Research Catalog

Keepers of the Motherland : German texts by Jewish women writers

Title: Keepers of the Motherland : German texts by Jewish women writers / Dagmar C.G. Lorenz.
Author: Lorenz, Dagmar C. G., 1948-
Publication: Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, ©1997.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	DS135.G33 L59 1997	Off-site

Details

Description

xxii, 402 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

Keepers of the Motherland is the first comprehensive study of German and Austrian Jewish women authors. Dagmar Lorenz begins with an examination of the Yiddish author Glikl Hamil, whose works date from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and proceeds through such contemporary writers as Grete Weil, Katja Behrens, and Ruth Kluger. Along the way she examines an extraordinary range of distinguished authors, including Else Lasker-Schuler, Rosa Luxemburg, Nelly Sachs, and Gertrud Kolmar. Although Lorenz highlights the authors' individualities, she unifies Keepers of the Motherland with sustained attention to the ways in which they all reflect upon their identities as Jews and women. In this spirit Lorenz argues that "the themes and characters as well as the environments evoked in the texts of Jewish women authors writing in German resist patriarchal structures. The term 'motherland, ' defining the domain of the Jewish woman's native language, regardless of political or ethnic boundaries, is juxtaposed with the concept 'fatherland, ' referring to the power structures of the nation or state in which she resides." Lorenz describes a vital, diverse, and largely dissident literary tradition - a brilliant countertradition, in effect, that has endured in spite of oppression and genocide. Combining careful research with inspired synthesis, Lorenz provides an indispensable work for students of German, Jewish, and women's writings.

Series Statement

Texts and contexts

Uniform Title

Texts and contexts

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (p. 355-384) and indexes.

Language (note)

Includes selections translated from German.

Contents

1. Writing the Motherland. Historical Perspectives. A Separate Reality: Glikl Hamil's [actual symbol not reproducible] (Zikhroynes). From the Ghetto to the Salon (Fanny von Arnstein, Henriette Herz, and Dorothea Mendelssohn Veit Schlegel). The Creation of Space and the Invention of Language (Rahel Levin Varnhagen) -- 2. At the Crossroads. Emancipation, Feminism, and Revolution. Feminism and Jewish Emancipation (Fanny Lewald). Jewish Women in the Public Arena (Bertha Pappenheim and Rosa Luxemburg). Inventing Identity, Creating Reality (Else Lasker-Schuler) -- 3. The Troubled Metropolis. Jewish Women Writers and Modernity. Race, Class, and Gender (Claire Goll). Mother and Daughter in Pre-Nazi Berlin (Gertrud Kolmar).

ISBN

0803229178
9780803229174

LCCN

96030057

OCLC

ocm36180906
36180906
SCSB-14415248

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library