Scholem, Arendt, Klemperer: Intimate Chronicles in Turbulent Times

Through an examination of the diaries and letters of three extraordinary and distinctive German-Jewish thinkers - Gershom Scholem, Hannah Arendt, and Victor Klemperer - Steven E. Aschheim illuminates what these intimate writings reveal about their evolving identities and world views as they wrestled with the meaning of being both German and Jewish in Hitler’s Third Reich. In recounting how their personal and private selves responded to the public experiences these writers faced, their letters and diaries provide a composite portrait. Scholem, a scholar of Jewish mysticism and the spiritual traditions of Judaism; Arendt, a political and social philosopher; and Klemperer, a professor of literature and philology, were all highly articulate German-Jewish intellectuals, shrewd observers, and acute analysts of the pathologies and special contours of their times. From their intimate writings Aschheim constructs a revealing history from within that sheds light on the complexity and drama of the 20th-century European and Jewish experience.