Jewish Chronotopes: Sites of Memory in the Autobiographies of Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin Public
Weisberger, Abigail Elena (2014)
Published
Abstract
Eminent German-Jewish scholars Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) and Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) contributed in key ways to Weimar intellectual culture and had a well-documented friendship. Although they grew up in Berlin during the same period, their autobiographies yield almost opposing narrative structures. Through a collection of vignettes, Benjamin's Berlin Childhood around 1900 (1938) focuses on sensory objects and places as seen from the perspective of a child. In contrast, Scholem's From Berlin to Jerusalem (1977) depicts the trajectory of his life in a straightforward narrative: namely, his journey from the Berlin of his youth to his adult life in Jerusalem. These two thinkers exemplify not just divergent views on Judaism in early twentieth-century Germany, but also the different usages of autobiography to express Jewish identity. Using Berlin Childhood and From Berlin to Jerusalem as a case study for Jewish autobiographical literature, I examine the authors' Jewish self-image through the concepts of space and time. These autobiographies are a prism through which one can understand Jewish reactions to and conceptualizations of their own marginality in a period of rupture.
Table of Contents
Introduction / 1
Chapter I: Jewish Spaces of Community and Marginality in Berlin / 6
A. Jewish Spaces in the Public Sphere
B. Private Jewish Spaces: Home and Community
Chapter II: Time-Space Structures in Jewish Autobiography / 21
A. Bakhtinian Chronotope and Genre
B. Intersections of Space and Time in Benjaminian Aesthetic Theory
C. Chronotopes of Nostalgia and Otherness
Chapter III: Jewish Time and Autobiographical Narrative / 36
A. The Dialectic of Past and Future in Jewish Messianism and Social Emancipation
B. Destruction and Redemption in the Kafka Correspondence
C. Messianic Time in Autobiography
Closing Remarks / 53
Bibliography / 58
Notes / 60
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