Dovid Eynhorn "Between Worlds": A Transnational History of Yiddishspeaking Intellectuals

• Applicant: Dr. Agnieszka Wierzcholska
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 527259863

Yiddish-speaking writers, artists, historians, and social scientists born at the cusp of the 20th century are the protagonists of this project. I propose to bring them out of oblivion and show their extraordinary qualities as global intellectuals, highly interconnected, well-informed and transnationally active. This should allow to re-position them from their status of a minority at the margins of society, into the center; to give them due recognition as astute observers and analysts capable to illuminate and articulate an innovative, avant-garde outlook on the 20th century. The lives of the intellectuals took them to different countries and cities, and although they spoke many languages, they consciously decided to publish in Yiddish. As politically engaged migrants, they observed social and political developments very closely, as this was also of utmost importance for their further paths in life. They were in constant exchange with each other, whether they lived in Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, Buenos Aires or New York. In this way, a global Yiddish-language network emerged that was reflected, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, in extensive correspondence and in the Yiddish press in which these intellectuals published and commented on each other. One of these Yiddish-speaking intellectuals and a surprisingly neglected figure up to this point was Dovid Eynhorn (1876–1973). As a sharp-sighted journalist and astute observer, he lived in and wrote about the Russian Empire, Switzerland, Poland, Weimar-era Berlin, Paris, and finally, from 1940, also New York. Dovid Eynhorn belonged to a hitherto only marginally studied group of people who, in the age of nationalisms, consistently did not think in national categories, acted in global networks, and communicated in a language - Yiddish - that was supranational. His texts and analyses provide a more nuanced picture of the times in which they were written. On the basis of Dovid Eynhorn's biography, his journalism, and his rich correspondence, an entangled history of twentieth-century will be written from the perspective of an Eastern European Jewish migrating intellectual. Furthermore, Eynhorn's global Yiddish-language network will be explored in my study, as well as the transfers of ideas within it. Eynhorn is like a window through which the circle of Yiddish-speaking intellectuals will be examined more closely.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants