IngentaConnect Mythical Moments in National and Other Family Histories

Author: Feuchtwang, Stephan

Source: History Workshop Journal, Volume 59, Number 1, 2005 , pp. 179-193(15)

Abstract:

The flight of two sisters from Minsk before the invading German army has become a story of great importance to a Russian Jewish family in Berlin. I interpret it as a family myth, and relate its telling down three generations to the ways in which members of the family talk about themselves and their lives. I also relate their self-representations to a number of crucial historical contexts: the breakdown of the Soviet Union, German reparation for and commemoration of the Holocaust, the revitalizing of Jewish Community in Berlin, and the centrality of Israel for Jewish self-definition. To do this I employ an idea of before/after caesuras, employed in acts of commemoration, in the writing of history and in the telling of stories. Interviews with members of the family show how they hold in reserve from all these contexts their own Jewish self-definition. At the same time it is evident that their self-definition is actively dependent on these contexts of policy change, historiography, public commemoration and a television documentary of the Minsk ghetto. My argument is that this reserve from the contexts on which it depends has the potential to define a subject for a history of Diasporic Jews not yet written or commemorated.

Keywords: Wanda Landowska; Pleyel; historical harpsichords

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1093/hwj/dbi014

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