Rafael Seligmann

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Rafael Seligmann (2010)

Rafael Seligmann (born October 13, 1947 in Tel Aviv ) is a German writer , publicist , political scientist and contemporary historian .

Life

Seligmann immigrated from Israel to Germany with his parents in 1957 and studied political science and history in Munich and Tel Aviv. He received his doctorate in 1982 on "Israel's Security Policy".

Seligmann has been writing essays, commentaries and columns as an editor since 1978 for the Spiegel , the Springer -lätter BZ , BILD and Die Welt as well as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , the taz and the Jüdische Allgemeine .

In 1981/82 he was a foreign policy advisor in the CDU federal office in Bonn, and from 1985 to 1991 lecturer in international relations at the University of Munich. In 1985 Seligmann founded the Jewish newspaper and remained its editor-in-chief for two years.

Seligmann lives as a freelance journalist, publicist and author in Berlin. From October 2004 to 2009 Seligmann was editor-in-chief of the English-language monthly newspaper The Atlantic Times, which appears in Germany and the USA . From 2012 to 2019 he published the English-language magazine Jewish Voice from Germany , which appears four times a year .

From 2008 to 2012, Seligmann interviewed one person from public life on personal and political issues as part of the “Talk in the Elysée” in the Hamburg hotel “Grand Elysée”. Guests included Maybrit Illner , Huub Stevens , Hildegard Müller and Michel Friedman .

Seligmann criticized the fact that in the dispute over the Mohammed cartoons, freedom of the press was not defended more aggressively by Europe. Instead, there are apologies to Islamists. The same applied to a quote in a papal speech that degraded Islam and that the Pope never made his own. Through this submission, the European values ​​of freedom are endangered in the long term and radical Islamism wins.

Seligmann is a board member of the association “ Face Show! For a cosmopolitan Germany ".

Basic tendencies of the work

Seligmann writes provocatively and relentlessly about the German-Jewish relationship in his novels and non-fiction books. This relationship is "his life melody, enlightenment, his mission". For Seligmann this means: criticism in all directions. Seligmann's main intention: "More normality" in the coexistence of Germans and Jews. For this it is worthwhile to go to the pain limit.

“ After Auschwitz , the survivors, relatives and descendants of the victims and perpetrators left deep emotional injuries. These cannot be cured through academic debate alone. It takes a lot of understanding, but also arguments - arguments like in the Jewish school , ”he wrote in the Rheinische Post .

Seligmann's work and creations polarize - just like his person: He is considered to be a “nest dirtier” ( Allgemeine Jüdische Wochen-Zeitung ) and an “enlightener” ( Zeit ). Seligmann sees himself as a “German Jew”.

Prose literature

With his debut novel, Rubinstein's auction (1988), he wrote the first work in contemporary German Jewish literature , which was followed by more. It was received with great enthusiasm, but also with rejection. In the 1997 novel Der Musterjude, Seligmann satirized the media world and difficult German-Jewish relations by taking the career path from a Jewish jeans seller to a celebrated, taboo-breaking star journalist to absurd heights.

At the end of 2006, "The Coal Saga" was published, a family saga about a Polish immigrant family, whose fate has reflected the history of German hard coal mining over the decades, largely identical to the company history of Ruhrkohle AG . Ruhrkohle AG has sent an issue to every employee in the group.

In 2017 the novel "Deutsch Meschugge" was published, a satire about the effects of populism in German politics.

Non-fiction

Seligmann's dissertation from 1982 entitled Israel's Security Policy. Between Self-Assertion and Preventive Strike - A case study on fundamentals and motives deals with the six-day war between Arabs and Israelis in 1967. In it, the author looks at the prehistory of the conflict, analyzes important determinants of Israeli security policy and examines the diverse spectrum of the political and military system of the State of Israel in the first two decades of its existence. The work minutely traces the decision-making process on the Israeli side during the individual phases of crisis and war in May / June 1967. In the context of the topic, the author examines the rationality of Israeli security policy with the instrument of the political-strategic teachings of Carl von Clausewitz .

In his non-fiction book With Limited Hope in 1991, shortly after German reunification, he dealt with the situation of German Jews and Jews in Germany.

The essay Hitler appeared in spring 2004 . The Germans and their leader . It deals with the question of why the Germans were absolutely loyal to Hitler for so long. Seligmann's answer that this loyalty was based on “fear of modernity” was hotly debated. In the FAZ z. B. it is referred to as “mere psychologizing in the case of significantly disturbed references to historical reality”. The basic tenor is that it is an easy-to-read book with “a lot of showmanship” but little new knowledge.

Seligmann's non-fiction books gave rise to discussions; on the one hand through the political intentions and on the other hand through the historical interpretations.

Seligmann wrote the script for the two-part television film Shalom Germany (first broadcast: spring 1998, ARD ).

Jewish Voice from Germany

At the beginning of 2012, Seligmann founded the newspaper Jewish Voice from Germany - the English-speaking bridge between Germany and Jews around the world , which is primarily aimed at an American audience. The newspaper is distributed to all members of the US Congress , the Israeli Knesset, and the Canadian and Australian parliaments. The newspaper is intended to provide information about Jewish life in Germany. It appears quarterly in English and is mainly funded by advertising. Seligmann is the editor. The editors are Hartmut Bomhoff, Michael S. Cullen , Sabine Dultz, Siegfried Guterman, Susanne Mauss (†), Elisabeth Neu. The authors include Moshe Zimmermann , Heribert Prantl , Uwe-Karsten Heye and Heiko Maas . The initial circulation is 50,000 copies, of which 7,000 are to be distributed in Germany. The first edition appeared on January 1, 2012. Since 2015, a German edition has been published parallel to the English edition. It is part of the daily newspaper DIE WELT .

Works

Autograph

literature

  • Helene Schruff, Hans-Joachim Hahn: Seligmann, Rafael. 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. 461-463.

Web links

Commons : Rafael Seligmann  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Deutschlandradio Kultur: "Jewish Voice from Germany" on the market today / Rafael Seligmann: We are free and independent  ( page can no longer be accessed , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.dradio.de   . In: Kulturnachrichten. January 2, 2012. Retrieved January 3, 2012.
  2. ↑ Sonja Pohlmann: New newspaper about Jewish life. Beyond the Holocaust . In: Tagesspiegel. December 12, 2011. Retrieved January 3, 2012.
personal data
SURNAME Seligmann, Rafael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 13, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Tel Aviv , Israel