Autorenlesung: Grunewald im Orient

"Grunewald in the Orient" is the title of Thomas Sparr's book about the idyllic Jerusalem neighborhood of Rechavia, which became a center for German Jews from 1933 onwards.

Poets such as Else Lasker-Schüler and Gershom Scholem emigrated to the neighborhood, which was laid out as a garden city in the early 1920s. It reminded Mascha Kaléko of Berlin - in a letter she describes the atmosphere there as "almost Dahlemish". However, everyday life in Rechavia was not always easy. The neighborhood lay in the crosshairs of the long-divided city. The present and past of the Shoah weighed heavily on its residents. At the same time, Rechavia was also an important place for German-Israeli rapprochement.

The author paints a vivid and moving picture of the district and the people who formed a lively German-Jewish microcosm here.

Dr. Thomas Sparr himself lived in Jerusalem in the 1980s, where he worked at the Hebrew University and the Leo Baeck Institute. From 1990 to 1998 he was head of the Jewish publishing house at Suhrkamp Verlag, and from 1999 to 2004 he was chief editor at Siedler Verlag. Today he works as Editor-at-Large for Suhrkamp Verlag and as an author.

Photo © Grunewald in the Orient, Berenberg Verlag