Von Berlin nach Jerusalem und zurück

Although Gershom Scholem presented his life in his autobiography as a one way movement from Berlin to Jerusalem, a closer look in mainly unpublished documents reveals a different picture. Since the moment of his arrival in Palestine in 1923 and until his death in 1982 he remained in close contact to the German speaking cultural and intellectual worlds. In the 1920ies and 1930ies he contributed to the Hebrew and Jewish cultural circles in Berlin, and even after the shock of the Holocaust he gradually returned to shorter and longer visits in Germany. In the postwar Federal Republic Scholem played a central role as a moral authority, who offered an alternative for young intellectuals to their corrupted father’s generation. By doing so, the German-Israeli intellectual served as a generational link, bridging over the abyss created by the Holocaust. For Scholem himself this “return” was the outcome of a long process of disillusionment with his Zionist utopia.