Susan Taubes Edition

Since 2003 the writer and philosopher Susan Taubes’ (née Feldmann, 1928–1969) literary remains have been archived and studied at the ZfL. Her life and writings are a testament to a personal history that is both extraordinary and at the same time paradigmatic for the 20th century. It is a life story in which Jewish exile meets female intellectualism. The multivolume publication Schriften von Susan Taubes (Susan Taubes’ Writings; ed. Sigrid Weigel) with its wealth of heretofore unpublished materials from Taubes’ posthumous archive makes it possible to discover this independent author who has remained obscure for too long. Her literary works as well as her cultural criticism reflect experiences of transit, loss, and placelessness. They provide documentation of Taubes’ enthusiastic participation in the intellectual resurgence within postwar culture in the USA, Israel, and Europe during the 1950s and 60s.

Alongside the scholarly and literary manuscripts found in her literary estate, the collection also includes a large number of private notes and writings found in journals and letters. Her correspondence with Jacob Taubes from the early 1950s—in the period just after their marriage—gives a strong impression of what her working conditions were like. It also documents the intellectual development of the young philosopher and author, for in the letters private disputes overlap with philosophical debates, for example, with regard to the relationship between Jewish exile and German philosophy after 1945. Moreover, the letters tell of numerous personal encounters and give glimpses into the intellectual scenes of New York, Paris, and Jerusalem.

Subvolumes 1.1 and 1.2 of Schriften von Susan Taubes (2011 and 2014, ed. Christina Pareigis) include a total of 269 letters, each printed in the respective original language (English, German, and Hebrew) and each with scholarly annotations. The publishing of these two volumes was preceded by an extensive phase of viewing, probing, and arranging the contents of the archive as well as substantial research in archives in the USA, France, and Israel to find out more about certain biographical contexts and the historical conditions in which Taubes was working. On top of that were interviews with eyewitnesses and an intensive collaboration with Ethan Taubes in New York and Noémi Földes in Budapest.

Volume 2 of Schriften von Susan Taubes (eds. Thomas Macho and Johannes Steizinger) includes Taubes’ previously published essays on Heidegger, Camus, the theory of tragedy, and Simone Weil, as well as her long unpublished dissertation about that same French woman philosopher (Harvard, 1956). These philosophical works were unique in Taubes’ time and remain highly relevant today. In 2024 they will be available in print for the first time in German and with annotations.

Volume 3 of Schriften von Susan Taubes (2015, ed. Christina Pareigis) includes a selection of her short stories translated into German. During her lifetime Susan Taubes only published two literary texts in addition to her novel Divorcing (1969). Her literary remains indicate, however, that her literary productivity was in fact much more extensive. The aesthetic contexts from which these works emerged and her other self-reflexive experimental writings have their origins in the European postwar avant-garde. These writings are also currently a central focus of literary scholarship. Taubes’ highly complex compositions with their multiple settings and linguistic registers are stagings of both a life story and identity, neither of which is based on a singularity of meaning or a sense of continuity. Instead, they are based on the unknown, the broken, and the interrupted.

The Stiftung Preußische Seehandlung funded the establishment of the archive.

Through the diverse range of publications and presentations that resulted from our colleagues' work on this project (e.g., the Telos Conference Rituals of Exchange and States of Exception. Continuity and Crisis in Politics and Economics, New York, January 15–16, 2011; the Susan Taubes panel at the Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies, Washington DC, December 12, 2011), we have gained new collaborative partners, especially scholars from the USA.