Vilna (Polish Wilno), modern Vilnius and capital of Lithuania, was the traditional spiritual and intellectual centre of Jewish thought in the Russian Empire. It was often referred to as the 'Jerusalem of Lithuania', a term that has now come to stand for the lost world of Jewish life in Europe. Most people today learned what they know about this Vilna from autobiographies or personal memoirs. This book takes a more objective look at how Vilna became a uniquely important centre of the Jewish press. In particular it follows the development of the Jewish press within the context of modernising Imperial Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century. Vilna is revealed as an important centre for the Jewish Socialist movement, the Bund, towards the turn of the nineteenth century and in the years running up to the 1905 Revolution. Bundist journalism is discovered to be the sponsor of a Jewish cultural ideology called Yiddishism.

Starting from the premise that all Jewish periodicals are the material heirs of a unique textual tradition, the authors of this volume -researchers from Germany, Austria, Israel, Belarus, the UK, and the US - have distilled here the fruits of their interactive discussions. Their inquiry sets out to scrutinize the history of the Ashkenazy Jewish press as a history of the visions it advocated. It transcends the conventional approach which focusses on the context of the nation state. Thus, the reader can trace the journey of Jewish periodicals as they migrated seamlessly across national borders and languages, and hence discover geopolitical and generational entanglements that have so far been largely neglected.

Vilna (Polish Wilno), modern Vilnius and capital of Lithuania, was the traditional spiritual and intellectual centre of Jewish thought in the Russian Empire. It was often referred to as the 'Jerusalem of Lithuania', a term that has now come to stand for the lost world of Jewish life in Europe. Most people today learned what they know about this Vilna from autobiographies or personal memoirs. This book takes a more objective look at how Vilna became a uniquely important centre of the Jewish press. In particular it follows the development of the Jewish press within the context of modernising Imperial Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century. Vilna is revealed as an important centre for the Jewish Socialist movement, the Bund, towards the turn of the nineteenth century and in the years running up to the 1905 Revolution. Bundist journalism is discovered to be the sponsor of a Jewish cultural ideology called Yiddishism.

This volume comprises selected papers from the conference <<berlin -- wien -- prag. modernity, minorities and migration in the inter-war period>> which was held at the Queen's University of Belfast in September 2000. The contributions (in English or German) offer new perspectives on the exciting culture of these cities during the 1920s and 30s from a variety of disciplines: Literary History, Media Studies, Jewish Studies and History of Architecture.