A lecture by Prof. Dr. em. Vivian Liska of the Institute of Jewish Studies (University of Antwerp) - NLMagazine/Antwerp - Situated at the crossroads of theology, politics, history, and philosophy, messianism plays a crucial role in early 20th-century German-Jewish thought.
While the importance of messianic thinking among philosophers from Hermann Cohen to Walter Benjamin, Gershom Scholem and Franz Rosenzweig is widely acknowledged, ideas of redemption in German-Jewish literature are both underexplored and challenging to pinpoint.
This difficulty arises mainly because messianic themes and motifs are subtly woven into literary works and do not crystallize into any doctrine or ideology. However, examples from the writings of three major German-speaking Jewish authors from the last century—Franz Kafka, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Paul Celan—reveal a striking correspondence between messianism and modernism. In their literary creations, this affinity is marked by a keen awareness of incompleteness accompanied by a profound sense of potentiality that expands the boundaries of the established order, affirms the quotidian and the concrete, and focuses on the care for the common world.
More information
- Lecture by Prof. Dr. em. Vivian Liska, University of Antwerp
- Lecture in English. Free admission.
- Registration is not required.
- Tuesday 27 February 2024 at 20h
- Stadscampus UAntwerpen, Room R.012, Rodestraat 14, 2000 Antwerpen–
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