Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Nearly a quarter of the population of Budapest at the fin de siecle was Jewish. This demographic fact appears startling primarily because of its virtual absence from canonical histories of the city.
Famed for its cosmopolitan culture and vibrant nightlife, Budapest owed much to its Jewish population. Indeed, it was Jews who helped shape the city's complex urban modernity between 1867 and 1914. Yet these contributions were often unacknowledged, leading to a metaphoric, if not literal, invisible status for many of Budapest's Jews.
In the years since, particularly between the wars, anti-Semites within and outside Budapest sought to further erase Jewish influences in the city. Appellations such as the "sinful city" and "Judapest" left a toxic inheritance that often inhibited serious conversation or scholarly research on the subject.
Into this breach strides Mary Gluck, whose goal is no less than to retrieve the lost contours of Jewish Budapest. She delves into the popular culture of the city's coffee houses, music halls, and humor magazines to uncover the enormous influence of assimilated Jews in creating modernist Budapest. She explores the paradox of this culture, which was Jewish-identified yet lacked a recognizable Jewish face. Because much of the Jewish population embraced and promoted a secular, metropolitan culture, their influence as Jews was both profound and invisible.
Synopsis
This multidisciplinary collection of readings offers suggestive new interpretations of Richard Wagner’s ideological position in German history. The issues discussed range from the biographical—the reasons for Wagner’s travels, his spotted political life—to the aesthetic and ideological, regarding his re-creation of medieval Nuremberg, his representations of gender and nationality, his vocal iconography, his anti-Semitism, and his vegetarianarguments, and, finally, his musical heirs.
The essays are written by Tamara S. Evans, Edward R. Haymes, Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Peter Morris–Keitel, Alexa Larson–Thorisch, Audrius Dundzila, Marc A. Weiner, Jost Hermand, Frank Trommler, and Hans Rudolf Vaget. Avoiding journalistic or iconoclastic approaches to Wagner, these writers depart from the usual uncritical admiration of earlier scholars to develop a stimulating and ultimately cohesive collection of new perspectives.
About the Author
Reinhold Grimm is professor of German and comparative literature at the University of California, Riverside. Jost Hermand is professor of German at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.