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Jewish Women Authors and the Exile Experience: Claire Goll, Veza Canetti, Else Lasker‐Schüler, Nelly Sachs, Cordelia Edvardson
Author(s) -
Lorenz Dagmar C.G.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
german life and letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.1
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 1468-0483
pISSN - 0016-8777
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0483.00095
Subject(s) - fell , judaism , politics , narrative , criticism , poetry , history , literary criticism , nazism , literature , art , law , political science , archaeology , geography , cartography
The works and conditions of the literary production of five prominent Jewish women exile writers are examined to shed light on the question why some women authors fell silent after leaving Germany or Austria, while others continued writing. The circumstances under which Jewish women writers lived and wrote and their works themselves provide insight into the issue of literary productivity in the case of women who have traditionally lacked the kind of concrete and emotional support that typically ensured the productivity of male writers. Jewish women who continued to or began to write in exile had to identify female and in some cases specifically Jewish patterns through or against which they could establish their narrative position and shape their texts. No less aware of the political and social problems of their times than their male colleagues, they proceeded less abstractly in their criticism of the history of assimilation and Nazism. They formulated alternative paradigms empirically, on the basis of their personal experiences.