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Book Reviews 163 them. This goes for Celan as well, and more so. This being said, Del Caro has taken care to select themes central toCelan's poetics. Even so, the thematic approach does land Del Caro in difficulty at times. For example, the effort to make the "Epitaph for Franyois" apoem about home andhomelessness falls short (p. 201). Similarly, the effort to force Firges' schema ofcolor symbolism on "Aspen Tree" is unfortunate (p. 33). The issue here is not failure ofmemory: Celan's mother was never allowed to grow old enough to have white hair. These are occasional errors, however. Sometimes Del Caro moves in the other direction, and gives a poem more room to breathe by not subordinating it so strongly to a theme. As a result, sometimes the relation ofthe poem to the theme is not altogether clear, but it is in fact probably a boon for the interpretation. Interpretive works, in their attempt to determine what the poem is saying, often pay too little attention to poetic form and to the poem's manner-which are, after all, essential to the poem's being qua poem. Del Caro does succumb to this pitfall, and consequently misses an important part of the drama of the poems. This is not to deny the work an emotional impact. The work derives a pathos from the language ofthe poems, from the backdrop ofthe Holocaust, and also from Del Caro's own diction, which, far from being dry and scholarly, is often impassioned. He is most passionate in his Nietzsche-inspired attack on religion, including Judaism, but particularly on Christianity, and this passion leads him at times to aggressive and reductive statements. These flaws and others could have been overcome ifmore time had been spent with the manuscript, which seems to have been hurried into print. But despite these caveats, Del Caro has produced a very interesting book. Many of the interpretations are intriguing, and one admires his willingness to dive right into and navigate the turbulent stream ofCelan's language. His promises to be a useful addition to the literature on Celan in English, and will undoubtedly fulfill its function ofmaking Celan's work more accessible to a growing American readership. Jeffrey D. Todd Department of Modem Languages and Literatures Texas Christian University Antisemitismus in offentlichen Konflikten: Kollektives Lernen in der politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik 1949-1989, by Werner Bergmann. Frankfurt: Campus. 1997. 535 pp. DM 118.00. Werner Bergmann, a long-time member of and now professor at the Zentrum fUr Antisemitismusforschung at the Technische Universitiit Berlin, has written an authoritative survey of public debates on antisemitism in West Germany. The volume is the capstone ofhis numerous earlier publications about the: history and phenomenology of modem antisemitism. Bergmann combines thick descriptions ofpolitical scandals with analyses ofavailable polling data and summaries ofreform efforts in education, public 164 SHOFAR Winter 2001 Vol. 19, No.2 policy, and the law. On the basis ofthis diverse material, he describes how a thoroughly antisemitic population has unlearned anti-Jewish prejudice through foreign guidance, political reform efforts, and responsible media coverage over four decades. Bergmann tells the optimistic story of democratic value engineering from the top down, which fIrst delegitimized antisemitism in the public sphere and-as a consequence and increasingly successfully-also prevented its reproduction in the private sphere. This learning process evolved as an asymmetrical communication between the political and cultural elite, who quickly embracedpoliticallycorrectphilosemitismafter 1945, and the general population, who avoided such sudden reversal of values. The gradual, delayed change ofmentality resulted primarily from radically different conditions of socialization for post-Nazi generations. Germans born after 1935 received a democratic, anti-antisemitic education in schools and through the media, while more traditional and suspect channels ofcultural learning, especially the family, were effectively marginalized. As a result, the percentage of West Germans with antisemitic attitudes decreased from 34 percent in 1952 to 13 percent in 1987 (pp. 177,477). In addition, less than 5 percent of citizens born after 1943 held clearly antisemitic world views in 1987 (pp. 476, 494). Bergmann suggests that the closing of the gap between published opinion and popular opinion went through four different stages which are reflected in...

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