Observable type: Jewish women and the Jewish press in Weimar Germany

Through an examination of German and Yiddish-language Jewish periodicals in Weimar Germany (1919-1933), this dissertation investigates the problematics of Jewish visibility, and the ways women approached modernity and embodied markers of Jewish and gender difference. With volatile political and economic conditions, rising anti-Semitism produced an urgent need for Jews in Germany to acculturate and remain undetected to the untrained eye. While other scholars have identified an uncomplicated impulse to de-Judaization or self-abnegation, I demonstrate that Jewish periodicals systematically reflected a desire for Jewish recognizability vis-a-vis other Jews. The press trained readers in the art of encoding themselves with a complex set of subtle yet visible signifiers; audiences of Jewish women received instruction in covert self-styling, and recognition of other Jews based on distinct modes of presentation.By way of media disseminated to Jews in Germany, women acquired insight into possibilities for upholding traditions while simultaneously participating in the spectacles of modern German mass culture. The "Orthodox Bubikopf (pageboy-style wig) offers a potent example: by wearing this, religiously observant Jewish women found new ways of appearing as modern, emancipated new women.Chapter One focuses on serialized literature by authors including Clementine Kramer, Pauline Wengeroff, S.H. Mosenthal, and Sammy Gronemann. Modern Jewish journalism and feuilletons constitute the subject matter of Chapter Two, in addition to the discourse about typologies of Jewish women as initiated by Max Brod's novel Judinnen. Chapter Three examines popular icons in visual culture, theater, and film, with particular attention to Elisabeth Bergner's role in Paul Czinner's film Der traumende Mund. Aesthetic representations and beauty culture are considered in Chapter Four, which investigates images of East European and exotic women, the work of artist Rahel Szalit, and representations of Jewish beauty queens, among others. Chapter Five explores the imagery and marketing campaigns of advertisements in the Jewish press. In assessing various components of a mass media form that stimulated intellectual and cultural life, I offer insight into the ways in which Jewish women contributed to German culture as readers and as consumers.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 2011.School code: 0175