In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Zeitungsstadt Czernowitz: Studien zur Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Presse der Bukowina (1848-1940) ed. by Andrei Corbea-Hoisie, Ion Lihaciu, and Markus Winkler
  • Joseph W. Moser
Andrei Corbea-Hoisie, Ion Lihaciu, and Markus Winkler, eds. Zeitungsstadt Czernowitz: Studien zur Geschichte der deutschsprachigen Presse der Bukowina (1848-1940). Bukowinastudien II. Kaiserslautern und Mehlingen: Parthenon Verlag, 2014. 264 pp.

Czernowitz, the capital of the former Austrian crown land Bukovina, was an outpost of German-language culture and literature, which has long since occupied the interest of Austrian Studies scholars. Paul Celan and Rosa Ausländer put Czernowitz on the literary map even after it had become Romanian in 1918, and it remained a place in their imagination even after the German-speaking Czernowitz ceased to exist in 1941 after the deportation and murder of its predominantly Jewish German-speaking population. Zeitungsstadt Czernowitz, edited by Andrei Corbea-Hoisie, Ion Lihaciu, and Markus Winkler, focuses on the German-language newspaper culture in this city from 1848, after the defeat of the revolution in Vienna when German-speaking intellectuals sought refuge in Czernowitz, to 1940, when the Red Army occupied the city and restricted the public use of German. The findings in this volume are the result of a project sponsored by the Romanian Ministry of Sciences and European Union funds at the German Department of the Alexandru-Ioan-Cuza University in Iasi, Romania. The researchers compiled and accounted for a total of 309 German-language periodicals during this period that were published in Czernowitz. This book is a precursor to a lexicon that is in progress and will describe these periodicals in their historical scope.

This very interesting volume includes thirteen articles that chronologically explore the development of German-language newspapers within this time period. The first article by Stefanita-Mihaela Ungureanu, “Literatur und Theater in Ernst Rudolf Neubauers Bukowina,” explores the first long-term German-language periodical in Czernowitz, called Bukowina, which was in print from 1862 to 1868 and was published by Ernst Rudolf Neubauer, an exile of the 1848 revolution. Francisca Solomon examines Jewish identity in “Sprache und Identität: Zu den theoretischen und typologischen Dimensionen der ‘jüdischen Presse’ in Galizien und in der Bukowina während der Habsburger Zeit,” in which she describes the German-language Jewish press as one of the markers of Jewish assimilation to German culture from the nineteenth century until the Holocaust. Andrei Corbea-Hoisie—aprofilicscholar of Czernowitz culture, literature, and history—contributed “Ein Presseskandal aus dem Jahr 1919 und die Czernowitzer ‘Zivilisationsliteraten,’” which examines [End Page 151] the short-lived literary periodical Der Nerv, which was edited by Albert Maurüber and appeared between January and September 1919. Der Nerv argued for German Idealism in contrast to Heimatdichtung, which caused a stir within the intelligentsia in Czernowitz and raised questions about how the German language should be used. Alfred Margul-Sperber became one of the most prominent representatives of this movement. Questions of Jewish identity are also at the center of Dragos Carasevici’s article “Die Anfänge der ‘Ostjüdischen Zeitung’ und die Frage der Minderheitensprachen in der Bukowina nach der Vereinigung mit Rumänien (1924-1929)” and continue in Nora Chelaru’s contribution, “Klara Blum als Feuilletonistin und Journalistin für die Ostjüdische Zeitung (1924-1929).” Czernowitz was a microcosm of the larger discussion on Jewish identity in Europe in the early twentieth century, including the question of which language Jews should speak—Yiddish, German, or Hebrew. Die Ostjüdische Zeitung in Czernowitz was the Zionist newspaper in town, which in several of its German-language articles referred to Hebrew as the “Nationalsprache der Zukunft” (160), thus rejecting an allegiance to the German language and culture.

Ioana Rostos, with “Alfred Margul-Sperber als Mitarbeiter des Czernowitzer Morgenblatts,” and Raluca Radulescu, with “Alfred Margul-Sperbers literarische Texte in der Czernowitzer Zeitschrift Die Straße (1929),” write about Margul-Sperber’s work with periodicals in Czernowitz. While Rostos focuses on his non-literary writing, Radulescu writes about the poems that he published; both scholars contribute to a better understanding of Margul-Sperber’s work. Hans Neumann examines “Das Bild der Czernowitzer Presse der Zwischenkriegszeit in Gregor von Rezzoris Roman ‘Ein Hermelin in...

pdf

Share