Moritz Goldstein

Moritz Goldstein (born March 27, 1880 in Berlin ; died September 3, 1977 in New York ) was a German-American writer and journalist .

Life

Moritz Goldstein studied German language and literature for one semester in Munich and the rest of the time in Berlin. He obtained his doctorate in 1906. phil. and was 1907-1914 editor of the Golden Classics Library . In 1912, Goldstein's essay “Der German-Jewish Parnassus” appeared in the journal Der Kunstwart , in which he questioned the German-Jewish symbiosis that had finally taken place and thus triggered a lively discussion.

From 1915 to 1918 he was a soldier in the First World War . Although Goldstein had actually wanted to be a playwright, he mainly worked as a journalist. He mostly did that with sheets of the Ullstein publishing house . From 1918 he was an employee of the Vossische Zeitung in the editorial offices of politics, features and local issues. After the death of court reporter Paul Schlesinger , editor-in-chief Georg Bernhard appointed Goldstein head of the justice department in 1928. Goldstein worked from then on as a court reporter. As a journalist, he wrote over a thousand articles, feature sections, reports, glosses and reviews. Dismissed from Ullstein Verlag in 1933 because of his Jewish origins , he first went to Italy.

In Florence founded Goldstein 1933 together with Werner Peiser the Landschulheim Florence , whose economic ladder he remained until 1936th From 1936 to 1939 he and his wife ran a boarding house in Forte dei Marmi and emigrated from here to England via France. In 1947 he moved to New York, and from 1953 he was a US citizen.

"Inquit"

Goldstein, with the editorial abbreviation "Inquit" (Latin "he says"), was next to Paul Schlesinger ("Sling") and Gabriele Tergit the best known and most important court reporter of the Weimar Republic .

The Kunstwart debate

Moritz Goldstein was also the man who triggered the “Kunstwart Debate” in 1912. With his essay "German-Jewish Parnassus", which was published in March 1912 in the national conservative magazine "Der Kunstwart", Goldstein sparked a very controversial discussion. Because in it he expressed his doubts about the final integration and assimilation of the Jewish population in Germany. He accuses the Jews of not only denying this fact, but even of "anxiously watching over" not to be recognized by others as Jews. Goldstein's thesis, which he expressed in his essay "German-Jewish Parnassus", was felt to be particularly outrageous: "We Jews manage the intellectual property of a people who deny us the right and the ability to do so". After the article was published, Ferdinand Avenarius, the editor of the "Kunstwarts", made his magazine available for discussion. The article was also lively discussed in the Jewish press. The public debate about this statement revealed the identity crises of many Jews born in the last third of the 19th century in Germany. They rejected the conventional identification patterns “Judaism” and “Germanness”, in the place of which they designed new orientation and positioning models. The "Zionists" were enthusiastic, however, the "German citizens of the Jewish faith" protested, and the anti-Semites took advantage of the article for their own purposes.

Works (selection)

Books:

• The technique of cyclical frame narratives in Germany. From Goethe to Hoffmann . Dissertation . Berlin 1906.
• Concept and program of a Jewish national literature . Jewish publishing house, Berlin 1913.
• The gift of God. Comical tragedy in 3 acts . Oesterheld Verlag, Berlin 1919.
• The value of the futile . Sybillen Verlag, Dresden 1920.
• The Broken Earth , 1927 (short stories, under the pseudonym "Michael Osten")
• Catastrophe. Novellas . Kunstkammer M. Wasservogel, Berlin 1927.
• The lost father. Acting in 5 acts . M. Wasservogel, Berlin 1927.
• Führer must fall. A study of the phenomenon of power from Caesar to Hitler . Translation into English EW Dickes. WHAllan & Co, London 1942.
• Berlin Years - Memories 1880–1933 . (= Dortmund contributions to newspaper history. Volume 25). Verlag Documentation, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-7940-2525-3 . (Memoirs)
• George Grosz acquitted - court reports from the Weimar Republic . Edited by Manfred Voigt; Till Schickedanz. Philo - Verlag, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-86572-363-2 .

Essay:

• German-Jewish Parnassus . In the Kunstwart . 11/1912, pp. 281-294.

literature

• Thomas Gräfe: German-Jewish Parnassus (article by Moritz Goldstein, 1912). In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Hostility to Jews in the past and present. Volume 7: Literature, Film, Theater and Art. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, pp. 68–70.
• Irmtraud Ubbens: Banned from my language ... Moritz Goldstein, a German-Jewish journalist and writer in exile . (= Dortmund contributions to newspaper research. Volume 59). KG Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-21323-9 .
• Joachim Schlör : The city's self. Debates on Judaism and Urbanity, 1822–1938. Göttingen 2006.
• Irmtraud Ubbens: The country school home in Florence. In childhood and youth in exile. A generation issue. (= Exile research. An international yearbook. Volume 24). edition text + kritik, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-88377-844-3 , pp. 117-134.
• Irmtraud Ubbens: ... stamped the 'Inquit' of a time. Moritz Goldstein - Inquit - the journalist. In: Yearbook for Communication History . Volume 7, Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2005, pp. 93-121.
• Irmtraud Ubbens: His fight for justice, freedom and decency was notorious. Moritz Goldstein - Inquit, journalist and court reporter at the Berlin "Vossische Zeitung". edition lumière, Bremen 2009, ISBN 978-3-934686-69-4 .
• Moritz Goldstein: "Announce what is happening ..." Berlin in the Weimar Republic. Features, reports and court reports. Edited, introduced and commented on by Irmtraud Ubbens. de Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-027433-2 .
• Irmtraud Ubbens: American life as experience and experience. Moritz Goldstein writes for "Die Neue Zeitung" from 1950–1954. In: Yearbook for Communication History . Volume 14, Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2012, pp. 152-185.
• Manfred Voigts : Kunstwart debate. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 3: He-Lu. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02503-6 , p. 464 f.
• Steven E. Aschheim : 1912 The Publication of Moritz Goldstein's “The German-Jewish-Parnass” sparks a debate over assimilation, German culture, and the “Jewish spirit”. In: Sander L. Gilman , Jack Zipes (ed.): Yale companion to Jewish writing and thought in German culture 1096-1996. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1997, pp. 298-305
• Andreas Kilcher: Goldstein, Moritz. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. 2nd, updated and expanded edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02457-2 , pp. 166-168.

Web links

• Literature by and about Moritz Goldstein in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Moritz Goldstein in the Lexicon of Westphalian Authors

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Irmtraud Ubbens: The country school home in Florence. P. 131.