Sprachkunst Jahrgang LI/2020, 2. Halbband, pp. 33-48, 2021/01/26
Beiträge zur Literaturwissenschaft
Jahrgang LI/2020, 2. Halbband
The negation of the origin: Egon Friedell’s idealistic anti-Semitism. If, on the one hand, research accuses Egon Friedell of “vehement hatred of Jews” and, on the other hand, apologetically denies his anti-Semitism, this reflects Friedell’s ambivalent attitude: he combines the long-lasting anti-Jewish discourse with modern racial theories, while at the same time asserting the idealistic sovereignty of the individual. By intensifying such antinomies typical of the time in an aphoristic manner, Friedell makes them productive for the style and rhetoric of artistic cultural historiography.