Bridges to a bygone Jewish past? Abraham Tendlau and the rewriting of Yiddish folktales in nineteenth-century Germany

ABSTRACT

From the late eighteenth century, as German Jews gradually replaced Yiddish with German, the publication of Old Yiddish literature practically ceased in Western and Central Europe. But this rich and once very popular literary corpus was by no means forgotten there. Rather, it gained a “second life” in the works of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars, in the form of annotated anthologies and translations, bibliographic lists, and literary surveys. This article focuses on one prominent example, that of the German-Jewish folklorist Abraham M. Tendlau (1802–1878). In his popular anthologies, Buch der Sagen und Legenden jüdischer Vorzeit (1842) and Fellmeiers Abende: Märchen und Geschichten aus grauer Vorzeit (1856), as well as in his renowned collection of proverbs Sprichwörter und Redensarten deutsch-jüdischer Vorzeit (1860), Tendlau incorporated German translations of older Jewish folktales, which he took primarily from the Old Yiddish Mayse-bukh (1602) and Seyfer mayse nisim (1696). The article analyses Tendlau’s translations of the Old Yiddish folktales against the backdrop of Jewish modernization and acculturation, on the one hand, and, on the other, the culture of remembrance and nostalgia, which permeated Jewish culture in nineteenth-century Germany. By this, it hopes to shed light on the important yet hitherto underestimated role of Old Yiddish Literature in the formation of a distinct German-Jewish identity in the modern era.

KEYWORDS:

• Abraham Tendlau
• German-Jewish history
• Jewish folkloristics
• Mayse-bukh
• old Yiddish literature
• Seyfer mayse nisim
• translation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Aya Elyada is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her fields of interest are German and German-Jewish history and culture; Christian–Jewish relations; Yiddish language and literature; and the social and cultural history of language and translation. Her publications include papers in the Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (2008), Past and Present (2009), the European Journal of Jewish Studies (2010), Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte (2017) and the Jewish Quarterly Review (2017). Her book, A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern Germany, was published in 2012 by Stanford University Press.

Notes

1. “Rewriting,” as proposed by literary critic Andre Lefevere (1987), is a general term that can indicate translations, adaptations, paraphrases, anthologies, and similar texts that “are designed to adapt works of literature to a given audience and/or to influence the way in which readers read a work of literature” (30). See also Lefevere (1992).

2. For interesting case studies see, for example, Grossman (2009, 2016).

3. The Yiddish discussed in this paper is referred to today as “Western Yiddish” (also known as “Jewish-German” or “Judeo-German”), as opposed to the “Eastern Yiddish” of the east-European Jews. Composed almost entirely from a Germanic and a Hebraic component, Western Yiddish was, linguistically speaking, closer to German than modern Yiddish, which contains an additional Slavic component. On the history of the Yiddish language see esp. Weinreich (2008).

4. On early modern Yiddish literature see, in particular, (Shmeruk 1978); and, more recently, Baumgarten (2005).

5. On the German-Jewish language shift see, for example, Römer [Roemer] (1995); Lässig (2000).

6. On these works see, for example, Baumgarten (2005, Ch. 10). Unlike previous assumptions, it is almost certain that the manuscript of Seyfer mayse nisim was originally written in Yiddish, rather than translated into Yiddish before its publication. See Raspe (2014).

7. Last known editions in Yiddish were published in Nuremberg in 1763 and in Lemberg (in present-day Ukraine) in 1851.

8. The movement of Jewish Pietists, which emerged in the German lands in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

9. Last known edition in Yiddish was published in Fürth in 1788.

10. See, for example, Starck (1991, 478–479).

11. On the construction of a German-Jewish subculture see esp. Sorkin (1987).

12. About the Jewish Volkskunde and Grunwald's Gesellschaft see the various papers by Christoph Daxelmüller, including a recent one from 2010: Daxelmüller (2010).

13. Not much is known today about Tendlau's biography. Born in Wiesbaden in 1802 to the family of a Wiesbadner Kreisrabbiner, he resided as an adult in Frankfurt a.M., and made his living as a teacher and a private tutor. In the 1860s he was awarded honorary distinctions in the field of Volkskunde. He died in Wiesbaden in 1878. See the editor's introduction to Tendlau (1934, 8).

14. On this point see the review of Raphael Kirchheim in Der Orient (1842, esp. 660–661). See also Glasenapp (2007, 380–381; 2009, 22).

15. Thus, of the 60 stories of the 2nd edition, about one third drew on Old Yiddish tales, either as their main source or as an additional one. This proportion persisted also in the 3rd edition.

16. On the last point see also Glasenapp (2009): “Tendlaus Anthologie erweiterte damit das jüdische Sagen- und Legendenkorpus in entscheidendem Maße, da nun alle Legenden – ungeachtet ihrer talmudischen, mittelalterlichen bzw. frühneuzeitlichen Herkunft – in gleichem Maße als überlieferungswürdig erachtet” (22).

17. This notion can also be deduced from Tendlau's irritated response to the non-Jewish reviewer of the Blätter für literarische Unterhaltung, who erroneously assumed that Tendlau had taken all the legends in his anthology from the pages of the Talmud (Alexis 1843, 763). Tendlau responded to this review in the preface to the second edition of the book: “Die Blätter für literar. Unterhaltung  …  glauben irrthümlich, daß die Sagen alle dem Talmud und nicht dem Volksleben entnommen seien. Dem ist jedoch nicht so” and he mentions several post-Talmudic stories, including those derived from the Yiddish Mayse-bukh, as examples for tales and legends “die dem Volksleben entnommen sind” (Tendlau 1845, intro., IX).

18. See, for example, proverbs no. 1029, 1059, 1060, 1061; see also Tendlau’s introduction to the work (1860, intro., III–IV, IX–X). Tendlau provided stories that illuminated certain proverbs or pointed out their origin.

19. Both Fellmeiers Abende and Sprichwörter und Redensarten will be further discussed below.

20. “Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past. Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you”. The same motto appears at the beginning of Tendlau's Sprichwörter und Redensarten (1860).

21. On the Europe-wide revival of folklore at the time see, for example, Neubauer (2004). As the anonymous reviewer of Tendlau's Buch der Sagen und Legenden for the AZJ noted, when he wished for a second volume: “Da das Erhabene, Gebetliche häufig genug schon geboten worden, so ist Einem hier das Volksthümliche um so gefälliger” (Anon 1842, 638).

22. See, in particular Schorsch (1994), Ch. 4: “The Myth of Sephardic Supremacy.” See also Efron (2015).

23. As Grossman (2000) writes:

Yiddish thus evokes more than the image of ghetto life – it becomes the world of the ghetto internalized, from which freedom can be won only by linguistic and cultural disinheritance, that is, by expelling Yiddish from the projected canon of Jewish literature. (109)

24. On this re-orientation in German-Jewish historiography and literature see also Roemer (2010, 76–80); Hess (2010, esp. intro., Ch. 2).

25. Focusing on the city of Worms, Roemer refers specifically to the Seyfer mayse nisim, but the same can be said of the Mayse-bukh just as well.

26. During this time, according to Roemer (2010, Ch. 2), textual representations were placed alongside the medieval memory culture of rituals and customs, with the fixing of medieval, oral traditions in anthologies of Jewish legends playing a crucial role in the preservation and restoration of local Jewish traditions and heritage in the German lands.

27. On this point see also Roemer (2010, 79–81, 85–86).

28. On the popularity of Tendlau's rewritings see below.

29. For illuminating discussions on the cultural expressions of nostalgia among German Jews in general, and on the genre of “ghetto literature” in particular, see, for example, Cohen (1998, Ch. 4); Hess (2010, Ch. 2 [with further references to literature on this genre]).

30. In his Sprichwörter und Redensarten, too, Tendlau explains that in the case of many proverbs he had to rely on his own memories “aus seiner frühesten Jugendzeit” (1860, intro., III–IV).

31. That Tendlau's scholarly editing of the Jewish texts was in line with that of the Brothers Grimm was noted by one of the book's reviewers (Alexis 1843, 763), as mentioned (with pride?) by Tendlau in the introduction to the second edition (1845, intro., IX).

32. See esp. Alexis (1843, 763–764), and to some extent also Anon. (1842, 638). In another instance, the reviewer for the Blätter für Literatur und bildende Kunst praised Tendlau's overall poetic endeavor, while pointing out what he considered to be some of its weaknesses (K[?]-n 1843, 221–222).

33. Thus, for example, in Fellmeiers Abende Tendlau abandoned the poetic style as well as the scholarly apparatus in favor of a more “authentic,” folkloristic experience of story-telling. Yet the writing in standard German remained nonetheless, although one can imagine that this was hardly the language used by the old Fellmeier at the beginning of the century (and see also Tendlau [1856, intro. VI], where he notes that “freilich sind Form und Ausdruck nicht mehr ganz dieselben”).

34. The reviewer for the Blätter für Literatur und bildende Kunst, for example, agrees that the tales published by Tendlau will be of interest for non-Jewish readers, yet he provides a somewhat different reason for this: “auch das nichtjüdische Publicum wird sie, wie der Verfasser hofft, nicht ohne Interesse lessen, indem sich in den meisten der jüdische Volkscharacter höchst getreu abspiegelt” (K[?]-n 1843, 221).

35. No. 1029: “Drei Mann un e Roßkopp!” (Tendlau 1860, 371–375). As Tendlau (1860, 371–372) mentions in a footnote, the story appears also in Seyfer mayse nisim and in the second edition of his own Buch der Sagen und Legenden, story no. 49.

36. On the fact that this was the prevalent notion of Yiddish among German-Jewish scholars of the nineteenth century see, for example, Grossman (2000, Ch.2); (Matut 2012).

37. In a footnote to each title, Tendlau indicates that the legend is “[a]us einer noch ungedruckten zweiten Sammlung jüdischer Sagen und Legenden”.

38. On the prominence of Belletristik in nineteenth-century German-Jewish literature, and the role played by the AZJ in promoting this genre, see for example, Hess (2010, intro., esp. 8).

39. The 1865 story appears, also in verse, in the 3rd edition of Tendlau's Das Buch der Sagen und Legenden (1873). Although Tendlau's name is not explicitly mentioned in the 1866 story, Roemer's attribution also of this rewriting to Tendlau seems reasonable enough (2010, 238n68).

40. On this point see also Roemer (2010, 86).

41. As prominent examples one could note the works of Moritz Steinschneider, Max Grünbaum, and Gustav Karpeles. Among non-Jewish scholars, one should especially mention Friedrich Ave-Lallemant (see below).

42. See for example, Grunwald (1898, 14); Gaster ([1924] 1968, LV, 20, 185ff. : “Literary Parallels” [passim]); (1933, XI); (1934, intro., xli); (1936, 33).

43. On the work of Ave-Lallemant, police inspector from Lübeck whose investigations into the language of the German underworld led him to become an important Yiddish researcher, see for example, Weinreich (1993, 236–243); Grossman (2000, 134–135).

44. Tendlau's work was also used, for example, by Bolte and Polivka for their monumental Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- u. Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm from 1913–1932. See Bolte and Polivka (1918, 561ff.).

45. On this point see Elyada (2017).

Additional information

Funding

This paper is part of a larger project on the Yiddish-German encounter throughout the ages. Various stages of the project have been funded by the Marie Curie Career Integration Grant of the European Commission, the Israel Science Foundation, and the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development. I would like to thank all three foundations for their generous support.