Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena

Kolleg Publications


The following section contains collected volumes emanating from the conferences and workshops held at the Imre Kertész Kolleg since its inception. Here you will find our most recent publications with Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group) as well as contributions by staff and affiliated researchers to our monograph series ‘Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century’, published by De Gruyter/ Oldenbourg.


Vol. 7 Catastrophe & Utopia

Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century, Vol. 7

Ferenc Laczó & Joachim von Puttkamer (eds.)

Catastrophe and Utopia

Jewish Intellectuals in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s

Munich, De Gruyter/ Oldenbourg
ISBN 978-31-1055-934-7
11/2017
355 pages

By focusing on the relatively underexplored region of Central and Eastern Europe – which was the primary centre of Jewish life prior to the Holocaust, served as the main setting of the Nazi genocide, but also had notable communities of survivors – the volume offers significant contributions to a European Jewish intellectual history of the twentieth century. Approaching specific historical experiences in their diverse local contexts, the twelve case studies explore how Jewish intellectuals responded to the unprecedented catastrophe, how they renegotiated their utopian commitments and how the complex relationship between the two evolved over time. They analyze proximate Jewish reactions to the most abysmal discontinuity represented by the Judeocide while also revealing more subtle lines of continuity in Jewish thinking.