The Yiddish Summer Weimar is the most important Yiddish cultural Event in the world. The Festival in the city of Goethe and Schiller can be the most creative Phase of Jewish artists in the Weimar Republic back to life.
For the past 20 years, the Yiddish Summer Weimar (YSW) is reminiscent of the vitality and Tradition of Yiddish culture, especially the music, which was once a key role in the cultural life of Europe.
In the 19th century. Century and the beginning of the 20th century. Century, Berlin developed out of the unofficial capital of a kind of Jewish cultural Republic which stretched across Europe from Russia to France in the first place. The network of Yiddish-language cabarets, theatres, literature circles, educational institutions, and even Jewish work organizations integrated seamlessly into the General culture of dance and the then society of the Weimar Republic.
The goal of the Nazis to the so-called “seizure of power” in 1933 was to put a Once and for all – without success: The ‘Yiddish-land’ in Weimar a new lease of life. And in the city, which connects with the icons of German romanticism and classical literature: Goethe and Schiller.
1000 Years Of Cultural History
“The Weimar Republic of Yiddish country” is the theme of the YSW, 2019, the this year from the 12. July until the 17. August takes place. The focus is on the heyday of the Yiddish creativity, which is reached before the Nazis took power in 1933 in Germany and throughout Europe, their peak is.
“Jewish artists were represented in the Weimar period, in all areas of the culture, and extremely popular, whether in the literature or in classical music and pop music, theatre, Film, cabaret, in the fine arts, and even Modern Dance,” says Alan Bern, Director of the YSW-Festivals, in front of the DW.
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Jewish composers who were murdered during the HolocaustErwin Schulhoff
The 1894 Prague-born Erwin Schulhoff was a protégé of Antonín Dvořák. “He saw in the Schulhoff, the next great promise of the European music scene,” says Amit Weiner, founder of the project “Music in Times of Tragedy”. “His music brought many avant-garde styles with Jazz.” Schulhoff was a Professor of music in Prague before he was murdered in 1942 in a concentration camp.
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Jewish composers who were murdered during the HolocaustGideon Klein
He was the youngest Jewish composer who was murdered during the Holocaust. Klein was 26 years old when he came in in addition to bearing the Prince of the pit at Auschwitz were killed. His work combines Jewish themes with modern composition techniques. In 1940 he was offered a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London. “That would have been able to save his life, but he was not allowed to travel,” says Weiner.
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Jewish composers who were murdered during the HolocaustHans Krasa
“I find it interesting that the music of Krasa is so happy and optimistic. Also the music he wrote in Theresienstadt, is very much alive,” says Weiner about the Czech composer and the author of the children’s Opera “Brundibar”. Krasa died in Auschwitz in 1944. “Even in such dark times, and under terrible conditions, he had hope and looked to the future with optimism.”
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Jewish composers who were murdered during the HolocaustIlse Weber
The Czech writer had published several books of fairy tales in the German language, before it was brought in 1942 to Theresienstadt. Weber began to write songs, as she worked in the children’s hospital of the camp. Their music survived, thanks to her husband, Willi, who discovered their songs again after the war. Ilse and their son Tommy were murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
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Jewish composers who were murdered during the HolocaustMordechai Gebirtig
“He was not a professional musician, but a carpenter who could not even read notes. The songs which he composed were written by a friend of his, a watchmaker,” says Weiner about Gebertig, is today one of the most popular Singer-Songwriter in Israel. The Polish composer died in 1942 in the Krakow Ghetto.
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Jewish composers who were murdered during the HolocaustPavel Haas
Prior to his Deportation to Theresienstadt, Pavel Haas’s film scores, and pieces for orchestra wrote. He destroyed many of his works myself. “In the beginning, he was very depressed, but composers such as Gideon Klein and Hans Krasa encouraged him to continue to write,” says Weiner. In Theresienstadt Haas composed outstanding works. He was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.
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Jewish composers who were murdered during the HolocaustViktor Ullmann
“If he hadn’t been in 1944 and murdered in Auschwitz imprisoned, he would certainly be one of the most important musical forces of the 20th century. Century become,” said Amit Weiner the Austrian composer, who had been appointed before the war as a conductor of the Prague state Opera. The three years he spent in Theresienstadt, were, paradoxically, the most productive of his career.
Also in the architecture and philosophy, there are famous Jews of the world have had a major influence. This includes, inter alia, Walter Gropius, founded 100 years ago, the “Bauhaus”, and the philosopher and political scientist Hannah Arendt or Theodor Adorno, known by the Frankfurt school.
The numerous book publishers and music producers, who worked during the times of the Weimar Republic in Berlin – the Integration of the Yiddish language in the international P. E. N-Club under the name “Yiddish land”, inclusive, were the result of a thousand-year history of Yiddish in Germany.
“In fact, the Jewish presence in the culture of the Weimar period was so strong that it caused, inevitably, a reaction to the Nazis,” says Alan Bern. If he pulls YSW, the threads, the US-Americans as a composer, accordion player, and a cultural activist. Since 1987, he is at home in Berlin.
The Nazis rejected the cosmopolitanism of the Jewish culture and “made them a major point of their nationalist, anti-Semitic Propaganda”, adds Alan. After Hitler in 1933 had come to Power, he risks a political course, the “Jews from the German cultural scene excluded.”
In order to show clearly how the Jewish culture still survived, and now again, with global significance, will celebrate premieres at the YSW ten new international music – and theatre productions. These plants blow up far from the boundaries of traditional Klezmer Bands.
Alan Bern’s Mission to revive Yiddish culture, is bearing fruit
The Revolution of cabaret
The world premiere of the only surviving Yiddish Opera in Europe “Bas-Sheve” in an orchestral version on the program. Composed by Henech Kon, it was premiered in 1924 in Warsaw, however, only with piano accompaniment. Almost a century later, the “Triangle Orchestra”, composed of 30 young musicians from all over Europe will bring the Opera back to life. It tells the biblical story of king David and Bathsheba.
Another Highlight is the “Café Cosmo pole”, a music theatre with original music by the Yiddish Duo “Tsvey Brother” (“Two brothers”). Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell sings and Dmitri Gaskin is playing the accordion and piano. With the help of synths they create a sound carpet to the words of Yiddish Poets and writers who populated the cafes get in Berlin, Odessa, and Warsaw, where Jewish Communists, socialists, Zionists, immigrants, and the Bohemian court held.
Sasha Lurje has launched a Klezmer Festival to life
Sasha Lurje occurs regularly at the YSW, and is one of the co-Founders of the festival “Shtetl Berlin-Neukölln”, where once a year, the local Klezmer scene celebrates. The native Latvian takes part this year in various Yiddish music workshops at YSW. In addition, she sings at the Premiere of “Baym cabaret Yitesh” – a re-recording of the Yiddish cross-border Warsaw cabarets of the 1920s.
Michael Wex, bestselling author of the newspaper “New York Times” and expert of Yiddish, is behind this revolutionary and avant-garde re-recording of “the expressionist experiment”, the eighth of the Yiddish cabaret in Poland accounted for and spread out in the whole of Europe.
The shadows of the past
The Renaissance of Yiddish culture will take place, ironically, in the vicinity of the concentration camp Buchenwald, which was in 1937, was built by the Nazis. Under the of 56,000 murdered prisoners there, some 11,000 of them Jews. “The fact that we are only a few kilometers away from Buchenwald, reminds us daily of how important our Mission is,” says festival Director Alan Bern.
The Yiddish Summer Weimar is considered the most important Jewish cultural Event in the world.
“The systematic murder of millions of Jews meant that the vibrant cultural base from which the contemporary Yiddish culture was created, disappeared,” he adds. And also notes that this year will not be recognized thousands of the old Yiddish culture, also from the state of Israel and “a new cultural identity for the Jews” was replaced.
A part of the lost culture of good will can Rapper Josh Dolgin, the YSW resurgence. “Arestant eyelids: Hearing Unheard Voices” is the name of his concert, “unheard voices”. Influence on his music, ethnographic recordings of Eastern European, Jewish prisoners, who were imprisoned during the Second world war in German prisoner-of-war camps were.
Bern believes that the contribution of the Yiddish-speaking, Jewish artists in the General culture and arts scene makes such a Revival is even more important. The Central value of the YSW was, as Bern, that the rich Tradition will again be a “source of Inspiration and ideas for all contemporary artists, Jewish or not,”.
The Yiddish Summer Weimar is still up to 17. August 2019 to different places in Weimar instead.