Archives
Issue 18 (2024), 35
Dear readers and friends of Medaon,
The members of our journal’s all-volunteer editorial team are currently facing particularly great professional and personal challenges, and the dynamic developments in politics and academia are also demanding a great deal from the authors. We are therefore particularly pleased to welcome Susanna Kunze as a new member of the Education editorial team.
Despite the diversity of the specific topics, the articles in this issue are dedicated to a common consideration: How do people and groups with different biographical experiences succeed in meeting and engaging in dialog? Anya Zhuravel Segal takes us back to Berlin in the interwar period under the title “A Red City: Russian Jews and the Soviet Cultural Presence in Weimar Berlin.” Helena Lutz explores the question on the basis of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short stories and Dani Kranz and Ina Schaum devote themselves to the Leerstelle jüdischer Gegenwart (“Void of the Jewish present”).
Kai Schubert and Christian Tietz look at the implications of the so-called Historikerstreit 2.0 or Catechism debate on antisemitism awareness education and on a Berlin educational project by the Vajswerk association.
The series on biographies of Jewish women is continued by Natalie Naimark Goldberg on Hannah Kaminski, while other articles focus on literary and didactic issues as well as experiences from digital research.
The reviews in this issue cover a wide range of topics. We wish you an inspiring read. If you are interested in reviewing for Medaon yourself, please do not hesitate to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you and will be happy to support you.
This issue would also not be possible without the support of all the reviewers, whom we would like to thank for their commitment. We would also like to thank Steffen Schröter from text plus form, Cathleen Bürgelt, Markus Schaub and Margret Schellenberg for their thorough and reliable corrections and translations.
Dear readers,
We mourn the loss of Dr. Nora Goldenbogen, who was always a formative and inspiring personality for research on Jewish history and for our journal and who accompanied quite a few of the editorial board members and contributors as they took their first steps in this field of research.
We dedicate this issue to her memory.
A Red City: Russian Jews and the Soviet Cultural Presence in Weimar Berlin
After WWI and the Russian 1917 revolutions, Berlin emerged as one of the leading centers of Russian emigration. In 1922, Soviet Russia and the Weimar Republic extended mutual diplomatic recognition, paving the way for yet another wave of migration. This article suggests that while Russian/Soviet Jewish migrants played a key role in the transfer of ideas between the two countries in the early interwar era, they were simultaneously engaged in a search for new Jewish culture. Exploring the case of the artist El Lissitzky, illustrative for a cohort of Russian-born Jewish intellectuals who engaged in the transfer of ideas between the Soviet realm and the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, the article probes the social history of overlapping Russian-Jewish migrant circles in Weimar Berlin. A deeper exploration of the topic, still a desideratum, will forge a more nuanced understanding of the cultural transfer between the German, Jewish, and Soviet societies during the early interwar era.
Leerstelle jüdische Gegenwart: Jüdische Studien, Selbstpositionierung und blinde Flecken
We had planned a reply to Michael Brenner and Benet Lehmann. This has become a reflection on Judaic Studies, Jewish Studies and history in post- Shoah Germany. We argue that contemporary Jewish Studies is an important research focus in itself. While the two articles and our manuscript were written before October 7, 2023, the reactions ever since in Germany underscore the lack of knowledge about Jews, Israelis and Israel. We arrive at the conclusion that interdisciplinary cooperation must be expanded to address social grievances, and to support the resilience of Jewish life in Germany.