Wechsberg’s memoir of pre-World War II mittel-Europa recounts with charm and irony life in the dying Habsburg Empire, family stories of wealth gained and lost, the subtleties of coffeehouse culture and the dynamics of Viennese society where one “is at the same time an actor, his own audience, and his own critic.” “[His] early childhood reads like an idyll […] so that while other writers may recall the last years of this ancien régime as constricting, Wechsberg remembers them as kindly and easygoing if sometimes philistine and stuffy. However, his father was killed in action on the Russian front very soon after the start of the First World War, and his mother, having invested her inheritance in government bonds, was impoverished when the government lost the war and was dissolved. Yet this is in no way a mournful book: young Wechsberg found the pre-war years entertaining, and his inquiring, wry mind makes the post-war years equally so. His account of a visit in the twenties to rich relatives in Vienna, describing his provincial bewilderment at their cosmopolitan luxury, is very funny; it is also excellent social history, and everybody in the story — for example, the chauffeur, whom Wechsberg found the most comprehensible member of the ménage — comes alive for us. Though Wechsberg can remember himself as a country cousin, his memoirs are urbanity itself.” — The New Yorker (July 30, 1979)
The collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 left all Austrians in a state of political, social, and economic turmoil, but Jews in particular found their lives shaken to the core. Although Jews' former comfort zone suddenly disappeared, the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy also created plenty of room for innovation and change in the realm of culture. Jews eagerly took up the challenge to fill this void, and they became heavily invested in culture as a way to shape their new, but also vexed, self-understandings. By isolating the years between the World Wars and examining formative events in both Vienna and the provinces, Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars demonstrates that an intensified marking of people, places, and events as "Jewish" accompanied the crises occurring in the wake of Austria-Hungary's collapse, with profound effects on Austria's cultural legacy. In some cases, the consequences of this marking resulted in grave injustices. Philipp Halsmann, for example, was wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his father years before he became a world-famous photographer. And the men who shot and killed writer Hugo Bettauer and philosopher Moritz Schlick received inadequate punishment for their murderous deeds. But engagements with the terms of Jewish difference also characterized the creation of culture, as shown in Hugo Bettauer's satirical novel The City without Jews and its film adaptation, other texts by Veza Canetti, David Vogel, A.M. Fuchs, Vicki Baum, and Mela Hartwig, and performances at the Salzburg Festival and the Yiddish theater in Vienna. By examining the lives, works, and deeds of a broad range of Austrians, Lisa Silverman reveals how the social codings of politics, gender, and nation received a powerful boost when articulated along the lines of Jewish difference.
“Mahler’s great orchestral works have been gathering a massive audience. Perhaps his strongest following is among the young... As a logical corollary of the burgeoning interest in the music has come a new interest in the man. What kind of mind shaped the music, what social experience shaped the mind? [Blaukopf’s] portrait of Mahler [1860-1911] as a developing individual is securely drawn, despite the complexities of the subject.” — Carl Schorske, New York Times Book Review “The study makes fascinating reading... Mostly an account of [his] life and career, the book clears up a number of questions regarding the composer’s life and sheds new light on various aspects of his personality... the final chapter, a review of the Mahler literature and a discussion of the changing opinions about Mahler, is especially valuable.” — Library Journal “Goodwin’s excellent translation makes Blaukopf’s work readily available to English readers, and the book is filled with important insights [into] Mahler and his contemporaries... will be meaningful to all readers who enjoy Mahler’s music, and help convert those who do not.” — Choice “[A] concise and... comprehensive survey of Mahler’s life and work.” — Stereo Review
In the spring of 1944, thirty-two young Palestinian Jews parachuted into Nazi-held Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Their goal was to encourage Jewish resistance where possible and to organize rescue schemes thwarting deportations to the death camps. Linking up in Yugoslavia and impelled by the hope that the Jews trapped in Hungary were still capable of fighting back, some of the volunteers set out for Budapest. Tragically, they were betrayed by their local guides, who turned out to be double agents also working for the Hungarian Fascists. The volunteers reached Budapest where the young woman volunteer, Hannah Szenes, was executed and another deported to a death camp. Into the Inferno is the remarkable first-hand account of this mission by the only member of the group who miraculously survived from among those who penetrated into Hungary. He endured imprisonment and torture both by the Gestapo and the Hungarian Fascists, escaped from a deportation train, and joined the Zionist youth rescue underground in Budapest. “In May 1944, Palgi was one of three Jews from Palestine who parachuted into Nazi-held Yugoslavia and headed for Hungary... His memoir... is an incredible account of this daring mission by its only survivor. Without a doubt, a vivid chronicle of bravery and compassion.” — George Cohen, Booklist “More than half a century has elapsed since [Yoel Palgi’s] paratrooper operations in occupied Europe. The world has appreciably changed since... Yet there are events, fragments of history, whose significance time and place do not alter. It seems that a special place in history is reserved for the story of this remarkable group of courageous Jews that did the impossible. It is vital that [this] story be told.” —Shimon Peres, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Israel “Palgi describes in riveting human terms an excruciatingly painful piece of Israeli and world history, and does so with extraordinary psychological and ethical insight.” —Robert J. Lifton, author of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide “This gripping account of a desperate rescue mission goes beyond conveying the horror of the Holocaust and the brutality of the Nazis. The rescuers worked within an ambiguity where every alliance was questionable and noble decisions could prove fatal. This is the illuminating story of a thoughtful man, driven by history to courageous improvisation and ethical struggle, acting and remembering in spite of uncertainty.” —Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Full Circles, Overlapping Lives “Yoel Palgi’s story is one of heroism, inner conflict and questioning. His readiness to go behind the Nazi lines to rescue the Jews of Hungary reflected his extraordinary courage. He paints a vivid picture of the danger of his effort both behind enemy lines and the emotional scars that were left after the war. This is a must-read for any student of the Holocaust.” — Dennis Ross, Director, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
“Enzo Sereni was physically tiny, a peanut with spectacles. Born in 1905 into a cultivated, wealthy Italian Jewish family, he steeped himself as a youth in traditional Italian culture. Burning with visions of Eden, he became one of the little band of Italian Zionists — more precisely, the still littler band of Italian Socialist Zionists, dreamers of a new life for Jews as a people and as people. At 22, he went off with his wife to Palestine, the two of them the first Italians to work as “pioneers.” He became a founder of kibbutz Givat Brenner, working on and off as laborer in the fields and then racing away to beg/borrow money for the kibbutz from Jewish agencies and Italian relatives. During the war he served with British intelligence in Cairo, and then worked as a secret agent in Iraq, helping endangered Jews to flee. Finally, 39, he parachuted behind the Nazi lines in northern Italy, hoping to save a few of the remaining Jews stranded there. Caught by the Nazis, he was shipped to Dachau. The few surviving witnesses record that he behaved with notable courage. In 1944 the Nazis killed him... As Ruth Bondy, an Israeli journalist, tells the story in her unadorned and disciplined book, the bare events take on color, shape and nuance, and one comes to think of Sereni as a heroic figure. He seems heroic not just because of his readiness to face death, by no means unusual in our century, but because of his wish to live out his life to the brim of consciousness — which for him meant the brim of responsibility and risk... Sereni’s story is the best testimony I have ever read to the moral energy Zionism commanded during its heroic period... Ruth Bondy has told his story with an admirable plainness, out of an understanding that in our time nothing is finally more moving than the record of an exemplary life.” — Irving Howe, The New York Times “When I think about Enzo there is one thought on my mind: he was unique. Of course, he lived in our midst, in the kibbutz, in political life; he had many friends who were near to him; he loved people — and yet, I always felt that he was one of a kind. You cannot say about Enzo: he was one of those who... There was nobody like him.” —Golda Meir, from the Afterword “Enzo Sereni’s life is the stuff of legend. His passionate nature and reflective intelligence were both animated and tempered by the most scrupulous ethical judgments. A dashing and romantic figure in the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, he should become — through Ruth Bondy’s sensitive and deeply human evocation — an inspiration for all who genuinely care about justice. Here was a man who had roots and wings at once.” — Martin Peretz, Editor, The New Republic “Enzo Sereni’s life was climaxed by an act of desperate heroism in World War II — parachuting behind the Nazi lines to bring courage to the beleaguered and alert them that the outside world was concerned with their fate. Precisely because Ruth Bondy writes of him in a low key, without forced drama, and with the larger perspective never lost, her biography of this Italian-born Israeli leaves an unforgettable impact.” — Abram L. Sachar, Chancellor, Brandeis University
Shmuel Katz’s detailed and comprehensive biography of Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940) is an unabashedly partisan defense of one of the most complex Zionists of the early 20th century. Jabotinsky was a Russian poet, playwright, journalist, and novelist as well as the founder of Revisionist Zionism and of Betar. His oratory in many languages was legendary. Katz first heard him speak in South Africa in the early part of the 20th century and was so impressed that he dropped out of university to work for Revisionist Zionism. Katz recounts Jabotinsky’s efforts to create the Jewish Legion during World War I, traces the history of Jewish relations with the British during the time of the Palestine Mandate, describes Jabotinsky’s role in the defense of the Jewish Yishuv and in organizing the Af-Al-Pi “illegal” Jewish immigration to Palestine before World War II. He paints a vivid mural of competing Jewish personalities, factions and ideologies in the decades before the establishment of Israel. “Shmuel Katz has written an intelligent, journalistic account of Jabotinsky’s life […] and was able to use a substantial amount of previously unavailable material, particularly British archival documents. Although Katz clearly has tremendous respect and affection for Jabotinsky, he does not hesitate to criticize him, for example, for his ineffectiveness as a fundraiser [...] Lone Wolf’s greatest strength is its comprehensive breadth. Every major event and many minor incidents are extensively covered. Furthermore, Katz has taken the rather unorthodox move of including verbatim large sections of Jabotinsky’s original speeches and writings.” — Paul Radensky, H-Net “[S]cholarly and yet totally gripping... we must be everlastingly grateful [...] to Shmuel Katz for so masterfully giving [Jabotinsky’s] memory fresh life... this [book] — quiet, calm, and, while certainly partisan, without a single shrill note — may one day help to direct the course of Israel’s seemingly endless argument with itself.” — Midge Decter, Commentary Magazine “Dr. Katz's monumental and superb biography is a balanced, detailed story of a lion and not a wolf. (Ze'ev in Hebrew means a wolf and this is the reason why the title isLone Wolf)” — Jewish Post
The issues are addressed in both a historical and theoretical context. several essays Center around questions which are often overlooked in similar works.
The fascinating story of émigré intellectuals, writers, artists, scientists, movie directors, and scholars — including Bertolt Brecht, Theodor Adorno, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Mann, Arnold Schoenberg, George Grosz, Erik Erikson, Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang — who fled Nazi Germany and changed America. Heilbut provides a vivid narrative of how they viewed their new country and how America reacted to their arrival as the atom bomb was being developed, the Cold War and McCarthyism were underway, and Hollywood dominated moviemaking. “The son of Jewish immigrants who fled Germany, Anthony Heilbut grew up in New York. Exiled in Paradise, a social history he wrote more than 35 years ago, is still the most immersive account of the German-speaking exiles who came to this country between 1933 and 1941 and of their outsize influence on the culture they found here... Mr. Heilbut provides an absorbingly detailed chronicle of some of these immigrant lives — among them Theodor Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Mann, Billy Wilder and Cold War physicists.” — Donna Rifkind, The Wall Street Journal “Still the best book on the topic” — Phillip Lopate, The New York Times Book Review “Insightful ... valuable and stimulating ... For some readers, especially the children of generations of émigrés, the book will provide a background to their most basic intellectual assumptions.” — Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times “From one page to the next, the book transcends its stated purpose of providing a link between the history of the German-Jewish immigrants and their staggering cultural achievements to acquire the dimensions of that mysterious reality which even a Bresson cannot hope to define: a work of art.” — Marcel Ophuls, American Film Magazine “The story of these refugees has finally found its singular and single voice; it is that of Anthony Heilbut, himself the son of exiles ... His book turns into something more than a panorama about foreigners. It is a way of revealing to Americans themselves what their country really is like.” — Ariel Dorfman, The Washington Post “Anthony Heilbut has exercised impressive scholarship, and even a touch of poetry, to get to the heart of this diaspora.” — Time
This is the second volume in Brett Kahr's 'Interviews with Icons' series, following on from Tea with Winnicott. Professor Kahr, himself a highly regarded psychoanalyst, turns his attention to the work of the father of psychoanalysis. The book is lavishly illustrated by Alison Bechdel, winner of the MacArthur Foundation 'Genius' Award.Sigmund Freud pays another visit to Vienna's renowned Cafe Landtmann, where he had often enjoyed reading newspapers and sipping coffee. Freud explains how he came to invent psychoanalysis, speaks bluntly about his feelings of betrayal by Carl Gustav Jung, recounts his flight from the Nazis, and so much more, all the while explaining his theories of symptom formation and psychosexuality.Framed as a 'posthumous interview', the book serves as the perfect introduction to the work of Freud while examining the context in which he lived and worked. Kahr examines his legacy and considers what Freud has to teach us. In a world where manifestations of sexuality and issues of the mind are ever more widely discussed, the work of Sigmund Freud is more relevant than ever.
“This memoir documents the fate of German expatriates, Jews, antifascists and socialists before and immediately following France’s defeat in World War II. Escape Through the Pyrenees is set in a concentration camp called Gurs and in the various border checkpoints in southern France, along the coast and in the Pyrenees. Fascism is shown not to be a monopoly of any people. If the Germans excelled at it, Lisa Fittko shows, many French officials occasionally outdid them. Against a backdrop of chaos as refugees flee the Gestapo, the gap between law and any true code of honor becomes glaringly evident. Ms. Fittko and her husband, Hans, were socialists, and their commitment to sharing impelled them to risk their lives to lead refugees, including the critic Walter Benjamin, over the Pyrenees to Spain. The author takes delight in describing the people she met — the 70-year-old female hobo, for example, whom Ms. Fittko encountered in the death ward of a French hospital and who read Baudelaire and sang the Marseillaise at the top of her voice. This woman was a rebel not against fascism but against institutionalization of any sort. It is in portraits like this that Escape Through the Pyrenees, well translated from the German by David Koblick, transcends the documentary formula and captures the poetry of human character.” — Freema Gottlieb, The New York Times “[A] worthy account of French wartime cowardice and xenophobia and of the brave souls who defied officialdom.” — Publishers Weekly “Lisa Fittko had no room for self-pity. Their campaigns against terror were pure struggles; [her] accounts, even allowing for the retouching of memory, are pure too.” — Smithsonian “[T]his memoir [...] is unique in the literature of the resistance... the book truly reads as a suspense novel... The author made a valuable contribution to the literature of the persecuted in World War II.” — Vera Laska, International Journal on World Peace “[T]he story of a little-known dimension of the fight against Hitler.” — Shofar “[A] gripping book.” — Alfred G. Frei, The Journal of Modern History
