W. Michael Blumenthal "The Invisible Wall Germans and Jews; A Personal Exploration."
Recounts the stories of six of the author's ancestors in an attempt to understand the failure of the German-Jewish relationship.
W. Michael Blumenthal, a German Jew who arrived in the U.S. with $65 in his pocket, went on to become President Jimmy Carter's Secretary of the Treasury. He comes by his over-achievement honestly: his ancestors include jewelers, composers, businessmen, and literati, whose stories he collects in "The Invisible Wall: The Mystery of the Germans and Jews." These stories are the lens through which Blumenthal views the history of Christian-Jewish relations in Germany, and the means by which he answers the question of why Jews in that country experienced "such a promising beginning, so much hope, and so much accomplishment―and so terrible an end." His answers to that question are both careful and controversial―and his book―as a whole, will convince many that it's finally impossible to separate personal and political responsibilities.
Blumenthal himself escaped the Nazi regime in 1939 and grew up with other Jewish refugees in Shanghai. He traces the Jews' history in Germany by looking at his own family tree and picking out six ancestors from 1671 to 1945: Jost Liebmann, a peddler who became one of Berlin's richest men; Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, owner of a salon where the intellectual elite gathered; Giacomo Meyerbeer, a celebrated composer; Louis Blumenthal, a businessman and bank founder; Arthur Eloesser, a scholar and literary critic; and Ewald Blumenthal, a decorated soldier (and the author's father).
Hardcover. 1998.
New book. Very slightly warped from sitting on a shelf. Very good, nice and clean.