Bambi's Jewish Roots and Other Essays on German-Jewish Culture

(Hardback)

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Paul Reitter has won acclaim as both a scholar and a public critic for his writing on German Jewish culture in the twentieth century. Bambis Jewish Roots brings together the best of Reitters essayistic work, exploring the lives of well-known figures and revealing surprising new perspectives. These include how Felix Saltens Zionist commitments manifest themselves in his most famous work, the novel Bambi; what Gershom Scholems diaries tell us about his development as a thinker and person; why German-Jewish writers hated Stefan Zweig so passionately; where myth-busting books about Franz Kafka have indulged in myth-building; how Freuds Moses and Monotheism offers a theory of Jewish self-hatred more than an explanation of anti-Semitism; and why Heinrich Heine felt aburning need to distance himself from his fellow liberal Jewish critic Ludwig Brne. The works collected here, many of which were originally published in forums such as the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Harpers Magazine, and the Jewish Review of Books, have earned Reitter his reputation as a witty, erudite, and deeply illuminating critic.

Reviews

Reitter has established himself as a leading authority on German-Jewish relations between the wars. * Choice (Praise for ON THE ORIGINS OF JEWISH SELF-HATRED) *
Reitter treads skilfully between the twin dangers of pedantry and pandering: he is intelligent when commenting on familiar debates and expansive in his discussion of lesser-known figures ... [A] book that manages to do a great deal well, illuminating the many lesser-known corners of German-Jewish culture with economy and wit. * Times Literary Supplement *
[Bambi's Jewish Roots] provides the reader with cause for reflection not only in every selection, but virtually on every page ... Reitters readings are always fair, and when he has a criticism to make its done in as even-toned a fashion as possible. -- Mitchell Abidor * Jewish Currents *
Reitter has perfected an eminently readable style ... while simultaneously displaying profound knowledge of his subject-matter ... [One] cannot deny the volume its worth, which lies in creating a kaleidoscope of Jewish life and culture of one turn of the century from the vantage-point of the next. * Modern Language Review *
Bambis Jewish Roots is a bouquet of elegantly crafted essays evoking seminal but largely overlooked moments in German-Jewish cultural history. * Paul Mendes-Flohr, Dorothy Grant Maclear Professor of Modern Jewish History and Thought, The University of Chicago, USA *
Paul Reitter preserves the memory of German-Jewish culture in the manner perhaps most faithful to its achievementthrough the well-wrought essay. Venerated by a cult of readers who have run across one or another of his entries, Reitters prose will win a whole new level of esteem thanks to this lovely compilation. Always informative, at times cheeky, ultimately somber, but always elegant, it is less a monument to a lost golden age of the humanities than a showing of how to make an admirable past live on in our own time. * Samuel Moyn, Professor Law and History, Harvard University, USA *

Author Bio

Paul Reitter is Professor in German Languages and Literatures and Director of the Humanities Institute at Ohio State University, USA. The author of The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siecle Europe (2008), and On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred (2012), he has contributed essays and reviews to Harper's Magazine and The Nation, and collaborated with Jonathan Franzen on The Kraus Project: Essays by Karl Kraus (2013). He recently co-edited Anti-Education, a new translation of Nietzsches lectures on the German educational system, and The Rise of the Modern University, an anthology of sources having to do with the mission of the research university.