New books in our collection

To Begin Again: Jewish Life in Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of Communism in 1989
Edited by Ruth Ellen Gruber (Centropa, 2008)

Centropa, a Vienna-based Jewish historical institute, asked twelve Jews in Central and Eastern Europe to share with us their personal stories. With essays written by Jews ranging in age from their early sixties to their mid-twenties, these take us from the fall of Communism in 1989 until today. Some of these authors are community activists, others teach in Jewish schools. Some have rediscovered their Judaism and emigrated to Israel; others have chosen to stay and rebuild Jewish life at home.

During the Holocaust, the Nazis destroyed most of these Jewish communities. Over the ensuing four decades, the Communists did irreparable harm. Most outsiders thought there could never be Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe ever again. These twelve contributors give their candid assessment of the past twenty years, and what that portends for a Jewish future in Europe.

Literatur und Kritik (most recent issue November 2009)

Renowned Austrian journal Literatur und Kritik, edited since 1991 by Karl-Markus Gauss and published by Otto Mueller Verlag, Salzburg, has become known for its rich cultural background and, especially since Gauss has taken over as editor, for the collaboration of a younger generation of writers. The journal covers a range of international cultural and historico-cultural topics and also includes essays from contributors. Since 2005, the first double issue of each year publishes first editions of poetry. The library of the Austrian Cultural Forum holds a full run of this serial (up to the November 2009 issue) and copies are available for reference.

Interwar Vienna – Culture between Tradition and Modernity
Edited by Deborah Holmes and Lisa Silverman

Although beset by social, political, and economic instabilities, interwar Vienna was an exhilarating place, with pioneering developments in the arts and innovations in the social sphere. This volume of new essays stretches disciplinary boundaries to consider the cultural and social movements that shaped the city. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire resulted not in an abandonment of the arts, but in new forms of expression. The city’s culture was caught between extremes, from neo-positivism to cultural pessimism, Catholic mysticism to Austro-Marxism, late Enlightenment liberalism to rabid antisemitism. Concentrating on the paradoxes and often productive tensions that these created, the volume’s twelve essays explore achievements and anxieties in fields ranging from modern dance, theater, music, film, and literature to social, cultural, and racial policy.

Deborah Holmes is Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography in Vienna. Lisa Silverman is Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee