Steven E. Aschheim Libros

This volume of essays examines the complex intersections of European, particularly German, and Jewish history. It delves into the intertwined experiences of empathy and enmity, belonging and estrangement, as well as creativity and destructiveness at these significant crossroads.

Exploring the complex interplay between European culture, German history, and the Jewish experience, this collection of essays delves into significant historical flashpoints, including Nietzsche's legacy and the debates surrounding the Holocaust. Steven E. Aschheim analyzes the evolving identities and cultural dialogues that shaped these interactions, addressing both the historical context of Weimar Germany and contemporary issues in Israeli discourse. The essays illuminate the pervasive impact of Nazi genocide and highlight the contributions of thinkers like Hannah Arendt, enhancing our understanding of German Jewish history and broader historical processes.

The German-Jewish experience through the rise of Nazism in 1933 was characterized by an explosion of cultural and intellectual creativity. This work seeks to explain this phenomenon and analyze how the German-Jewish legacy has permeated modes of Western thought and sensibility, and why these emigres occupy an iconic place in contemporary society.

This book revolves around the intricate interplay between culture and catastrophe. It seeks to engage the various permutations, the complexity and the unresolved dimensions of this connection, especially as it relates to the origins, disposition and aftermath of National Socialism. It examines various German and Jewish responses to Nazism and its roots, and demonstrates the ongoing relevance of that experience to contemporary culture and collective and individual self-definitions.

This series focuses on the Jewish textual tradition as well as the ways it evolves in response to new intellectual, historical, social and political contexts. Fostering dialogue between literary, philosophical, political and religious perspectives, this series, which consists of original scholarship and proceedings of international conferences, reflects contemporary concerns of Jewish Studies in the broadest sense.

This book consists of a range of essays covering the complex crises, tensions and dilemmas but also the positive potential in the meeting of Jews with Western culture. In numerous contexts and through the work of fascinating individuals and thinkers, the work examines some of the consequences of political, cultural and personal rupture, as well as the manifold ways in which various Jewish intellectuals, politicians (and occasionally spies!) sought to respond to these ruptures and carve out new, sometimes profound, sometimes fanciful, options of thought and action. It also delves critically into the attacks on liberal and Enlightenment humanism. In almost all the essays the fragility of things is palpably present and the book touches on some of the ironies, problematics and functions of responses to that condition. The work mirrors the author's ongoing fascination with the always fraught, fragile and creatively fecund confrontation of Jews (and others) with European modernity, its history, politics, culture and self-definition. In a time of increasing anxiety and feelings of fragility, this work may be helpful in understanding how people at an earlier (and sometimes contemporary) period sought to come to terms with a similar predicament.

The twentieth century witnessed numerous attempts to appropriate Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas for various cultural and political purposes, particularly in Germany. In a comprehensive chronicle, Steven Aschheim examines Nietzsche's influence on German life and politics from the turn of the century to reunification. He begins with the aesthetic fervor of fin-de-siècle Europe and traces Nietzsche's impact through the tumultuous periods of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich. Despite Nietzsche's desire to avoid disciples, his work shaped and was adapted by a wide array of contradictory movements, including anarchists, feminists, Nazis, Socialists, Marxists, avant-garde artists, and more. Aschheim highlights the significance of Nietzsche for prominent figures like Martin Heidegger and Thomas Mann, as well as lesser-known thinkers such as Rabbi Cesar Seligmann and Otto Gross. He offers a nuanced account of the connection between Nietzsche and National Socialism while exploring the philosopher's pervasive presence in contemporary German history's major tensions. Aschheim ultimately illustrates that Nietzsche's "untimely" thoughts remain highly relevant to the moral, aesthetic, and intellectual challenges faced in today's world.

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Dieser Band versammelt die wichtigsten ideen- und kulturhistorischen Studien des Historikers Steven E. Aschheim. Sie reichen von den Erfahrungen in den ostjüdischen Schtetl über den Zionismus als Befreiungsbewegung, die ikonischen jüdischen Intellektuellen (Adorno/Horkheimer, Benjamin, Strauss u. a.) bis zum Umgang mit der Shoa: Assimilation, Selbstbehauptung und Ausgrenzung prägten die deutsch-jüdische Erfahrung zwischen kulturellem Glanz und dem Abgrund der Katastrophe. In seinen fein gearbeiteten Essays vermag Aschheim immer wieder auch die Bezüge zur Gegenwart herzustellen – zur Präsenz des Antisemitismus und zur Relevanz deutsch-jüdischer Geistestraditionen. Im Rückblick auf sein umfangreiches Werk als Historiker wird deutlich, dass Aschheim immer auch der Fragilität jüdischen Lebens nachspürt, dessen Bedrohung nach dem 7. Oktober 2023 eine ganz neue Dimension erreicht hat. Der Ton moralischer Empörung ist ihm jedoch fremd. Stattdessen möchte Steven E. Aschheim verstehen, um im Sinne historischer Aufklärung die Erfahrungsräume und Erwartungshorizonte in den deutsch-jüdischen Konfrontationen und kreativen Symbiosen kenntlich zu machen.