History as Legitimation: The Invention of Ancient Antisemitism in the German Empire 1871-1914 Seminar
For more information regarding this seminar, please email parkes@southampton.ac.uk .
Event details
Part of the Parkes Institute Seminar series
All welcome.
The chair for is seminar will be Professor Tony Kushner.
The lecture explores the patterns of interpretation that German scholars (theologians, historians, classicists) of the late 19th and early 20th centuries used in presenting the conflicts between Jews and non-Jews in the Greco-Roman world. It argues that the modern form of Jew-hatred that called itself "antisemitism" was tried to legitimize by projecting it back into the Classical World. The paradigm of "ancient anti-Semitism" did not only change the image of the Jews in Antiquity but also formed a crucial argument in contemporary debates on the "Jewish Question" in the German kaiserrhwsh.
Speaker information
Professor Christhard Hoffmann, University of Berge, Head of Department. Christhard Hoffmann is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Bergen/Norway and presently visiting the Parkes Institute. He has developed special research interests in the following areas: Nationalism, antisemitism and xenophobia; History of migration and minorities, in particular Jewish history; and the public uses of history and memory. Among his publications are: Juden und Judentum in der Literatur (co-editor 1985); Juden und Judentum im Werk deutscher Althistoriker des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (1988, reprint 2007); Eduard Meyer – Victor Ehrenberg. Ein Briefwechsel 1914-1930 (co-editor 1990) Die Emigration der Wissenschaften nach 1933. Disziplingeschichtliche Studien (co-editor 1991); Exclusionary Violence: Antisemitic Riots in Modern German History (co-editor 2002); Preserving the Legacy of German Jewry: A History of the Leo Baeck Institute, 1955-2005 (editor 2005).