Arnold Schönbergs Konfrontationen mit Antisemitismus (III)

Abstract

Arnold Schoenberg shared the collective experience of dissociation and identity crisis with many of his Jewish contemporaries in the German-speaking world. Years of confronting antisemitism, existential experiences in the first world war, the philosophical quest for meaning, and the aesthetic exploration of religious subjects in the 1910s all contributed to his focus on his Jewish identity. Between 1916 and 1921, his attitude to Judaism had undergone considerable clarification, which he himself said had been prompted by a coalescence of fundamental realizations.