Wilhelm Raabe's 'beautiful Jewish women' Intercultural Evaluations of Ethics and Aesthetics in Interpretations of Literary Texts

Focusing Wilhelm Raabe's evolution in portraying 'lovely Jewish women', this essay discusses methodological problems and questions of philologic dealings with evaluations of ethic and aesthetic in literary texts representing intercultural interaction. Marking one of the most central stereotypes in literary antisemitism of the 19th century, the 'beautiful Jewish girl' turns out to be one of Raabe's favourite characters in prose. But especially in this case Raabe's texts Holunderblute (1863), Frau Salome (1875) and Hxter und Corvey (1875) reveal a progress from simple and problematic plots to much more complex strategies of writing. This paper demonstrates the philological difficulties in deciding wether such texts should be critizised as examples of literary antisemitism or not.