What is it about?
This essay is an attempt to analyse the multi-layered dimensions of Franz Rosenzweig’s Nachlass, which is held at the Leo Baeck Institute and is also available online. It aims to underscore the hermeneutic interplay in the archive itself, including a kind of explicit awareness of Rosenzweig’s posthumous reception as well as the discrepancy between the various profiles of him that emerge from reviews and obituaries. Following the development of Rosenzweig’s reception will enable us to understand why he was such a controversial figure, considered too Jewish for the Germans and too German for the Jews. In the first part of this study, I analyse Rosenzweig’s archival consciousness by considering some passages from his diaries and correspondence, as well as his archival sensibility. In the second part, I illuminate the outside view of Rosenzweig’s works—namely, the reviews and obituaries collected by his wife, Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann—in order to show both the tensions and the uniqueness of his reception during his lifetime and after his death. Finally, in the conclusion, I discuss some “spectres” of the archive and the figure of Edith herself, whose work was crucial in shaping Rosenzweig’s legacy
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Why is it important?
This essay endeavors to interpret Rosenzweig's Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute as a coherent and meaningful entity. It amalgamates various approaches, encompassing a philosophical exploration of the archive, a narrative derived from the documents, a Wirkungsgeschichte (history of reception) of Rosenzweig's thought, and a perspective on the dual identity of German-Jewish legacy.
Perspectives
During the pandemic, I took on the challenge of writing this essay while working at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Culture at the University of Hamburg. The task was not only to immerse myself in the FR collection of over 4000 pages, but also to deal with the methodological intricacies of a new perspective. The essay attempts to bridge the gap between the theoretical dimension offered by a philosophical account of the archive and its practical application to Rosenzweig's collection. This endeavour proved to be no easy task, and in the midst of the dark times of the pandemic, I grappled with conceptualising alternative paths that eventually culminated in the final version of the article.
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This page is a summary of: “The Last German Jew”, August 2023, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004508668_003.
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