In this Book

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The nineteenth- and twentieth-century relationship between European culture, German history, and the Jewish experience produced some of the West’s most powerful and enduring intellectual creations—and, perhaps in subtly paradoxical and interrelated ways, our century’s darkest genocidal moments. In Times of Crisis explores the flashpoints of this vexed relationship, mapping the coordinates of a complex triangular encounter of immense historical import.
    In essays that range from the question of Nietzsche’s legacy to the controversy over Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners, the distinguished historian Steven E. Aschheim presents this encounter as an ongoing dialogue between two evolving cultural identities. He touches on past dimensions of this exchange (such as the politics of Weimar Germany) and on present dilemmas of grasping and representing it (such as the Israeli discourse on the Holocaust). His work inevitably traces the roots and ramifications of Nazism but at the same time brings into focus historical circumstances and contemporary issues often overshadowed or distorted by the Holocaust.
    These essays reveal the ubiquitous charged inscriptions of Nazi genocide within our own culture and illuminate the projects of some later thinkers and historians—from Hannah Arendt to George Mosse to Saul Friedlander—who have wrestled with its problematics and sought to capture its essence. From the broadly historical to the personal, from the politics of Weimar Germany to the experience of growing up German Jewish in South Africa, the essays expand our understanding of German Jewish history in particular, but also of historical processes in general.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Title, Copyright and Dedication
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
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  1. Preface
  2. pp. ix-x
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  1. Part I: The Crisis of Culture—Then and Now
  1. 1. Friedrich Nietzche, Max Nordau, and Degeneration
  2. pp. 3-12
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  1. 2. Thinking the Nietzche Legact Today: A Historian's Perspective
  2. pp. 13-23
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  1. 3. Against Social Science: Jewish Intellectuals, the Critique of Liberal-Bourgeois Modernity, and the (Ambiguous) Legacy of Radical Weimar Theory
  2. pp. 24-43
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  1. 4. Nazsim and the Holocaust in Contemporary Culture
  2. pp. 44-56
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  1. Part II: (Con)Fusions of Identity—Germans and Jews
  1. 5. Excursus: Growing Up German Jewish in South Africa
  2. pp. 59-63
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  1. 6. Assimilation and Its Impossible Discontents: The Case of Moritz Goldstein
  2. pp. 64-72
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  1. 7. Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem
  2. pp. 73-85
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  1. 8. German History and German Jewry: Junctions, Boundaries, and Interdependencies
  2. pp. 86-92
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  1. 9. Archetypes and the German Jewish Dialogue: Reflections Occasioned by the Goldhagen Affair
  2. pp. 93-102
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  1. Part III: Understanding Nazism and the Holocaust: Competing Models and Radical Paradigms
  1. 10. Nazism, Normalcy, and the German Sonderweg
  2. pp. 105-121
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  1. 11. Nazism, Culture, and The Origins of Totalitarianism
  2. pp. 122-136
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  1. 12. Post-Holocaust Jewish Mirrorings of Germany: Hanah Arendt and Daniel Goldhagen
  2. pp. 137-143
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  1. Part IV: Historians, History, and the Holocaust
  1. 13. Reconceiving the Holocaust? Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners
  2. pp. 147-154
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  1. 14. George Mosse at 80: A Critical Laudatio
  2. pp. 155-170
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  1. 15. On Saul Friedlander
  2. pp. 171-194
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  1. Notes
  2. pp. 197-264
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  1. Index [Includes Back Cover]
  2. pp. 265-269
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