‘Eine Art geistiger Wiedergutmachung’: Karl Otten's Anthologies of Jewish Writing Das leere Haus and Schofar

This article evaluates the role played by Karl Otten in the revival of literary Expressionism in post‐war Germany and more specifically his efforts to rescue the work of its Jewish exponents, many of whom had died in the Holocaust or the diaspora of exile. In the years 1957 to 1963, Otten edited no fewer than six anthologies, collecting and reintroducing long‐forgotten work by his Expressionist contemporaries. The anthologies Das leere Haus (1959) and Schofar (1962) were intended to exemplify the distinctive Jewish contribution to Expressionism, Otten describing them as an act of ‘geistige Wiedergutmachung’. The article discusses the textual selection and preparation of these anthologies, evaluating Otten's correspondence with the publishers Cotta, and with friends like Kurt Pinthus, in the light of the contemporary discourse regarding the Nazi past.