A seminal text in Jewish thought accessible to English readers for the first time. The diagnosis of Jewish self-hatred has become almost commonplace in contemporary cultural and political debates, but the concept’s origins are not widely appreciated. In its modern form, it received its earliest and fullest expression in Theodor Lessing’s 1930 book Der jüdische Selbsthaß. Written on the eve of Hitler’s ascent to power, Lessing’s hotly contested work has been variously read as a defense of the Weimar Republic, a platform for anti-Weimar sentiments, an attack on psychoanalysis, an inspirational personal guide, and a Zionist broadside. “The truthful translation by Peter Appelbaum, including Lessing’s own footnotes, manages to make this book more readable than the German original. Two essays by Sander Gilman and Paul Reitter provide context and the wisdom of hindsight.”—Frank Mecklenburg, Leo Baeck Institute From the forward by Sander Gilman: Theodor Lessing’s (1872–1933) Jewish Self-Hatred (1930) is the classic study of the pitfalls (rather than the complexities) of acculturation. Growing out of his own experience as a middle-class, urban, marginally religious Jew in Imperial and then Weimar Germany, he used this study to reject the social integration of the Jews into Germany society, which had been his own experience, by tracking its most radical cases.... Lessing’s case studies reflect the idea that assimilation (the radical end of acculturation) is by definition a doomed project, at least for Jews (no matter how defined) in the age of political antisemitism.
Enemy in The Country: Satires & Novellas is the first English translation of this fictional book by Jewish philosopher Theodor Lessing (1872-1933), who was assassinated by the Nazis during their rise to power. The collection of short stories, satires, novella, and poem is unique in Lessing's writings. Set during the 1923-1925 French occupation of the Ruhr, they are powerful warnings, 10 years before Adolf Hitler became chancellor, on the dangers of threatening a prostrate post-war Germany with reparations and occupation. The volume was translated by award-winning author and translator Peter C. Appelbaum, who also translated Lessing's famous 1930 book Jewish Self-Hate.
Devenu une figure emblématique de l'opposition à l'ascension du nazisme, Theodor Lessing (1872-1933) - philosophe allemand d'origine juive - fut l'objet à partir de 1925 d'une virulente campagne de diffamation qui aboutit à son assassinat le 31 août 1933. Cet essai se propose non seulement d'éclairer les circonstances de sa vie et de sa mort, mais surtout de mieux faire connaître l'évolution de sa pensée et de son action à travers un choix de textes rédigés entre 1906 et 1933, et toujours inédits en français.
Theodor Lessing studierte in den Jahren 1906/07 in Göttingen Philosophie bei Edmund Husserl und arbeitete zu dieser Zeit neben seinem Studium als Theaterkritiker für die Göttinger Zeitung. Seine mit großer psychologischer Einfühlsamkeit geschriebenen Göttinger "Nachtkritiken", die hier erstmals in Buchform erscheinen, dokumentieren den Wandel in der Bewertung des kulturellen Leitmediums Theater im Jahrzehnt vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg. Sie sind Beiträge zur Neubestimmung einer Kultur im Spannungsfeld zwischen wilhelminischer Monumentalität auf der einen und avantgardistischer Reformmoderne auf der anderen Seite. Neben den Artikeln für die Göttinger Zeitung enthält der vorliegende Band weitere Schriften Lessings, u.a. über das Theater sowie seine psycho-logisch-medizinische Studie "Über Hypnose und Autosuggestion". Lessings Gedanken zu den künstlerischen, und psychologischen Reformbewegungen um 1900 spiegeln - in einer Momentaufnahme der Jahre 1906/07 - die tiefgreifende Umbruchsituation des kulturellen Systems im Deutschen Reich wider. Die Edition präsentiert die Texte Lessings in der Chronologie ihres Erscheinens nach den Erstdrucken. Der ausführliche Kommentar liefert Angaben zum Druck sowie zur Entstehungs- und Wirkungsgeschichte der Texte und erläutert zeitgeschichtliche, politische und kulturgeschichtliche Hintergründe.
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