Synopses & Reviews
Mehring 's drama, first staged by Erwin Piscator in 1929, caused the biggest theatre scandal of the Weimar Republic. It portrayed a diverse picture of the city of Berlin from the stock exchange to the Scheunenviertel and a socio-political cross section through the German population after the First World War. The text, which also illustrates the lives of Jews in Berlin at that time, is made more accessible to modern readers by a commentary referring to the events surrounding inflation as well as the lives of Jews in Germany.
Synopsis
Walter Mehring (1896-1981), in der Weimarer Republik einer der herausragenden satirischen Schriftsteller und Kabarett-Autoren, hat- neben Gedichten und Chansons, Romanen und essayistisch-erzhlenden Texten (Die verlorene Bibliothek, 1951)- auch Dramen geschrieben. Das wichtigste unter ihnen, Der Kaufmann von Berlin (1929), spielt zur Zeit der Inflation 1923 und liefert ein facettenreiches und in den Details geistvoll-treffsicher gezeichnetes Bild der Grostadt Berlin- von der Brse bis zum Scheunenviertel- und einen politisch-sozialen Querschnitt durch die deutsche Bevlkerung nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Das Drama, das bei der Auffhrung durch Erwin Piscator (1929) den grten Theaterskandal der Weimarer Republik verursachte, veranschaulicht unter anderem auch das Leben von Juden im Berlin dieser Zeit und ist vielleicht nicht zuletzt deshalb mehrfach neu gedruckt worden. Die jetzige Ausgabe erfllt, auf der Grundlage der Erstausgabe, die Ansprche, die man an eine kritische Ausgabe stellen kann, und erschliet heutigen Lesern den Text durch einen Kommentar, der die Bezge zum Inflationsgeschehen ebenso bercksichtigt wie die zum jdischen Leben in Deutschland.
Synopsis
This book-series, initiated in 1992, has an interdisciplinary orientation; it is published in English and German and comprises research monographs, collections of essays and editions of source texts dealing with German-Jewish literary and cultural history, in particular from the period covering the 18th to 20th centuries.
The closer definition of the term German-Jewish applied to literature and culture is an integral part of its historical development. Primarily, the decisive factor is that from the middle of the 18th century German gradually became the language of choice for Jews, and Jewish authors started writing in German, rather than Yiddish or Hebrew, even when they were articulating Jewish themes. This process is directly connected an historical change in mentality and social factors which led to a gradual opening towards a non-Jewish environment, which in its turn was becoming more open. In the Enlightenment, German society becomes the standard of reference - initially for an intellectual elite. Against this background, the term German-Jewish literature refers to the literary work of Jewish authors writing in German to the extent that explicit or implicit Jewish themes, motifs, modes of thought or models can be identified in them.
From the beginning of the 19th century at the latest, however, the image of Jews in the work of non-Jewish writers, determined mainly by anti-Semitism, becomes a factor in German-Jewish literature. There is a tension between Jewish writers' authentic reference to Jewish traditions or existence and the anti-Semitic marking and discrimination against everything Jewish which determines the overall development of the history of German-Jewish literature and culture. This series provides an appropriate forum for research into the whole problematic area.