Germans, Jews and the Claims of Modernity by Jonathan M. Hess (review)

Abstract

860 Reviews it bears witness to the rediscovery of older German texts by seventeenth-century scholars. Such texts were oftencited in that era to bolster cultural-patriotic arguments about the antiquity of German, though the seemingly degenerate German found in them was also seen as proof of its sorry,neglected state. Much, if not most, of this seventeenth-century scholarship is sadly inaccessible, as yet unreached by modern reprints or editions, though an exception noted by Dunphy is Manfred Zimmermann's photographic reprint edition of Goldast's Paraeneticorum veterumpars I (Goppingen: Kiimmerle, 1980). Dunphy's bilingual edition of Opitz's work thus makes a useful contribution to studies of the seventeenth-century reception of Old and Middle High German texts, for it provides the firstannotated edition of Opitz's commentary on the Annolied, complete with translation. Importantly, Dunphy offers the Opitz Annolied in its original context, complete with dedication, prologue, and notes. His facing-page English translations of both Opitz's Latin and the Middle High German read well. In translations of Opitz's notes, though, it is not clear which language is being translated. For example, the reader of Dunphy's 'Scunnered, wearied' on page 141 has no way of knowing without cross-checking that Opitz glosses bidroz in twolanguages: verdrosz, taedebat. Dunphy adds useful explanatory notes of his own at the back ofthe book, both on the Annolied and on Opitz's commentary, though the reader of the text/translation is given no indication of when there will be a note. Some of the facing-page translations of Opitz's annotations also give additional comments or glosses by Dunphy in square brackets, so that it can be difficultto know when and where to look foran explanation. The Annolied translation itself appears in numbered verse lines (following the two distinct systems used by Nellmann and Roediger in their editions): this is useful, even if it ends up looking more like a translation of someone else's edition than of Opitz's (which Opitz printed in numbered 'chapters' of prose). Still, this is a matter of taste. Dunphy's introduction assumes little or no background knowledge. He devotes as much attention to an overview of the life of Bishop Anno (pp. 1-7) as to the Annolied itself (pp. 7-12), and provides general background on Opitz's life and works (pp. 1219 ), before dealing with the edition itself (pp. 19-25). Although this background is useful, seventeenth-century specialists may find the discussion of Opitz's life and works rather cursory and lacking reference to scholarship on the wider context of early modern cultural patriotism. Ideally, Dunphy would have gone the extra mile and supplied the full references to the sources cited by Opitz, rather than merely translating them, incomplete as they are (though he lists the authorities used by Opitz, pp. 160-61). Still, this would have increased the scope ofthe task considerably. For now, at least, we can be most grateful that Dunphy has made thefull Opitz edition readily accessible. University of Nottingham Nicola McLelland Germans, Jews and the Claims ofModernity. By Jonathan M. Hess. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2002. xii +258 pp. ?25. ISBN 0-300-09701-8. Jonathan Hess's book Germans, Jews and the Claims ofModernity is an important in? tervention in debates about Jewish-German relations in the late eighteenth century. In approaching this key period, which marks the onset of Jewish emancipation in the German lands and the rise of both modern German and modern Jewish culture and society, Hess introduces a genuinely new perspective. Past studies have tended to focus on the mostly positive impact ofthe Enlightenment and its vision of modernity, the emergence, forinstance, of a neutral or semi-neutral society and the promotionof ideals of tolerance, which in such approaches were undermined only by the ensuing MLR, 100.3, 2??5 861 Romantic-nationalist backlash. At the same time, Hess notes the opposed view, pre? sented by such sophisticated students of the period as Arthur Hertzberg and, from a differentperspective, the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, or far more simplistically and less convincingly by figures like Paul Lawrence Rose and Daniel Goldhagen, all of whom trace the sources...