Literary anti-Semitism

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Literary anti-Semitism is a literary theory concept, featuring anti-Semitic stereotypes , which in literary happen texts and used. These relate to different linguistic and non-linguistic levels. In this sense, literary works are classified as anti-Semitic if the subtle to drastic anti-Jewish motifs, images and set pieces used are ultimately supported and not questioned.

Stereotypical representations of Jewish figures are supposed to make Jews identifiable and thus actually without identity . In this way, the characters are robbed of their individuality, since they are now recognized as Jews and immediately classified, one reason for the lack of literary nature of the texts, which in this way lack complex codings and readings .

Concept and problem

The comparatively new term belongs to the interdisciplinary research on anti-Semitism , wants to expand the previous anti-Semitism models and theories and integrates poetological methods with those of text comprehension. Literary texts are analyzed with clear reference to their literary nature, but not viewed as a historical source or examined for evidence that is based on classical research on anti-Semitism.

The importance of literary studies for research on anti-Semitism has so far been rather marginal; However, it can bring a wide range of methods of text understanding and an extensive corpus of sources into interdisciplinary research. The peculiarity of literary texts demands that they cannot simply and schematically be  subjected to a given concept of anti-Semitism - such as that used in historical studies . For this reason one does not speak of anti-Semitism in literature , but of literary anti-Semitism .

In contrast to anti-Semitism in literature, the focus here is on typical representations and aesthetic and media representations of Jewish figures. The term also aims to protect itself against a superficial suspicion of anti-Semitism or prejudices among certain writers and also distinguishes itself from motive research , which with the “image of the Jew” resulted in “visual anti-Semitism” and ignored questions of literary nature. After studies on the history of motifs had appeared during the time of National Socialism , such as Elisabeth Frenzel's “Jewish figures on the German stage”, the genre was also accused of having an ideology- forming effect.

Whether a text is ultimately anti-Semitic or not is often judged differently. The claims and assessments are seldom based on verifiable criteria. The fact that obviously not every decision by a literary figure to use a Jewish figure is anti-Semitic leads to problems of interpretation and interpretation.

As Martin Gubser points out, it is also not easy to introduce a Jewish figure without exposing oneself to accusations of anti-Semitism. As a rule, the writer chooses a Jewish figure who is a member of a social minority and whose painful history is mainly characterized by dehumanizing clichés. For this reason, however, it exudes a special exotic charm.

The accusation of literary anti-Semitism is always justified, however, if an author can be proven to use anti-Semitic clichés, i.e. not to distance himself from the traditional images and ideas.

Background and details

While anti-Semitic statements in public are usually not tolerated and may be prosecuted, in literary garb they initially trigger a dispute about their existence and the legitimacy of what is depicted. As Klaus-Michael Bogdal explains, the observation of German literature justifies the observation of literary anti-Semitism that can be classified in the period before and after Auschwitz, even if it is one of the areas that have been neglected in historical and literary research. In addition, literary studies have dealt more with the collection of forgotten and repressed Jewish and German-Jewish literature.

Anti-Semitic clichés can be found in numerous texts in European literature. They range from drastic, anti-Semitic rough drawings that are already evident on the surface of the text (as at the beginning of the pious Helene von Wilhelm Busch with the “crooked-nosed Jew” who “wriggles his way up to the stock exchange” “deeply depraved and soulless”, which is the same as the external drawing associated with animal aspects) to anti-Semitic clichés in the work of Gustav Freytag to subtle or complex anti-Jewish elements in literatures in various languages, such as the figure Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice or in the work of the French writer Céline , which is always controversial become.

Gustav Freytag

Gustav Freytag followed, among other things, with his comedy The Journalists, which was most played at the time, and anti-Semitic stereotypes and clichés in the Bildungsroman and bestseller Soll und haben , thereby giving examples of literary anti-Semitism.

For a long time, Jews were only talked about in reports and reviews, but Freytag first used Jewish characters in a German novel and made use of numerous anti-Semitic clichés.

The character Schmock in Die Journalisten, for example, although a journalist himself, does not have a command of the grammatically correct Standard German and generally answers questions with counter-questions that are regarded as “typically Jewish”. As part of a Manichaean figure constellation in the piece, Schmock is only poorly represented. Above all, his lack of mind sets him apart from the other characters, the materialistic, cynical relationship to his profession does the rest: “My misery is just that I'm in a bad business. I have to make sure that I get out of literature. "

The crude “laughable humor”, which was partly responsible for the success of the Schmock character , mostly only works with reference to corresponding anti-Semitic clichés, which refer, for example, to the appearance and the apparently laughable language of Jews. In addition, the argumentation pattern can be classified as nationalistic , since Schmock is attributed to the forces that agitated against the liberal party, which upholds “German values”.

In Debit and Credit , Freytag depicts a “Biedermeier transfigured monumental painting of German-bourgeois righteousness”. In contrast, there are Eastern Jews and Poles who “act as profound, unscrupulous existences”. The Jewish merchant "Veitel Itzig" is portrayed as a counter-figure to the hardworking and virtuous Anton Wohlfahrt.

In Thomas Mann's work , who described himself as philosemitic, campaigned for Jews during the Nazi era and condemned anti-Semitism, there are problematic passages that are still the subject of research and are judged differently.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder , influenced by Gerhard Zwerenz , triggered a scandal with his play The Garbage, the City and Death .

By using a Jewish house speculator , of all people , who describes himself as “the rich Jew”, as a negative figure in his play, the author used the cliché of the “unscrupulous Jewish capitalist” for Martin Gubser. In his opinion, the text would probably not have caused a scandal if Fassbinder had resorted to an equally unsympathetic depicted Jewish police officer, baker or Christian speculator as a negative figure. Here, however, he wanted to allude to Ignatz Bubis , who was notorious in the Frankfurt squatters' scene . In this constellation, it is obvious that he complied with the common anti-Semitic cliché of the Jewish capitalist.

In the first of three articles for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Joachim Fest admitted that the term left-wing fascism was imprecise and was often used in polemical contexts, but here he assumed a current case of left-wing fascism. It is now conceivable to write pieces with a Jewish negative figure; In this literarily worthless piece, which does not do without modern set pieces such as pornographic elements, the “rich Jew” is portrayed merely as a murderer and a fraud, so that it is “cheap agitation inspired by vulgar clichés”.

While “fascism from the left” has shown itself in different forms in Germany so far, it has so far been largely free of anti-Semitic movements. As Fest explains, the policy of the Soviet Union against Israel mobilized anti-Semitic affects on the left-wing scene in the Federal Republic, which now saw anti-Semitism as an element of the world revolution and believed that it had nothing to do with the hatred of Jews under National Socialism. This gives left anti-Semitism a clear conscience.

The play's anti-Semitism, however, is less a result of resentment than tactics and part of “radical fate”. For Fest, the left had no real enemy image for a long time and therefore needed an opposing figure to offset the low fascination of its ideology. Another role was played by the will of the younger generation to show themselves to the world as impartial, to no longer accept taboos and to meet them callously. "In the hangman's house, the sons like to speak cheekily about the rope."

Hellmuth Karasek, on the other hand, rejected the accusation of left-wing anti-Semitism and spoke of dubious polemics by Fest and a "left-wing hatred" as a new line of culture in the FAZ . In any case, after reading the play, little remains of a planned, left-wing anti-Semitism.

Current trends, Grass and Walser

In the present there are also controversies, even scandals. In connection with the poem What must be said by Günter Grass , the accusation of anti-Semitism was again raised against the author.

Grass had been criticized several times for his attitude towards Israel and Judaism. The literary scholar Klaus Briegleb believes he sees signs of repressed guilt in his behavior , for example for having participated in an exclusion campaign by Group 47 against Marcel Reich-Ranicki , who for Grass had impaired the group's "political resilience". If the attacked person is described by Hans Werner Richter as a “dead and disturbing point”, this is an anti-Semitic reflex that Grass confirms with his approval. His dealings with Jewish authors like Erich Fried and attacks against Israel and Zionism showed an "anti-Israel impulsiveness". In his essay Israel and I , he accused the country of having provided the Arab states with a pretext for attacking the occupied territories through a "creeping annexation of the occupied territories." Here, as in his poem, he would operate a reversal of victim and perpetrator by accusing Israel of being responsible for the threat itself. In his novella Im Krebsgang , when the ship went down, there was talk of a “never heard final cry”, which, according to Briegleb, was “a turn in the metaphor of the final solution to the Jewish question ” and “a figuratively evaluating role reversal of the German victims for the victims of the Shoah “Betray. Perhaps Grass applies the "to this day unbelievable remark of the Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex : 'The Germans will never forgive the Jews Auschwitz.'"

Michael Wuliger sarcastically stated, "Grass brings literary anti-Semitism into disrepute." The anti-Semitic topos of seeing Jews as a threat to world peace and the whole of humanity was known long before the publication of the verses What Must Be Said . In the poem A Hero of Our Days , Grass refers to the Mossad in the verses of a "gang ... which uninhibitedly does not shy away from murder" , perhaps even to "the Israeli government or the Elders of Zion ."

Martin Walser also sparked controversy with his novel Death of a Critic . For the philologist and literary scholar Jan Philipp Reemtsma , the novel is a reckoning with his long-time critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki and uses a number of anti-Semitic clichés with which Walser tries to characterize the figure André Ehrl-König . This drastic method is at the expense of the literary quality of the work. Because of Walser's personal concern to discredit Reich-Ranicki, which is in the foreground, all other elements would step back and give room to an obvious anti-Semitism. For Reemtsma, many of the attributes of the character, such as the language, the black hat or the platform soles, come from the fund of anti-Jewish caricature clichés. The core of these stereotypes is the image of the Jew who exercises illegitimate power in the cultural sphere.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Klaus-Michael Bogdal: Essay. In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Klaus Holz, Matthias N. Lorenz (eds.): Literary anti-Semitism after Auschwitz . Metzler, Stuttgart 2007, p. VII
  2. ↑ Mona Körte: Literary Anti-Semitism. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 3: Concepts, ideologies, theories. Berlin / New York 2010, p. 195
  3. ↑ Mona Körte: Literary Anti-Semitism. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Volume 3: Concepts, ideologies, theories. Berlin / New York 2010, p. 196
  4. ↑ Martin Gubser: Literary anti-Semitism. Investigations on Gustav Freytag and other bourgeois writers of the 19th century . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1998, p. 83
  5. ↑ Martin Gubser: Literary anti-Semitism. Investigations on Gustav Freytag and other bourgeois writers of the 19th century . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1998, p. 84
  6. ^ Klaus-Michael Bogdal: Literary anti-Semitism after Auschwitz, Perspektiven der Forschung. In: Klaus-Michael Bogdal, Klaus Holz, Matthias N. Lorenz (Hrag.): Literary anti-Semitism after Auschwitz. Metzler, Stuttgart 2007, p. 4
  7. ↑ Central Council of Jews in Germany Kdö.R .: Literary Studies: The Purified Antisemite | Jewish general. Retrieved May 14, 2017 (English).
  8. ^ Charlotte Woodford, Benedict Schofield: The German Bestseller in the Late Nineteenth Century . Camden House, 2012, ISBN 978-1-57113-487-5 , pp. 36 ( google.de [accessed on May 14, 2017]).
  9. ↑ Quoted from: Martin Gubser: Literarischer Antisemitismus. Investigations on Gustav Freytag and other bourgeois writers of the 19th century. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1998, p. 282
  10. ↑ Quoted from: Martin Gubser: Literarischer Antisemitismus. Investigations on Gustav Freytag and other bourgeois writers of the 19th century. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1998, p. 282
  11. ^ TV projects: Tragischer Itzig . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 1977 ( online ).
  12. ↑ Martin Gubser: Literary anti-Semitism. Studies on Gustav Freytag and other bourgeois writers of the 19th century, Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 1998, p. 84
  13. ↑ a b Joachim Fest: About Rainer Werner Fassbinder's play "The Garbage, the City and Death", rich Jew from the left. In: Fleeting size. Collected essays on literature and art. Rowohlt, Hamburg 2008, p. 246
  14. ^ Hellmuth Karasek: Shylock in Frankfurt . In: Der Spiegel . No. 15 , 1976 ( online ).
  15. ^ Debate about poem critical of Israel. Günter Grass - the attack as repression . In: Rheinische Post , April 11, 2012.
  16. ↑ Another poem . In: Jüdische Allgemeine , October 18, 2012
  17. ↑ Anti-Semitic Affect Storm, Walser Debate, Spiegel online June 27, 2002