Jewish Exiles Psychological Interpretations Of Nazism

This book examines works of four German-Jewish scholars who, in their places of exile, sought to probe the pathology of the Nazi mind: Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom (1941), Siegfried Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (1947), and Erich Neumann’s Depth Psychology and a New Ethic (1949). While scholars have examined these authors’ individual legacies, no comparative analysis of their shared concerns has yet been undertaken, nor have the content and form of their psychological inquiries into Nazism been seriously and systematically analyzed. Yet, the sense of urgency in their works calls for attention. They all took up their pens to counter Nazi barbarism, believing, like the English jurist and judge Sir William Blackstone, who wrote in 1753 - scribere est agere ("to write is to act").

Siegfried Kracauer stands out as one of the most significant theorists and critics of the twentieth century, acclaimed for his analyses of film and popular culture. However, his writing on propaganda and politics has been overshadowed by the works of his contemporaries and colleagues associated with the Frankfurt School. This book brings together a broad selection of Kracauer’s work on media and political communication, much of it previously unavailable in English. It features writings spanning more than two decades, from studies of totalitarian propaganda written in the 1930s to wartime work on Nazi newsreels and anti-Semitism through to examinations of American and Soviet political messaging in the early Cold War period. These varied texts illuminate the interplay among politics, mass culture, and the media, and they encompass Kracauer’s core concerns: the individual and the masses, the conditions of cultural production, and the critique of modernity. The introduction and afterword explore the significance of Kracauer’s contributions to critical theory, film and media studies, and the analysis of political communication both in his era and the present day. At a time when demagoguery and bigotry loom over world politics, Kracauer’s inquiries into topics such as the widespread appeal of fascist propaganda and the relationship of new media forms and technologies to authoritarianism are strikingly relevant.

Hans Baron, Karl Popper, Leo Strauss and Erich Auerbach were among the many German-speaking Jewish intellectuals who fled Continental Europe with the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Their scholarship, though not normally considered together, is studied here to demonstrate how, despite their different disciplines and distinctive modes of working, they responded polemically in the guise of traditional scholarship to their shared trauma. For each, the political calamity of European fascism was a profound intellectual crisis, requiring an intellectual response which Weinstein and Zakai now contextualize, ideologically and politically. They exemplify just how extensively, and sometimes how subtly, 1930s and 1940s scholarship was used not only to explain, but to fight the political evils that had infected modernity, victimizing so many. An original perspective on a popular area of research, this book draws upon a mass of secondary literature to provide an innovative and valuable contribution to twentieth-century intellectual history.

Antifascist literature repurposed Nazi stereotypes to express opposition. These stereotypes became adaptable ideological signifiers during the political struggles in interwar Germany and Austria, and they remain integral elements in today’s cultural imagination.

Demonstrates how four books by dissident German intellectuals served as a rebuke to the Nazi regime. During 1942, the decisive battles of Stalingrad and El Alamein raged and the Nazi genocide was at its lethal peak. The Pen Confronts the Sword examines the shared motives behind four remarkable texts German exiles began writing that year: Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus (1947); Ernst Cassirer’s The Myth of the State (1946); Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946); and Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944). Each identified a specific danger in Nazi ideology and mustered new theories, approaches, and sources to combat it. The books aimed to expose the encompassing catastrophes of German culture (Mann), politics (Cassirer), philology (Auerbach), and philosophy and sociology (Horkheimer and Adorno). Their scope, mastery, and sense of urgency constitute a comprehensive Kulturkampf(culture war) against Nazi barbarism. Avihu Zakai cogently analyzes each work, explains the context of its creation, and draws connections between these four landmark books in Western intellectual history. “This book provides a remarkable synopsis of four well-known, but disparate, responses to Nazism and links them as part of a humanist cultural war with dictatorship. By combining the readings of Mann, Cassirer, Auerbach, and Adorno/Horkheimer, we gain a comprehensive view of an ideal of Western culture composed from very different directions. This approach unlocks a reading of these classics of modern scholarship that is usually lost either in their specific reception by subdisciplines or in their isolated reading as brilliant works.” — Gregory B. Moynahan, author of Ernst Cassirer and the Critical Science of Germany: 1899–1919

In This Hour offers the first English translations of selected German writings by Abraham Joshua Heschel from his tumultuous years in Nazi-ruled Germany and months in London exile, before he found refuge in the United States. Moreover, several of the works have never been published in any language. Composed during a time of intense crisis for European Jewry, these writings both argue for and exemplify a powerful vision of spiritually rich Jewish learning and its redemptive role in the past and the future of the Jewish people. The collection opens with the text of a speech in which Heschel laid out with passion his vision for Jewish education. Then it goes on to present his teachings: a set of essays about the rabbis of the Mishnaic period, whose struggles paralleled those of his own time; the biography of the medieval Jewish scholar and leader Don Yitzhak Abravanel; reflections on the power and meaning of repentance, written for the High Holidays in 1936; and a short story on Jewish exile, written for Hanukkah 1937. The collection closes with a set of four recently discovered meditations—on suffering, prayer, spirituality, and God—in which Heschel grapples with the horrors unfolding around him. Taken together, these essays and story fill a significant void in Heschel’s bibliography: his Nazi Germany and London exile years. These translations convey the spare elegance of Heschel’s prose, and the introduction and detailed notes make the volume accessible to readers of all knowledge levels. As Heschel teaches history, his voice is more than that of a historian: the old becomes new, and the struggles of one era shed light on another. Even as Heschel quotes ancient sources, his words address the issues of his own time and speak urgently to ours.

Bernhard Lang, known for his contributions over several decades to biblical anthropology, offers in this volume a selection of essays on the life and literature of the ancient Hebrews. The subjects range from the Hebrew God, the world-view of the Bible, and the formation of the scriptural canon, to peasant poverty, women's work, the good life, and prophetic street theatre. The stories of Joseph, Samson, and the expulsion from Paradise are analysed, and in a departure from the Old Testament, the priestly origins of the Eucharist are considered. Insight into the Hebrew mentality is facilitated by the arrangement of the essays, reflecting the three strata of the ancient society: the peasants, with their common concerns of fertility and happiness; warriors, their martial pursuits, and the divine Lord of War; and the wise - prophets, priests, and sages.

Two giants of twentieth-century psychology in dialogue C. G. Jung and Erich Neumann first met in 1933, at a seminar Jung was conducting in Berlin. Jung was fifty-seven years old and internationally acclaimed for his own brand of psychotherapy. Neumann, twenty-eight, had just finished his studies in medicine. The two men struck up a correspondence that would continue until Neumann's death in 1960. A lifelong Zionist, Neumann fled Nazi Germany with his family and settled in Palestine in 1934, where he would become the founding father of analytical psychology in the future state of Israel. Presented here in English for the first time are letters that provide a rare look at the development of Jung’s psychological theories from the 1930s onward as well as the emerging self-confidence of another towering twentieth-century intellectual who was often described as Jung’s most talented student. Neumann was one of the few correspondence partners of Jung’s who was able to challenge him intellectually and personally. These letters shed light on not only Jung’s political attitude toward Nazi Germany, his alleged anti-Semitism, and his psychological theory of fascism, but also his understanding of Jewish psychology and mysticism. They affirm Neumann’s importance as a leading psychologist of his time and paint a fascinating picture of the psychological impact of immigration on the German Jewish intellectuals who settled in Palestine and helped to create the state of Israel. Featuring Martin Liebscher’s authoritative introduction and annotations, this volume documents one of the most important intellectual relationships in the history of analytical psychology.