Bohemia’s Jews and Their Nineteenth Century

This book on Jewish culture and literature focuses on the “quiet” decades of the nineteenth century, a scarcely written-about period of time in Bohemian Jewish history. Using a myriad of sources, including travelers’ accounts, poems, essays, short stories, guides, and newspaper articles, the volume explores Jewish expression, Jewish-Czech relations, and the changing attitudes toward Jews between the 1820s and 1880s. It offers close readings of writers like Karel Havlíček Borovský, Ján Kollár, Siegfried Kapper, and Jan Neruda, as well as lesser-known authors and sources. Combining skillful sustained analysis, judicious argumentation, and elegant writing, the book is a truly enriching reading experience.

Credits

Foreword

Bohemia’s  Configurations

Borders Invite Contact: Prague’s  Jewish Town

Making Sence of a Ruin: The Old Jewish Cementery in Prague

To Include or Not to Include? Kollár’s and Mácha’s Conflicted Answers

Shock and Entertain: Diversions for Gentiles and/or Jews

Varieties of Bohemian Jewish Literature

The Imperial and the Local: Frankl vs Kapper

New Debates about Jews: The 1840s

Languages of 1848

In Search of an Enemy: Jews According to Jan Neruda

New Times: Jewish, Czech, Jewish-Czech

Attempting a Conclusion

List of illustrations

Bibliography

Index of names and subjects