Literary antisemitism? A contribution to the discussion about this approach based on an analysis of Thomas Mann's novella Death in Venice

This article summarizes the research on so-called literary antisemitism and develops the impulses in this field from the recent years, applying them to the work of Thomas Mann. Building on innovative approaches from the turn of the millennium that highlight Thomas Mann's ambivalent relationship to literary depictions of Jewishness, it looks for traces of them in the novella Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice, 1912). Since these stereotypes are not directly identifiable as anti-Jewish, they are compared with earlier works by Thomas Mann where the connection with the characters' negatively, or at least ambiguously, portrayed Jewishness is evident, especially the "Jewish" novella Walsungenblut (The Blood of the Walsungs, 1906/1921). In doing so, it verifies the thesis that Thomas Mann uses emotional "triggers" in both novellas that encrypt negative Jewish identity. Whereas in Walsungenblut this simulates a failed "hyper-assimilation", in Der Tod in Venedig it acts as an Orientalist threat to German masculinity.