Renewal in the Shadow of the Catastrophe: Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Celan in Germany

The essay discusses German Jewish cultural renewal in the aftermath of the World War II and the Holocaust. In order to do so, it offers a comparative study of three prize-reception speeches, given in West Germany after the Holocaust by notable Jewish figures. Although these speeches vary greatly, they all seek to perform German Jewishness shortly after the long and honorable tradition of German Jewry was brutally demolished by National Socialism. This article investigates how they thus partake in an attempt to renew German Jewish culture after the catastrophe of the Holocaust.