Haskala, Band 30

This study is the fruit of many years’ interest in the mindset of the fin de siècle. At that time women and Jews were allocated a common place in the constructions of ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’, something which motivated them to challenge this in creative terms. The quotation from Goethe in the title suggests women of the turn of the century who bear the traits of Mignon from "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre". However, unlike the situation in Goethe’s work where the hero’s fosterdaughter is doomed to destruction, fictional fathers now become the screens onto which their daughters project their ideas of life.

In Gabriele Reuter’s -"Gunhild Kersten", Hedwig Dohm’s "Christa Ruland" and Lou Andreas-Salomé’s "Ruth" the eponymous characters seek to assert themselves through narrative between social conformity and ‘unfeminine’ demands. Between these women’s desire for emancipation and the compromise solution of Jewish acculturation there is hitherto overlooked internal connection within the texts discussed. Echoes of the Jewish Exodus here represent a difficult emancipation as daughters negotiate their break from fathers who will not willingly let them go.