Between Mickiewicz and Bar Kokhba: The Young Jewish Generation in Lwow at the End of the 19th Century
In this paper Ela Bauer looks at members of the young Jewish generation who were engaged in Jewish national activities in fin de siecle Galicia, under a self-governing Polish minority. At that time Galician Jewry was known for its admiration of imperial German culture. Members of the young Jewish generation who studied at local gymnasiums, however, used Polish methods, concepts, symbols, and idioms in their attempts to create a Jewish national identity and culture. The use of different Polish national methods in the late 19th century and beginning of the 20th century was employed by the young supporters of Jewish national ideas in conscious and subconscious ways, even though many experienced exclusion in their non-Jewish surroundings.
Ela Bauer is associate professor of film, media, and history at Kibbutzim College in Tel Aviv. Her research focuses on the intellectual and cultural life of Polish Jewry in the 19th and 20th centuries and the history of the Jewish press. Her book, Between Poles and Jews: The Development of Nahum Sokolow’s Political Thought, was published in 2005 by Magnes Press, Jerusalem. Her recent research is about Polish Jewish intelligentsia groups in Warsaw and Lwow during the last decades of the 19th century. Her latest articles are about Jews and the silver screen in Poland at the end of the 1920s, Poles and Jews at the beginning of WWI, and a historiography of Polish Jewry at the daily newspaper Ha-zefira.
