Yiddish and the Negotiation of Literary Legacy in Germany After 1945

FOLK FICTION: YIDDISH AND THE NEGOTIATION OF LITERARY LEGACY IN GERMANY AFTER 1945 Emma Woelk A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Carolina Duke Graduate Program in German Studies. Chapel Hill/Durham 2015 Approved by: Ruth von Bernuth William Donahue Kata Gellen Jonathan Hess Richard Langston © 2015 Emma Woelk ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT Emma Woelk: Folk Fiction: Yiddish and the Negotiation of Literary Legacy in Germany after 1945 (Under the direction of Ruth von Bernuth) Following the Holocaust, when Eastern European Yiddish-language culture was all but destroyed and millions of Yiddish speakers were murdered, the language took on new significance in German culture. Whether it be as a symbol of proletarian solidarity in East German theater or as part of West German literary engagement with American Jewish culture, Yiddish shows up all over postwar German literature and performance. Building on scholarship from German Studies, Yiddish Studies, and cultural and political history, the following study connects the study of Yiddish in German literature after 1945 both to discourses from the early 20th century and to broader discussions on German identity and literary legacy in the postwar era. I am primarily interested in the reinvention of the folk tradition following the Nazi era and the creation of a usable literary past at a time in which the German political and geographic present was in flux. This dissertation explores these issues by looking at the ways in which German-language authors on both sides of the Berlin Wall, and those writing after its fall, relied on Yiddish to negotiate national literary identities. By looking at the diverse body of texts that do this and the ways in which these works were received, this dissertation demonstrates that the presence of Yiddish language and culture in German literature after 1945 was used to create spaces in which foundational narratives could be reshaped and new identities defined. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS YIDDISH IN POSTWAR GERMAN CULTURE: A HISTORICAL AND MUSICAL INTRODUCTION...................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1: FOLKSTIMLIKHKAYT AND POLITICAL DRAMA: YIDDISH IN POSTWAR GERMAN THEATER…………………………...23 CHAPTER 2: STORIES IN YIDDISH, YIDDISH IN STORIES: RETHINKING THE PAST IN AND OF YIDDISH IN THE GDR……………….……68 CHAPTER 3: THE YIDDISH UNCANNY: RELOCATING THE LOST EAST IN THE NEW WEST…………………………………………………….105 CHAPTER 4: FROM IMAGINED VOICES TO REMEMBERED TEXTS: THE YIDDISH WRITTEN WORD IN THE NEW GERMANY……………142 CONCLUDING REMARKS…………………………………………………………...191 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………..193 iv Yiddish in Postwar German Culture: A Historical and Musical Introduction Yiddish’s simultaneous proximity to and distance from the German language have long been at the center of German-language discourse on Yiddish language and culture. It is this ambivalent relationship that at once makes Yiddish or Yiddish-like speech largely comprehensible to German audiences and allows this language to serve as a marker of an exoticized other, both at the hands of Jews and non-Jews. Several scholars have written on the use of Yiddish, Judendeutsch or Jargon1 in German literature in the decades and even centuries before 1933. These studies, as well as primary sources from the time, make clear that the degree of difference that separates or familiarity binds German and Yiddish, as perceived by German speakers, is constantly in flux. Matthias Richter, for example, notes that German defenders of Yiddish in the second half of the 19th century touted the language’s “essentielle Nähe zur deutschen Sprache und Kultur und die Fülle alter deutscher Ausdrücke, die hier bewahrt seien.”2 Gabriele von Glasenapp, however, demonstrates that, by the end of 1 Through the early decades of the twentieth century, Yiddish was often known, even by its own speakers, as either Judendeutsch (Judeo-German) or Jargon. The use of these blanket terms and that fact that Yiddish was not seen as a “real” language capable of producing academic texts or literature until the 19th century mean that, while these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, the forms this language takes in German literature can vary dramatically. This dissertation considers text that employ language anywhere on this spectrum, but makes clear when the authors are using Yiddish and when they use a stylized German intended to mimic Yiddish; See: “Das Judendeutsch in der deutschen Literatur” by Mark Gelber (1986); Die Sprache jüdscher Figuren in der deutschen Literatur by Matthais Richter (1995), Mauscheln: Ein Wort als Waffe by Hans-Peter Althaus (2002) and The Discourse on Yiddish in Germany: From the Enlightenment to the Second Empire (2000) by Jeffrey Grossman. 2 Matthias Richter. Die Sprache jüdischer Figuren in der deutschen Literatur. Göttingen: Wallenstein Verlag, 1995. 89 1 the same century, “such a position was no longer tenable.”3 She argues that increasing antisemitism and disillusionment with the possibility of assimilation made arguments about the essential Germanness of Jews more difficult to support. And debates on the relative proximity between German and Yiddish become even more complicated when specific literary genres are taken into account. Increased interest in Eastern European Jewry in the early 20th century, inspired largely by the work of Martin Buber, led German Jewish periodicals to begin including more essays on Yiddish-language culture and the lyrics to Yiddish folksongs. In an article by Moses Calvary that appeared in Der Jude in 1916, for example, the author, who insists that Yiddish be seen as its own language rather than a German dialect, writes, “Ursprünglich war das jiddische Volkslied gewiβ eine Nuance des deutschen. [...] Hier ist keine eigene Kunstform.”4 In the following issue of Der Jude, however, Salomon Lehnert argues that it is in fact the Yiddish folksong that best reflects the unique spirit of Eastern European Jewry. Dismissively describing German attempts to appropriate Yiddish culture, he writes, “Ein jiddisches Volkslied, von einer deutschen Konzertsängerin übermittelt, von Studenten an der Biertafel, von deutschen Jungen in einem deutschen Walde gesungen, läβt uns nicht einmal die jüdische Seele ahnen, aus der das Volkslied erwachsen ist.”5 It was partially this ambiguity and uncertainty that seems to have inspired Kafka’s interest in Yiddish and shaped his famous 1912 “Einleitungsvortrag über 3 Gabriele von Glasenapp. “German versus Jargon: Language and Jewish Identity in German Ghetto Writing.” Ghetto Writing: Traditional and Eastern Jewry in German-Jewish Literature from Heine to Hilsenrath. Eds. Anne Fuchs and Florian Krobb. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1999. 62 4 Moses Calvary. “Jiddisch.” Der Jude. Heft 1 (April 1916). 30 5 Salomon Lehnert. “Juedische Volksarbeit.“ Der Jude Heft 2 (May 1916). 110 2 Jargon.”6 As Yasemin Yildiz notes in her book Beyond the Mother Tongue, “Kafka seeks to bring out an anxiety that negates the safe, regulated distance between the audience and ‘Jargon.’ He states that the audience’s anxiety is so powerful that it ‘almost’ manifests itself physically.”7 Following the Holocaust, when Eastern European Yiddish-language culture was all but destroyed and millions of Yiddish speakers were murdered, the language took on new significance in German culture. Scholarship on Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or coming to terms with the past, has shaped critical discourse on the presence of Jewish themes in German art and literature over the past decades.8 While this has been valuable and while the atrocities committed in the name of the German state during the Second World War have shaped the portrayal of Jews and Jewish themes in postwar German literature, it is crucial that this literature also been seen as part of a tradition that predates 1933. Building on scholarship from German Studies, Yiddish Studies, and cultural and political history, the following study seeks to reintroduce this discourse of proximity, distance, self and other into the discussion surrounding Yiddish language, literature and popular culture in postwar Germany. 9 Like Uta Poiger’s study of American culture in postwar Germany, this study 6 Kafka gave this speech on February 18, 1912, in the Jüdisches Rathaus zu Prag as part of a Yiddish poetry recital by his close friend, Yitzak Löwy. Although the speech is now often called Rede üder die jiddische Sprache, Kafka refers to the language in question as der Jargon, as would have his contemporaries. 7 Yasemin Yildiz. Beyond the Mother Tongue. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012. 53 8 See, for example: Anne Fuchs, Mary Cosgrove and Georg Grote, Eds. German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse since 1990. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006; Matthias Krauss. Völkermord statt Holocaust: Jude und Judenbild im Literaturunterricht der DDR: Ein Nachlesebuch. Schkeuditz: Schkeuditzer Buchverlag, 2012; Pól O’Dochartaigh. Jews in German Literature since 1945: German-Jewish Literature? Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 9 This project, which considers texts written between 1943 and 2014, draws on the work of Jeffrey Grossman’s The Discourse on Yiddish in Germany from the Enlightenment to the Second Empire (2000) and recent projects that touch on the status of Yiddish in Weimar German culture, such as Marline Otte’s work on Jargon and

Load more