Call for papers

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The Historical Discourse Working Group and the Leo Baeck Institute, London, with the support of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations would like to announce their first international conference to be held at Queen Mary, University of London on 10-11 November 2010.

PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE OF DATE FOR THIS CONFERENCE

The conference organisers, Professor Felicity Rash, Dr Geraldine Horan, Dr Daniel Wildmann and Dr Stefan Baumgarten, invite proposals in the form of abstracts of about 150-200 words on relevant topics in the analysis of pre-1945 nationalist, anti-Semitic or colonialist discourse. We welcome contributions which discuss issues of methodology or which adopt interdisciplinary approaches, and we hope to foster debate on points of contact between linguistics and the historical analysis of political and ideological discourses. We would be particularly interested in contributions on nationalist figures who are less well-represented in discourse research. It is hoped that academic colleagues at all levels of their careers, including postgraduate students, will offer to present papers or lead workshops.

Papers should be presented in English.

The conference will be one of the events organised as part of the major research project, The Discourse of German Nationalism and Anti-Semitism 1871-1924, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and led by Prof. Felicity Rash and Dr Geraldine Horan.

Key note speakers will include Ruth Wodak and Andreas Musolff. It is intended that the conference proceedings will be published. Please send expression of interest and abstracts to Dr Stefan Baumgarten by 15 April 2010; email: s.baumgarten@qmul.ac.uk.

International Conference organised by the German Historical Institute London and the Leo Baeck Institute London

Countless objects owned by Jews were illegally appropriated in Germany between 1933 and 1945: houses, businesses, paintings, furniture, tablecloths, bric-a-brac. Some of these items were returned to their previous owners after 1945, not always voluntarily, but many were not.
These objects are connected with emotions. But what were the emotional associations for the original Jewish owners on the one hand, and for the Aryanisers, buyers and their heirs on the other?
Emotions are linked to cultural values and moral principles. Feelings of shame and enjoyment, for instance, are both the result of learning processes that take place within a specific social, cultural and political context. Which values were associated with the appropriated objects by dispossessed Jews and by their new owners, and which kind of idea of morality and value did the heirs of the latter attach to them, knowing that these objects had been in their family’s possession only since the Nazis had come to power? What do these values and emotions tell us about the way the National Socialist past was dealt with both emotionally and materially?
This conference will investigate these questions emphasising in particular recent findings about how, in their private sphere, Germans tackled the questions of morality and emotions in relation to the appropriated and inherited possessions of the Nazi era.
The conference approaches these questions from two different angles: from the perspective of the objects, reconstructing their history, theft and eventual return or non-return; and by studying the emotions linked with such objects from the Nazi era.
Scholars from the UK, USA, Germany and the Netherlands will take part in this conference.

For futher information please contact Anita Bellamy or call 020 7309 2023.

Programme

Monday, 26 July

2.00 – 2.20pm Opening:
Prof Andreas Gestrich (GHI London/ Universität Trier)

Dr Daniel Wildmann (LBI London/ Queen Mary, University of London)

2.30 – 3.30pm Author’s Reading:
Chair: Dr Daniel Wildmann (LBI London/ Queen Mary, University of London)

Gila Lustiger (Paris): The Paper Weight

3.45 – 5.15pm Panel 1:
Chair: Dr Kerstin Brückweh (GHI London)

Dr Hanno Loewy (Jüdisches Museum Hohenems): Diasporic Home or
Homelessness? The Museum and the Never Ending Story of Lost and Found.

Dr Cathy Gelbin (University of Manchester): Broken Ties: Accounts of lost objects in Jewish survivor narratives

5.30 – 7.00pm Documentary:
Chair: Dr Judith Keilbach (Utrecht University)

Die Akte Joel – Die Geschichte zweier Familien (Austria, 2001-German version)

Tuesday, 27 July

9.30 – 11.00am Panel 2:
Chair: Prof Jane Caplan (St. Anthony´s College, Oxford)

Inka Bertz (Jüdisches Museum Berlin): Property: Notions and Emotions

Dr Jürgen Lillteicher (Willy-Brandt-Haus Lübeck): Aryanization, Morality and the Reputation of a Good Merchant. Business Ethics before and after 1945

11.30am – 1.00pm Panel 3
Chair: Prof Andreas Gestrich (GHI London/ Universität Trier)

PD Dr Sabine Wienker-Piepho (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena): “The Rabbi’s Desk” – Narratives about a Jewish Object in German Hands

Dr Anthony Kauders (Keele University): The Emotional Geography of a Lost Space: Germany as an Object of Hatred and Desire after 1945

2.30 – 4.00pm Panel 4:

Chair: Prof Ute Frevert (FU Berlin/ Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin)

Prof Norman Palmer CBE QC (King’s College London/ 3 Stone Buildings): Emblems and Heirlooms: Restitution, Reparation and the Subjective Value of Chattels: a Lawyer’s Perspective

Dr Hilde Schramm (Berlin): “Zurückgeben” – a foundation to support cultural projects of Jewish women in Germany

4.30 – 6.00pm Panel 5:

Chair: Prof Raphael Gross (LBI London/Fritz Bauer Institut/ Jüdisches Museum Frankfurt)

Prof Atina Grossmann (The Cooper Union, New York): Family Files: The Hotel Astoria and other (non) Restitution Stories

Prof Leora Auslander (University of Chicago): The lives of things: Some unexpected consequences of restitution processes

6.10 – 6.30pm Closing Remarks: Prof Peter Pulzer (LBI London/ All Soul’s College, Oxford)

22 July 2010, 7 pm at the Wiener Library

Marx and the Jewish Question: the lecture will take advantage of the ambiguity of the formulation, which refers at the same time to the historical attitude of Marx with respect to the condition of the Jewish communities in 19^th century Europe, faced with a dilemma of assimilation or becoming minoritarian, and to the philosophical developments contained in the 1844 article for the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, “Zur Judenfrage”, where, in reply to Bauer’s homonymous brochure, Marx would propose his first analysis of the value and limitations of bourgeois “juridical universality”. It will reflect on the latent tension in Marx between a “secular” theory of the political in terms of radical democratic emancipation and a “messianic” transposition of the function of the Chosen People on the world proletariat. Ultimately it will try to assess the extent to which Marx’s dialectic of community and universality constituted a real alternative to the development of Modern Jewish Nationalism or simply represented its inverted image.

Etienne Balibar was born in Avallon (France) in 1942.He graduated at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Sorbonne in Paris, later took his PhD from the University of Nijmegen (Netherlands) and has an Habilitation from Université de Paris I.He has been teaching at the Universities of Algiers, Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), Leiden, Nanterre (Paris 10). He is now Emeritus Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of Paris 10 Nanterre and Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine (USA). He is also teaching seminars at the Centro Franco-Argentino de Altos Estudios de la Universidad de Buenos-Aires (Argentina) and the Center for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University of New-York.He is author or co-author of numerous books including Reading Capital (with Louis Althusser) (1965), On the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1976), Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities (Verso, 1991, with Immanuel Wallerstein), Masses, Classes, Ideas (Routledge, 1994), The Philosophy of Marx (Verso 1995), Spinoza and Politics (Verso 1998), Politics and the Other Scene (Verso, 2002), We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship (Princeton, 2004). He is also a contributor of the Dictionnaire Européen des Philosophies (sous la direction de Barbara Cassin, 2004). Forthcoming are Extreme Violence and the Problem of Civility (The Wellek Library Lectures 1996), and Citoyen Sujet, Essais d’anthropologie philo­sophique (Presses Universitaires de France).Etienne Balibar is a member of Ligue des Droits de l’Homme (Paris), with a particular interest in the rights of migrants and asylum seekers. He is co-founder of Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace and acting chair of Association Jan Hus France.

Admission is free but places are limited and must be reserved in advance by contacting the Leo Baeck Institute: email or phone 020 7580 3493.

Lectures begin promptly at 7 pm. Latecomers may not be admitted.

Organised by the LBI London and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt/Main in cooperation with Queen Mary University. We would like to thank our sponsor Bank Sal. Oppenheim jr.&Cie.

Refreshments will be served after the lecture.

Venue: The Wiener Library, 4 Devonshire Street, London W1W 5BH.

Underground: Regents Park, Great Portland Street. Bus: C2, 18, 27, 30, 88, 435

Click here for the entire programme of the European Leo Baeck Lecture Series London 2010.
You can download the leaflet here.

Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations

A CJCR Seminar in cooperation with the Hebrew & Jewish Studies Department, the Department of German, and the Centre for European Studies at UCL, and the Leo Baeck Institute (London)
Lars Fischer (Academic Director, CJCR):
Gemeinschaft, Gesellschaft, and “the Jews” in Early Marx
Marcel Stoetzler (Visiting Fellow, CJCR):
Antisemitism, Capitalism and the Formation of Sociological Theory
Eva-Maria Ziege (Visiting Fellow, CJCR):
Labour, Late Capitalism, and Social Theory. The Frankfurt School on the “Jewish Question”
Friday, 4 June 2010, 13.30–16.30 – UCL Department of German, Room 101
17 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AT (entrance at the back of the building)

Contact: Lars Fischer, lf309@cam.ac.uk

- To Mark the World Cup in South Africa -

Wednesday, 26 May 2010, 7pm Wiener Library

To mark the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, Dr Daniel Wildmann and Ben Barkow have pleasure in inviting you to a special lecture organized by the Leo Baeck Institute and the Wiener Library

The conceit that football is ‘the beautiful game’ originated at a time when English gentlemen amateurs still set the tone, although they were no longer among the best players. For the early professionals of the 1920s, on the other hand, football became a lifestyle, which underpinned their whole existence. It was workers, Jews, and immigrants – people on the margins of society – who from an early stage shaped professional football both as players and managers. Why did some Jews, beginning in the 20^th century – from Bela Gutmann, to Roman Abramovich to Malcolm Glazer – choose to make football a central focus of their lives and how did they influence the game in the UK and on the Continent?

Detlev Claussen is Professor for Theory of Society, Sociology of Culture and Science at Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany.  He studied with Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, was a member of the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund, and a political commentator.  He has published several studies on violence, antisemitism, and racism and most recently the monograph A Last Genius on Theodor W. Adorno, published by Harvard University Press (2008). Other books include List der Gewalt, Grenzen der Aufklärung (forthcoming at UC Press), Was heisst Rassismus?, Aspekte der Alltagsreligion, and Béla Gutmann. Weltgeschichtes des Fussballs in einer Person (Berlin 2006).

The lecture is held at the Wiener Library, 4 Devonshire Street, London W1W 5BH and begins at 7.00pm. Latecomers may not be admitted.

Admission is free, but places are limited and must be reserved in advance by contacting the Leo Baeck Institute

(info@leobaeck.co.uk or tel: 020 7580 3493).

Underground: Great Portland Street, Regent’s Park; Bus: C2, 18, 27, 30, 88, 435.