Prof. Stéphane Mosès sel. A.
Honorary member of the ZfL, until his retirement Professor of comparative literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)
CV
Stéphane Mosès, born on June 11, 1931 in Berlin, died on December 1, 2007 in Paris, was a professor of comparative literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Born in Berlin, his family immigrated to Morocco in 1936. After the war, he returned to Europe to study German literature in Paris and Nanterre. In 1969 he moved to Israel. He founded the German department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1977. In 1990 he founded the Franz-Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History, where he served as director until his retirement in 1996. After returning to Pars in 1997, Mosès resumed his work up until his death in 2007. He was awarded the prestigious Humboldt Research Prize in 2004.
Stéphane Mosès’s writings on Rosenzweig, Scholem, and Benjamin distinctly shaped the image of German-Jewish modernism. His name has come to stand for ›Jewish Thought in a World without God‹ – an epithet that also served as the title to his Festschrift (Berlin 2001) – for his study of the tradition of Jewish writing and German literary history (from Goethe to Celan) gave way to readings that responded both to the 20th century’s rupture in civilization and the dialectics of secularization.
Obituaries
- Andreas Kilcher: Jüdische Gegengeschichte. Zum Tod von Stéphane Mosès, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 5 Dec 2007
- Thomas Meyer: Botschafter von Weimar. Literaturwissenschaftler Stéphane Mosès - ein Nachruf, in: Jüdische Allgemeine, 13 Dec 2007
Photo © Daniel Mordzinski
Publications
Selected
- Momentaufnahmen/Instantanés. German and French, ed. by Sigrid Weigel, Berlin: Suhrkamp 2010
- Un retour au judaïsme: entretiens avec Victor Malka. Paris: Éditions du Seuil 2008
- Exégèse d’une légende. Lectures de Kafka. Paris: Éditions de l’Éclat 2006
- Ed.: Gershom Scholem. Literatur und Rhetorik. Köln: Böhlau 2000 (with Sigrid Weigel)
- L’Éros et la Loi. Lectures bibliques. Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1999
- Ed.: Zwischen den Kulturen: Theorie und Praxis des interkulturellen Dialogs. Tübingen: Niemeyer 1997 (with Carola Hilfrich-Kunjappu)
- Ed.: Manes Sperber als Europäer. Eine Ethik des Widerstands. Berlin: Ed. Hentrich 1996
- L’Ange de l’Histoire. Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Scholem. Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1992
[Translation: The Angel of History. Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Scholem. Stanford: Stanford University Press 2009] - Ed.: Spuren der Schrift. Von Goethe bis Celan. Frankfurt a.M.: Jüdischer Verlag bei Athenäum 1987
- Ed.: Kafka und das Judentum. Frankfurt a.M.: Jüdischer Verlag bei Athenäum 1987 (with Karl-Erich Grözinger, Hans Dieter Zimmermann)
- Système et Révélation. La philosophie de Franz Rosenzweig. Paris: Éditions du Seuil 1982
[Translation: System and Revelation. The Philosophy of Franz Rosenzweig. Detroit: Wayne University Press 1992] - Une Affinité littéraire. Le Titan de Jean-Paul et Le Docteur Faustus de Thomas Mann. Paris: Klincksieck 1972
Articles by Stéphane Mosès in ZfL’s publications
- Der kulturelle Index von Freuds Traumdeutung, in: Trajekte. Zeitschrift des Zentrums für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin 23 (2011), 5–13 (transl. by Dirk Naguschewski)
- Im Herzen eines Chiasmus. Derrida und Levinas, Levinas und Derrida, in: Martin Treml, Daniel Weidner (eds.): Nachleben der Religionen. München: Wilhelm Fink 2007, 189–205 (transl. by Uli Menke, Verena Schermer)
- Korrespondenzen. Der Familienroman der biblischen Patriarchen, in: Trajekte. Zeitschrift des Zentrums für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin 8 (2004), 22–31 (transl. by Martin Treml)