Dr Axel Stähler from the Department of Comparative Literature was recently interviewed on his research into early German-Jewish Zionist literature. The interview has been published in a blog post on Blogerim, the blog of the Jewish Museum in Berlin.
The short exposé discusses the umbrella as a curious attribute of Jewishness in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with antisemitic connotations but with the potential also of being reinterpreted in a more positive light in relation to colonial discourse. The research presented in the blog post is part of a larger project which interrogates the connections between German colonialism, constructions of blackness and Jewishness, and early Zionist literature.
More on the subject can be found at: www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/09/peddlers-with-caftans-sidelocks-and-umbrellas-images-of-jews-around-1900/#more-1691