Jewish-German identity in the orientalist literature of Else Lasker-Schüler, Friedrich Wolf, and Franz Werfel

About this book

One of only a handful of studies on German literary Orientalism, Professor Heizer's pioneering book is the first to examine the phenomenon of Jewish-German Orientalist literature. For many Jewish-German authors of the beginning of the twentieth century, the Orient represented an imaginative space where they could describe and analyze their position as Jews in German society. The book explores representations of Muslims and Islamicate cultures in the works of Lasker-Schuler, Wolf, and Werfel, and reveals how these popular and respected authors - who were nevertheless often seen as Jewish, Oriental "others" by the German-speaking societies in which they lived - came to terms with their multiple identities as Germans and Jews by writing Orientalist literature. Despite their similarities as German-Jewish authors rooted in Expressionism, Lasker-Schuler, Wolf, and Werfel constructed quite different images of the Orient in their works. Lasker-Schuler's Die Nachte Tino von Bagdads (1907) and Der Prinz von Theben (1912) creates a timeless, amorphous Orient, filled with visionary artists like herself; it serves as the vehicle with which she explores her role as a Jewish artist in a German society. Wolf's Mohammed: Ein Oratorium (1922) depicts the Orient as the birthplace of the great message of social justice espoused by Islam; here Wolf reaches a new understanding of his position as a politically progressive Jew in a war-torn German society. And in Werfel's Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh (1933) the author uses the modern conflict between Turks and Armenians to present an Orient where he can explore his own religiosity.