Verena Hutter’s ‘Identity Politics and the Jewish Body in Edgar Hilsenrath’s The Nazi and the Barber’ is this year’s winner of the Leo Baeck Essay Prize for young researchers in the field of German-Jewish Studies. Examining the role of physical transgression in Hilsenrath’s novel, Hutter argues that The Nazi and the Barber self-consciously conjures up a world in which lies, hatred, and violence are blissfully perpetuated. The essay is featured in the 2013 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book.
Her paper examines the role of physical transgressions in Edgar Hilsenrath’s postwar Holocaust satire The Nazi and the Barber. The story of the former SS-mass murderer Max Schulz, who impersonates his childhood friend Itzig Finkelstein in order to emigrate to Israel and become a Zionist freedom fighter, is generally read as a satire of German postwar philosemitism. My reading focuses on bodily processes in the novel, from Max’s physical metamorphosis to Itzig Finkelstein and his future identity confusions. I argue that Max’s physical changes and transgressions underscore the religious-ethical transgressions that scholars, such as Erin McGlothlin, have established. I also submit that Edgar Hilsenrath’s description of bodily changes underscores the genre of satire and questions it at the same time—a satire requires an ideal world as a foil against which it is criticized, and ideally inspires hope, yet in Hilsenrath’s dark post-Holocaust world neither exists. While most memoirs of Holocaust survivors celebrate survival and aim to stand as a warning to future generations (of ‘never again’), Hilsenrath’s novel cynically portrays a world in which lies, hatred, and violence are blissfully perpetuated. He presents a unique voice within the representation of the Holocaust.
Verena Hutter is Visiting Assistant Professor of German at DePauw University in Greencastle, IN. Having finished her dissertation in 2012, she is currently working on her first book which explores tattoos as literary, social and political practices in Germany, and focuses on how notions of deviance intersect with discourses of identity, gender, nation, and Otherness. Her research includes body theory, Holocaust representation, twentieth century literature, and Gender Studies.
