Reconsidering Heine’s Notions of Diaspora
GSA panel
sponsored by
The Heinrich Heine Society, and The Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg
Heinrich Heine may be regarded as an early example for a writing that is strongly connected to an understanding of Modern Diaspora existence. In Ludwig Börne (1840), Heine first developed a notion of living and writing in the Diaspora by picking up the old Middle-Eastern denomination of the Jews as “people of the book”. After converting to the Christian faith in 1825 and after leaving Germany for Paris in 1830, Heine was struggling to find his place of belonging in Exile. Recurring to a cultural notion of Judaism proved to be a strategy of spite in light of his uneasy relationship to his Jewish past as well as his alleged association with the “Junges Deutschland” movement. In doing so, Heine transformed a pre-Modern religious facet of being Jewish into a secular Modern notion of identity politics in Exile. Later in his life, in Confessions (1854), he radicalized this notion even further by calling “the book” the “portative fatherland” par excellence of the Jews. This idea turned into a highly influential and fruitful
understanding of a transnational, cosmopolitan identity that is essentially rooted in literature, i.e. in a process of literary productivity. It inspired ways of a secular self-understanding of Modern Jewish authors such as Leopold Zunz, Moritz Steinschneider, Rafael Seligmann, or Alfred Wolfenstein, and remains a powerful notion of diaspora existence up until this day.
The panel inquires an understanding of “Diaspora” and “diasporic writing” in Heine as well as the traditions it inspired. It is in particular interested in both the esthetical and the political consequences of such an approach to literary writing in Modern Europe. Papers may be on Heine and his works, but also on other – contemporary or more recent – writers whose poetics touch upon notions of Diaspora. Topics may include, but are to restricted to, the following fields of interest:
- Heine’s esthetics of Diaspora and Exile
- Heine and Börne on Diaspora and as “diasporic” writers
- Notions of Diaspora in the “Verein für Cultur und Wissenschaft der Juden”
- Religious facets of Jewish Diaspora in Heine’s Time and later
- Westerns, Eastern, and Global “Diasporas” and their Differences
- The Potential of Thinking “Diaspora” in the 20th and 21st Century
Please send a short paper proposal (title and description) as well as a short CV to jskolnik@german.umass.edu or michaelis@europa-uni.de by February 14, 2019.