Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism

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In Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin, Marc Caplan explores the reciprocal encounter between Eastern European Jews and German culture in the days following World War I. By concentrating primarily on a small group of avant-garde Yiddish writers--Dovid Bergelson, Der Nister, and Moyshe Kulbak--working in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, Caplan examines how these writers became central to modernist aesthetics. By concentrating on the character of Yiddish literature produced in Weimar Germany, Caplan offers a new method of seeing how artistic creation is constructed and a new understanding of the political resonances that result from it. Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin reveals how Yiddish literature participated in the culture of Weimar-era modernism, how active Yiddish writers were in the literary scene, and how German-speaking Jews read descriptions of Yiddish-speaking Jews to uncover the emotional complexity of what they managed to create even in the midst of their confusion and ambivalence in Germany. Caplan's masterful narrative affords new insights into literary form, Jewish culture, and the philosophical and psychological motivations for aesthetic modernism. Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Weimar and Now Part I. Spectral Empires: Landscapes, Nation-States, and the Homelessness of Weimar Modernism 1. A Past Become Space: Alfred Döblin and Dovid Bergelson in Poland, the Soviet Union—and Berlin 2. At the Crossroads of the Twentieth Century: Neue Sachlichkeit and Dovid Bergelson’s Berlin Stories Part II. Melancholic Conspiracies: Masks, Masques, and Baroque Aesthetics in Yiddish and German Modernism 3. Watch the Throne: The Baroque, the Gothic, and Symbolism in Der Nister’s Early Stories 4. Harold Lloyd and the Hermit: Popular Culture, Gothic Aesthetics, and the End of Der Nister’s Symbolist Career Part III. Apocalyptic Origins: The Politics of Nostalgia in German and Yiddish Modernism 5. Arrested Development: Fragmentation, Apocalypse, and the Pursuit of Origins in Joseph Roth’s Representation of Eastern Europe 6. Moyshe Kulbak’s Berlin Writings: Here, There, Everywhere (Nowhere) Conclusion: Origin Is the Goal Selected Bibliography Index About the Author