ЄВРЕЇ ТА ЄВРЕЙСЬКА КУЛЬТУРА СХІДНОЇ ГАЛИЧИНИ ТА ВЕЛИКОЇ УКРАЇНИ В НІМЕЦЬКОМОВНИХ ПУТІВНИКАХ КІНЦЯ ХІХ – ПЕРШОЇ ПОЛОВИНИ ХХ ст.

Abstract

The article deals with travel guides in German language about current territory of Ukraine at the end of 19th – first half of 20th centuries. It is noted that they represent quite a small group of literary sources. Major part of their content is reference information about geography, history, specific features of daily life and household traditions of one region or another, but major function is imposing of normative perception of foreign, alien culture. The most well-known are those, which were issued by publishing house “Baedeker”, as well as those, published in the times of Austrian-Hungarian monarchy. The author analyses image of Jews as ethnic community in the regions of Eastern Galicia and so-called Great Ukraine before the First World War, in the interwar period and during the Second World War. It is emphasized that thorough consideration of image of the Jews through prism of travel guides during dramatic and tragic events of the end of XIX – the first half of XX centuries may open to the readers of the XXI century new perspectives in understanding of such socio-political phenomena, as a state policy towards ethnic minorities; collective auto- and hetero-stereotypes; dynamics of antisemitism from common level of everyday life to discrimination and extermination of Jews. Moreover, travel guides contain various materials for analysis of issues, related to cultural transfer, models of journeys, attractiveness of certain destinations and objects of cultural and historical heritage at the territory of regions, which for centuries were known by coexistence of various ethnic groups and frequent changes of borders. Necessity of usage of interdisciplinary approach was an additional stimulus for research on the subject under consideration. The author stressed that the book of Franz Obermeyer “Ukraine. Land der schwarzen Erde”, as well as the travel guide by Baedeker, 1943, and the travel guide for Kyiv, 1942, were instruments of the criminal Nazi-Propaganda, contrary to publications during Austrian-Hungarian monarchy, which to certain measure can be considered as a source of knowledge about inter-cultural communications and tolerance. But in both cases the character of these books depended on a political and ideological conjuncture. While in the books, published before the WWI, the image of a Jew was presented mainly from the ethnographic perspective, but in Nazi publications during WWII it was transformed into the image of an enemy. But the authors avoided usage of formulations like “judo-bolshevism” or “worldwide Jewish conspiracy”. Most likely, the traditional format of a travel guide as an instrument of inter-cultural communication limited its actual transformation into a primitive racial or anti-Semitic propaganda. Certain attention in the article is given to the soviet travel guides, edited by Alexander Rado and published by All-Union Society of Cultural Relations in the 1920-ies, which were and are still little known.