Meditations on Jewish Creative Identity: Representations of the Jewish Artist in the Works of German-Jewish Writers from Heine to Feuchtwanger (review)

Abstract

Meditations on Creative Identity: Representations of Artist in Works of German-Jewish Writers from Heine to Feuchtwanger, by Helen Ferstenberg. North American Studies in 19th-century German Literature, vol. 34. Oxford, Berne: Peter Lang, 2004. 229 pp. $49.95. In recent years, German-Jewish literature and has been one of fields of intense scholarship in German Studies in United States and Britain. Outstanding examples are Yale Companion to Writing and Thought in German Culture, 1096-1996, edited by Sander L. Gilman and Jack Zipes, and Ritchie Robertson's The 'Jewish Question' in German Literature 1749-1939: Emancipation and Its Discontents (Oxford 1999). Ferstenberg's study, based on a Yale dissertation, is an important contribution to this field, since it deals with a topic that has not been treated: artist in fiction of German-Jewish writers before 1933. Ferstenberg discovered that question of creative was one that most writers hesitant to broach because of prejudice that Jews fundamentally uncreative and the issue of a dual German-Jewish identity (p. 12). But in spite of trend toward assimilation among German Jews, many were anxious to retain a of some form, and many literary texts by German-Jewish authors bear witness to this dilemma (p. 12). The author rejects Sander Gilman's assessment of self-hatred as oversimplification in case of most German-Jewish writers and follows Ritchie Robertson's approach of avoiding both symbiosis model as well as model of a failed dialogue between Germans and Jews (Gershom Scholem) for her interpretation. She rather goes back to the period when Holocaust was still unimaginable, trying to understand the age of assimilation as contemporaries did (Robertson, The Jewish Question, pp. 2-3). This approach enables her to show that German-Jewish writers remarkably successful in their portrayal of artists to raise question of German and allegiance and issues of distinctiveness as well as viability of participation in German culture. The authors discussed include Heinrich Heine (1798-1856), Berthold Auerbach (1812-1882), Karl Emil Franzos (1848-1904), Karl Kraus (1874-1936), Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931), Jakob Wassermann (1873-1934), Max Brod (1884-1968), Franz Kafka (1883-1924), and Lion Feuchtwanger (1884-1958). Heine is most important figure ar beginning of German-Jewish literature, because he is first of his generarion to enter German cultural life, and his status as German writer of origin overshadowed careers of subsequent generations of German-Jewish writers. Yet, he is not best example for author's thesis, because of his baptism and his regret in retrospect. Ferstenberg is right to detect a sense of precariousness of his position as a writer of origin attempting to establish himself in German culture (p. 24). He shows a deep ambivalence towards Jewishness and its connection to artistic creativity. Only with his assumption of theMarrano pose, that is, identification with historical Sephardic elite during Golden Age of Spanish Jewry, is Heine able to achieve a reconciliation of his Jewishness and creativity, as his poems Jehuda ben Halevy and Der Apollogott show. But it is an exotic gesture that offers, as author concludes, no practical models for assuming a creative in contemporary German culture (p. 58). While Auerbach and Franzos present more realistic portrayals of artists, their protagonists end in failure, suggesting that artistic survival depends on successful integration into German culture. Both writers are shown to avoid a firmly creative identity, and their successful careers attest to relevance of this model, although they are not oblivious to dangers of political antisemitism. …