Goldberg, Leah (1911–1970)

Author(s):  
Allison Schachter

Leah Goldberg (1911–70) was a prolific modernist poet, novelist, playwright, translator, and literary critic. Born in Königsberg, Germany, Goldberg grew up in the Russian-speaking milieu of Kovno. Her early education was in Russian and German and she read widely in both languages. During World War I the family fled Kovno. Upon their return in 1918 Goldberg’s parents enrolled her in the Hebrew gymnasium and there she studied Hebrew and language and literature. In 1931 she traveled to Germany to begin graduate work in Semitic Studies in Berlin and later in Bonn, where she completed her doctorate. In Germany, Goldberg witnessed the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the Nazi rise to power—two historical events that haunt her work. In 1935, Goldberg immigrated to Mandatory Palestine and found a place for herself as a prominent member of the Moderna, a group of Hebrew modernist poets that included Avraham Shlonsky and Nathan Alterman, quickly establishing herself as an important intellectual and cultural figure of her generation. She played this role not only as a poet and writer, but also as a scholar. Goldberg taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she founded the Department of Comparative Literature.

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ofer Ashkenazi

Prison cells constituted a unique sphere in post-World War I German films. Unlike most of the modern city spheres, it was a realm in which the private and the public often merged, and in which reality and fantasy incessantly intertwined. This article analyses the ways in which filmmakers of the Weimar Republic envisaged the experience within the prison, focusing on its frequent association with fantasies and hallucinations. Through the analysis of often-neglected films from the period, I argue that this portrayal of the prison enabled Weimar filmmakers to engage in public criticism against the conservative, inefficient and prejudiced institutions of law and order in Germany. Since German laws forbade direct defamation of these institutions, filmmakers such as Joe May, Wilhelm Dietherle and Georg C. Klaren employed the symbolism of the prisoner’s fantasy to propagate the urgent need for thorough reform. Thus this article suggests that Weimar cinema, contrary to common notions, was not dominated by either escapism or extremist, anti-liberal worldviews. Instead, the prison films examined in this article are in fact structured as a warning against the decline of liberal bourgeois society in the German urban centres of the late 1920s.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 50-57
Author(s):  
Elena Vladimirovna Fedotova

The work is devoted to the analysis of the field diaries of the participant of the First World War V.D. Efremov (1890–1978), a native of the Chuvash village of Ilyutkino, Staro-Maksimkinskaya volost, Chistopol district, Kazan province. The purpose of the research is to study the document in the context of historical events and introduce them into scientific use. The work is based on the author's field materials. The document is analyzed from a historical perspective. At the same time, in this work, the author turns to ethnographic and literary approaches. V.D. Efremov (1890–1978) – cavalryman of the 5th squadron of the 14th Dragoon Little Russian regiment. His diary entries were made in Russian in 1915 on the territory of Belarus. The value of this document lies in the fact that it represents the records made during the hostilities themselves. There is not so much evidence of this kind in Russian historiography. The records allow us to trace the movement of a soldier for more than six months and his perception of military events. Interesting in the diary is a poetic text in the Chuvash language, the author of which is K.D. Efremov, brother of a soldier. The song is filled with philosophical content and was written in the folklore traditions of the Chuvash people.


Author(s):  
Timothy Shipe

Born in Pirmasens on February 22, 1886, the German writer Hugo Ball is best known as the co-founder, with Tristan Tzara, of the Cabaret Voltaire and the Dada movement in Zurich. Active initially as an Expressionist playwright and dramaturge in Munich and as a journalist and literary critic in Berlin in the years leading up to World War I, Ball left Germany with his companion and future wife Emmy Hennings in 1915. They remained in Switzerland for the rest of their lives. Following his period of Dada activities in 1916 and 1917, Ball was a journalist for a centre-left newspaper for three years. Reconverting to the Catholic faith of his childhood, Ball spent the remainder of his life in relative seclusion in Ticino, where he wrote a series of religious books and revised his diaries for publication.


Author(s):  
Elliot Neaman

This chapter discusses the life and work of Ernst Jünger, who was part of a strain in modern German conservatism that tested the limits of modernity and Enlightenment rationality. He catapulted to fame as a young man on the basis of his World War I memoirs, In Storms of Steel, which made him part of the antidemocratic forces of the Weimar Republic, but he retreated into the inner emigration during the Third Reich. After 1950 he lived a reclusive life but published a stream of essays and books and an impressive diary that chronicled almost four decades of life with sharp observations on a wide range of topics. He was a cultural pessimist who thought that the rise of a unifying planetary technology and the loss of local culture meant that we were entering into a posthistorical world of fragmentation, and new forms of cultural and political tyranny.


1982 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 479-504

Robert Allan Smith, always known as Robin to his close associates, was born on 14 May 1909 in Kelso, Roxburghshire. Professionally, during Robin’s time first names were rarely used except between close friends. Surnames were in common usage except for Smiths, Joneses, etc., who had to be distinguished. Hence, he was often called ‘R.A.’. The combination of charm and determination, characteristic of a Borderer, was always present with Robin. He was the elder brother to (William) Allan, in the family of two, born to George J. T. Smith, tailor, a native of Kelso, and his wife, Elisabeth( née Allan), a ladies’ dressmaker and native of Eccles village, Kelso. The family ancestry was mainly in farming and business. His childhood was spent in the country in and around Kelso together with his primary and secondary schooling. On the outbreak of World War I, his father, who was a member of the Territorial Army, was called up, and his mother, Robin and Allan moved to Heeton Village near Kelso to stay with relations. A strong bond was formed between Robin and his uncle and aunts which endured throughout their life. Robin’s first school was therefore Heeton Village School where he spent a year before the family returned to Kelso. There after schooling continued at Kelso Infant School, Kelso Public School, and a Bursary to Kelso High School gave him the opportunity to go forward to higher education.


1995 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 282-296

A quote that says much about John McMichael comes from his own autobiographical notes: ‘I come from a materially poor branch of a Galloway family’. He was born on 25 July 1904 in Gatehouse of Fleet, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland, son of James and Margaret McMichael. There were two older sisters and two elder brothers, and he was something of an afterthought. His father ran a farm on the edge of the village and was also the local butcher. A ‘God-fearing, generous man’, he was not a good manager of his limited resources. Until he was ten years old John McMichael went to a school run under the patronage of the Lady of the Manor; but in 1914 this school was closed and he transferred to Girthon public school under its headmaster, William Learmonth, who was to have a major influence on the young McMichael. Learmonth’s son, eight years McMichael’s senior, became Sir James Learmonth, the well-known surgeon. Learmonth was an exceedingly capable teacher to find in a small village school and his pupils clearly felt the benefit. At the age of 14 there was a debate in the McMichael household about the next stage in John’s education. His mother, supported by Learmonth, decided he must continue and he moved to Kirkcudbright Academy, eight miles away, a hard and hilly bicycle ride. Here he blossomed, taking first place in most subjects, and ending up as Dux of the school. His decision to read medicine was influenced by two chance factors. He often spent his holidays with a fisherman on an island in the Fleet Bay where the solitary house was occupied by a doctor from the Indian Medical Service during his leaves. On wet days his medical books opened up exciting prospects in the schoolboy’s enquiring mind. During World War I a maternal cousin, Col. George Home, C.B.E., M.D., of the New Zealand Army Medical Corps, spent his leaves with the family and kindled a broad interest in science and medicine.


2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIA ROOS

AbstractThis essay revisits 1920s German debates over the illegitimate children of the Rhineland occupation to examine hitherto neglected fluctuations in the relationship between nationalism and racism in Weimar Germany. During the early 1920s, nationalist anxieties focused on the alleged racial ‘threats’ emanating from the mixed-race children of colonial French soldiers. After 1927, plans for the forced sterilisation and deportation of the mixed-race children were dropped; simultaneously, officials began to support German mothers’ paternity suits against French soldiers. This hitherto neglected shift in German attitudes towards the ‘Rhineland bastards’ sheds new light on the role of debates over gender and the family in the process of Franco–German rapprochement. It also enhances our understanding of the contradictory political potentials of popularised foreign policy discourses about women's and children's victimisation emerging from World War I.


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