Conversion and Catastrophe in German-Jewish Émigré Autobiography

Abraham Rubin (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

232 Seiten

2025
University of Toronto Press (Verlag)
978-1-4875-5734-8 (ISBN)

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This book explores the fraught relationship between religion, politics, and Holocaust memory from an autobiographical perspective.

Conversion and Catastrophe in German-Jewish Émigré Autobiography is a collective biography of four German-Jewish converts to Christianity, recounting their spiritual and confessional journeys against the backdrop of the Holocaust and its aftermath. Focusing on personal testimonies that fuse historical trauma and spiritual illumination into one narrative, the book explores how Jewish emigrants interpreted their experiences of persecution and displacement through the hermeneutics of Christian conversion. It draws on autobiographies, novels, religious writings, and newspaper articles as well as unpublished archival materials such as diaries, lecture notes, and private correspondence.

The book explores how chosen genres of writing both enabled and hindered self-understanding. It also assesses whether the literary paradigm of Christian conversion, highlighting an individual’s separation from a past sinful self, is suitable for expressing a collective catastrophe. Applying psychoanalysis, disability studies, and autobiographical theory to the life writing of converted Jews, the book offers new avenues for conceptualizing the Jewishness of historical subjects who disavowed their ties to Judaism.

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Abraham Rubin is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Conversion and the Problem of Persuasion

1. Conversion and the Question of German Guilt in Karl Jakob Hirsch’s Heimkehr zu Gott (1946)

2. The Suppressed Jewish Voice in Alfred Döblin’s Schicksalsreise (1949)

3. Mixed Metaphors of Jewish Blindness in Karl Stern’s The Pillar of Fire (1951)

4. The Postwar Politics of Judeo-Christian Reconciliation and the Inability to Mourn in Heinrich Kronstein’s Briefe an einen jungen Deutschen (1967)

Conclusion: The Consolations of Christianity and the Inadequacy of Form

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	05.03.2024
Reihe/Serie	German and European Studies
Zusatzinfo	31 b&w illustrations
Verlagsort	Toronto
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	1 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Spezielle Soziologien
ISBN-10	1-4875-5734-5 / 1487557345
ISBN-13	978-1-4875-5734-8 / 9781487557348
Zustand	Neuware