Insiders and Outsiders: Jewish and Gentile Culture in Germany and Austria (review)

198 SHOFAR Spring 1996 Vol. 14, No.3 souls" but preserved the consensus behind the popularity of the Fascist regime as long as he tilted toward the latter. When Mussolini took a radical turn toward "fascist revolution" in both foreign and racial policy in the late 1930s, he broke the consensus and alienated the military, civil service, and diplomatic elites who ultimately triumphed over the weakened and vacillating Duce of 1942-43 and shaped the policies that thwarted Nazi Germany, protected Jews, and preserved Italian honor. In this reviewer's opinion, Carpi could have strengthened his book by expanding the historiographical section and explicitly engaging the arguments of other historians of Italian Jewish policy and rescue, such as Meir Michaelis, Jonathan Steinberg, and the late Menachem Shelach. Christopher R. Browning Pacific Lutheran University Insiders and Outsiders: Jewish and Gentile Culture in Germany and Austria, edited by Dagmar C. G. Lorenz and Gabriele Weinberger. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994. 365 pp. $44.95. Insiders and Outsiders is an ambitious attempt to present an overall history of the dynamics of the outsider, in his/her contribution to German and Austrian culture. The book consists of 28 essays by cultural and literary historians as well as by journalists, all of whom are involved in GermanJewish studies. In addressing the issue of the outsider within literary discourse, the editors take a historical approach focusing on the Jewish community. Divided into six sections with an introduction and conclusion, the book begins with a broad sweep of the history of the Jewish influence during specified time periods and ends with the post-Holocaust period. For this approach, Dagmar Lorenz, who contributed several essays throughout the text, provides an appropriate introduction by tracing major trends not only in German language and literature since the Enlightenment, but also in the fields of political and social science. Through such a factual approach, Lorenz makes the case for distinguishing between German and Austrian literature, a demarcation that is especially crucial in understanding post-Holocaust writing as it affects the Jewish community. The book accurately conveys a central fact in postwar German and Austrian literature: the Holocaust is the focal point that has not only given rise to the literary discourse in Germany and Austria following the Holocaust but has altered literary interpretation prior to it. Book Reviews 199 Lorenz has therefore correctly drawn attention to the distinction ofliterary development in each of the two countries especially since the Holocaust. The presentation of the essays, for the most part, is tightly structured. Each of the major sections represents a specific issue within the framework of historical chronology; each section can also stand alone because of its division by an inherent historical progression. Section One, "HistoricalPerspectives: Emancipation and Assimilation," serves as a general introduction to the issues concerning the Jewish influence throughout literary history. Sander Gilman's lead essay presents issues that have not changed over time or place either in the old world or new, an approach consistent with the universality underlying the Jewish presence in cultural life. Employing psychological techniques, Dr. Gilman provides the reader with an understanding of the major issues involving the Jew as outsider. His essay is followed by several others that concentrate on the various issues from a historical perspective that Gilman raises from a psychological one. The section ends with Ruth Beckermann's essay on Jean Amery as a paradigm for the issues that have faced Austrian Jewry since the close of the War. While serving as an introductory section, Section One can stand on its own chronology. Section Two, "Jewish Languages and DiscOlJrses," follows a similar pattern as that presented in Section One. While the focus of Section One was primarily on literature, Section Two encompasses the German language, including Yiddish. The introductory essay is strictly linguistic. The following four essays are chronologically aminged. Two provocative arguments of the cultural aspects of the German language are presented here. They are Michael Berkowitz's "The Debate About Hebrew in German: The Kulturfrage in the Zionist Congresses, 1897-1914" and Margaret Pazi's "Authors ofGerman Language in Israel." The first example uses the Zionist movement as its historical context, and in the second example it...