Irreconcilable Differences: The Politics of Bad Feelings in Contemporary German Jewish Culture

Summary

Introduction: Beyond the Reconciliation Paradigm

TO MARK HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY 2020, the renowned sociologist Natan Sznaider published a reflection in the Neue Züricher Zeitung in which he stresses the fundamental difference and irreconcilability between German and Jewish memories of the Holocaust. He even wonders whether joint memory rituals, intended to bring victims and perpetrators together, actually expose an “Abgrund …, wo nichts mehr gutgemacht werden kann” (an abyss … where nothing can ever be made good again). This stance clashes with established traditions in German Jewish memory culture, premised on reconciliation and Wiedergutmachung, which implies material compensation as well as the possibility of atonement. Sznaider is not, however, a complete outlier in contemporary German Jewish culture; several contemporary authors are beginning not only to question the reconciliation paradigm, but also to vent their negative emotions vis-à-vis the German Jewish status quo. One example that comes to mind is Maxim Biller, who has long been renowned for portraying angry and resentful Jewish characters in his fiction, while also presenting himself as a contemptuous commentator on past and present-day Germany and German-Jewish relations. Biller has recently been joined by a generation of younger authors who also voice their discontent with the state of German Jewish affairs: the poet, essayist, political commentator, and curator Max Czollek has called on Jews and other minority groups to “de-integrate” from the German mainstream culture, while the comedian and writer Oliver Polak has denounced both the commodification of Jewishness and the renewed acceptability of anti-Semitism in today's Germany.

These contemporary bad feelings are embedded in an affective genealogy that harks back to earlier expressions and discussions of “Jewish rage,” mainly in relation to the survivor generation. I intend to show, however, that these younger, second-or third-generation Jewish authors bring new issues to the fore that, through the use of more recent theoretical frameworks, also allow us to interpret these negative sentiments in novel ways. These changes have to do with generational and historical distance, while also reflecting the shifting sociopolitical and memory discourses surrounding these younger writers. Most scholarly engagement with Jewish rage and resentment focuses on the survivor generation, often stressing the scandalous, repressed, and taboo character of these negative emotions.