{"id":6042,"date":"2019-01-04T18:09:21","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T23:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/?page_id=6042"},"modified":"2019-02-01T02:54:42","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T07:54:42","slug":"rezension-jochanan-trilse-finkelstein-with-esther-grunwald-so-kam-ich-unter-die-deutschen","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/archive\/glossen-44-2019-current-issue\/rezension-jochanan-trilse-finkelstein-with-esther-grunwald-so-kam-ich-unter-die-deutschen\/","title":{"rendered":"Rezension: Jochanan Trilse-Finkelstein with Esther Gr\u00fcnwald. “So kam ich unter die Deutschen”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jochanan Trilse-Finkelstein with Esther Gr\u00fcnwald. So kam ich unter die Deutschen: Jochanan Trilse-Finkelstein. Die Saga<\/em>.\u00a0Leipzig: Araki, 2017. ISBN 978-3-936 149-25-8, 670 pages.<\/p>\n

von Gabriele Eckart<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The East German Jewish writer Jochanan Trilse-Finkelstein died in Berlin in 2017.\u00a0 In his estate, there was an unfinished autobiographical manuscript titled That\u2019s How I Got Among the Germans<\/em> — a politically engaged text with interesting reflections about war, fascism, and genocide, as well as about the first years of the GDR.<\/p>\n

Trilse-Finkelstein, well known for several books about theater and about Heinrich Heine, was born in Breslau (today Wroclaw) in 1932. After his death, Esther Gr\u00fcnwald, the co-author of this book with the very fitting title, which is a quotation by H\u00f6lderlin, published the fragment — pointing out that the book is not \u201ceine Autobiographie, die im Einzelnen historisch nachpr\u00fcfbar w\u00e4re, sondern [\u2026] als Kunst mit allen Freiheiten und Ausdeutbarkeiten zu lesen.\u201d The book is structured in four chapters, one fragment of a chapter, and an appendix on conversations that Gr\u00fcnwald held with the author before his death. A foreword by the co-author, many supplementary notes, and a bibliography enrich the text.<\/p>\n

The emotionally highly charged exclamation \u201cMeine Eltern waren nicht im Lager! Sie haben gek\u00e4mpft\u201d (241) can be used as a summary of Trilse-Finkelstein\u2019s message that prompted him to start writing down his memories. As is well known, in the GDR\u2019s Holocaust-discourse, Jews were portrayed as passive victims; therefore, according to GDR historiography, they were partially to blame for their tragic fate. Trilse-Finkelstein writes against the grain of this narrative.\u00a0 While many of his relatives suffered and died in German concentration camps, he and his parents did not.\u00a0 In 1941, they returned from their safe exile in Shanghai to Europe in order to fight in Tito\u2019s partisan army against fascism. His father worked as a surgeon in mobile field hospitals in the forests of Slovenia, his mother as a nurse; later on, he was promoted to major, she to lieutenant; Trilse-Finkelstein himself, at age eleven, was a \u201cKindersoldat.\u201d They ate deer, mushrooms, and berries, as well as food the Allies dropped from the sky; they slept in caves and sheep stables. As hard and dangerous as life was, he loved to be surrounded by the forest.<\/p>\n

For scholars of Jewish culture, this book might be interesting to read \u00a0to better understand how the Jewish partisans managed to remain religious under these conditions. Celebrating Shabbat was a challenge without candles and eating kosher had become impossible.\u00a0 For scholars of World War II, the book should be an important source of information because Trilse-Finkelstein also talks about what is left out of official historiography. For instance, some partisans did not stop fighting after the war and committed massacres among local populations — not differentiating well between people who had collaborated with fascists and those who had not.<\/p>\n

As Gr\u00fcnwald points out, Trilse-Finkelstein wanted this text to be dedicated to his mother, Esther Finkelstein. Although wounded in battle during the war and having suffered as a political prisoner in the GDR, she survived; his memories are to a high degree based on stories he heard from her. On his deathbed, talking to Gr\u00fcnwald, you can hear his voice shivering when he remembers his mother\u2019s fate in the GDR.\u00a0 In 1952 — she lived in Erfurt at the time — she was told by the Party to condemn Tito (whom she had known personally treating his illness during the war) and the Yugoslav project of socialism. But, she did not. Trilse-Finkelstein explains: \u201cSie wollte sich ihre eigene, erk\u00e4mpfte Aufwertung nicht nehmen lassen, die Chance nicht vertun, die die Geschichte ihr zugeworfen hatte \u2013 als J\u00fcdin nicht Objekt von Dem\u00fctigungen zu sein, sondern Offizier der Befreiungsarmee gewesen zu sein. Dieser Selbstwert war mit ihr verschmolzen. Schwerer als die Kr\u00e4nkung durch die Stalinisten in Erfurt wog sp\u00e4ter noch die, durch niemanden mehr gekannt zu sein\u201d (235-36). After Stalin\u2019s death, she was released from prison, and later, from 1981 on, even received a small pension, called VdN (Verfolgter des Naziregimes) Rente. She died in 1985.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, there are also positive memories of the GDR in Trilse-Finkelstein\u2019s book, especially about people he met, including Ernst Bloch whose student he was in Leipzig. With a passport as a stateless person, Trilse-Finkelstein could travel, see the world, and did not have to share the claustrophobic feelings of the others living in that country. He enjoyed his work as an editor of the Henschel-Verlag and later as a free-lance theater critic and writer \u2013 work that brought him in touch with the leading intelligentsia of the GDR. His free time he spent on a sailboat. He did not get involved in political controversies publicly, perhaps because he was traumatized by what had happened to his mother.<\/p>\n

Many of the pages of the book are filled with descriptions of travel. The description of the family\u2019s trip (by train from Shanghai through China, Mongolia, the Soviet Union, Slovakia to Vienna) in 1941 is breathtaking. Without their fake passports, they could not have made it. However, Trilse-Finkelstein\u2019s father had been widely known as a social democrat before the war (many people knew him; his true identity could be found out easily) and Trilse-Finkelstein\u2019s mother looked very Jewish according to the stereotypes of the time; therefore, the constant crossing of borders during wartime was dangerous. In 1943, they moved on to Slovenia to join the partisans. In 1947, the family returned to Vienna; the mother was an Austrian citizen. Then, the parents divorced; the mother, a member of the Communist Party, moved to the GDR in 1951; the son followed her after he finished his studies in theater, dance, and aesthetics \u2013 regretting this last move later on. Vienna had felt like home; Berlin, where he lived most of his years in the GDR, never did.<\/p>\n

Trilse-Finkelstein reflects broadly on the problem of remnants of anti-Semitism.\u00a0 Since his father owned a house in Breslau and loved the city, he dreamed of returning there after the war.\u00a0 He traveled from Belgrad to Wroclaw and discovered that a pogrom had just taken place in his birthplace, Kielce, when Jews who had survived the Holocaust had tried to return to their town.\u00a0 In post-war Vienna and in the GDR, there were no pogroms; however, Trilse-Finkelstein also had to confront anti-Semitism there. In 1990, he became politically active as one of the founders of the J\u00fcdischer Kuturverein Berlin.<\/p>\n

Esther Gr\u00fcnwald\u2019s conversations with Trilse-Finkelstein (not attached to the end, but integrated into the narrative) enrich the text; their discussions, as for instance, about Tito\u2019s legacy, Ernst Fischer, or about the aesthetics of dancing are very interesting to read. Her footnotes to explain names and dates are helpful, but sometimes excessive.\u00a0 For the sake of \u201cLesevergn\u00fcgen,\u201d I recommend reading the book for the first time without them \u2013 or only looking down at the notes when you have a question.\u00a0 For further editions, the book requires more editing.\u00a0 There are many typos and sometimes colloquial word choices like \u201cupgedated.\u201d A \u201cPersonenregister\u201d at the end of the book is also very helpful.<\/p>\n

For universities with programs in Jewish Studies this book is an important addition and provides a personal narrative of Jewish experience that is usually overlooked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jochanan Trilse-Finkelstein with Esther Gr\u00fcnwald. So kam ich unter die Deutschen: Jochanan Trilse-Finkelstein. Die Saga.\u00a0Leipzig: Araki, 2017. ISBN 978-3-936 149-25-8, 670 pages. von Gabriele Eckart   The East German Jewish writer Jochanan Trilse-Finkelstein died in Berlin in 2017.\u00a0 In his estate, there was an unfinished autobiographical manuscript titled That\u2019s How I Got Among the Germans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":282,"featured_media":0,"parent":5902,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6042","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6042\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/glossen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}