My new, forthcoming novel "German first?" - Mein neuer Roman "Zuerst deutsch?" erscheint im Januar 2027

 

Zuerst deutsch? – Mein neuer Roman erscheint im Januar 2027

Über Nationalismus, Liebe und Verrat – und eine Vergangenheit, die nicht vergeht.

Kann man zuerst deutsch und dann jüdisch sein? Und was geschieht, wenn die eigene nationale Zugehörigkeit plötzlich gegen einen selbst gewendet wird?

Im Januar 2027 erscheint mein neuer Roman Zuerst deutsch? im Verlag der blaue reiter. Nach Nicht alle Tage und Der Schatten der Nähe führt mich dieser Roman in ein anderes, historisch dunkleres Kapitel – und doch geht es erneut um Liebe, Nähe, Verlust und die Frage, wie Menschen mit ihrer Vergangenheit leben.

München, 1991. Ein nächtlicher Telefonanruf erschüttert die Kunsthistorikerin Anika Maschka. Ihr verstorbener Vater, ein angesehener Wissenschaftler und Ehrenbürger, soll während der NS-Zeit an der Verfolgung von Juden und am Raub jüdischer Kunst- und Kulturgüter beteiligt gewesen sein. Anika will ihn verteidigen. Doch ihre Nachforschungen führen sie immer tiefer in eine Geschichte, die sie selbst betrifft.

Bei ihren Forschungen über die jüdische Künstlerin Hulda Mannheimer entdeckt sie, dass diese die Geliebte ihres Vaters gewesen war. Und dass der Mann, der sich an Verfolgung und Enteignung beteiligte, zugleich sein Leben riskierte, um Hulda zu retten.

Doch auch Hulda passt nicht in die vertrauten Kategorien. Als junge Frau begeistert sie sich für Deutschland, für nationale Ideale und die Gemeinschaft einer jüdischen Jugendbewegung, die ihre Zugehörigkeit zur deutschen Nation betont. Sie will Deutsche sein, nicht trotz, sondern mit ihrer jüdischen Herkunft. Bis das Land, dem sie sich verbunden fühlt, sie ausschließt.

Die Geschichte führt von Kassel über Berlin und das besetzte Paris nach Großbritannien und Afrika. Sie erzählt von Kunst und Kunstraub, von politischer Verblendung, Liebe und sexueller Ausbeutung, von Verfolgung und Überleben.

Mich beschäftigt dabei besonders, wie widersprüchlich menschliches Handeln sein kann. Wie wird ein Mensch zum Täter, ohne aufzuhören, ein Liebender zu sein? Wie kann jemand Opfer einer Ideologie werden, der er selbst einmal nahestand? Und was geschieht mit unserer Vorstellung von Geschichte, wenn die Trennung zwischen Täter, Opfer und Retter nicht mehr so eindeutig gelingt?

Der Roman beginnt mit einem Satz, der seine Erzählerin durch die gesamte Geschichte begleiten wird:

„Ich wollte meinen Vater verteidigen, gestand ich mir ein.“

Doch je mehr Anika erfährt, desto schwieriger wird diese Verteidigung. Ihre historische Forschung verwandelt sich in eine Untersuchung ihrer eigenen Familie.

Zuerst deutsch? ist ein Roman über die Macht nationaler Identitäten, die Verstrickung von Liebe und Schuld und über die unbequeme Frage, ob die Suche nach historischer Wahrheit selbst zum Verrat werden kann.

Markus Vinzent, Zuerst deutsch?
Roman, Verlag der blaue reiter, Januar 2027
ISBN 978-3-911731-18-8

Weitere Informationen folgen zur Veröffentlichung.

German First? – My New Novel to Be Published in January 2027

On nationalism, love and betrayal – and a past that refuses to disappear.

Can one be German first and Jewish second? And what happens when the nation to which one belongs turns against its own people?

In January 2027, my new novel, Zuerst deutsch? (German First?), will be published by the German publishing house Verlag der blaue reiter.

Following my earlier novels Nicht alle Tage and Der Schatten der Nähe, this book takes me into a different, historically darker world. Yet some of the underlying questions remain: how love and loyalty shape our lives, how we deal with loss, and how the past continues to inhabit the present.

Munich, 1991. A late-night telephone call shatters the world of Anika Maschka, a young art historian. Her deceased father, a respected German scholar and public figure, is accused of involvement in Nazi persecution and the confiscation of Jewish cultural property.

Determined to defend him, Anika begins to investigate. But the archival evidence leads her somewhere she had never expected.

While researching Hulda Mannheimer, a Jewish artist forced to flee Nazi Germany, Anika discovers that Hulda had been her father's secret lover. Even more disturbing is the contradiction at the heart of his life: the man who participated in persecution and dispossession had also risked his own position, perhaps even his life, to save the woman he loved.

Yet Hulda herself is no straightforward victim of history. As a young woman, she had embraced German nationalism and belonged to a Jewish youth movement that proudly affirmed its German identity. She thought of herself as German, without believing that her Jewish background made her any less so. The nation she loved would eventually exclude and persecute her.

Moving between Nazi Germany, occupied Paris, Britain and Africa, the novel explores the intertwined histories of nationalism, art, cultural dispossession, sexual exploitation, persecution and survival.

What interested me particularly while writing was the difficulty of maintaining the familiar distinctions between perpetrators, victims and rescuers. Can someone participate in a criminal regime and still act courageously to save another person? How does nationalism become destructive not merely to those who oppose it, but also to those who once believed themselves part of it? And what happens when the historian discovers that the history she is reconstructing is also her own?

The novel opens with a confession:

“I wanted to defend my father, I admitted to myself.”

But the more Anika discovers, the more difficult that defence becomes. Her search for historical truth gradually turns into an investigation of her own family's past.

Zuerst deutsch? is a novel about nationalism and belonging, the entanglement of love and complicity, and the unsettling possibility that confronting the past may itself become an act of betrayal.

Markus Vinzent, Zuerst deutsch? (German First?)
Novel, Verlag der blaue reiter, January 2027
ISBN 978-3-911731-18-8

An English translation is also being prepared by Maggie Hamand.

Further information will follow as publication approaches.

Ephesians 5:14 - a baptism hymn?

 In response to our latest video on Romans, 

@christianmichael8609 comments:@23:10 - that is a strong statement there - that the recipients of the Apostolos letters did not know of Christian initiation by baptism. Ought you not be more cautious? Laodiceans 5.14 is explicitly cited by Epiphanius, and as you surely know reputable scholars have suggested that this was a baptismal initiation saying.
My reply: With your question you confirm my statement. Reputable scholars are reading Ephesians 5.14 in the light of the canonical 14-Letter Collection and the canonical NT, particularly Rom. 6:3-4 (Bruce, for example), where, of course such light-metaphor reminds of baptism. This is exactly the point, of what I was saying. Once you move, as you do, within the canonical frame, things are clear which are very different within the 10-Letter Collection. Jürgen Becker and Ulrich Lutz, for example, simply speak of Eph 5:14 as of a "baptismal song", yet, even in canonical Eph 5 there is no single mention of baptism. Hence they are careful in saying twice that this is a "guess" (in German they use twice "vermutlich", p. 166). Bruce is more willing to follow the idea, yet he makes a cautious note of B. Noack, “Das Zitat in Ephes. 5:14,” ST 5 (1951), 52-64, for its being primarily a resurrection hymn (although applicable secondarily to baptism) and points to R. P. Martin, “Aspects of Worship in the New Testament Church,” VE 2 (1963), 30. Bruce, however, refers to the earliest commentary that exists on this verse Eph 5:14 and writes (Bruce, Commentary ad loc.): "Attempts have been made to strengthen the identif ication of the tristich as a baptismal hymn by the argument that its rhythm is that found in the initiation formulae of various Hellenistic cults. The formula most commonly adduced is one quoted by Firmicus Maternus as uttered by the person newly initiated into the Attis mystery. Such formal parallels are difficult to establish, and throw no light on the meaning of what is, in context and content, an explicitly Christian composition. Clement of Alexandria quotes this tristich and accompanies it with another tristich amplifying the reference to Christ in its third clause." His criticism of referencing Hellenistic cults should have also led him to be more cautious with referencing Christian baptism, as Clement points to Christ, but does not know of a baptismal link, let alone of a baptismal hymn behind this text. Interesting is that Strack-Billerbeck adduce 1 Tim 2:8 - again, providing a non-baptismal context. So I would be less firm than you are. In addition, Makus Barth does not follow this "guess" in his commentary on Ephesians, if I have not overlooked something.

1 Timothy 2:13-15 - a terrible biblical verse with an awful historical legacy

 

 As we are doing the final corrections of the book "The Letters of Paul in the Second Century: A Critical Reappraisal", authored by myself, Mark G. Bilby, Jack Bull and Kevin Lance Lotharp, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, I came across this small section that I thought is important to share, as it shows the nature of the canonical redaction and the way it transformed a Marcionite appreciation for women into a subordination of these:

¹³For Adam was first formed, then Eve. ¹⁴Adam wasn’t deceived, but the woman, being deceived, has fallen into disobedience. ¹⁵But she will be saved through her childbearing (σωθήσεται δὲ διὰ τῆς τεκνογονίας), if they continue in faith, love, and sanctification with sobriety. (1 Tim 2:13–15)

 

In light of its historical legacy: What a terrible statement![1] It is a ghastly travesty of *Pauline teaching and of his appreciation of women.[2] Here, the narrative hierarchy derived from Genesis 2 becomes theological norm: creation order implies a chauvinist moral order that connects the salvation of women—married women, others do not seem to be thought of[3]—with childbearing and the implied pregnancy, labor, pain and motherhood, understood as “penal suffering.”[4] The woman is not merely created second, she is made culpable, while Adam is exonerated by priority. It is the Christian beginning of an unending story of female temptation and seduction, as we can see, for example, in Marcion’s commentator Tertullian.

“Do you not know that you are Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway. You are the one who unsealed the forbidden tree. You are the first deserter of the divine law. You are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack.”[1]

 

Tertullian blames Eve, and by extension all women, for the fall of man, portraying women as the origin of male seduction into sin. A little later in the same book, he adds:

 

“First, know that the desire to please by adorning oneself does not spring from a clear conscience, but from decor designed to entice lust. Why, then, do you stir up that evil in yourself? Why do you invite someone foreign to you whom you claim to be? Moreover, we must not open the way to temptations that sometimes accomplish by pressure what God’s calls would seem to fail to; indeed, they at least move the spirit to stumble.”[2]

 

Women’s use of beautification, so his male gaze throughout this text, he accuses to be a form of seduction, recalling Eve’s role in leading Adam astray. Adornment is portrayed as an invitation to lust, and thus morally dangerous. How persistently this message of 1 Timothy resonated with the fathers can be seen from the influential John Chrysostom who in his homilies on this text preaches to his congregation: “You have crushed the head of your husband… it was you who expelled him from paradise! It was you who made him a subject of death… Do you not know that you are Eve?”[3]

---

[1] Tert., De Cultu Feminarum 1.1: Et nesciebas te Evam esse? Dei sententia in hanc sexum vestrum vivit in hoc saeculo: ergo et delictum necesse est vivat. Tu es porta diaboli, tu es prima desertrix legis divinae, tu illa es quae persuasisti eum quem diabolus aggredi non valuit.

[2] Tert., De Cultu Feminarum 2.6: Primo quod non de integra conscientia venit studium placendi per decorem quem naturaliter invitator libidinis scimus. Quid igitur excitas in te malum istud? Quid invitas cuius te profiteris extraneam? Tum quod temptationibus viam aperire non debemus, quae nonnumquam quod Deus a suis abigat instando perficiunt, certe vel spiritum scandalo permovent.

[3] John Chrys., Homiliae in 1 Timotheum, Hom. 9.

---

[1] Brox judges: “These reflections, so utterly alien to us” (“Diese uns völlig fremdartigen Überlegungen”), N. Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe (1969), 136.

[2] 1 Tim 2:13-15 is read as a fighting off the Pauline teaching from 1 Cor 7 in G. Wohlenberg, Die Pastoralbriefe (der erste Timotheus-, der Titus- und der zweite Timotheusbrief); mit einem Anhang: Unechte Paulusbriefe (1923), 120. According to Brox, this passage suggests that “it is hardly imaginable” that it “derives from the hand of Paul,” N. Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe (1969), 135.

[3] See the criticism in N. Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe (1969), 136.

[4] So G. Wohlenberg, Die Pastoralbriefe (der erste Timotheus-, der Titus- und der zweite Timotheusbrief); With an appendix: Unechte Paulusbriefe (1923), 121.

Judith Lieu, review on my Christ's Torah in SBL

 It is nice to see this in-depth, critical and welcoming review that my fine colleague Professor Judith Lieu has recently published in SBL. The view ends with the following paragraph:

"So, what are those anticipated nonspecialists to make of all this? Hints during the course of the work become explicit in his concluding suggestion that “many of [the] demarcations” of the modern world, between religions, cultures, institutions, “were historically conditioned, perhaps even once useful and helpful in some respects but must be reexamined again and again in terms of their necessity and usefulness” (354). This may surprise few, even if its application to the New Testament is less welcome. Nonetheless, as Markus Vinzent doggedly builds up his body of work into the uncertainties of any rediscovery of the earliest Christian period and writings, scholars in the field cannot avoid taking seriously his analysis, conclusions, and extensive command of patristic literature. The time is long past when his own (and others’) radical rereadings could be dismissed as maverick while “mainstream” scholarship carries on undisturbed."

Mein neuer Roman "Der Schatten der Nähe" - Coverentwurf

 Hier ein erster Blick auf den Coverentwurf meines in den nächsten Wochen erscheinenden neuen Romans: