GermanEditorial
In the current issue of MEDAON Anna Augustin (Potsdam) adds a case study on the handling of stolen cultural goods in Israeli museums to the academic discourse on Nazi looted Art. Alexandra Klei (Berlin) in her contribution examines the remembrance of Jewish inmates of Buchenwald concentration camp on its present day memorial site. She focuses on description and analysis of monuments, plaques, photos and texts as means for conveying information about the camp. Ines Sonder (Potsdam) sketches the reception of visionary approaches, writings and works of Bruno Taut by the representatives of the first generation of Zionist disposed architects. Taut was one of the central figures of 1920s architecture. These architects, who were actively participating in the construction of a new Jewish society, drew upon Taut’s idea of a “Stadtkrone” (City Crown) in many different ways. Through the history of the reception of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the key text of modern anti-semitism, Malte Gebert (Berlin) shows the entrance of a text of Christian-European origin into an existing Egyptian narrative on Jews. He identifies the belief in a Jewish-Zionist conspiracy as a central momentum of arabic anti-semitism up until today. Susanne Beer (Berlin/Essen) and Marten Düring (Essen) seek to illuminate the motives of Berlin journalist Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, who supported Jewish friends during National Socialism. They plead for further and comparative studies as well as a connecting theoretical comprehension of aid within politically repressive contexts.
Oliver Geisler (Dresden) refers to the work “Psalm” by the Swiss composer Heinz Holliger. It is an attempt at transforming into music Paul Celan's poem and his quest for a language appropriate to the Shoah. The composition will be performed at a memorial concert in the New Synagogue in Dresden in November 2007. In the series “Jewish female writers – Rediscovered” Jana Mikota (Siegen) reminds us of the poet Gertrud Kolmar, who was murdered in Auschwitz. Waltraud Schmidt (Rößnitz) presents the Friedländers, a Jewish physician’s family, and depicts their expulsion from Brambach in Vogtland/Saxony after ‘Kristallnacht’ in 1938.
Joachim Albrecht's (Kamenz) interest rests on the context of a petition by Prague Jews from 1744, conserved at the main archives of Saxony's State Archive in Dresden, which documents that, after anti-Jewish pogroms, these Jews sought for admission to Saxony in vain. Miriam Y. Arani (Frankfurt) presents photo holdings from the Wiener Library in London and sheds a critical light in regard to their sources onto the history of their development and tradition. The testimonies from Łódź Ghetto documented here in their entirety were taken by Mendel Grosmann and most likely Lajb Maliniak.
Noa Mkayton (Jerusalem) argues for an early encounter with the topic “Holocaust” in the context of primary and secondary education and reflects on specific challenges therewith.
As usual, a number of reviews examine scholarly publications and online offers. At this point, however, we want to draw attention to the review articles by Janina Wurbs (Berlin), Edna Herlinger (Frankfurt/Main) and Kobi Kabalek (Beer Sheva).
The current edition of MEDAON would not have been possible without the help of Wendy Anne Kopisch, Peter Carrier, Phillip Roth, Irina Suttner and Stefan Schwarz, as well as all the reviewers. Corrections were done by Cathleen Bürgelt as well as by Gunther Gebhard and Steffen Schröter of text plus form – the editors wish to thank them very much.
The editors of MEDAON, October 2011