opening up a discussion of religion, the highly local appeal of New York's Yiddish language radio created a vibrant circuit of economic and cultural exchange rooted in the city's Jewish immigrant communities. Beneath overt discussions of language, ethnicity, religion, and location lay the larger question regarding the relationship between Jews an America. As intent on Americanization as Jewish immigrants were, what kind of relationship did Yiddish-speaking radio broadcast, and what kinds of practices did its listeners develop in order to negotiate their lives that took shape on both Jewish and American terms?Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 2003.School code: 0146
AHC Interview with Erika Benis.
No full textNovember 24, 2003Erika Benis, née Petyan, was born in Vienna on July 7, 1922. She was shortly affiliated with the Hakoah sports club, and went for 8 years to high school at Realgymnasium 20, in the 2nd Viennese district. She fled from Vienna in September 1938. She travelled via Germany (Aachen and Koeln) to Brussels, after she had illegally crossed the Belgian border. She arrived on 11/10/1939 in the USA. She worked as director at the New York Blood Center and lived in New York.Austrian Heritage Collectio
AHC interview with Joan G. Knisbacher.
No full textJoan G. Knisbacher, 2003Joan G. Knisbacher, née Johanna Glaser, was born in Vienna in 1922. She lived at Josefstrasse 7 in St Poelten, Niederoesterreich (Lower Austria). She went into hiding from 8/8/1942 until April of 1945. After the war she went via Bremen, Germany, to the USA.Austrian Heritage Collectio
Anmerkungen und Hinweise zur Geschichte der ehemaligen juedischen Gemeinde in Grebenau.
No full textNotes on the history of the Jewish community in Grebenau, Hesse (Germany); incl. names of Holocaust victims from Grebenau.Sent for digitizationReturned from digitizationLinked to online manifestationdigitize
AHC interview with Gertrude Wortzman.
No full textGertrude Wortzman was born as Gertrude Frage in Vienna in 1922. Her family home was located in the 2nd district were she lived with her parents and her brother and sister. After the rise of Nazi power Ms. Wortzman was forced to live in the Lenow Ghetto and to do Zwangsarbeit (forced labor) for the German Wehrmacht and was interned in Janowski KZ (until 05/1943), then thrown into prison (01/1944), escaped prison into hiding until beeing freed (06/1944). After returning to Vienna she decided to go to the USA.Austrian Heritage Collectio
One child's lonely passage to freedom 1938-1939
No full textA short memoir that mixes personal experiences with historical facts, e.g. about Kristallnacht and the Kindertransport. Experiences made during Kristallnacht are described, followed by the ride on the Kindertransport, and Mr. Rosenbaum's arrival in Britain. He then describes the effects on him of being separated from his family, his difficulties in adapting to new circumstances in his life, mainly because of him not knowing English. Includes resume which is full of awards and affiliations.digitizedFred M. Rosenbaum was born in Vienna in 1926 under the prewar name Fritz Rosenbaum. He went on a Kindertransport to England in late 1938 where he then stayed with a middle class family in East London. After the war broke out, the family reunited in England, and took a freight ship to the USA. In the US, Mr. Rosenbaum received a BS in Political Science at Portland State University, then went to Law School at Northwestern College. He worked as a life insurance broker, and lives in Portland, Oregon
Seeing and being seen: Urban space and the German public, 1933--1949.
No full textThis dissertation examines the intersection of socio-political and spatial practices during the Nazi and immediate post-war periods in Germany. It asks first, how do we connect acts of legislation removing Jews from the German public to the urban visions articulated in Nazi architecture and city planning, and second, what implications did these Nazi visions have for modern architects imagining how to rebuild Germany's ruined cities immediately after the war? Drawing on architectural plans, accounts in architectural journals, print and film propaganda, period belles lettres, and memoirs, the dissertation reconstructs the ideological underpinnings for both periods' attempts to "redeem" the metropolis.Fantasies about Jewish visibility first articulated in Mein Kampf drove much of the Third Reich's public statements about urban space and allowed the Nazis to instrumentalize the public/private opposition in a manner useful to their own consolidation of power. Focussing on how Nazi propaganda cast the private sphere as "Jewish," the dissertation argues that for the Nazis turning Berlin into a truly "worthy" capital city and eliminating its "Jewishness" meant not only physically removing Jewish bodies, but renegotiating the "place" of private buildings in the city. Yet as internal documents from Albert Speer's office show, these very goals, which defined acceptable limits for the use of commercial elements, often constrained Speer's attempts to create "urban life" for the new Berlin.Following from this insight that Nazi architectural propaganda relentlessly constructs public/private oppositions within its visions for urban space, the dissertation examines those modern architects and planners who explicitly defined themselves in opposition to Nazi architectural practice by embracing the discourse of humanism and recuperating the private realm they saw leveled by Nazism. Using the work of Hannah Arendt, a figure not usually brought to bear on urban questions, particularly her arguments concerning the lingering damage of Nazi totalitarianism on the public sphere, I argue that these architects' wish to dismantle the metropolis and reaffirm the value of private space was, despite their intents, profoundly de-politicizing and thus failed to address an important legacy of Nazism.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Columbia University, 2003.School code: 0054