Goethe in German-Jewish Culture (Revised 2000)

The success of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners (1997) and the heated debates that followed its publication exposed once again Germany's long history of anti-Semitism as one of the main causes for Hitler's Final Solution. Goldhagen, like many before him, drew a direct and irresistible line from Luther's pamphlets against the Jews to Hitler's attempted annihilation of European Jewry.

The aim of this collection of new essays is to examine the thesis of a universal anti-Semitism in Germany by focussing on its greatest author, Goethe, and to see to what extent some scholars are justified in accusing him of anti-Semitism. The book places the reception of his works in a broader historical context: Goethe's relationship to Judaism and the Jews; the reception of Goethe's works by the Jewish elite in Germany, the reception of the 'Goethe cult' by Jewish scholars; the Jewish contribution to Goethe scholarship; and Goethe's heritage in exile during the Third Reich. The last section of the volume treats the Jewish contribution to Goethe's fame and to Goethe philology since the 19th century, and the exodus of many Jewish authors and scholars after 1933, when they took their beloved Goethe into exile. When a few of them returned to Germany after 1945, it was to a country that had lost Goethe's most devoted audience, the German Jews.