Inside Jews, Inside Germany: Internalised Reconciliations
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UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY SYDNEY Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Inside Jews, Inside Germany: Internalised Reconciliations by Lisa Dabscheck A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Creative Arts Sydney, Australia 2019 i Production Note: Signature removed prior to publication. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My heartfelt thanks go to the generous and “sehr reflektiert” individuals who invited me into their inner worlds, sharing with me their ruminations without which this project would not have been possible. To Benyamin Reich, Béa and Greg Loeb, Myriam Halberstam and Stephan J. Kramer, Raphael Seligmann, Flora Hirschfeld, Lisa Gaufman, Robert Schulzmann, Glafira Silvestra, Ken Speyer, Skull Judenfreund and to ‘Susanne’ and ‘Sascha’ who prefer to be recorded here as such. To the survivors: Henry Rotmensch, Natan Grossmann, and Inge Borck together with Herr Wagner and Herr Wolf, my deepest thanks. And to Joram Ronel and Miriam Acoca at Café Zelig. To those others I met along the way who shared with me their intelligence, acumen and encouragement: Konrad Kwiet, Terry Swartzberg, Levi Ufferfilge, Sandra Anusiewicz-Baer, Alina Gromova, Toby Axelrod, Alexander Hausgall and Dekel Peretz. At Beth Shalom I found great insight and gentle communion with the mensch and Rabbi Tom Kučera and in the extraordinary voice of Cantor Nikola David. It was there that I met my dear friend and confidant Amber Rose Bedal, whose experience chimed so profoundly with mine and to whom, with the heaviest of hearts, I must give my thanks in Memoriam. At the University of Technology Sydney my sincere thanks to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Communication. To Andrew Hurley for your keen observations and support and to Sue Joseph for your early help and supervision. Thank you to Chris Jackson for proofreading my thesis with your steady and thoughtful eyes. To my doctoral supervisor Paula Hamilton, whose extraordinary support has been integral to this project, my profound thanks. As both teacher and mentor, your acuity and sensitive guidance have been invaluable. Your acclaimed work as oral historian has strongly informed my approach and understanding. I am deeply grateful for your generosity, expertise and enthusiasm. iii To the marvellous Münchner whose wisdom, insights and wit helped imme immeasurably, Fabiana Vidal Leao de Aquino, Nicole Janson-Ebeling and Florian Ebeling, Friederike and Claudio Stern, Limor Hader, Lauren Rid, Adriana von Schelling, Barry Goldman, Vély Perez, Ariane Payer and Nina Bojanic, together with Viviane Stappmanns in Weil am Rhein, Ulrike Karbjinski and Rainer Spehl in Berlin, and Anne Moal in Sydney. And to the one who set the spark that started it all, the brilliant and inimitable Martin Kornberger. Special thanks to my stepfather, Errol Kaplan, for his encyclopaedic knowledge of Jewish history and for his unshakeable confidence in my success. To my darling children, thank you from my heart. To Sammy for the well of comfort that flows from deep within your being, to Lucia for shining your light on my fight for what I believe in, to Milo for believing in me without question and making me laugh till I cried, and to Lotte for holding me still and asking me all the right questions. To my husband, Simon Hörauf, for giving me the freedom to think and to write, for being the foil to my every midnight proclamation and hesitation, and for never wavering in your faith in me. To my beloved late dad, Warren Dabscheck, who is with me always. And to my mum, Zina Kaplan, to whom I dedicate this labour of my spirit, for sharing with me the infinite qualities of your mind, your heart, and your love. iv PREFACE This Doctor of Creative Arts thesis has two components, which examine what it means to be a Jew in Germany during the period 2012 to 2019, framed by the Holocaust. It comprises an exegesis, which explores the theoretical and conceptual underpinning of the main section that follows, which is a creative work in the form of a hybrid non-fiction narrative and memoir. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of original authorship …………………………………………..……….……….. ii Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………….….…….…... iii Preface ……………………………………………………………………..………..……….…v Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………..……….. viii Glossary ……………………………………………….….………………..…………….…… x EXEGESIS: Inside Jews, Inside Germany: Internalised Reconciliations ..……….….… 1 1. Research Background …………………………………………………………..………... 2 2. Conceptual Framework and Literature …………………………………….………..…. 11 Introduction to Key Themes ………………………………….…………………….………. 12 Theme 1: Home and Belonging ……………………………………………………….…… 15 Theme 2. Jewish Identity …………………………………………………………………... 22 Theme 3: Memory and Musealisation …………………………………………………….. 26 Theme 4: Anti-Semitism………………………………………………………..…………… 33 Conclusion to Themes …………………………………………………….………………… 37 Concept of “Internalised Reconciliation" …………………………………………….…… 38 3. Exposition: Public Events as “Pivot Points”…………………………….……………... 40 Pivot Point 1, 2012: Circumcision Debate…………………………………………..……… 41 Pivot Point 2, 2014: Nazi Slogans at Al Qud’s Day Rally, Kurfurstendamm, Berlin .… 43 Pivot Point 3, 2015: Arrival of 1 million Syrian and other Refugees into Germany …... 45 Pivot Point 4, 2017: German National Election - AfD Elected to Parliament ……....…. 48 Pivot Point 5, 2018: Kippah Attack, Appointment of “Jewish Life & Fight Against Anti-Semitism Commissioners” ………………………………………………….... 51 4. Methodology and Structure …………………………………………………………….. 56 5. The Interviewees ………………………………………………………………………… 58 vi Autoethnography /Critical Autobiography ……………………………………………….… 62 Structure of the Creative Work ………………………………………………….….………. 65 Geographical and Temporal Frames ……………………………………………………… 66 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………….……..…. 70 CREATIVE ARTEFACT: “Every Soul a Whole World” …….………………….……..….. 74 Epigraph ……………………………………………………………………………………… 75 Part One …………………………………………………………………………………..…. 76 Part Two ……………………………………………………………………………………. 132 Part Three ……………………………………………………………………….…………. 194 Part Four ……………………………………………………………………………..…….. 270 Epilogue ………………………………………………………………………………..…… 283 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………..……. 287 vii ABSTRACT Inside Jews, Inside Germany: Internalised Reconciliations What is it to live as a Jew in today’s Germany? Seventy years after the end of the Holocaust, contemporary Jewish life in Germany is a phenomenon leveraged for various purposes: heralded as a triumph over the perpetrators; trumpeted as proof of their descendants’ recovery; condemned as a travesty to the victims; dismissed as an anomaly, a fragile coalition of factions, as “Russian” and Israeli immigrants, together with vestiges of pre-war Jekkes and others endeavour to knit together vivid communities with tenuous common threads. Between 2012 and 2019 I conducted a series of long-form and background interviews. My research delves into the inner worlds of a handful of Jews living in contemporary Germany. It removes each from their “group”, approaching them singularly. With this emphasis on individuation each is asked to consider the reconciliation that takes place not in the realms of public “memory theatre” 1 or in interpersonal contexts, but in private iterations, where coming to terms with the past in the present is an ongoing personal matter, requisite to living in Germany as a Jew, and containing a multiplicity of sentiment within individuals, with a tendency to shift over time. I have termed this process “internalised reconciliations”. These contemporary oral histories inform the exegesis and appear in the creative artefact framed around pertinent current events that occurred during the period. These act as what I term “pivot points”, whose repercussions crystallise the prevailing, latent and unfolding perspectives of these individuals. Between their interpretations I weave my point of view as a Jew married to a non-Jewish German with whom, together with our children, in 2016 I moved from Sydney to live in Munich, immersing myself in the research landscape. This project reveals how both research and creative practice can contribute to understanding the relationship between the public and the personal through the intricate process of ongoing negotiations of identity that are provoked at the nexus between memory and present experience. The contextualised self-portraits liberate my interlocuters from the memory and associative cultures that confine them, and suggest viii the dynamic ways in which Germany acts as both place of mediated residence for the Jews who live there, at the same time as its complexities reside deep inside them. 1 Y Michal Bodemann, Gedächtnistheater. Die jüdische Gemeinschaft und ihre deutsche Erfindung, Hamburg 1996 ix GLOSSARY Achtung - German word for attention or caution Altbau - old-build apartment or other buildings constructed at or before the turn of the 20th century Apfelstreusel - apple crumble cake Ashkenazi - Jews of central or eastern European descent Avinu Malkeinu - Jewish song meaning “Our Father, Our King” Bar/Bat Mitzvah - coming of age ritual comprised of reciting from the Torah together with further sacred texts and prayers, whereby Jewish boys and girls become accountable for their actions, and for understanding and interpreting the laws and argumentation of Judaism. Known as “Bar Mitzvah” for boys and conducted coinciding with the 13th birthday in all synagogues. For girls it is known as “Bat Mitzvah”. In progressive synagogues this is identical to Bar Mitzvah. In conservative