Idealized or Demonized: Representations of Jewish Motherhood in the novels by Selma Kahn and Anna Gmeyner

This volume explores the relationship between identity - understood not as an essence, but rather a positioning - and the work of German-Jewish women authors. The period 1900-1938 provided them with a wide range of possible self-identifications, both between Jewish tradition (or 'Jewish renaissance') and acculturation, and between a traditional and modern understanding of the position of women. By examining their texts in the historical and literary contexts in which they were written, the analyses in this book reveal traditions and positions that are not necessarily communicated directly by the German-Jewish authors themselves.

The volume contributes a major contribution to the understanding of writers who have largely been excluded from the literary canon to date and to the re-evaluation of their works. In addition to Gertrud Kolmar, Else Lasker-Schüler, Veza Canetti, Else Ury and Mascha Kaléko, the authors considered here include the less well-known: Klara Blum, Ulla Wolff-Frank, Auguste Hauschner, Anna Goldschmidt, Else Croner, Anna Gmeyner, Selma Kahn, Ruth Landshoff-Yorck, the journalist Regina Neisser and the salonière Berta Zuckerkandl-Szeps.