Jews and the Making of Modern German Theatre

Preface and Acknowledgments

Preface and Acknowledgments Although the theme of this volume, Jews and modern German theatre, has been addressed in a number of articles over the years, this will be the first book to view modern German theatre (1871–1933) as a co-creation by two overlapping cultures: gentile and Jewish Germans. Our focus is on the Jewish participants; but the world in which they create, and the theatre they helped generate, is German tout court. Assembling a collection of articles focusing on this unique topic has been a rewarding and challenging task. The first steps were taken at a conference we organized in January 2002, with the support of the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Goethe Institute in Jerusalem. We are very grateful to Paul Mendes-Flohr, the director of the Franz Rosenzweig Center at the time, for his involvement and generosity during this initial probing of the subject. The discussions from this meeting were further developed during a workshop sponsored by the Minerva Foundation and hosted by the Institute for Theatre Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz in March 2004. We thank Peter W. Marx, who initiated and wonderfully prepared this meeting. The present book is only partially based on materials that were presented at these meetings, although they enabled us to formulate some of the problematics of the subject with greater clarity and detail. We then extended invitations to additional scholars who had addressed these issues but for different reasons had not been present at the meetings. These pages are therefore the result of seven years of deliberations, discussions, and ongoing work with the authors of the essays. Their cooperation and creativity made the process an adventure. Special thanks to Keren Cohen, graduate student of Theatre Studies at the Hebrew University, who carefully edited the prefinal version of this book and prepared its index; and to Anat Feinberg, for always being willing to help in every capacity. i x The final—and crucial—phase of our work as editors was finding the most suitable outlet for our book. It is a pleasure to extend our thanks to Tom Postlewait, the editor of the Studies in Theatre History and Culture series at the University of Iowa Press, for his interest, his learned and serious engagement with the text, and his commitment to getting our book published. Holly Carver, the director of the press, offered us her untiring support and patience and the very capable work of her staff. Many thanks to our copyeditor, Kathy Burford Lewis. We hope that this collective effort will serve as an inspiration for further investigations into this rich and intriguing field. Jeanette R. Malkin and Freddie Rokem Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, 2009 p r e fac e a n d ac k n ow l e d g m e n ts x Jews and the Making of Modern German Theatre ...