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The contributions that have been assembled in this volume present
the story of queer lives – from the first emancipation movements
around the turn of the (last) century via attempts at
self-empowerment in the Weimar Republic to the destruction of queer
subcultures under the National Socialist regime and the continued
discrimination of LGBTIQ* persons in the postwar period. Since the
late 19th century, increasing numbers of people have self-assuredly
championed the recognition of queer lifestyles. These pioneers
formed collectives, made their voices heard and questioned dominant
gender categories politically, scientifically and artistically.
Through essays, interviews and artworks the authors and artists
illustrate this struggle for recognition which was forcefully
prevented and destroyed following the seizure of power by the
National Socialists and almost forgotten after 1945.
From the last decades of the nineteenth century through the late
1930s, the West Bohemian spa towns of Carlsbad, Franzensbad, and
Marienbad were fashionable destinations for visitors wishing to
"take a cure"-to drink the waters, bathe in the mud, be treated by
the latest X-ray, light, or gas therapies, or simply enjoy the
respite afforded by elegant parks and comfortable lodgings. These
were sociable and urbane places, settings for celebrity sightings,
match-making, and stylish promenading. Originally the haunt of
aristocrats, the spa towns came to be the favored summer resorts
for the emerging bourgeoisie. Among the many who traveled there, a
very high proportion were Jewish. In Next Year in Marienbad, Mirjam
Zadoff writes the social and cultural history of Carlsbad,
Franzensbad, and Marienbad as Jewish spaces. Secular and religious
Jews from diverse national, cultural, and social backgrounds
mingled in idyllic and often apolitical-seeming surroundings.
During the season, shops sold Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers, kosher
kitchens were opened, and theatrical presentations, concerts, and
public readings catered to the Jewish clientele. Yet these same
resorts were situated in a region of growing hostile nationalisms,
and they were towns that might turn virulently anti-Semitic in the
off season. Next Year in Marienbad draws from memoirs and letters,
newspapers and maps, novels and postcards to create a compelling
and engaging portrait of Jewish presence and cultural production in
the years between the fin de siecle and the Second World War.
Historical events and our knowledge of them mould our understanding
of today's world. The interdisciplinary authorship of this volume
focuses on the connection between past and future. A bold and
unusual publication whose approaches and themes extend
frombiographical experiences via intergenerational exchange to the
discussion of current social phenomena. To what extent does (lack
of) knowledge of the past influence our view of the present and our
tales of the future? Authors from the realms of history, art,
philosophy, journalism, poetry, cartoons and film investigate
complex everyday reality in history and the present and direct
their attention towards the shifts in political hegemonies which
lead to ostracism, denigration and destruction. They have
explicitly chosen an international perspective which shows that
social polarisation and radicalisation are not phenomena limited by
national boundaries, but are universal social manifestations in a
globallyinterlinked world.
Werner Scholem never took the easy path. Born in 1895 into the
Berlin Jewish middle class, he married a young non-Jewish woman of
proletarian background. He was the youngest member of the Prussian
Parliament in the 1920s, one of the leaders of the German Communist
Party, and the editor of the influential journal The Red Flag. As
an outspoken critic of Stalin, he was soon expelled from the party,
only to take up a position at the head of a revolutionary
Trotskyite faction in the years before 1933. Reviled by the
National Socialists as a Communist and a Jew, he was among the
first to be arrested when Hitler rose to power and, after a long
incarceration, was murdered in Buchenwald. In Werner Scholem: A
German Life Mirjam Zadoff has written a book that is at once a
biography of an individual, a family chronicle, and the story of an
entire era. It is an account of the ruptures within a society and
of the growing insecurity in which German Jews lived between the
two world wars-and especially of two brothers who chose opposing
paths out of the shared conviction that there was no future for
Jews in Germany after the First World War. While Werner pinned his
hopes on a universal revolution he would never see, the younger
Gerhard emigrated to Palestine where, as Gershom, he would choose
revolutionary Zionism and the reanimation of ancient strains of
Jewish mysticism.
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