Awards

• Winner of Finalist, 2022 Jordan Schnitzer Book Award.

Overview

By the end of the Second World War, Germany was in ruins and its Jewish population so gravely diminished that a rich cultural life seemed unthinkable. And yet, as surviving Jews returned from hiding, the camps, and their exiles abroad, so did their music. Transcending Dystopia tells the story of the remarkable revival of Jewish musical activity that developed in postwar Germany against all odds. Author Tina Frühauf provides a kaleidoscopic panorama of musical practices in worship and social life across the country to illuminate how music contributed to transitions and transformations within and beyond Jewish communities in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Drawing on newly unearthed sources from archives and private collections, this book covers a wide spectrum of musical activity-from its role in commemorations and community events to synagogue concerts and its presence on the radio-across the divided Germany until the Fall of the Wall in 1989. Frühauf's use of mobility as a conceptual framework reveals the myriad ways in which the reemergence of Jewish music in Germany was shaped by cultural transfer and exchange that often relied on the circulation of musicians, their ideas, and practices within and between communities. By illuminating the centrality of mobility to Jewish experiences and highlighting how postwar Jewish musical practices in Germany were defined by politics that reached across national borders to the United States and Israel, this pioneering study makes a major contribution to our understanding of Jewish life and culture in a transnational context.

Full Product Details

9780197532973

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Reviews

As deftly traced by Tina Fruhauf, the post-World War Two renewal of German Jewry's uniquely creative liturgical musical tradition is a testimony to the spiritual resilience of the surviving remnant of the Shoah. * Paul Mendes-Flohr, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Professor Emeritus of the University of Chicago * Comprehensive, authoritative, highly readable, insightful, and ground-breaking, Tina Fruhauf's book enriches our understanding of the varied fate of postwar German Jews - east and west - through music, a powerful expression of Jewish resilience, identity, and belief. * Mark Slobin, Winslow-Kaplan Professor of Music Emeritus, Wesleyan University *

Author Information

Tina Frühauf is Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University and serves on the doctoral faculty of The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the editor of the award-winning Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture (OUP, 2014) and has published widely on German Jewish music culture and twentieth-century music.

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