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).