ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the self-creation and subsequent self-refashioning of one writer, David Bergelson, in the context of the emigre Yiddish literary scene in Weimar Berlin, bearing in mind Bergelson's status as a professional writer. A number of critics have commented on Bergelson's reorientation towards Moscow, most of them sceptical of Bergelson's affirmations of allegiance to the Soviet literary cause, made most explicitly in his 1926 essay 'Dray tsentren'. The marketplace for Yiddish publications emanating from Berlin was the United States and Eastern Europe'. There was insufficient local readership for much of the Yiddish literary output that found a temporary home in Berlin during the inter-war years. Max Wentzl's status as a poet is very much in doubt because he is neither known to an established readership nor published in literary journals. As Wentzl — another of many refugees in Berlin and a poor poet whose work is not recognized by critics.
