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UNBURNING BOOKS IN BERLIN
By Avner Shapira
http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/unburning-books-in-berlin-1.4251
19.04.12
AN EXHIBIT IN THE GERMAN CAPITAL LOOKS AT THE LIVES AND WORKS OF
WRITERS WHOSE BOOKS WERE BURNED AND BANNED DURING THE THIRD REICH.
Alexander Moritz Frey is remembered today less for his literary works
and more for Adolf Hitler's moustache. Frey, a German writer who was
born in 1881, served in the same Bavarian army reserve regiment as
Hitler in World War I. He reported that his fellow fighter in the
trenches did not voluntarily choose the narrow moustache that would
eventually be associated with him. He says that at the time Hitler
had a long moustache and was required by his commanders to trim it
so the gas mask worn by soldiers during the mustard gas attacks of
the British would fit.
In an article Frey wrote later on, "The Unknown Private - Personal
Memories of Hitler," he described his first encounter with the future
dictator: "One evening a pale, tall man tumbled down into the cellar
after the first shells of the daily evening attack had begun to fall,
fear and rage glowing in his eyes. At that time he looked tall,
because he was so thin. A full moustache, later trimmed because of
the new gas masks, covered the ugly slit of his mouth." In Frey's
accounting, Hitler was an enthusiastic soldier eager to fight who took
the military maneuvers of the enemy personally, as if they wanted to
take his life in particular.
Nazi book burning - Getty - 19.4.12
May 10, 1933, Berlin. Goebbels told Nazi activists at the book
burning that it marked the "end of the era of outlandish Jewish
intellectualism."
Photo by: Getty Images
The essay was discovered many years after Frey's death in 1957
and was included in a biography of him published five years ago in
Switzerland. However, Frey, who early in his career was a prominent
writer known mainly for his fantasy books, is today unknown to the
general public in Germany or elsewhere.
An attempt to restore his place in the collective consciousness is now
underway in Berlin in the form of an exhibition. Called "Burned Books:
Ostracized Authors in Nazi Germany," the exhibition at the pavilion
opposite the Holocaust Memorial focuses on the lives of writers whose
books were burned and banned during the Third Reich and who were
themselves suppressed and persecuted by the regime. Many retained
their position and were not forced into oblivion as the Nazis hoped
they would be. But in the case of Frey and several others featured
in the exhibit, it is hard to say that the German effort to erase
their works from German culture failed entirely.
The exhibition relates that Frey, who lived in Munich, saw Hitler
on the city's streets several times after World War I, but never
spoke to him again. He firmly refused requests from Hitler's aides to
join the Nazi party in its early days. Unlike Hitler, Frey became a
pacifist after the war and opposed nationalist and racist ideologies,
views which are also reflected in his writing. That did not stop Hitler
from offering Frey the post of culture editor of the Nazi party organ,
Volkischer Beobachter, and he did not forgive Frey for turning down
the offer.
Frey's books were popular during the time of the Weimar Republic and
he was also known for his satirical columns in the press. In 1929,
his antiwar novel, "The Cross Bearers" was published. It was is based
in large part on his World War I military service and featured harsh
descriptions of the battle routine with no attempt to spare the reader.
"The useless flesh which only a day earlier had been useful for
transporting arms, bayonet stabbings or shooting, fell into the pits.
If there was anything dignified or meaningful in this, it was this:
the flesh fertilized the earth," Frey wrote in the book, which sparked
the Nazis' anger.
In March 1933, shortly after Hitler's rise to power, an arrest
warrant for Frey was issued and Nazi storm troopers broke into his
apartment while he was away, and destroyed it. He fled to Austria and
after Germany annexed it, relocated to Switzerland, where he had to
constantly fight with the authorities to be allowed to remain there
and became impoverished due to the difficulty he had publishing his
books. Frey did not return to Germany after the Nazis' defeat. Only
on his deathbed, did Switzerland grant him citizenship.
Restocking burned books
Only one kilometer separates the "Empty Library" memorial at Bebelplatz
from a library that is not empty, and is in fact one of the main
displays at the Berlin exhibit. The memorial by Israeli artist Micha
Ullman depicts the books burned in that same square by Nazi supporters
on May 10, 1933 with empty shelves. The symbolic representation in the
exhibition fills the void with actual content: placed together are
the books of the 20 writers to whom it is dedicated, Jews alongside
Christians, Communists next to liberals and opponents of the regime,
Germans together with citizens of other European countries. The common
denominator among them (and some 100 other writers not mentioned in
the display ) is the Nazis' efforts to ostracize them based on the
claim that their books "threaten the German spirit."
Berlin memorial - Sirila - 19.4.12
The "Empty Library" memorial in Berlin, with its vacant bookshelves,
depicts the books burned here in 1933.
Photo by: Aharon Sirila
This is a historical exhibit of modest proportions, as well as modest
pretensions. Using photos, archival documents and voice recordings,
it returns to the book burnings on that spring night in 1933 not only
in Berlin, but also in other cities across Germany; and it seeks
to create a monument not just to noted intellectuals and writers
whose works were confiscated, but also to those whose persecution
and ostracism is sometimes forgotten.
The curator of the exhibition, Jan Pronczak, stresses that the book
burning was a key step in the Nazi effort to dominate civil society
and cultural discourse in Germany. In the exhibition catalog, Pronczak
notes that the book burnings were not a government initiative but
were organized voluntarily by the German Students Union. The effort
did not spark any criticism from other students or lecturers in the
universities, except for a few professors who were permitted to hold
onto copies of the banned books for "research purposes."
The books burnings were welcomed by the Nazi propaganda minister,
Joseph Goebbels, who was invited to speak at the central event in
Berlin. Goebbels told the students and Nazi activists who gathered
there that the event marks the "end of the era of outlandish Jewish
intellectualism" and is "a breakthrough in the German revolution."
According to him, just three months earlier, when Hitler was appointed
chancellor of Germany, "we could not imagine that it would be possible
to cleanse Germany so quickly."
Still, from a historical perspective, Goebbels and the others
working on purifying "the German spirit" did not accomplish their
mission in its entirety. Alfred Doblin, Stefan Zweig, Kurt Tucholsky,
Joseph Roth, Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann, Anna Seghers and Erich Maria
Remarque are some of the prominent writers whose lives are reviewed
in the exhibition and who are still considered part of the German
cultural canon.
Remarque, the author of the 1929 antiwar book "All Quiet on the Western
Front," one of the most successful 20th century German writers,
fled from Germany to Switzerland immediately after the Nazis' rise
to power. On the night of the book burnings, he was hosted by his
neighbor, the writer Emil Ludwig, and together they listened to the
radio broadcast from Berlin. In his description, he said "we opened
the oldest bottle of Rhine wine we had, listened on the radio to the
flames flickering and the Nazis' speeches and we drank to the future."
A conscientious objector
Unlike Remarque, the writer and journalist Armin T. Wegner, another
hero featured in the exhibition, was imprisoned at the time in a German
concentration camp. Only a few weeks earlier, after "the boycott day"
the Nazis imposed on Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933, he mustered
the courage to send Hitler a sharp letter criticizing the persecution
of the Jews. As a result, he was imprisoned and tortured, and after
three years he was released and managed to escape to Italy.
This was not the first time that Wegner voiced conscientious
objection. Wegner was born in 1886 and began his creative career as
an expressionist poet, and refused to serve in the army as a soldier
for pacifist reasons. Nevertheless, in World War II, he volunteered
to serve as a medic and afterward as a medical officer.
He served in the Middle East and witnessed the Ottoman Empire's
genocide against the Armenian people. He visited refugee camps and mass
graves and circulated reports and photos documenting the destruction,
despite the personal risk that entailed. In 1919, he published an
open letter to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in which he called on
him to grant the Armenian people independence in the name of "the
voice of humanity."
After the war, Wegner became known as a prolific journalist, the
author of travel books and novels as well as a human rights activist.
He traveled the world with his wife, the Jewish poet Lula Landau. In
the late 1920s they visited Palestine and Wegner described this
visit in essays and a book that voiced his support for the creation
of a Jewish national state in Palestine. After the couple's divorce
in 1939, Landau immigrated to Palestine and lived there until he died.
In a letter Wegner sent to Hitler after "boycott day" under the heading
"To Germany," he tried to dissuade him from activities intended to
suppress the Jews. "Sir Reichskanzler, we are not talking here solely
about the fate of our Jewish brethren. This is a matter of the fate of
Germany!" he wrote. "As a German, who received the gift of speech not
for the sake of remaining silent, I appeal to you: stop this madness!"
He surveyed what the Jews had endured throughout history and estimated
that "with the same perseverance that helped them survive as an ancient
people, the Jews will also overcome this danger but the shame and
tragedy that will be caused to the German people will not soon be
forgotten." Moreover, he proposed to Hitler: "Preserve Germany by
granting protection to the Jews."
A Hebrew translation of his letter appears in the book by Israeli
researcher, Prof. Yair Auron, "Genocide: Can it be Prevented" (Open
University Press, 2010). Auron maintains that "Wegner is one of the
loftiest voices produced by the German-Jewish symbiosis against the
Nazi German effort that sought to annihilate it."
Auron adds that in 1968, Wegner was recognized as a Righteous Gentile
by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Even though he
did not actually save Jews, the committee that grants the title
decided to honor his courage and the risks he took in an attempt
to defend the Jews in Nazi Germany. In addition, he received Medals
of Honor from the governments of West Germany and Armenia. Wegner,
who remained in Italy until the end of his life and did not manage
to recreate his success as a writer, died in 1978.
Similar to Frey and Wegner, Irmgard Keun was among the writers whose
books were forgotten during the Nazi era and after it as well. But
unlike them, in her later years she received renewed recognition. She
is recalled today as a writer who was miraculously able to provide
sharp and light-hearted depictions of modern lifestyles, the consumer
society and the flashy society of the Weimar era.
A daring portrait of Berlin women
The exhibition notes that Keu, who was born in 1905, worked first
as a stenographer and as a model and studied acting. After being
unsuccessful in the theater, she switched to literary writing. Her
first novel, "Gilgi - One of Us" sparked a storm after its publication,
in 1931, because of its direct depictions of the life of the young,
independent, free-spirited heroine, portrayed as the embodiment of
modern femininity. Among other things, the book covers such issues
as adoption, gaps among social classes, women working in office jobs,
sexual harassment, single-parent families and abortion.
Keun earned praise from important writers, such as Doblin and
Tucholsky, for her humorous and sharp writing and after a year
released another novel, "The Artificial Silk Girl," which became
a bestseller. It presents an entertaining monologue by Doris, a
light-headed Berlin young woman, with great fondness for men, lies,
trendy clothes and brand names.
Doris tries to make her way into the world of glamour and is
indifferent to the political dangers in the twilight period of the
Weimar Republic. "I want to write like in a film that my life is like
that and will be even more so," Doris says. "And I look like Colleen
Moore (an American film star ), if only she had a permanent curl in
her hair and a nose with more chic, pointed upward a bit more."
The Nazis banned Keun's books and did not allow them to be distributed
after having identified "anti-German tendencies" in them and in 1936
she left for Belgium. That same year, she began a romance with Joseph
Roth, which lasted until 1938, and later on she moved to Holland. When
that country was occupied by Germany, she returned to her native
land and lived there under a false identity until the end of World
War II. She felt protected because she knew the regime had received
false reports of her suicide.
In West Germany after the war Keun continued writing books but they
did not gain a following. She suffered emotional crises and became
addicted to alcohol and in the 1960s was hospitalized for a time in a
psychiatric institution. Only in the mid-1970s was she rediscovered
following a newspaper article about her. Her books were issued in
new editions and received enthusiastically by young readers and she
frequently attended literary events until her death in 1982. Her books
were also adapted for theater and film and merited academic analyses.
Six years ago, Israeli director Tom Levy created an adaptation of
"The Artificial Silk Girl" which was staged at Tel Aviv's Tzavta
Theater. The novel is mentioned several times in Israeli historian
Dr. Boaz Neumann's book, "Being in the Weimar Republic" (Am Oved
Publishers, 2007 ).
Neumann say the novel's heroine faithfully represents several
prevailing trends in Germany at that time, such as the centrality of
ads and shopping in people's lives, the importance of fashion and a
glamorous appearance in defining humanity, and the tendency to use
lies and deceit to climb the social ladder; or in the words of Doris:
"I know that people who 'must always speak the truth' always lie."
It seems that some of Doris' perceptions regarding the consumer
society are relevant today as well. It is possible that this is one
reason why Achuzat Bayit Books chose to release the book in Hebrew,
translated by Hanan Elstein. The translation is to be released around
Rosh Hashana and its title will be taken from contemporary language,
"Naara Homranit" (Material Girl ).
Keun's works were the focus of an evening of readings recently held in
Berlin as part of a monthly series devoted to one of the writers whose
lives are reviewed in the exhibition. The events feature contemporary
German writers such as Herta Muller, the 2009 recipient of the Nobel
Prize for Literature, Daniel Kehlmann, the author of "Measuring
the World," and actress Iris Berben reading from the works of Armin
T. Wegner.
The exhibition closes on December 31.
By Avner Shapira
http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/unburning-books-in-berlin-1.4251
19.04.12
AN EXHIBIT IN THE GERMAN CAPITAL LOOKS AT THE LIVES AND WORKS OF
WRITERS WHOSE BOOKS WERE BURNED AND BANNED DURING THE THIRD REICH.
Alexander Moritz Frey is remembered today less for his literary works
and more for Adolf Hitler's moustache. Frey, a German writer who was
born in 1881, served in the same Bavarian army reserve regiment as
Hitler in World War I. He reported that his fellow fighter in the
trenches did not voluntarily choose the narrow moustache that would
eventually be associated with him. He says that at the time Hitler
had a long moustache and was required by his commanders to trim it
so the gas mask worn by soldiers during the mustard gas attacks of
the British would fit.
In an article Frey wrote later on, "The Unknown Private - Personal
Memories of Hitler," he described his first encounter with the future
dictator: "One evening a pale, tall man tumbled down into the cellar
after the first shells of the daily evening attack had begun to fall,
fear and rage glowing in his eyes. At that time he looked tall,
because he was so thin. A full moustache, later trimmed because of
the new gas masks, covered the ugly slit of his mouth." In Frey's
accounting, Hitler was an enthusiastic soldier eager to fight who took
the military maneuvers of the enemy personally, as if they wanted to
take his life in particular.
Nazi book burning - Getty - 19.4.12
May 10, 1933, Berlin. Goebbels told Nazi activists at the book
burning that it marked the "end of the era of outlandish Jewish
intellectualism."
Photo by: Getty Images
The essay was discovered many years after Frey's death in 1957
and was included in a biography of him published five years ago in
Switzerland. However, Frey, who early in his career was a prominent
writer known mainly for his fantasy books, is today unknown to the
general public in Germany or elsewhere.
An attempt to restore his place in the collective consciousness is now
underway in Berlin in the form of an exhibition. Called "Burned Books:
Ostracized Authors in Nazi Germany," the exhibition at the pavilion
opposite the Holocaust Memorial focuses on the lives of writers whose
books were burned and banned during the Third Reich and who were
themselves suppressed and persecuted by the regime. Many retained
their position and were not forced into oblivion as the Nazis hoped
they would be. But in the case of Frey and several others featured
in the exhibit, it is hard to say that the German effort to erase
their works from German culture failed entirely.
The exhibition relates that Frey, who lived in Munich, saw Hitler
on the city's streets several times after World War I, but never
spoke to him again. He firmly refused requests from Hitler's aides to
join the Nazi party in its early days. Unlike Hitler, Frey became a
pacifist after the war and opposed nationalist and racist ideologies,
views which are also reflected in his writing. That did not stop Hitler
from offering Frey the post of culture editor of the Nazi party organ,
Volkischer Beobachter, and he did not forgive Frey for turning down
the offer.
Frey's books were popular during the time of the Weimar Republic and
he was also known for his satirical columns in the press. In 1929,
his antiwar novel, "The Cross Bearers" was published. It was is based
in large part on his World War I military service and featured harsh
descriptions of the battle routine with no attempt to spare the reader.
"The useless flesh which only a day earlier had been useful for
transporting arms, bayonet stabbings or shooting, fell into the pits.
If there was anything dignified or meaningful in this, it was this:
the flesh fertilized the earth," Frey wrote in the book, which sparked
the Nazis' anger.
In March 1933, shortly after Hitler's rise to power, an arrest
warrant for Frey was issued and Nazi storm troopers broke into his
apartment while he was away, and destroyed it. He fled to Austria and
after Germany annexed it, relocated to Switzerland, where he had to
constantly fight with the authorities to be allowed to remain there
and became impoverished due to the difficulty he had publishing his
books. Frey did not return to Germany after the Nazis' defeat. Only
on his deathbed, did Switzerland grant him citizenship.
Restocking burned books
Only one kilometer separates the "Empty Library" memorial at Bebelplatz
from a library that is not empty, and is in fact one of the main
displays at the Berlin exhibit. The memorial by Israeli artist Micha
Ullman depicts the books burned in that same square by Nazi supporters
on May 10, 1933 with empty shelves. The symbolic representation in the
exhibition fills the void with actual content: placed together are
the books of the 20 writers to whom it is dedicated, Jews alongside
Christians, Communists next to liberals and opponents of the regime,
Germans together with citizens of other European countries. The common
denominator among them (and some 100 other writers not mentioned in
the display ) is the Nazis' efforts to ostracize them based on the
claim that their books "threaten the German spirit."
Berlin memorial - Sirila - 19.4.12
The "Empty Library" memorial in Berlin, with its vacant bookshelves,
depicts the books burned here in 1933.
Photo by: Aharon Sirila
This is a historical exhibit of modest proportions, as well as modest
pretensions. Using photos, archival documents and voice recordings,
it returns to the book burnings on that spring night in 1933 not only
in Berlin, but also in other cities across Germany; and it seeks
to create a monument not just to noted intellectuals and writers
whose works were confiscated, but also to those whose persecution
and ostracism is sometimes forgotten.
The curator of the exhibition, Jan Pronczak, stresses that the book
burning was a key step in the Nazi effort to dominate civil society
and cultural discourse in Germany. In the exhibition catalog, Pronczak
notes that the book burnings were not a government initiative but
were organized voluntarily by the German Students Union. The effort
did not spark any criticism from other students or lecturers in the
universities, except for a few professors who were permitted to hold
onto copies of the banned books for "research purposes."
The books burnings were welcomed by the Nazi propaganda minister,
Joseph Goebbels, who was invited to speak at the central event in
Berlin. Goebbels told the students and Nazi activists who gathered
there that the event marks the "end of the era of outlandish Jewish
intellectualism" and is "a breakthrough in the German revolution."
According to him, just three months earlier, when Hitler was appointed
chancellor of Germany, "we could not imagine that it would be possible
to cleanse Germany so quickly."
Still, from a historical perspective, Goebbels and the others
working on purifying "the German spirit" did not accomplish their
mission in its entirety. Alfred Doblin, Stefan Zweig, Kurt Tucholsky,
Joseph Roth, Heinrich Mann, Klaus Mann, Anna Seghers and Erich Maria
Remarque are some of the prominent writers whose lives are reviewed
in the exhibition and who are still considered part of the German
cultural canon.
Remarque, the author of the 1929 antiwar book "All Quiet on the Western
Front," one of the most successful 20th century German writers,
fled from Germany to Switzerland immediately after the Nazis' rise
to power. On the night of the book burnings, he was hosted by his
neighbor, the writer Emil Ludwig, and together they listened to the
radio broadcast from Berlin. In his description, he said "we opened
the oldest bottle of Rhine wine we had, listened on the radio to the
flames flickering and the Nazis' speeches and we drank to the future."
A conscientious objector
Unlike Remarque, the writer and journalist Armin T. Wegner, another
hero featured in the exhibition, was imprisoned at the time in a German
concentration camp. Only a few weeks earlier, after "the boycott day"
the Nazis imposed on Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933, he mustered
the courage to send Hitler a sharp letter criticizing the persecution
of the Jews. As a result, he was imprisoned and tortured, and after
three years he was released and managed to escape to Italy.
This was not the first time that Wegner voiced conscientious
objection. Wegner was born in 1886 and began his creative career as
an expressionist poet, and refused to serve in the army as a soldier
for pacifist reasons. Nevertheless, in World War II, he volunteered
to serve as a medic and afterward as a medical officer.
He served in the Middle East and witnessed the Ottoman Empire's
genocide against the Armenian people. He visited refugee camps and mass
graves and circulated reports and photos documenting the destruction,
despite the personal risk that entailed. In 1919, he published an
open letter to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in which he called on
him to grant the Armenian people independence in the name of "the
voice of humanity."
After the war, Wegner became known as a prolific journalist, the
author of travel books and novels as well as a human rights activist.
He traveled the world with his wife, the Jewish poet Lula Landau. In
the late 1920s they visited Palestine and Wegner described this
visit in essays and a book that voiced his support for the creation
of a Jewish national state in Palestine. After the couple's divorce
in 1939, Landau immigrated to Palestine and lived there until he died.
In a letter Wegner sent to Hitler after "boycott day" under the heading
"To Germany," he tried to dissuade him from activities intended to
suppress the Jews. "Sir Reichskanzler, we are not talking here solely
about the fate of our Jewish brethren. This is a matter of the fate of
Germany!" he wrote. "As a German, who received the gift of speech not
for the sake of remaining silent, I appeal to you: stop this madness!"
He surveyed what the Jews had endured throughout history and estimated
that "with the same perseverance that helped them survive as an ancient
people, the Jews will also overcome this danger but the shame and
tragedy that will be caused to the German people will not soon be
forgotten." Moreover, he proposed to Hitler: "Preserve Germany by
granting protection to the Jews."
A Hebrew translation of his letter appears in the book by Israeli
researcher, Prof. Yair Auron, "Genocide: Can it be Prevented" (Open
University Press, 2010). Auron maintains that "Wegner is one of the
loftiest voices produced by the German-Jewish symbiosis against the
Nazi German effort that sought to annihilate it."
Auron adds that in 1968, Wegner was recognized as a Righteous Gentile
by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. Even though he
did not actually save Jews, the committee that grants the title
decided to honor his courage and the risks he took in an attempt
to defend the Jews in Nazi Germany. In addition, he received Medals
of Honor from the governments of West Germany and Armenia. Wegner,
who remained in Italy until the end of his life and did not manage
to recreate his success as a writer, died in 1978.
Similar to Frey and Wegner, Irmgard Keun was among the writers whose
books were forgotten during the Nazi era and after it as well. But
unlike them, in her later years she received renewed recognition. She
is recalled today as a writer who was miraculously able to provide
sharp and light-hearted depictions of modern lifestyles, the consumer
society and the flashy society of the Weimar era.
A daring portrait of Berlin women
The exhibition notes that Keu, who was born in 1905, worked first
as a stenographer and as a model and studied acting. After being
unsuccessful in the theater, she switched to literary writing. Her
first novel, "Gilgi - One of Us" sparked a storm after its publication,
in 1931, because of its direct depictions of the life of the young,
independent, free-spirited heroine, portrayed as the embodiment of
modern femininity. Among other things, the book covers such issues
as adoption, gaps among social classes, women working in office jobs,
sexual harassment, single-parent families and abortion.
Keun earned praise from important writers, such as Doblin and
Tucholsky, for her humorous and sharp writing and after a year
released another novel, "The Artificial Silk Girl," which became
a bestseller. It presents an entertaining monologue by Doris, a
light-headed Berlin young woman, with great fondness for men, lies,
trendy clothes and brand names.
Doris tries to make her way into the world of glamour and is
indifferent to the political dangers in the twilight period of the
Weimar Republic. "I want to write like in a film that my life is like
that and will be even more so," Doris says. "And I look like Colleen
Moore (an American film star ), if only she had a permanent curl in
her hair and a nose with more chic, pointed upward a bit more."
The Nazis banned Keun's books and did not allow them to be distributed
after having identified "anti-German tendencies" in them and in 1936
she left for Belgium. That same year, she began a romance with Joseph
Roth, which lasted until 1938, and later on she moved to Holland. When
that country was occupied by Germany, she returned to her native
land and lived there under a false identity until the end of World
War II. She felt protected because she knew the regime had received
false reports of her suicide.
In West Germany after the war Keun continued writing books but they
did not gain a following. She suffered emotional crises and became
addicted to alcohol and in the 1960s was hospitalized for a time in a
psychiatric institution. Only in the mid-1970s was she rediscovered
following a newspaper article about her. Her books were issued in
new editions and received enthusiastically by young readers and she
frequently attended literary events until her death in 1982. Her books
were also adapted for theater and film and merited academic analyses.
Six years ago, Israeli director Tom Levy created an adaptation of
"The Artificial Silk Girl" which was staged at Tel Aviv's Tzavta
Theater. The novel is mentioned several times in Israeli historian
Dr. Boaz Neumann's book, "Being in the Weimar Republic" (Am Oved
Publishers, 2007 ).
Neumann say the novel's heroine faithfully represents several
prevailing trends in Germany at that time, such as the centrality of
ads and shopping in people's lives, the importance of fashion and a
glamorous appearance in defining humanity, and the tendency to use
lies and deceit to climb the social ladder; or in the words of Doris:
"I know that people who 'must always speak the truth' always lie."
It seems that some of Doris' perceptions regarding the consumer
society are relevant today as well. It is possible that this is one
reason why Achuzat Bayit Books chose to release the book in Hebrew,
translated by Hanan Elstein. The translation is to be released around
Rosh Hashana and its title will be taken from contemporary language,
"Naara Homranit" (Material Girl ).
Keun's works were the focus of an evening of readings recently held in
Berlin as part of a monthly series devoted to one of the writers whose
lives are reviewed in the exhibition. The events feature contemporary
German writers such as Herta Muller, the 2009 recipient of the Nobel
Prize for Literature, Daniel Kehlmann, the author of "Measuring
the World," and actress Iris Berben reading from the works of Armin
T. Wegner.
The exhibition closes on December 31.