J ay H oward G eller . The Scholems

The fraught saga of modern German-speaking Jewry—with its remarkable achievements and perhaps related tragic fate—remains compelling and extraordinarily well documented. This includes family histories of the rich and cultured German-Jewish elite, such as the Mendelssohns, Cassirers, Mosses, and Warburgs. In his richly researched The Scholems: A Story of the German-Jewish Bourgeoisie from Emancipation to Destruction, however, Jay Howard Geller goes one rung lower to a more typical sample and follows the path of Jewish progression into the middle class and the later successes and travails of this single family as a kind of microcosm of the larger German Jewish experience. This is a detailed, at times quotidian, history of a particular family that is also a reflection of, and delineates various reactions to, wider social, economic, cultural, and political realities in especially turbulent times. Although from the early nineteenth century on, through meticulous archival research, Geller traces the lives...

Archaeology · Bourgeoisie · Elite · Emancipation · German · Judaism · Political science · Politics · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies