Ghosts of Home
The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish Memory
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 19. January 2010
Book
Hardback
392 pages
978-0-520-25772-6 (ISBN)
Description
In modern-day Ukraine, east of the Carpathian Mountains, there is an invisible city. Known as Czernowitz, the 'Vienna of the East' under the Habsburg empire, this vibrant Jewish-German Eastern European culture vanished after World War II - yet an idealized version lives on, suspended in the memories of its dispersed people and passed down to their children like a precious and haunted heirloom. In this original blend of history and communal memoir, Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer chronicle the city's survival in personal, familial, and cultural memory. They find evidence of a cosmopolitan culture of nostalgic lore - but also of oppression, shattered promises, and shadows of the Holocaust in Romania. Hirsch and Spitzer present the first historical account of Jewish Czernowitz in the English language and offer a profound analysis of memory's echo across generations.
Reviews / Votes
"[This] monumental book ... is a stunning marriage of intellectual curiosity and personal search. [It] reads with the poignancy of memoir, yet in a collective voice... The overarching authorial voice is nuanced and reflective but also informed. " Pri's The World "Hirsch and Spitzer expose the complex layers that inform our understanding of the past." Jewish Book World "Unique ... Ghosts of Home collects the fragments of one place and provides us with an artifact that is as close as we will ever come to 'perfect rest.'" Tikkun Magazine "An interesting volume." German Studies Review "Eminently readable... Hirsch's depiction of prewar Jewish life is masterful." -- Norman Ravvin Canadian Jewish News "The ability to observe, evaluate, and contextualize habits and specific objects is one of the greatest strengths of this book." Austrian History YearbookMore details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
49 b-w photographs, 4 maps
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-25772-6 (9780520257726)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
07/2011
1st Edition
University of California Press
€31.00
Shipment within 10-20 days
E-Book
01/2010
1st Edition
Naval Institute Press
€29.49
Available for download
Persons
Marianne Hirsch is William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and Co-Director of the Institute of Research on Women and Gender, at Columbia University. She is the author of Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory, among other books. Leo Spitzer is Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor of History Emeritus at Dartmouth College, and the author of many books, most recently Hotel Bolivia: A Culture of Memory in a Refuge from Nazism.
Content
List of Illustrations Preface Part One "We would not have come without you," 1998 1 / "Where are you from?" 2 / Vienna of the East 3 / Strolling the Herrengasse 4 / The Idea of Czernowitz 5 / "Are we really in the Soviet Union?" 6 / The Crossroads Part Two The Darker Side, 2000 7 / Maps to Nowhere 8 / The Spot on the Lapel 9 / "There was never a camp here!" 10 / "This was once my home" Part Three Ghosts of Home, 2006 11 / The Persistence of Czernowitz 12 / The Tile Stove Epilogue, 2008 Chernivtsi at Six Hundred Notes Selected Readings Index