Strangers in Berlin: Modern Jewish Literature between East and West, 1919-1933

Berlin in the 1920s was a cosmopolitan hub where for a brief, vibrantmoment German-Jewish writers crossed paths with Hebrew and Yiddishmigrant writers. Working against the prevailing tendency to view Germanand East European Jewish cultures as separate fields of study, Strangersin Berlin is the first book to present Jewish literature in the WeimarRepublic as the product of the dynamic encounter between East andWest. Whether they were native to Germany or sojourners from abroad,Jewish writers responded to their exclusion from rising nationalistmovements by cultivating their own images of homeland in verse, andthey did so in three languages: German, Hebrew, and Yiddish.

Author Rachel Seelig portrays Berlin during the Weimar Republic as a threshold between exile and homeland in which national and artisticcommitments were reexamined, reclaimed, and rebuilt. In the pulsatingyet precarious capital of Germany’s first fledgling democracy, thecollision of East and West engendered a broad spectrum of poetic stylesand Jewish national identities.