Revisiting German Jewish Writing & Culture, 1945-1975

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to announce a special issue of Humanities on German Jewish writing from 1945-1975. We invite contributions that reevaluate German Jewish cultural production in the first three decades following the end of the Holocaust. The goal of this special issue is to explore a period in German Jewish history characterized primarily by the work of authors, artists, etc. who in many cases experienced multiple geographic displacements as the result of exile, war, genocide and other aspects of the violence and trauma enacted by the Nazis and their allies. The earlier postwar period—in contrast to both the prewar period, which featured Kafka, Wassermann, and Zweig, and the more recent post-Wall resurgence in Jewish writing in German—has not generally be seen as a distinct literary phenomenon or cultural milieu and thus has not received adequate critical recognition. Many Jewish writers in the early decades following the Shoah, such as Jean Améry, Edgar Hilsenrath, and Jakov Lind, wrote in German but lived abroad, unable or unwilling to return to or settle in German-speaking countries. Other writers, such as Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Fred Wander, and Jurek Becker, made—sometimes only temporarily—homes in either the Federal Republic or the German Democratic Republic. Their experience of postwar German culture was one of unease or dissatisfaction, making their engagements in the German-language cultural sphere and their efforts to lead a public career as Jewish authors writing in German often difficult or even untenable. We seek to contribute to the conversation generated by recent scholarship at the intersection of German Studies, Jewish Studies, and Holocaust Studies that probes the complex interconnectedness between the German and the Jewish prior to, during, and after World War II. This special issue will endeavor to explore specifically the tenacity of this interconnectedness in the early decades of the postwar period—a period in which German Jewish writing struggled for expression and definition in spite of its lack of geographical coherence. The issue thus aims to re-historicize the literary and artistic output of German-speaking Jewish authors, taking into account the political and social conditions that shaped this production, i.e. an early postwar culture that tended towards silence with regard to Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. We solicit contributions that explore a variety of genres, including, but not limited to, theater, radio plays, short stories, as well as novels and poetry. The special issue also endeavors to investigate the ways in which, on a formal level, postwar German Jewish literature performs its displacement and radical decenteredness. For this reason, we welcome not only literary-historical analyses but also contributions that employ narrative theory or other methodological perspectives.

Dr. Erin McGlothlin
Dr. Corey Twitchell
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Postwar German-Jewish literature and culture
• Holocaust literature