Hebrew Literature in the 20th Century

Modern Hebrew literature and some of the most important works of the younger and contemporary generation of Israeli authors are interwoven with the German-speaking world in manifold ways. These close connections owe in part to the biographies and family histories of the authors and in part to the thematic level of their narratives, but also to literary traditions and forms or specific instances of translation, publication, and dissemination through which works of Hebrew literature develop a life of their in the German language.

This colloquium will explore and discuss this history of literary entanglements during the course of five evenings with guests who are themselves active in the most varied ways as mediators between German-language and Hebrew Israeli literature and culture. To this end, it will focus on incisive works – by S. J. Agnon (1888–1970), Lea Goldberg (1911–1970), and Tuvia Rübner (1924–2019) through to contemporary literature – and on the reconstruction of dissemination processes and encounters.

This event series is a cooperation between the Leibniz Research Alliance »Value of the Past« and the Literaturhaus Leipzig.
Please refer to the DI homepage for details of guests, topics, venue and time: Dubnow Institute Colloquium

Literature: Lina Barouch, Between German and Hebrew. The Counterlanguages of Gershom Scholem, Werner Kraft and Ludwig Strauss, Berlin u. a. 2016; Amir Eshel/Na’ama Rokem, Berlin and Jerusalem: Toward German-Hebrew Studies, in: Steven E. Aschheim/Vivian Liska, in cooperation with the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem (eds.), The German-Jewish experience revisited, Berlin, Boston, Mass. 2015, 265–272; Anat Feinberg (ed.), Moderne hebräische Literatur. Ein Handbuch, München 2005; Giddon Ticotsky: A German Island in Israel: Lea Goldberg and Tuvia Rübner’s Republic of Letters, in: Naharaim 10 (2016), 127–162; Yfaat Weiss, Lea Goldberg. Lehrjahre in Deutschland 1930–1933. Übersetzt von Liliane Meilinger, Göttingen 2010.