Gustav Meyrink’s 'Golem' and Leo Perutz’s 'Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke': A literary expression of the Jewish experience during the twentieth century

Gustav Meyrink’s novel Der Golem [The Golem], published in 1915, and Leo Perutz’s 1953 novel Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke [By Night under the Stone Bridge] communicate the authors’ image of the Jewish experience and treatment during the period of the twentieth century. Uncanny and fantastical elements are used throughout both texts to help portray the Jewish condition. Meyrink conveys the animosity between nationalistic Jews and middle-class assimilated Jews and highlights the rising anti-Semitism among Gentiles by associating Jews with the decay and corruption of modernity. At the same time, however, Jews are also depicted as a model of higher spirituality. Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke places the Holocaust within the greater context of Jewish history and conveys Perutz’s assessment that the tragedy of the Holocaust is one in a series of devastating events which have plagued the Jewish people. Moreover, the text casts doubt on the benevolence of Jewish and non-Jewish authority figures and even the mercifulness of God. The doubt raised in the novel regarding central Jewish beliefs mirrors the Jewish experience of disorientation and confusion following the horrors of the Holocaust. Perutz also conveys the need for Jewish history to be passed down to future generations as it is their past which helps form their Jewish identity. Keywords: Der Golem [The Golem] (Meyrink, Gustav); Nachts unter der steinernen Brücke [By Night under the Stone Bridge] (Perutz, Leo); Jewish experience (portrayal of); twentieth century; uncanny and fantastical literature; literary interpretatio