Jewish Soldiers in the Collective Memory of Central Europe. The Remembrance of World War I from a Jewish Perspective
Meerscheinschlößl, Mozartgasse 3, 8010 Graz
Centrum für Jüdische Studien der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
23.05.2016 – 25.05.2016
https://juedischestudien.uni-graz.at/
World War I marks a huge break in Central European Jewish history. Not only had the violent wartime events destroyed Jewish life and especially the living space of the Eastern European Jewish people, but the impacts of war, the geopolitical change and a radicalization of anti-Semitism also led to a crisis of Jewish identity. Furthermore, during the process of national self-discovery and the establishing of new states the societal position of the Jews and their relationship to the state had to be redefined. These partially violent processes, which were always accompanied by anti-Semitism, evoked Jewish and Gentile debates, in which questions about Jewish loyalty to the old and/or new states as well as concepts of Jewish identity under the new political circumstances were negotiated. In this context, one central and contested field of discussion was the question of Jewish military service, Jewish loyalty, and the Jewish attitude towards warfare. Many Jews in all belligerent countries expected to prove their patriotism and loyalty to the state with their military service.
About as many as 900.000 Jewish soldiers fought in the armies of the Russian Empire, Germany and the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, and about 100.000 of them died on various battlefields. Jews as individuals and Jewish communities tried to make sense of the deaths of Jewish soldiers as well as the manifold physical and psychological injuries that had been inflicted upon them during and after the war. They did this in terms of media discourses, in public and private practices of commemoration, by erecting memorials, and in religious rituals.
Commemorating the war has always been a public and political act of creating meaning and justifying the existence of the political unit, the state, the nation, for which the soldiers had died. After the collapse of the Romanov Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy as well as the transition of Germany from monarchy to a democratic republic, references to the no longer existing states became problematic. Furthermore, in Central Europe, a region of structural heterogeneity, the new states were attempting to establish homogeneous nation states. The process of making political meaning of the multitude of deaths in the war thus had to be adapted to the new political realities after 1918.
Therefore, commemorating the war was always a place where social and national belonging and unity were negotiated.
The Conference “Jewish Soldiers in the Collective Memory of Central Europe” opens up discussions about Jewish military service in its various forms (soldiers, prisoners of war, refugees, forced laborer, war welfare, …) and war memories in their multifaceted formations during and after World War I. Central Europe is understood as the German Empire, the Austria-Hungarian Monarchy, the western parts of the Russian Empire, and all the successor states of these empires.
Programm
Monday May 23th, 2016 festival room, Meerscheinschlössl, Mozartgasse 3, 8010 Graz
9.00: Registration
10.00: Conference Opening and Introduction
Begrüßung: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Arne Ziegler (Forschungsdekan der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz)
Einführung: Gerald Lamprecht (Graz) Jüdische Soldaten im kollektiven Gedächtnis Zentraleuropas
10.30: War Experiences
Chair: Dieter J. Hecht (Graz/Wien)
Katalin Fenyves (Budapest): Erfahrungen und Loyalitätskonflikte ungarischer Juden in und nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg
Olaf Terpitz (Wien): Shimon Anskis „togbukh fun khurbm“ – Literarische Aufzeichnungen und historisches Dokument
Jason Crouthamel: (Allendale, Michigan) Mutual Perceptions of „Comradeship“ between Gentile and German-Jewish Front Soldiers during the First World War
12.00: Coffee Break
12.30: Rabbis and War
Chair: Frank Stern (Graz/Wien)
Gábor Schweitzer (Budapest): Hungarian Neolog/Progressive Rabbis during the „Great War“ (1914–1918)
Dieter J. Hecht (Wien): War Memoirs of Jewish Military Chaplains in the Austro-Hungarian Army Autobiographical Writings, Postcards, Photographs
13.30: Lunch
15.00: Jewish Intellectuals at War
Chair: Eleonore Lappin-Eppel (Graz/Wien)
Barbara Breysach (Berlin): Sigmund Freud: Kriegskritiker und stolzer Vater zweier Soldaten
Frank Stern (Wien/Graz): „Die Gegensätze werden jetzt ausgekämpft und bleiben bestehen…“ Reichszusammenbrüche, Islam und europäische Staatsidee im Wirken Franz Rosenzweigs während und nach dem Großen Krieg
Eszter Balázs (Budapest): The image of the Jewish Soldier-Intellectual in the Hungarian-Jewish Review Múlt és Jövő (1914-1918)
16.30: Coffee Break
17.00: Jewish Refugees
Chair: Ursula Mindler-Steiner (Graz/Budapest)
Ines Koeltzsch (Prag): Familiar Strangers? East European Jewish Refugees in Czech Jewish Cultural Memory during and after the War
Gintarė Malinauskaitė (Berlin): Wandering Lithuanian Jewish Refugees during the First World War – Hirsz Abramowicz and His „Participant Observation“
18.30: Keynote
Hillel Kieval (St. Louis, Missouri): Shatter Zones. The Trauma of War and the Reconfiguration of Jewish Identities in Central Europe
Tuesday May 24th, 2016 festival room, Meerscheinschlössl, Mozartgasse 3, 8010 Graz
9.00: Anti-Semitism I
Chair: Werner Bergmann (Berlin)
Michal Frankl (Prag): „Provocation“ Narratives of anti-Jewish Violence in Bohemia (1917–1918)
Miloslav Szabó (Bratislava): „Jüdische Schreckensherrschaft“? Kampagnen gegen jüdische Soldaten in der Slowakei nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg
Thomas Stoppacher (Graz): Die jüdischen Soldaten Österreich-Ungarns im politischen Diskurs der Kriegs- und Nachkriegsjahre (1917–1920)
10.30: Coffee Break
11:00: Anti-Semitism II
Chair: Ulrich Wyrwa (Berlin)
Tullia Catalan (Triest): Anti-Semitism and Anti-Slavism in Trieste and Italy during WWI
Raul Cârstocea (Flensburg): The Turning of the Tide Jewish Emancipation and Anti-Semitism in Romania (1918–1923)
Nicole Grom (Nürnberg): Memoria als Kampf. Die Zeitschrift ‚Der Schild‘ als Spiegel antisemitischer Entwicklungen in Deutschland nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg
12.30: Lunch
14.00: Memory – Discourses
Chair: Werner Suppanz (Graz)
Rebekah Klein-Pejšová (West Lafayette, Indiana): Commemorating the 10.000
Andrea A. Sinn (Berkeley, California): Remembering War Jewish Women and the German Home Front during World War I
15.30: Coffee Break
16.00: Art and Literature
Chair: Olaf Terpitz (Wien)
Andrei Corbea-Hoisie (Iasi): Itzik Strul, der Deserteur. Jüdische Soldaten in der rumänischen Armee im 1. Weltkrieg – im Wehrdienst für eine unwirtliche Heimat
Daniel Hoffmann (Düsseldorf): In „Gottes Krieg“. Uriel Birnbaums jüdisch-katholischer Blick auf den Ersten Weltkrieg
Hildegard Frübis (Berlin/Graz): Den Müttern der Zwölftausend 1924. Max Liebermann und die Erinnerung an die jüdischen Frontsoldaten im Ersten Weltkrieg
Wednesday, May 25th, 2016, festival room, Meerscheinschlössl, Mozartgasse 3, 8010 Graz
9.00: Commemoration
Chair: Gerald Lamprecht (Graz)
Ljiljana Dobrovšak (Zagreb): „Forgotten Heroes“. Jewish Soldiers in Croatia during the First World War
Veronika Szeghy-Gayer (Budapest): Jewish War Memory as a Local Community Building Project – the Heroes’ Memorial of Prešov
Kamil Ruszala (Krakow): Jewish War Cemeteries as Sites of Memory in Galicia during the First World War
10.30: Coffee Break
11:00. Conflicts in Transition from War to Postwar
Chair: Helmut Konrad (Graz)
Nino Gude (Wien): Vereint mit allen Kräften. Die jüdischen Soldaten in der Ukrainisch-Galizischen Armee 1918/19
András Zima/Norbert Glässer (Budapest): Changing Frames and National Self-interpretations among Jewish Groups in the Carpathian Basin around the Great War
Ana Ćirić Pavlović (Budapest): Yugoslavs of the Mosaic Faith? Public Discourse about Jewish Loyalty in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941)
12.30: Final Commentary
Chair: Helmut Konrad (Graz)
Jay Winter (Newhaven, Connecticut)
http://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/termine-31003