Laboratory for world destruction : Germans and Jews in Central Europe / Robert S. Wistrich.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wistrich, Robert S., 1945-2015, author.

Series:

Studies in antisemitism (Unnumbered)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Antisemitism--Germany.

Antisemitism.

Europe, Central--Ethnic relations.

Europe, Central.

Germany--Ethnic relations.

Germany.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 404 p. :) ill., map ;

Place of Publication:

Lincoln ; London : University of Nebraska Press, [2007]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Published and distributed for the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism During the sixty years between the founding of Bismarck's German Empire and Hitler's rise to power, German-speaking Jews left a profound mark on Central Europe and on twentieth-century culture as a whole. How would the modern world look today without Einstein, Freud, or Marx? Without Mahler, Schoenberg, Wittgenstein, or Kafka? Without a whole galaxy of other outstanding Jewish scientists, poets, playwrights, composers, critics, historians, sociologists, psychoanalysts, jurists, and philosophers? How was it possible that this vibrant period in Central European cultural history collapsed into the horror and mass murder of the Nazi Holocaust? Was there some connection between the dazzling achievements of these Jews and the ferocity of the German backlash? Robert S. Wistrich's Laboratory for World Destruction is a bold and penetrating study of the fateful symbiosis between Germans and Jews in Central Europe, which culminated in the tragic denouement of the Holocaust. Wistrich shows that the seeds of the catastrophe were already sown in the Hapsburg Empire, which would become, in Karl Kraus's words, "an experimental station in the destruction of the world." Featured are incisive chapters on Freud, Herzl, Lueger, Kraus, Nordau, Nietzsche, and Hitler, along with a sweeping panorama of the golden age of Central European Jewry before the lights went out in Europe.

Contents:

Introduction : Jews and antisemitism in central European culture

The ethnic cauldron of the Habsburg empire

Adolf Fischof and the tragedy of liberalism

Austro-Marxist interpretations of the "Jewish Question"

Rosa Luxemburg, Polish socialism, and the Bund

The strange odyssey of Nathan Birnbaum

Max Nordau : from "degeneration" to "muscular Judaism"

Friedrich Nietzsche, Germany, and the Jewish "Superman"

Theodor Herzl : artist, politician, and social utopian

In the footsteps of "King Messiah"

The last testament of Dr. Sigmund Freud

Stefan Zweig and the "World of yesterday"

Karl Kraus : an anatomy of self-hatred

Karl Lueger and Catholic judeophobia in Austria

Adolf Hitler : the making of an antisemite.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780803208698

0803208693