Interdisciplinary Doctoral Programme
Hans Böckler Foundation promotes research on Jewish literature, philosophy and music
With around 900,000 euros, the Hans Böckler Foundation is funding the interdisciplinary doctoral programme "Broken Traditions? Jewish Literature, Philosophy and Music in Nazi Germany", which was jointly funded by the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), the Goethe University in Frankfurt (Main) and the University of Music FRANZ LISZT in Weimar. The funding was initially approved for 4.5 years.
From the summer semester of 2024 onwards, nine doctoral students at all three universities will scientifically study the intellectual and artistic activities of Jews, which were mediated, openly articulated or illegally disseminated within Nazi Germany in response to the social disenfranchisement, exclusion and ultimately murder of large sections of European Jewry.
The PhDs will be supervised by Prof. Kerstin Schoor (German-Jewish Literary and Cultural History, Exile and Migration, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)), Prof. Christian Wiese (Martin Buber Professorship for Jewish Philosophy of Religion, Goethe University Frankfurt/Main) and Prof. Jascha Nemtsov (History of Jewish Music, University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar). The Kolleg will be based at the Selma Stern Centre for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg.
The International Institute for Holocaust Research of the Yad Vashem Memorial, the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Leo Baeck Institute Jerusalem and the Music Department of the Dr. Hecht Arts Center of the University of Haifa have been secured as cooperation partners.
The scholarships will be announced at the end of August 2023. Interested applicants are requested to contact the desired primary supervisor during September 2023, preferably by the 15th. Applications for scholarships will be submitted to the Hans Böckler Foundation in consultation by 2 November 2023.
"I am very pleased that this funding from the Hans Böckler Foundation will allow a specific thematic focus of the participating chairs and institutions to be deepened in an interdisciplinary collaborative project and passed on to a new generation of scholars," says Prof. Dr. Kerstin Schoor, College Spokesperson and Chair of German-Jewish Literary and Cultural History, Exile and Migration at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder).
"Exploring the thematic field of the Kolleg from the perspective of the three participating disciplines promises not only insights into the past, but also informed discussions about pressing challenges of our time - I look forward to this," says Prof. Dr Christian Wiese, Director of the Frankfurt Buber-Rosenzweig Institute in Frankfurt Main.
Prof. Dr. Jascha Nemtsov (Department of Musicology Weimar-Jena) welcomes in this sense in the Kolleg also "a great opportunity to research the work of Jewish composers in Nazi Germany and to give their works back to today's musical life."
The Hans Böckler Foundation "is pleased to be able to support nine dissertations on Jewish literature, philosophy and music in Nazi Germany in an interdisciplinary research context in its new doctoral college (PK057)." It is supporting the Kolleg in the first funding phase with institutional and individual funding of around 900,000 euros.
Background:
Forced by political censorship and a massive process of exclusion and persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany that began as early as 1933, the developments in literature, philosophy and music at that time were characterised more strongly than in other periods by a (critical) reflection on traditional artistic-aesthetic, cultural and religious traditions. For intellectuals, writers and musicians of Jewish origin, the relationship to traditions of German, Jewish and European cultures became the "Gretchen question" of intellectual and artistic-aesthetic position formation.
The aim of the Kolleg is to expand knowledge of Jewish cultural life in an increasingly separated Jewish cultural circle within Nazi Germany since 1933 in literary studies, philosophy and religious studies as well as musicology. Framed by the common research question "Broken Traditions?", intellectual, literary and artistic-aesthetic references to tradition in the cultural life of German Jews of the 1930s and early 1940s in Nazi Germany will be subjected to a critical re-reading.
In doing so, the Kolleg is responding to a state of research that - in contrast to historiography - was still characterised by a widespread absence of the representation of characteristic developments in the literature, philosophy and music of intellectuals and artists of Jewish origin in Nazi Germany, by the widespread lack of reflection on the reasons for the delayed reception history of these intellectual and artistic activities from the post-war years until the 1990s, and - in a way that varies from discipline to discipline - by a desolate source situation, which in part still exists today. It is part of the international efforts of Nazi and Holocaust research, within which it also lays claim to originality in its specific disciplinary composition and content.
Further information:
Prof. Dr. Kerstin Schoor, schoor(at)europa-uni.de
Axel Springer Chair for German-Jewish Literary and Cultural History, Exile and Migration at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder
Prof. Dr Christian Wiese, c.wiese(at)em.uni-frankfurt.de
Martin Buber Professorship for Jewish Philosophy of Religion and Buber-Rosenzweig Institute for Jewish Intellectual and Cultural History of Modernity at the Goethe University Frankfurt/Main
Prof. Dr. Jascha Nemtsov, jascha.nemtsov(at)hfm-weimar.de
Chair for the History of Jewish Music at the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar
[21 July 2023]