ISBN: 978-88-905738-8-0

Abstracts
Roberta Ascarelli, Il romanzo di un ‘funambolo’. «Altneuland» di Theodor Herzl
After discussing the narrative structure of Theodor Herzl’s Zionist novel Altneuland (1902) and the peculiar process of mirroring between this fiction and the author’s actual engagement in shaping the Zionist project, this article highlights the interferences between poetics and political life in Herzl’s maturity, focusing on the influence of the fin de siècle French debate against Realism, the moralistic overtones of Bourget’s criticism to nihilism and his influence on Nietzsche’s aesthetics.
Luigi Compagna, L’Anti-Herzl di Odessa
A comparison of political Zionism and cultural Zionism. Once the Enlightenment dream of Jewish emancipation in Europe vanished, Theodor Herzl, a political Zionism visionary, plans the foundation of the Jewish State outside Europe, still in the Enlightenment and European spirit. Herzl’s immediate political solution is contrasted by Ahad Ha’am, who was from Odessa and was an eminent member of cultural Zionism. He supported the idea of a Jewish cultural re-birth necessarily prior to immigration to Palestin.
Massimiliano De Villa, «Ein Stück Kulturarbeit wollten wir leisten». Cultura tedesca nei primi scritti di Martin Buber
Martin Buber’s early Zionist writings (1900-1916) are an important contribution to the redefinition of German Judaism in the post-assimilation period. They constitute an aspect of that Jüdische Renaissance which, in the first decades of the XX century, reconfigures the idea of Judaism on new criteria, from the recreation of an aesthetic dimension to the rediscovery of ethnicity. The article focuses on Martin Buber’s cultural Zionism and on its connection with German culture, particularly
on the contradiction of a Zionism which – though aiming at an independent, autonomous Jewish cultural identity – largely draws on images, symbols and words typical of the German nationalist, neoromantic,right-wing framework. Starting from the Renaissance vogue and the attempt to establish a new Jewish art, the article moves on to underline, through a lexical and linguistic analysis of Buber’s Zionist writings, the analogy, and sometimes the total coincidence, of the cultural Zionist discourse with the conceptual apparatus of the German ‘völkische Bewegung’.
Giuseppe Farese, Luci e ombre di un’amicizia problematica
The complex and fascinating cultural landscape of turn-of-the-century is the setting of the friendship between two intellectuals who will become protagonists of their age: Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) and Arthur Schnitzler. In July 1904 Herzl writes to Schnitzler an affectionate and flattering letter that marks the beginning of a significant but problematic relationship. From 1891 to 1896 Herzl is in Paris as the correspondent of the «Neue Freie Presse» daily newspaper. In Paris he attends the
Dreyfus trial, reflects on the political aspects of anti-Semitism, and conceives the idea of Zionism. Unfortunately, since 1895 the friendship between the two writers deteriorates slowly and surprisingly, as testified by several passages in Schnitzler’s diaries. However, commenting Herzl’s untimely death on the (4th) of July, Schnitzler talked of a «death, which moved me deeply».
Marino Freschi, Joseph Roth e il sionismo
The connection between Roth and Zionism goes through the whole production of the Jewish author from Brody with a particular intensity in the years of the exile. Roth’s point of view is extremely critical up to moments of hard and unjust polemics when he compares the protagonists of radical Zionism with nazi leaders. Especially after the ‘turn’ represented by the works The Wandering Jews (1927) and Job (1930), Roth becomes a champion of the ‘mission juive’: In his opinion the
Jews have the destiny to attest the being of unity of the Eternal in the universal community. Zionism is for Roth a product of the modern western thought, namely the thought that caused the destruction of the World of the Tradition in name of the obsession of nationalisms, from which communist and nazi totalitarisms derived. Roth argued his ideas mainly through his articles and essays published in the several newspapers for which he wrote splendid and elegant contributions, authentic masterpieces of his writings.
Guido Massino, Lise Weltsch e l’associazione di studenti sionisti praghesi Bar Kochba
A postcard bearing Kafka’s signature, and now conserved in the Central Zionist Archives, provides a glimpse of New Year’s 1913-1914 and the young Prague Zionists of the Bar Kochba Association. This historical document, together with other unedited letters, provide us with new details regarding the Jewish milieu in Prague in general, and the relationship between Kafka and Lise Weltsch and her brother Robert in particular.
Paola Paumgardhen, Theodor Herzl: Sion a Vienna
During Finis Europae, in the palingenetic dream of a homeless Jew poet, the «Old New Land» of the Jews was born – an European Palestine in which all the people might be equal in diversity. After the Dreyfus affaire, in the pages of Theodor Herzl’s utopian literature, the epochal realistic project of Jewish politics delineates itself. It predicts the birth of the State of Israel half a century before it was really achieved and opens up to wider literary, cultural and political critical perspectives.
Simonetta Sanna, L’incontro con l’altro: Kafka e Felice
The work outlines the phases in the relationship between Franz Kafka and Felice Bauer, from the initial identification to the final disavowal,which took place at the same time as Kafka reintroduced his pursuit of the individual Eigentümlichkeit founded on unconventional social patterns and on his identity as a writer to which his last works are devoted. Furthermore, it investigates the themes of the construction of the Other in his letters and the adjustments to the Other’s image during their
meetings. Kafka’s interest in Felice was due not to his desire to start a family, nor to obey laws of any kind, be they explicit or unspoken, social or religious, and it cannot even be ascribed to his rivalry with his father; what he wanted from the woman was above all recognition as a person and a writer. Therefore, Kafka’s struggle for Felice coincided with his deep and personal utopia: from a moral point of view, the commitment to understanding the other person corresponded to going
beyond oneself, that is to a genuine interest in the other person; while, from a gnoseological point of view, Kafka fathomed the harrowing gap between life and knowledge.
Giulio Schiavoni, Architetti per Erez Israel: una sintetica rassegna (1918-1948)
This article focuses on the contribution that the young generation of Jewish architects, who were trained in German academies and who moved to Palestine in the early Twenties, gave to the realisation of a new society during the British Mandate until 1948. It highlights the freshness of their innovatory ferments which, in this new context, aimed to import the ‘avant-garde ideas’ they had absorbed in the old continent and to use them for the cause of Zionism, for the development
of the ‘New Man’, who represents the antithesis of the Diaspora Jew. A special attention is paid in particular to exponents such as Richard Kauffmann, Erich Mendelsohn and Lotte Cohn, who is considered a pioneer woman architect in Israel, and to the experience of the so-called ‘garden-cities’ as the inspiring model in the planning of urban centres, residential areas (most of all in Jerusalem, Haifa and Tel Aviv), kibbuzim and moshawim.
Isolde Schiffermüller, «Transport-Newyork-Oklahama». Il viaggio americano nel ‘Il Disperso’ di Franz Kafka
This essay proposes a reading of Franz Kafka’s first fragmentary novel The Man Who Disappeared (America) in light of the most significant stages of his American travel. In particular, it describes Kafka’s west ward journey in the context of the new epic of migration and focuses on the ‘transport’ as its main feature by further exploring its diverse symbolic meanings.
Claudia Sonino, Hugo Bergman, Praga e il sionismo
The essay focuses on H. Bergman’s early Zionism which was characterized by humanistic and supra-nationalistic features according to his philosophic education and Prague experience. It is a non-nationalistic, European and middle-European Zionism, built on Herder, Fichte and above all Martin Buber. On this human and cultural background Bergman developed a humanistic Zionism, which had to link and not divide peoples and which was the intellectual starting point of his following
experience in Palestine.
Giovanni Tateo, Il ritorno nella provincia morava. Jakob Julius
David: ‘Die Hanna’ (1904)
The aim of this essay is to investigate and explore the relationship between centre and periphery, between dominant and submissive culture in Jakob Julius David’s Trilogy Die Hanna. The Austrian novelist and journalist uses Vienna as a pretext to remember the landscape of his native country, at the same time he depicts his native Moravia not only as a mere narrative background but also as a living organism which first determines the characters’ actions and, then, becomes itself an essential
part of the story.
Leszek Żyliński, Deutsches Mitteleuropa und polnisches Intermarium: Mythisches Gedächtnis – politisches Kalkül
The article presents two concepts in the history of political ideas: the German Central Europe and Polish Intermarium as competitive projects of particular Central European integration projects. The genesis of these concepts in 18th and 19th century is associated with the loss/lack of statehood (Poland) as well as the smooth process of creating a unified national country (Germany). Their revival in the 20th century however is a result of political calculations and specific longlasting  ‘mental maps’.