UNC Asheville will offer a year-long examination of the period in German history preceding the Holocaust – known as the Weimar Era – when Jews in Germany experienced a cultural renaissance between the end of World War I and Hitler’s rise. The series of talks and performances, called Evenings at the Cabaret Weimar, will begin with a talk by German-Jewish historian Michael Brenner called “Why Weimar?” This event is free and open to the public at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 30, at UNC Asheville’s Reuter Center, home of OLLI, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
Curator for the series is Ron Manheimer, retired founding director of OLLI (formerly called the N.C. Center for Creative Retirement). Manheimer, a scholar and author of several books on philosophy, notes that the Weimar Era “spawned such figures as physicist Albert Einstein, composer Kurt Weill, philosopher Martin Buber, architect Erich Mendelsohn, and poet Else Lasker-Schüler. Evenings at the Cabaret Weimar will focus on each of these five creative individuals, their lives and their contributions to both Jewish and world culture.”
Michael Brenner, who presents the first event in the series, was born in the small Bavarian town of Weiden, a few miles away from the former Nazi concentration camp of Flossenburg. Both of Brenner’s parents are Holocaust survivors who chose to remain in Germany. He is a noted scholar of the history of German Jewry, and author of the highly regarded book, The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (Yale University Press, 1998).
Brenner, who holds appointments at both American University in Washington, D.C., and the University of Munich, will provide an overview of the Weimar Era, a period of exceptional creative energy for Germany’s tiny Jewish population, and a time of collision between traditional Judaism and the growing secular, modernist culture, that transformed Jewish literature, liturgy, synagogue architecture and education.
According to Manheimer, “the conflicts and controversies that erupted within the Weimar Era German-Jewish community continue to this day in debates over the future of Israel, North American Jewish identity, worship traditions and innovations, the nature of sacred spaces, and even the concept of God in the cosmos of quantum physics.”
The Evenings at the Cabaret Weimar series consists of:
- September 30: “Why Weimar?” – a talk by historian Michael Brenner
- October 14: “Meet Mack the Knife” – music by Kurt Weill performed by Vance Reese and Amanda Horton, and discussion by musicologist Naomi Graber
- October 28: “Is There a Jewish Architecture? “ – Israeli filmmaker Duki Dror presents his award-winning documentary about architect Erich Mendelsohn’s designs
- April 7: “Einstein in Berlin” – The great scientist’s impact and his role as a social activist are analyzed by multidisciplinary scholar Peter Fenves
- April 21: “The Poet of Crossing Boundaries” – European studies scholar Markus Hallensleben explores the expressionist poetry, prose and drama of Else Lasker-Schüler
- April 28: “Martin Buber: Jewish Existentialist” – Theologian Claire Sufrin discusses the ideas and work of philosopher Martin Buber.
Evenings at the Cabaret Weimar are sponsored by UNC Asheville’s Center for Jewish Studies and OLLI. For more information, contact the Center for Jewish Studies Director, Professor Richard Chess, atrchess@unca.edu or 828.232.6576.