Pisano, Libera2024-02-122024-02-122023Pisano L. “The last German Jew”: a perspectival reading of Franz Rosenzweig’s dual identity through his collection at the Leo Baeck Institute. In: Strauss Z, Slater I, editors. Maimonides Review of Philosophy and Religion, vol. 2. Berlin: Brill; 2023. p.50-84. DOI: 10.1163/9789004508668_003978-90-04-50864-4http://hdl.handle.net/10230/59070This essay is an attempt to analyse the multi-layered dimensions of Franz Rosenzweig’s Nachlass, which is held at the Leo Baeck Institute and is also available online. It aims to underscore the hermeneutic interplay in the archive itself, including a kind of explicit awareness of Rosenzweig’s posthumous reception as well as the discrepancy between the various profiles of him that emerge from reviews and obituaries. Following the development of Rosenzweig’s reception will enable us to understand why he was such a controversial figure, considered too Jewish for the Germans and too German for the Jews. In the first part of this study, I will analyse Rosenzweig’s archival consciousness by considering some passages from his diaries and correspondence, as well as his archival sensibility. In the second part, I will illuminate the outside view of Rosenzweig’s works—namely, the reviews and obituaries collected by his wife, Edith Rosenzweig-Scheinmann—in order to show both the tensions and the uniqueness of his reception during his lifetime and after his death. Finally, in the conclusion, I will discuss some “spectres” of the archive and the figure of Edith herself, whose work was crucial in shaping Rosenzweig’s legacy.application/pdfeng© Libera Pisano, 2023 doi:10.1163/9789004508668_003 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 License.Jueus alemanysinfo:eu-repo/semantics/bookParthttp://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004508668_003info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess