Digital Commons Network^™

The Jewish Vamp Of Berlin: Actress Maria Orska, Typecasting, And Jewish Women, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

“Maria Orska, she is simply the actual embodiment of the human beast.... here, again, she is the man-beguiling Lulu, so vivid in her performance that one can almost hear her words.” With these lines in his review of Die Bestie im Menschen (1920/21), critic Fritz Olimsky describes Orska as she was widely regarded: a femme fatale Lulu or vamp type known for her tragic, expressive performances, who was often cast in psychologically complex roles involving dramatic love affairs. Orska, like her Hollywood contemporary Theda Bara, rarely moved beyond her reputation for playing this type of character. In addition to exploring …

Visual Weimar: The Iconography Of Social And Political Identities, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

In the Weimar Republic, images were perceived to be as unreliable as they were powerful. They helped create and codify difference while simultaneously blurring lines within the categories of gender and race. Visual culture provided a wild playground for discourses about gender presentation and sexuality that encompassed veterans, athletes, criminals, the New Woman, and androgynous figures. Despite the growing prominence of images in race science, it was widely held that images could not be trusted to convey accurate information about race. The propagandistic use of images for political purposes had the potential to be equally ambiguous. It was ultimately up …

Forum: Feminism In German Studies, Elizabeth Loentz, Monika Shafi, Faye Stewart, Tiffany Florvil, Kerry Wallach, Beverly Weber, Hester Baer, Carrie Smith, Maria Stehle

German Studies Faculty Publications

From Professor Wallach's contribution entitled "Jews and Gender":

To consider Jews and gender within German Studies is to explore the evolution of German‐Jewish Studies with respect to feminist and gender studies. At times this involves looking beyond German Studies to other scholarship in Jewish gender studies, an interdisciplinary subfield in its own right. Over the past few decades, the focus on gender within German‐Jewish Studies has experienced several shifts in line with broader trends: an initial focus on the history of Jewish women and feminist movements gradually expanded to encompass the study of gender identity, masculinity, and sexuality. Historical and …

Review Of Violent Sensations: Sex, Crime, And Utopia In Vienna And Berlin, 1860-1914 By Scott Spector, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

The question “who is the murderer?” remains at the heart of countless media scandals today, just as over a century ago; many rely on graphic images of violence, brutality, and criminal activity. Scott Spector’s long-awaited book eloquently demonstrates that the fascination with such spectacles dates back to the 1860s, with the rise of media scandals about sexual practices (especially between men) and their potential connections to violent criminal acts. Ritual murder accusations that gained momentum in the 1880s made for Central European versions of the Dreyfus Affair, which strained Christian-Jewish relations and put allegedly treacherous Jews on trial. The fin-de-siècle, …

Escape Artistry: Elisabeth Bergner And Jewish Disappearance In Der Träumende Mund (Czinner, 1932), Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

The late Weimar film Der träumende Mund culminates in the apparent but unconfirmed suicide of its female protagonist, played by Elisabeth Bergner. Bergner, whose background contributed to the film’s Jewish reception, and who later claimed to have written the film’s screenplay, left Germany and went into exile with director Paul Czinner in 1932. This film and the circumstances of its production and premiere link tragic modes of self-erasure, including the suicides of both many women and many German Jews, to notions of escape, emigration, and reemergence. Its success among Jewish spectators points to its enduring and international appeal.

On Ashkenazi’S Weimar Film And Modern Jewish Identity, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

Every scholar of modern Jewish history is familiar with the poet Judah Leib Gordon’s 1862 exhortation to European Jewry: “Be a man in the street and a Jew at home” (as quoted in Ashkenazi, xv, 48). This motto takes on new relevance in the work of historian Ofer Ashkenazi, for whom public and private behaviors play out in the spatial terms of Weimar cinematic representation. Within the world of the street, Jews display only authentic bourgeois mannerisms and appearances; in private, the masquerade ceases to be necessary. According to Ashkenazi, we see this duality reflected in films made by Jewish …

Weimar Jewish Chic: Jewish Women And Fashion In 1920s Germany, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

This volume presents papers delivered at the 24th Annual Klutznick-Harris Symposium, held at Creighton University in October 2011. The contributors look at all aspects of the intimate relationship between Jews and clothing, through case studies from ancient, medieval, recent, and contemporary history. Papers explore topics ranging from Jewish leadership in the textile industry, through the art of fashion in nineteenth century Vienna, to the use of clothing as a badge of ethnic identity, in both secular and religious contexts. Dr. Kerry Wallach's chapter examines the uniquely Jewish engagement with fashion and attire in Weimar, Germany.

Dragica Rajcic: Writing Women And War In The Margins, Laurel Cohen-Pfister

German Studies Faculty Publications

Croatian-born Dragica Rajcic has received several awards for her poetry and short prose works. The author, who writes in German, permanently resides in Switzerland since fleeing war-torn Croatia in 1991. Rajcic's Heimat, she claims, is in language, not any place defined by geographical boundaries (Rajcic, 2009). Often praised for its sharp irony and cutting insight, Rajcic's language artfully deconstructs the reality it circumscribes. Defiant of the linguistic rules of grammar prescribed by High German, Rajcic's voice revels in its foreignness, in its ability to comment and critique precisely because it stands outside the realm of the familiar and expected. [ …

Kosher Seductions: Jewish Women As Employees And Consumers In German Department Stores, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

Department stores have long been associated with the trope of seducing female consumers, at least since the publication of Emile Zola’s novel Au bonheur des dames in 1883. This fictionalized portrayal of the Parisian department store Bon Marche, which has exerted considerable influence among early chroniclers of department store culture, identifies store owners as men who build ‘temples’ for prospective customers, and who use inebriating tactics to encourage them to enter and spend money. The consumer is gendered female in this and in many other literary works on the department store of the time; she is depicted as reluctant, yet …

Recognition For The ‘Beautiful Jewess’: Beauty Queens Crowned By Modern Jewish Print Media, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

This chapter demonstrates how women’s bodies were appropriated (in times of adversity) to promote Jewishness and Jewish ethnic/racial body aesthetics in a variety of locations, including Europe (Germany, Poland, Hungary), Tel Aviv, Argentina, and the United States.

Gender And Jewish History, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Other Jewish Question: Identifying The Jew And Making Sense Of Modernity, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

The “Jewish question” (Judenfrage) has referred to pressing concerns about the political status and fate of European Jewry since roughly the 1770s. In German and Austrian lands, Jewish emancipation, acculturation, and secularization gave rise to a slippery understanding of Jewishness (Judentum) among both Jews and non-Jews. Who should be considered a Jew was determined according to increasingly antisemitic and so-called racial (rather than religious) specifications; many came to regard Jewishness as indelible. [excerpt]