Bio
Jan Kühne, born in Dresden, studied at the Ruprecht Karls University in Heidelberg and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He conducted his postdoctoral research at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows, has been an associate post-doctoral research fellow and scholar-artist at the Israeli Institute for Advanced Studies, and is currently an affiliated researcher at the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History.
His Ph.D. research was dedicated to the German-Jewish writer Sammy Gronemann (1875-1952). Besides documenting Gronemann’s largely unknown Israeli and dramatic oeuvre (1936-1952), this project includes studies in the field of German-Jewish literature in Palestine and Israel. The dissertation was published under: ”Die zionistische Komödie im Drama Sammy Gronemanns – Über Ursprünge und Eigenarten einer latenten Gattung“ (Berlin & Boston 2020). On the basis of this research, Kühne initiated and serves as editor in chief of the ongoing Critical Edition of Collected Works by Sammy Gronemann, of which three volumes have already been published.
During his Ph.D. research, Kühne was also a Rosenzweig-fellow. Among other projects, he participated in the Traces of German-Jewish History and took care of the arrangement and description of the Habimah Administrative Archive 1925–1933 at the Israeli Center for the Documentation of the Performing Arts at Tel Aviv University.
Currently, Kühne is working on a new book devoted to German and Hebrew multilingualism in literature and performance. While mapping the diversity of multilingual modalities in modern German-Jewish and Hebrew literature, he focuses on homophonic translation as a hitherto unacknowledged multilingual device in Jewish literatures and performances of German affinity.
Since 2020, Dr. Kühne serves as co-coordinator of the research group Between Jewish languages: Literature, Thought and History , a joint project of the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem with the Rosenzweig Center and with the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University.
Selected Publications
Monographs
• 2020, Die zionistische Komödie im Drama Sammy Gronemanns. Über Ursprünge und Eigenarten einer latenten Gattung. Conditio Judaica 94, Berlin/Boston 2020. (with a foreword by Jakob Hessing)
Peer-Reviewed Articles
• 2021 [forthcoming] The Backstage of the Eye: On Interrupting Sight in Order to See, in Performance Research 26.3.
• 2021 [in press] Dan Pagis' Bilingual Poem "Ein Leben" – An Ophthalmologic Poetics of German-Hebrew Eye-Contact, in Leo Baeck Yearbook.
• 2021 [in press] “Nathan Alterman’s Bilingual Adaptation of Heinrich Heine’s ’Lorelei’: Hebrew-German Homophony as Parody”, in Carmen Reichert, Bettina Bannasch and Alfred Wildfeuer (eds.), Zukunft der Sprache, Zukunft der Nation. Debatten um jüdische Sprache und Literatur im Kontext von Mehrsprachigkeit und Nationbuilding, Berlin.
• 2019, “A German-Hebrew French Kiss: On Bilingual Homophony and Other Multilingual Intimacies in German-Jewish Literature,” in Yearbook for European Jewish Literature Studies 6, pp. 41–89.
• 2018, “A Parable of three Languages.”Nathan der Weise” in Arabic, Hebrew, and German,” in Lessing Yearbook XLV, pp. 93–111.
• 2017, “German-Jewish Literature in Mandate Palestine and Israel (1933-2017)” [ספרות יהודית גרמנית בתקופת היישוב ובמדינת ישראל (2017-1933)], in חידושים [Chidushim] 19, pp. 121-44.
• 2016, “Of the Two the Jew is – (Curtain falls.)” — Sammy Gronemann’s Dramaturgy of the German-Jewish Encounter in Mandate-Palestine/Israel (1936-1952), in Jewish Culture and History 17.1, pp. 254-274.
• 2013, “The German Archive of the Hebrew Habima: Bureaucracy and Identity” (Co-Author: Shelly Zer-Zion), in Naharaim 7.1-2, pp. 239-260.
Book Chapters
• [forthcoming 2022] "Zionistisches Drama", in: Handbuch "Orte und Räume“, ed. by Primus-Heinz Kucher and Alexandra Strohmaier.
• [forthcoming 2022] "Fortschreibungen", in: Handbuch "Wechselbeziehungen“, ed. by Olaf Terpitz, Marianne Windsperger and Gerald Lamprecht.
• 2018, “’Wo wohnst Du nun zwischen diesen Worten’? Zur Translingualität (Deutschsprachig) Jüdischer Literatur,” in Stefanie Willeke and Norbert Eke, Zwischen den Sprachen – Mit der Sprache? Deutschsprachige Literatur in Palästina Und Israel, Paderborn, pp. 41–62.
• 2015, “’Deutschlands besseres Selbst‘? – Nathan der Weise in Israel,” in Dirk Niefanger et al. (eds.), Lessing und das Judentum, Hildesheim, pp. 433–458.
• “Tohuwabohu”, in Dan Diner (ed.), Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur, Vol. 6, Stuttgart/Weimar 2015, pp. 127–131.
• 2015, “Deutschsprachige jüdische Literatur in Palästina/Israel”, in Hans Otto Horch (ed.), Handbuch der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur, Berlin & Boston, pp. 201–220.
Editor
• [forthcoming 2021] Performance Research 26.3. – On Interruption. (Co-Edited with Freddie Rokem)
• Sammy Gronemann: Hawdoloh und Zapfenstreich. Gronemann Kritische Gesamtausgabe (GKG), Vol. 3, Conditio Judaica 92/3, Berlin/Boston 2020. (co-edited and co-commented with Hanni Mittelmann)
• Sammy Gronemann: Tohuwabohu. GKG, Vol. 2. Conditio Judaica 92/2, Berlin/Boston 2019. (co-edited and co-commented with Joachim Schlör)
• Sammy Gronemann: Gesammelte Dramen. GKG, Vol. 1, Conditio Judaica 92/1, Berlin/Boston 2018. (with a foreword by Jakob Hessing)
Reviews
• 2021: Robert Kelz, Competing Germanies: Nazi, Antifascist, and Jewish Theater in German Argentina, 1933-1965. In: Europe Now Journal (Council for European Studies), <https://www.europenowjournal.org/2021/04/01/competing-germanies-a-study-of-two-german-exile-theaters-in-buenos-aires-by-robert-kelz-2/>
• 2020: משה והומרוס: יוונים, יהודים, גרמנים: סיפור אחר של התרבות הגרמנית — ברנד ויטה קורא תיגר על התרבות היהודית־גרמנית — Bernd Witte, Moses und Homer: Griechen, Juden, Deutsche: Eine andere Geschichte der deutschen Kultur, Berlin / Boston 2018, 384 pp. In: חידושים [Chidushim], 22, pp. 148-152.
• 2020: Mehrsprachige Schönheitsflecken: Zwischen den Zeilen. Ed. by Yael Almog and Michal Zamir. In: Fixpoetry, <https://www.fixpoetry.com/feuilleton/kritik/yael-almog-michal-zamir/zwischen-den-zeilen>
• 2020: „‚That such is man…‘ – Nathan der Weise in Amerika: Nathan auf Reisen. Stationen einer transatlantischen Rezeptionsgeschichte by Kristina-Monika Kocyba“. In: Hagalil, <https://www.hagalil.com/2020/04/nathan-der-weise-in-amerika/>
• 2020: „Deutsche und zentraleuropäische Juden in Palästina und Israel. Ed. by Anja Siegemund“. In: Hagalil <https://www.hagalil.com/2020/03/siegemund/>
• 2018: “Das israelische Theater. Noten und Notizen by Matthias Morgenstern”. In: Zeitschrift für Theaterpädagogik 72, pp. 60-1.
• 2018: “Zwischen allen Bühnen. Die Jeckes und das hebräische Theater 1933-1948 by Thomas Lewy, and: The German Jews and the Hebrew Theatre: A Clash between Western and Eastern Europe by Tom Lewy.“ In: German Studies Review 41.2, pp. 419-21.
• 2013: “Das Gastspiel. Friedrich Lobe und das hebräische Theater 1933-1950” by Sebastian Schirrmeister. In: PaRDeS 19, pp. 256-9.
See also: