Jewish Culture in Public Diplomacy, Memory Politics, and the Curious Case of Halle

2021 ◽  
pp. 281-288
Author(s):  
Tina Frühauf
Keyword(s):  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
Small Female ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Worship Music ◽  
Foreign Politics ◽  
East German ◽  
Service Music ◽  
East West

As East German foreign politics became ever more intertwined with Jewish culture and uniquely tied to East–West relations, Jewish music’s potential as the GDR’s diplomatic agent was being discovered. For these purposes, the Leipziger Synagogalchor transitioned to becoming a respected semi-professional ensemble linked with the Jewish communities. The communities, in turn, faced a dearth, not only of cultural programs, but also of worship music, which had declined. In order to maintain service music, the communities relied largely on lay people; and both Leipzig and Dresden could count on a small female chorus that consisted of non-Jews, which became firmly known as the Dresdner Synagogenchor. The Halle community held high hopes for its own cantor, which turned out to be an unfortunate episode that left the community stranded.

The Politics of Commemoration and Reorientation

2021 ◽  
pp. 299-306
Author(s):  
Tina Frühauf
Keyword(s):  
Turning Points ◽  
The State ◽  
Fiftieth Anniversary ◽  
The Other ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Foreign Politics ◽  
Steep Decline

The year 1988 saw the fiftieth anniversary of Kristallnacht and 1989 the fall of the Wall. During these years the Leipziger Synagogalchor’s national and international performances and exposure reached an all-time peak. But these years also marked other turning points. The year 1988 was the last year the choir officially functioned as Chor des Verbandes, though as representative of Jewish culture it continued to cater to the GDR’s increasing fixation with foreign politics. Indeed, the choir traveled westward multiple times, with tours to the other Germany in 1988 and 1989. It thus aided the state’s attempts to transmit the image of an antifascist society with a vibrant Jewish culture. In reality, the choir’s ever more dominant presence paralleled a steep decline of the Jewish communities, a situation the state was fully aware of.

Values and intergroup perceptions of East Germans and West Germans in 1998 1This research was supported by a grant from the German Research Society (We 1106/3-1).

1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-272
Author(s):  
Jörg Doll ◽  
Michael Dick
Keyword(s):  
Research Society ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Perceived Similarity ◽  
The West ◽  
Need For Uniqueness ◽  
German Research ◽  
East German ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
East West

The studies reported here focus on similarities and dissimilarities between the terminal value hierarchies ( Rokeach, 1973 ) ascribed to different groups ( Schwartz & Struch, 1990 ). In Study 1, n = 65 East Germans and n = 110 West Germans mutually assess the respective ingroup and outgroup. In this intra-German comparison the West Germans, with a mean intraindividual correlation of rho = 0.609, perceive a significantly greater East-West similarity between the group-related value hierarchies than the East Germans, with a mean rho = 0.400. Study 2 gives East German subjects either a Swiss (n = 58) or Polish (n = 59) frame of reference in the comparison between the categories German and East German. Whereas the Swiss frame of reference should arouse a need for uniqueness, the Polish frame of reference should arouse a need for similarity. In accordance with expectations, the Swiss frame of reference significantly reduces the correlative similarity between German and East German from a mean rho = 0.703 in a control group (n = 59) to a mean rho = 0.518 in the experimental group. Contrary to expectations, the Polish frame of reference does not lead to an increase in perceived similarity (mean rho = 0.712).

Mothers and Children in Ottoman Jewish Society as Reflected in Hebrew Sources of the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

2017 ◽  
pp. 77-102
Author(s):  
Ruth Lamdan
Keyword(s):  
Family Life ◽  
Financial Stability ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Family Stability ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Jewish Society ◽  
Mothers And Children

This chapter investigates an array of Ottoman Hebrew sources written following the expulsion from Spain in 1492 and focuses on the interplay between rabbinic sages and mothers in the arena of family law and relationships. It explains how the Ottoman Hebrew sources offer a more nuanced view of family life in Ottoman Jewish culture. It also examines how mothers are associated with childbirth and childrearing, as well as how they are portrayed as women who took the initiative in their role as mothers with respect to marriage, divorce, levirate marriage, and the financial stability of their family and children. The chapter considers Hebrew that honours mothers and acknowledges the active role that mothers assumed in maintaining family stability at times of crisis. It recounts families who were torn apart and forced to abandon their homes and join Jewish communities outside Spain in the period after the expulsion.

Who Are to Be the Successors of European Jewry? The Restitution of German Jewish Communal and Cultural Property

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 519-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Lustig
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Cultural Property ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Proportional Allocation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Communal Property ◽  
The World ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Archival Practices

Who are to be the successors of European Jewry? This question faced Jewish leaders after the Holocaust, in terms both legal – inheriting heirless property – as well as spiritual – carrying forward Jewish culture. Looted Jewish property was never merely a matter of inheritance. Instead, disputes revolved around the future of Jewish life. While Jewish restitution organizations sought control of former communal property to use around the world, some German-Jewish émigrés and survivors in Germany sought to establish themselves as direct successors to former Jewish communities and institutions. Such debates set the stage and the stakes for mass archival transfer to Israel/Palestine in the 1950s. The fate of the German Jewish communal archives highlights the nature of postwar restitution debates as proxy for the issue of the continuation of Jewish culture and history, calling into question the nature of restitution itself. As opposed to policies of proportional allocation to meet the needs of radically diminished Jewish communities, wholesale transfer of archives reflected a belief in a radical rupture in German Jewish existence as well as Israel’s position as successor to European Jewry. The fate of the archives, which broke with archival practices of provenance, concretized and validated the historical rupture represented by the Holocaust.

scholarly journals East-West Couples: Distribution, Characteristics and Stability

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Lois
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Distribution Characteristics ◽  
Federal States ◽  
German Federal States ◽  
Cohabiting Couples ◽  
East German ◽  
Unmarried Cohabitation ◽  
East West

SOEP data were used to examine relationships consisting of one partner socialised in West Germany and one in East Germany and who presently reside in the “old” (former West German) or “new” (newly formed East German) federal states. The estimated share of east-west couples among all marriages or cohabiting couples rises continuously within the observed period reaching approximately two and eleven percent respectively by 2009. The specific characteristics of east-west couples are that their employment-related division of labour is relatively egalitarian, above-average the partners are of different confessions and practice different religions, at least one of the partners is frequently divorced and there is also a strong tendency towards unmarried cohabitation. Besides the place of socialisation, the present place of residence has an independent impact on the economic situation, division of labour and marriage propensity. Analyses of relationship stability reveal that east-west couples exhibit a relatively high risk of separation. This is partly due to religious differences between the partners, but primarily to the low marriage propensity and the overrepresentation of divorced persons within this type of relationship.

scholarly journals Internal Migration in Germany, 1995-2010: New Insights into East-West Migration and Re-urbanisation

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikola Sander
Keyword(s):  
Internal Migration ◽  
Population Change ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Net Migration ◽  
Comprehensive Picture ◽  
East German ◽  
Regional Population ◽  
Education And Employment ◽  
East West

Over the last two decades, patterns of internal migration in Germany have been discussed under the headings of East-West movements and sub- and re-urbanisation. This paper argues that the intense scientific and public debate that ignited about the possible causes and consequences of internal migration should be based on a clear understanding of how internal migration flows impact on regional population change. Using the German Internal Migration (GIM) database, a unique new dataset that holds annual interregional migration counts drawn from the population register for 397 regions with temporally consistent boundaries, this paper aims to provide a more comprehensive picture of the spatial structure of inter-county migration in Germany and how it has changed over the period 1995-2010. To reduce the complexity of the county-level flow data and to facilitate the identification of patterns and trends, county-to-county flows were analysed using a spatial framework of 132 “analytical regions”. The results show that the intensity of migration between East German regions has been higher than East-West migration throughout the period, suggesting that the former type of migration has a stronger impact on rural population decline than commonly believed in the literature. Following a strong suburbanisation pattern in the 1990s, over the last decade, migration between counties in eastern Germany has resulted in a growing concentration of population in the cities of Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden. Increasing net migration gains were recorded by many urban cores across Germany. The trend was driven by both continuing in-migration of young adults in search for education and employment, and by a cessation of the long-term trend of family out-migration to the cities’ suburban and non-metropolitan hinterlands.

Toward a New Communal Future

2021 ◽  
pp. 389-398
Author(s):  
Tina Frühauf
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Music Festival ◽  
Jewish Music ◽  
West Berlin ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Small Parts ◽  
Divided Germany ◽  
Physical Manifestation ◽  
East West

The changing musical practices of the Jewish community in West Berlin are traced through the later 1980s, only to look again at Berlin at large and its two communities side-by-side. In spite of ideological differences, the East and West Berlin communities came closer, and generally music and culture mirrored the political rapprochement. In the final years of Divided Germany, a Jewish-music festival culture emerged on either side of the curtain, which reveals commonalities and differences between the Berlin communities. If the image of the Iron Curtain suggests a strict East–West separation, the Wall as its physical manifestation had begun to crumble with contacts between the Jewish communities across borders. Indeed, small parts of the Wall fell long before the significant date in history in a slow process that began in the early 1980s and reached a pivotal point in 1989.

Attraction and Attribution: Framings of Sephardi Identity in Ashkenazi Prayer Books

2018 ◽  
pp. 221-240
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Cultural Goods ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Cultural Objects ◽  
Prayer Books ◽  
Wissenschaft Des Judentums

This chapter recounts how maskilim and early representatives of Wissenschaft des Judentums divided the shares of Jewish culture between Ashkenaz and Sepharad in order to address questions of Jewish identity arising in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Germany. It looks at the perception of medieval Jewish culture that affected the views of their contemporaries. It also analyses the acceptance of cultural goods between the Jewish communities of Ashkenaz and Sepharad and the notion of the divide. The chapter reviews studies that show how texts and ideas were transmitted between the different communities that were adapted and incorporated into the regional Jewish cultures. It describes collective cultural identities and their dynamism that can be studied in a nuanced way through examination of the transfer of cultural objects from one region to another.

The Leipziger Synagogalchor in the Service of State Propaganda

2021 ◽  
pp. 267-280
Author(s):  
Tina Frühauf
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Republic ◽  
East Germany ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
Performance Context

Having received solid funding from the state, the Leipziger Synagogalchor began to adopt a new image to conform to the GDR’s cultural policies. By the early 1980s, its representation of Jewishness became ever more opaque. The choir maintained loose connections to the Jewish communities, while also entering deeper into the political web of the Democratic Republic through the state’s award system and through negotiations allowing travel to represent antifascist values. The choir found itself in additional contexts, in which aspects of Jewish culture intersected in other ways with GDR politics. At the same time interfaith efforts increased throughout East Germany, providing another performance context for the choir. Discussions about the Leipziger Synagogalchor are juxtaposed with the declining musical life of the Jewish communities.

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