By the end of the Second World War, Germany was in ruins and its Jewish population so gravely diminished that a rich cultural life seemed unthinkable. And yet, as surviving Jews returned from hiding, the camps, and their exiles abroad, so did their music. Transcending Dystopia tells the story of the remarkable revival of Jewish musical activity that developed in postwar Germany against all odds. In this book talk, author Tina Frühauf provides a glimpse into the rich kaleidoscopic panorama of musical practices in worship and social life across the country to illuminate how music contributed to transitions and transformations within and beyond Jewish communities in the aftermath of the Holocaust, followed by a discussion with Michelle Chesner, Norman E. Alexander Librarian for Jewish Studies, on the newly unearthed sources from archives and private collections.

Tina Frühauf is Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University in New York and serves on the doctoral faculty of the Graduate Center, CUNY. The study of Jewish music in modernity has been her primary research focus for two decades, culminating in monographs from Orgel und Orgelmusik in deutsch-jüdischer Kultur (Georg Olms Verlag, 2005) to Transcending Dystopia: Music, Mobility, and the Jewish Community in Germany, 1945–1989 (Oxford University Press, 2021). Among Dr. Frühauf’s recent editions is Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture (Oxford University Press, 2014, with Lily E. Hirsch), which won the Ruth A. Solie Award and the Jewish Studies and Music Award of the American Musicological Society, and the collection of essays, Postmodernity’s Musical Pasts (Boydell Press, 2020). Her current work focuses on the historiography of music scholarship and migration, examining the mass dislocation of peoples in the twentieth century and the conditions of globalization, genocide, exile, and minority experience.

Purchase the book here.

Supported by the generosity of the Kaye and Radov Families.

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