Emancipation after emancipation. Jewish literature, philosophy and history

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Bettina Bannasch
• Subject Area: German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; History of Philosophy ; Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 491743779

Based on the Jewish emancipation discourse of the 19th century and its close entanglement with adjacent emancipation discourses - women, the 'fourth estate', the youth, also the 'emancipation of the flesh' - the project asks whether this discourse formation(s) will continue after 1918 or after its abolition in adjacent discourse formations after 1933. The works of many Jewish authors in the 1920s and thereafter show how strongly the idea of ​​emancipation still shaped programmatic texts on the 'Jewish question' even after the turning point of the First World War. At the same time, in the literature and philosophy after 1933 one can understand the way in which conceptions of (Jewish) emancipation in the 20th century react to the ruptures that are caused by the experience of disenfranchisement, exile and the Shoah.The project is divided into two working phases. The first is focused on the years 1900–1933 and, apart from a working meeting in July 2021 and the planned final conference in February 2022, already completed. The second working phase covers the years 1933 until the present. Network funding is requested from the DFG for the first final conference (Part I) as well as for the second working phase with four workshops and a final conference (Part II).1. The central questions of the first working phase were: In what way does the disappointment about the process of Jewish emancipation in the first third of the 20th century, experienced by many Jews as a success, but also as a failure, form into a discourse in which the (Re-)Gaining Jewish self-confidence as a 'Jewish renaissance' which in the 19th century tried to undo the extensive integration into and assimilation to the Christian majority society? Can reciprocal influences between Christian and Jewish renewal movements be traced and their impact in (religious) philosophical and literary works more precisely determined and evaluated with a view to a more differentiated understanding of the Jewish emancipation movement in the different Jews in Germany in the interwar period?2. Key questions for the second project phase are: In what way is the idea of ​​emancipation still useful in the years after 1933? Can philosophical and literary works relevant to the German-language discourse, increasingly also films and series, understand developments that lead to an emancipation from the “German memory theater”? How does the talk of a “break in civilization” (Zivilisationsbruch") relate to continuities and references to a (supposedly?) Dialogical exchange and a (apparently?) Shared tradition before and after 1933? What is the relationship between German-speaking culture and history in Israel and the two German memory discourses in East and West?

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks