Between Redemption and Doom: The Strains of German-Jewish Modernism (review)

Abstract

Between Redemption and Doom: The Strains of German-Jewish ModernismNoah Isenberg, an assistant professor at Wesleyan University, has written an important and insightful book on German-Jewish modernism between the eve of the First World War and the rise of National Socialism. Between Redemption and Doom consists of four outstanding case studies which analyze works of literature, memoir, art, photography, and film by Franz Kafka, Arnold Zweig, Paul Wegener, and Walter Benjamin. Isenberg examines each author's attempts to balance European modernity and community. At the same time, he wisely eschews conventional approaches that fixate on negative representations of Jewish identity in pre-Shoah German (and less so Austrian) culture.Between Redemption and Doom shifts with poise from theory to cultural history to close readings. The study proceeds by utilizing Ferdinand Tonnies's distinction between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society) to map out early twentieth-century discourses of German-Jewish identity. Whereas the rich textual legacy of German-speaking Jewry has too frequently been discussed solely in aesthetic terms, it is in fact a body of work with social and political dimensions which oscillate between poles of redemption and doom. Related are the poles of conflict (e.g., assimilationism or self-hatred) and symbiosis (e.g., multiple identities, social and personal integration).German-speaking Jews were doubtless (con)strained in producing a distinctive modernism in which Jewishness would play more than a marginal role. (More comparison with other modernisms might have been helpful for situating the discussion among recent debates.) But the modernist's will to autonomous creation was often marked by psycho-social transferences which arose out of her/his sociological life-world. Isenberg demonstrates this dialectical relationship well, particularly in the persuasive chapters on Kafka and Benjamin.Both writers oppose some form of prelapsarian aura to presentist shocks. Yet more than Kafka, Benjamin promotes a messianic radicalism, albeit one which swings precipitously between historical (Marxian) materialism and kabbalistic Geist. The activation of collective memory (Eingedenken) involves a flash of insight into history which then quantum-leaps back to the future. Hence, in George Steiner's characterization of Benjamin as a remembrancer, one hears shades of necromancer. …