Rights Information

foreign rights available

Marketing Information

Written in Polish the last biography of Mordechai Gebirtig is already twenty years old and many of its contents have turned out to be inaccurate. Es brennt not only corrects these mistakes, but also presents a wealth of new insights into Gebirtig’s life and work, supplemented with numerous song examples and contemporary documents. Among many other things, the book contains a first publication of a newly discovered song by Gebirtig and comprises a complete index of Gebirtig’s songs and poems for the very first time. The topics of Jewish culture and history attract increasing interest today. Modern klezmer bands have been booming since the 1980s, bringing Jewish music closer to a broad audience. Since Yiddish is the language of many klezmer songs, it also experiences a revival, both within and outside the Jewish population. Mordechai Gebirtig is a central figure in Yiddish culture; his songs are part of the Jewish cultural heritage and to the permanent repertoire of every klezmer band. Gebirtig and his family were victims of the Shoa, which plays a special role in this book. 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. The necessity and the desire to come to terms with the crimes of this world war, especially the Holocaust, remain unbroken.

The book is aimed at all those who want to learn more about Jewish Eastern European culture and history, the Yiddish language, Jewish music and historical Krakow. Prior knowledge is not necessary, the information is conveyed in a accessible and narrative way. The book is therefore highly suitable as teaching material for students. However, it also offers new and thoroughly researched insights for experts and connoisseurs.

Reviews

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
Gebirtig’s life story is told by Uwe von Seltmann in an impressive way, with countless details he found in archives, with many photos, documents and facsimiles, with songs and poems, some of which are presented here for the first time in German translation. And yet the term ›biography‹ is only conditionally suited to this four hundred page large-format volume. Rather, it is a ›literary journey into Yiddish Land‹, as Seltmann himself calls it, telling of its development and its political background, customs, language and atmosphere.

Die Welt (newspaper):
The fact that these testimonies can now be read together with his folk songs, couplets and philosophical poems in German, and that the forgotten genius Gebirtig is thus given late honour, cannot be praised enough. Von Seltmann excellently translates all Yiddish texts and presents them in Latin letters, so that everyone can let Gebirtig’s prophetic pogrom song … have its gloomy effect on them. A monumental biography … compiled with love, down to the last pictorial document.

Jüdische Allgemeine (Jewish newspaper):
It does not seem exaggerated to describe Seltmann’s book as pioneering work. The author has meticulously searched archives in Europe, Israel and the USA for testimonies from Gebirtig’s life. ... An attempt to save Mordechai Gebirtig’s legacy and the Yiddish language from oblivion.


Nürnberger Nachrichten (newspaper):
Von Seltmann has researched intensively, traced contemporary witnesses and documents worldwide and translated many of Gebirtig’s songs into German for the first time. From this he weaves a comprehensive picture that shows the poet as a worker-revolutionary in the struggle for humane living conditions, as a sensitive melancholic, as a linguistically powerful guardian of his Yiddish mother tongue and as a tough fighter for the rich culture of the Jewish population. … The result is a real find, not only for Klezmer lovers and Gebirtig connoisseurs.

Author Biography

Uwe von Seltmann was born in Müsen, Germany, in 1964. A long time he lived in Krakow, now mainly in Croatia as a freelance publicist, documentary writer and researcher. Over the past 15 years he has been invited to around 600 international lectures, panel discussions and movie screenings in Europe, Israel and the USA. He is renowned in the worldwide Yiddish community. He has written and published nine books in German so far, which mostly deal with the familial, social and political effects of the Nazi era on present-day society. His book Todleben (en.: Deathlife), which he wrote together with his wife Gabriela von Seltmann, has been translated into Polish (Gabi i Uwe, Wydawnictwo PWN, Warsaw). He is the director and coproducer of the Yiddish documentary Boris Dorfman – A mentsh (2014).