Gollance, Sonia;
(2025)
Sir Toggenburg of the Shtetl: Friedrich Schiller in the East European Jewish Imagination.
Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry
, 37
pp. 217-238.
10.3828/polin.2025.37.217.
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Abstract
The German writer Friedrich Schiller was arguably the most important non-Jewish writer for east European Jews. Although these readers revered him even more than they did his contemporary Goethe, they often treated Schiller’s works as middlebrow fiction that was most appropriate for women—as exemplified by ‘Friedrich Schiller’, a 1919 short story by Galicia-born American Yiddish writer Fradel Shtok, which describes the inner life of a young Jewish woman in Galicia who develops an increasingly elaborate fantasy about her favourite German writer as her quiet life is rocked by the forces of modernity. Shtok suggests that an obsession with Schiller comports with a Jewish girlhood in a refined family. As such, this story provides a new perspective on how German literature was viewed—and reclaimed—by Yiddish-speaking Jews.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Sir Toggenburg of the Shtetl: Friedrich Schiller in the East European Jewish Imagination |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3828/polin.2025.37.217 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.3828/polin.2025.37.217 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Hebrew and Jewish Studies |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10203690 |
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