Exhibition view of Inventories: The Legacy of Salman Schocken; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Roman März
JMB Book Club on Der Rabbi von Bacharach by Heinrich Heine
As part of the exhibition Inventories: The Legacy of Salman Schocken (in German)
In his fragmentary narrative Der Rabbi von Bacharach (The Rabbi of Bacharach), Heinrich Heine contrasts the poetic Rhineland landscape, much celebrated in German Romanticism, with the pogroms against Jews in the late Middle Ages. The historical background is provided by the old ritual murder legend of the boy Werner von Bacharach, whose death triggers a wave of pogroms against Jews along the Rhine. Only the Rabbi of Bacharach and his wife Sara survive the violence by fleeing to Frankfurt.
Wed, 3 Sep 2025, 6:30 pm
Where
W. M. Blumenthal Academy,
Klaus Mangold Auditorium
Fromet-und-Moses-Mendelssohn-Platz 1, 10969 Berlin
(Opposite the Museum)
It was no coincidence that a new edition of the historical novel appeared in 1937 as the 80th volume of the Schocken Verlag library: pogroms, flight, and expulsion, set around the year 1495, are now read in the mirror of the National Socialist present.
Together with literary scholar Caroline Jessen and Monika Sommerer, director of the JMB Library, we take a look at Heinrich Heine's unique narrative art, which questions the romantic view of the German Rhineland landscape and reflects Heine's own relationship to Judaism.
