Between Revolution and Reaction

Members of the scholarly community in New York may register to attend the conference by emailing lbiconference2026@lbi.org.

• About the Conference
• Conference Program
• Participants
• Presentation Abstracts

The Leo Baeck Institute – New York I Berlin (LBI), one of the most important archives and libraries on the history and culture of German-speaking Jews, will sponsor an academic conference in New York, October 25-27, 2026. Inspired not least by the contemporary political moment, the conference will investigate the topic of (German-speaking) Jews and the political, cultural, and intellectual right, especially since the 19th century.

Both popular understanding and dominant historiographical narratives have tended to associate German Jews with the modern forces of "progress”, “democracy”, or "liberalism.” Jews appear in these narratives as founders, political supporters, or social bases of movements and ideas broadly understood as belonging to the left half of an ideological spectrum. They have been cast – and not without reason – as the natural friends or beneficiaries of political upheavals that allowed them link Jewish emancipation and social equality with more universal democratic demands – from the revolutions of 1789 and 1848 to 1917/18. These narratives have themselves had significant consequences for German-speaking Jews – often tragic – as the real or imagined disproportionate role of Jews in left and liberal politics affected the attitudes towards Jews of other political actors and ideologues.

While plenty of historiography has explored the nuances not encompassed by a liberal imaginary of Jews at the vanguard of progress, there is still work to be done to understand the full breadth of Jewish political consciousness and action. This especially so for Jewish political engagements that prioritized “tradition”, “order”, or “conservatism,” – the key values of the right. German-speaking Jews were no different from other populations in the sheer diversity of their politics, but it is worthwhile to consider how their position as Jews provided unique impulses. For instance, some Jewish conservatives explicitly linked their rejection of left or liberal causes to a fear of persecution as scapegoats by reactionaries. Others saw the individualism and universalism of democratic movements as a threat to Jewish tradition and communal cohesion – a slippery slope toward “assimilation.” As a disenfranchised and discriminated minority, Jews also became politicized in different ways and at different times than other populations.

With the current rise of right-wing and far-right wing movements worldwide, the literature on the intellectual history of conservative movements since the French Revolution has taken on a new urgency. German-speaking Jews figure large in this discourse, not only as victims of the worst-case scenario of right-wing totalitarianism, but also as early analysts of the far right (the Frankfurt School, Hannah Arendt) or lodestars of contemporary conservative thought (Leo Strauss, Ludwig von Mises). This conference aims to broaden and deepen our consideration of how German-speaking Jews positioned themselves in response to revolutionary and reactionary moments in history. The papers will explore Jewish responses to conservatism and even reactionary thought that ranged from rejection to attraction.

How did German Jews engage with conservative thought and movements? How do intellectual, political, and cultural interactions between Jews and “the right” in other countries reflect on the case of German-speaking Jews? (How) have traditional ingredients of ideologies and policies of the right, such as nationalism, authoritarianism, and xenophobia, affected Jewish ways of engaging with those movements as participants or opponents? How have the Holocaust and the new postwar circumstances, including a Jewish state and new ideological formations, affected Jewish attitudes and activities?

Conference committee:

Robin Judd (Ohio State University)

Darcy Buerkle (Smith College)

Paul Lerner (University of Southern California)

Philipp Nielsen (Sarah Lawrence College)

David Brown (LBI)

Frank Mecklenburg (LBI)

Magdalena Wrobel (LBI)

Markus Krah (LBI)

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2026

Kovno Room, Center for Jewish History

1:00–5:00 PM — JUNIOR SCHOLARS WORKSHOP (Conference Participants Only)

With presentations by Margarita Lerman (Jerusalem), Rosa Reicher (Frankfurt/Main), Sibel Tayçimen (Frankfurt/Oder), and Lieven Wölk (Berlin), led by Philipp Nielsen (Groningen)

5:00–6:30 PM — WELCOME RECEPTION FOR CONFERENCE PARTICIPANTS AND GRADUATE STUDENTS (NYC Area Grad Students in Jewish Studies are invited to register via rsvp@cjh.org)

Mezzanine & Goldsmith Gallery, Center for Jewish History

Drinks and a light dinner.

Cosponsored by the Center for Jewish History

6:30–8:00 PM — CONFERENCE KEYNOTE – (Open to the Public)

THE SECOND ANNUAL EVA REICHMANN LECTURE

Sponsored by The Hans & Berthold Finkelstein Stiftung

Forchheimer Auditorium, Center for Jewish History

“CONSERVATISM, REACTION, AND MESSIANISM”

By Mark Lilla, Columbia University

Mark Lilla, Professor of Humanities at Columbia University, will open the conference by delivering the second annual Eva Reichmann Lecture. In this public keynote, he will trace an intellectual genealogy of conservative and reactionary thought among German-Jewish thinkers who attributed the problems of modern society to a break in the history of ideas and promoted a return to earlier modes of thought.

The Eva Reichmann Lecture is open to the public. Registration at lbi.org/reichmann2026.

Followed by light refreshments at a public reception.

DAY 2

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2026

Kovno Room, Center for Jewish History

9:00 AM–9:15 AM

WELCOME & INTRODUCTORY REMARKS: PHILIPP NIELSEN

9:15 AM–10:45 AM

PANEL 1: ORTHODOXY, THE GERMAN RIGHT, AND THE STATE

CHAIR: ROBIN JUDD

• Philipp Lenhard (Vienna) The 1848 Revolution and the Failed Plan for a Jewish Concordat
• Johannes Czakai (Jerusalem) Machinations of Prussian Reactionary Politics: The Secret Informer Joel Jacoby and the Geiger-Tiktin Controversy
• Itamar Ben Ami (Utrecht) A Total Form of Life: The Making of Ultra-Orthodox Counterculture in Interwar Germany

10:45–11:00 AM — COFFEE BREAK

11:00 AM–12:30 PM

PANEL 2: JEWISH RESPONSES TO ANTISEMITISM AND THE RIGHT

CHAIR: DARCY BUERKLE

• Margarete Tiessen (Cologne) Between Jewish Identity and German Nationalism: The Deutsche Rundschau, 1874-1914
• Margarita Lerman (Jerusalem/Leipzig) Respectability under Suspicion: Jewish Responses to Discourses on Jewish Crime
• AJ Solovy (Vassar) “The Spirit of Yesterday:” German- and Austrian-Jewish Interpretations of the Extreme Right after 1945

12:30–1:15 PM — LUNCH Great Hall, Center for Jewish History

1:15–2:15 PM

PANEL 3: NAVIGATING THE REPUBLICS

CHAIR: PAUL LERNER

• Christian Dietrich (Frankfurt/Oder) “Almost Conservative” Conceptions of Order, Belonging, and the Uneasy Relationship of the Centralverein with Social Democracy (1918–1924)
• Rachel Blumenthal (Jerusalem) Jews and the Authoritarian Right in Interwar Austria

2:15–2:30 PM — COFFEE BREAK

2:30–3:30 PM

PANEL 4: JEWISH AND OTHER NATIONALISMS

CHAIR: GAVRIEL D. ROSENFELD

• Adi Gordon (Amherst) The “Good Jews” of the Völkisch Movement: What Were They Good For?
• Viktoria Pötzl (Grinnell) The Theater of Misogyny, Nationalism, and Colonialism: A Discussion of Max Nordau’s Plays

3:30–3:45 PM — COFFEE BREAK

3:45–6:00 PM

PANEL 5: BETWEEN AFFINITY AND ANTIPATHY: JEWISH THINKERS AND THE RIGHT

CHAIR: ADI GORDON

• Ghila Amati (Jerusalem) War, Life, and Jewish Destiny: Rereading Martin Buber’s Wartime Writings
• Michael A. Rosenthal (Toronto) Did Martin Buber Have a Conscience? The Argument with Carl Schmitt
• Agata Mirecka (Krakow) National Humanism and Conservative Cultural Critique: Literary Conceptions of Political Order in Max Brod and Robert Weltsch
• Rosa Reicher (Frankfurt/Main) Gershom Scholem and Conservative Discourse: A Critical Analysis of His Engagement with Tradition and the Right-Wing Movement

Great Hall, Center for Jewish History

6:00 PM

CONFERENCE DINNER BY INVITATION. DIETARY LAWS OBSERVED.

DAY 3

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2026

Kovno Room, Center for Jewish History

9:00–10:30 AM

PANEL 6: AT THE CROSSROADS: GERMAN-JEWISH CONSERVATIVES AFTER 1933

CHAIR: MARION KAPLAN

• Sibel Tayçimen (Frankfurt/Oder) Between Belonging and Exclusion: German-Jewish Engagement with Nationalism in the Early Years of Nazi Rule
• Lieven Wölk (Berlin) Belonging without Regret? German Patriotism of Jewish Youth in History and Memory: The Case of the Schwarzes Fähnlein (1932–1934)
• Harry Handler (New York) The Price of Status: Uncomfortable Truths of the Weimar Era

10:30–10:45 AM — COFFEE BREAK

10:45 AM–12:15 PM

PANEL 7: OLD POSITIONS IN A NEW ORDER? JEWS AND THE RIGHT AFTER 1945

CHAIR: JULIA KORNBERG

• Abraham Rubin (Dayton) Hermann Borchardt in America: The Cold War Conservatism of a Converted Communist
• Gustavo Guzmán (Berlin/New York) Yekkes for Pinochet: Right-Wing German-Speaking Jews in Cold War Chile (1947–1989)
• Fabian Weber (Sussex) Jewish Wit and Jewish Conservatism: Salcia Landmann: A Portrait in Paradox

12:15–1:00 PM

LUNCH & CLOSING DISCUSSION with PHILIPP NIELSEN & THE CONFERENCE COMMITTEE Great Hall, Center for Jewish History

CONFERENCE CONCLUDES AT 1:00 PM

PARTICIPANTS

GHILA AMATI is Golda Meir Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

ITAMAR BEN AMI is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Utrecht University.

RACHEL BLUMENTHAL is a fellow at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

DAVID BROWN is Director of Public History at the Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin.

DARCY BUERKLE is Professor of History at Smith College.

JOHANNES CZAKAI is a postdoctoral fellow at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

CHRISTIAN DIETRICH is Privatdozent at the Axel Springer Chair for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History, Exile and Migration at Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder.

ADI GORDON is Professor of History at Amherst College.

GUSTAVO GUZMÁN is Leon Levy CJH Fellow at the CSA-NYU Center for the Study of Antisemitsm.

HARRY HANDLER is a researcher and lecturer specializing in the rise of authoritarianism and 20th-century global conflicts.

ROBIN JUDD is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University.

MARION KAPLAN is Skirball Professor of Modern Jewish History Emerita at New York University.

JULIA KORNBERG is a Jewish Review of Books Fellow for Criticism & Public Scholarship at the Center for Jewish History.

MARKUS KRAH is John H. Slade Executive Director at the Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin.

PHILIPP LENHARD is Assistant Professor of Jewish History at the University of Vienna and academic director of the Institute of Jewish History in Austria.

MARGARITA LERMAN is a PhD student in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an Affiliated Researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow.

PAUL LERNER is Professor of History at the University of Southern California.

FRANK MECKLENBURG is Mark & Lottie Salton Senior Historian at the Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin.

AGATA MIRECKA is Associate Professor at the University of the National Education Commission (UKEN) in Krakow, Institute of Modern Languages.

PHILIPP NIELSEN is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at University of Groningen.

VIKTORIA PÖTZL is Associate Professor of German-Jewish Studies at Grinnell College.

ROSA REICHER is a PhD candidate at University of Frankfurt, Buber-Rosenzweig Institute.

GAVRIEL D. ROSENFELD is President of the Center for Jewish History and Professor of History at Fairfield University.

MICHAEL A. ROSENTHAL is the Grafstein Professor of Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto.

ABRAHAM RUBIN is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Dayton.

AJ SOLOVY is Assistant Professor of History at Vassar College.

SIBEL TAYÇIMEN is a PhD candidate at Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder).

MARGARETE TIESSEN is a political adviser and policy strategist at the German Research Foundation (DFG) in Bonn, Germany.

FABIAN WEBER is DAAD-Lecturer for History at the University of Sussex and the Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies.

LIEVEN WÖLK is a PhD candidate at the Humboldt University, Berlin.

MAGDALENA WROBEL is Associate Director of Public History at the Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin.

GHILA AMATI

War, Life, and Jewish Destiny: Rereading Martin Buber’s Wartime Writings

This presentation reexamines Martin Buber’s First World War writings as a coherent expression of Lebensphilosophie rather than a temporary deviation before I and Thou. Situating Buber within a constellation shaped by the philosophy of life of Simmel, Bergson, Nietzsche, and Dilthey, it shows how he interpreted war through kinesis, Erlebnis, temporal rupture, and organic unity—as a regenerative event revealing life’s creative, unconditioned forces. It argues that Buber radicalized Lebensphilosophie by joining it to a specifically Jewish vision of communal renewal and historical vocation. Comparisons with Simmel and Bergson illuminate both the generative possibilities and internal tensions of this wartime “Kriegsbuber” phase. The presentation ultimately reframes Buber’s later dialogical turn as an ethical reconfiguration of Lebensphilosophie while exposing the right-leaning, anti-liberal dimensions of his wartime thought.

ITAMAR BEN AMI

A Total Form of Life: The Making of Ultra-Orthodox Counterculture in Interwar Germany

This paper argues that interwar Germany saw a transformation in ultra-Orthodox self-understanding. Younger circles associated with Agudath Israel increasingly moved away from understanding Orthodoxy primarily as a halakhic and communal framework seeking to preserve itself within, or on the margins of, modern society. Instead, they began to conceive of it as a comprehensive culture—one that rivaled the liberal order and aspired to provide an alternative form of life in its entirety. Through new genres of Weltanschauung, a language of cultural crisis, and an ideal of Orthodox action, they recast the loss of Jewish totality as a conservative-revolutionary project aimed at reconstituting it. By examining German Orthodox discourse, the paper traces one layer in the genealogy of the ultra-Orthodox subjectification—a layer that would later come to appear as constitutive of ultra-Orthodoxy itself.

RACHEL BLUMENTHAL

Jews and the Authoritarian Right in Interwar Austria

In March 1933, Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss dismantled Austria’s First Republic and established a fascist regime, presenting it as a Catholic, anti-Marxist alternative to parliamentary democracy. Although the 1934 constitution formally guaranteed equality for all, Jews were increasingly relegated to the status of a legal minority and excluded from public life. Nevertheless, much of Austrian Jewry, including its communal leadership, continued to support the regime. This paper examines the reasons for that support. By treating Austrian Jews as political actors rather than merely as objects of right-wing ideology, it argues that social position and political priorities fostered a strategy of accommodation that overlooked antisemitic rhetoric and actions and rested on misplaced confidence in the state’s willingness and ability to protect them.

JOHANNES CZAKAI

Machinations of Prussian Reactionary Politics: The Secret Informer Joel Jacoby and the Geiger-Tiktin Controversy

My paper examines the role of Joel Jacoby (1811–1863) within the machinery of political oppression in nineteenth-century Prussia. Transitioning from Judaism to Catholicism, Jacoby evolved from a liberal poet and target of persecution into a conservative hardliner and one of the state’s key press censors. As such, he is a prime example of those Jewish intellectuals of the Emancipation era who did not choose a liberal path, but rather emerged as reactionary agitators with right-wing agendas. The political intrigue and paranoia of this era are brought to light by Jacoby’s alleged involvement in the Geiger-Tiktin controversy, a watershed moment in the history of the Jewish Reform movement. Ultimately, the paper argues that Jacoby acted as a crucial hinge between Jewish anti-modernism and state restoration.

CHRISTIAN DIETRICH

Conceptions of Order, Belonging, and the Uneasy Relationship of the Centralverein with Social Democracy (1918–1924)

When the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (CV) was founded in 1893, it also defined itself in opposition to Social Democracy. This rejection outlasted the Empire. In 1919, the CV’s Syndikus, Ludwig Holländer, characterized German Jews, in their political character, as “almost conservative.” With the Revolution, however, Social Democracy had become a governing party and a pillar of the new state, and the CV was compelled to redefine its stance toward it.

My contribution reconstructs the political positions the Centralverein staked out after the First World War. The debates over the immigration of Eastern European Jews show how the CV’s leaders drew closer to the governing Social Democrats in their conceptions of order and security, while in their markers of belonging they simultaneously came close to the right-wing Verband nationaldeutscher Juden. Building on this observation, I ask whether the CV’s defense work (Abwehrarbeit) in the early years of Weimar was shaped far more by belonging, order, and security than by the kind of solidarity that defending the ‘Ostjuden’ would equally have required.

ADI GORDON

The “Good Jews” of the Völkisch Movement: What Were They Good For?

The right-wing Völkisch Movement was notoriously antisemitic, and its activists frequently articulated what Saul Friedlaender called “Redemptive Antisemitism,” whose vision of German Renewal was reliant on the demise of the Jews. And yet, a closer inspection of that movement shows a confounding degree of ambivalence toward Jews and Jewishness. The völkisch religious and education reformer, Wilhelm Schwaner, for example, gradually adopted an anti-antisemitic position. The early work of völkisch poet Börries von Münchhausen, to provide a different example, fits the category of literary philosemitism. Yet a much broader manifestation of ambivalence regarding Jews is the distinction made in völkisch writing between “Good Jews” and “Bad Jews.” This paper will analyze a variety of such examples from Imperial Germany, focusing on the different völkisch functions of the ostensibly exceptional “Good Jew.” In conclusion, the paper will speculate as to the relevance of such examples to parallel gestures on the contemporary far right.

GUSTAVO GUZMÁN

Yekkes for Pinochet: Right-Wing German-Speaking Jews in Cold War Chile (1947–1989)

This paper examines the political trajectories of German-speaking Jewish refugees in Chile and their support for Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, with a special focus on the experiences of Holocaust survivors. I explore how anti-Communism, class anxieties, and German-Jewish historical memory shaped conservative political identities during the Cold War.

Drawing on archival research conducted in Chile, Germany, Israel, and the United States, I argue that German-speaking Jews (Yekkes) expressed stronger support for General Pinochet than other sectors of Chilean Jewry, including Yiddish-speaking, Sephardi, and even the markedly anti-Communist Hungarian Jews. The presentation highlights how experiences of persecution, exile, and social mobility could lead some Holocaust survivors to embrace authoritarian politics.

HARRY HANDLER

The Price of Status: Uncomfortable Truths of the Weimar Era

This paper explores an often-overlooked chapter of German-Jewish history: the elite Jewish professionals who supported conservative and Nazi politicians to protect their societal standing. To maintain their positions in the art world, scientific community, and judiciary, prominent Jews such as Berlin Museum Director Max Friendlander took on leading Nazi clients; biologist Otto Warburg ran the Kaiser Wilhelm Scientific Institute, and Berlin lawyers founded the Association of National German Jews, a Jewish organization that asked supporters to vote for Hitler.

Using contemporaneous writings and wartime reflections, this paper illustrates how German Jews’ political affiliations were often guided by social class, profession, and ancestry. Their Weimar and wartime collaboration was minimized post-war as they sought to rehabilitate their careers.

PHILIPP LENHARD

The 1848 Revolution and the Failed Plan for a Jewish Concordat

In Vienna in particular, numerous Jews were prominently represented in the revolutionary movement of 1848, including Adolf Fischhof, Hermann Jellinek, and Ludwig August Frankl, with the result that the

Jewish community was often hastily equated with progressive and liberal ideas. However, the political stance within the Jewish community was significantly more complex and ambivalent. The prospect of legal equality and social recognition was countered by fears of anti-Jewish violence and the destruction of the traditional order. Using the example of the Jewish banker and politician Ignaz Deutsch (1808-1881), the paper shows that some Jewish critics even went so far as to ally themselves with the state power against the revolutionaries.

MARGARITA LERMAN

Respectability under Suspicion:

Jewish Responses to Discourses on Jewish Crime

This paper examines how German-speaking Jewish bourgeois actors responded to narratives associating Jews with crime and moral deviance around 1900. Confronted with exclusionary claims linking moral purity to imperial belonging, many countered anti-Jewish accusations through appeals to statistical evidence. Amid the rise of modern criminology and new classificatory approaches to criminality, knowledge production became both an arena of contestation and a means of confronting crisis.

This dual role is evident in the tension within German-speaking Jewry between defending communal respectability through statistical rebuttals—appropriating the very methods used to reproach them—and pursuing reformist efforts to address precarious social conditions.

AGATA MIRECKA

National Humanism and Conservative Cultural Critique: Literary Conceptions of Political Order in Max Brod and Robert Weltsch

This presentation examines selected literary and journalistic works by Max Brod and Robert Weltsch, focusing on their concepts of nation, community, and cultural renewal. It explores Brod’s idea of national humanism as an attempt to reconcile ethical universalism with Jewish national identity and analyzes Weltsch’s critique of assimilation and liberal cosmopolitanism.

By situating both authors within the intellectual context of late Habsburg and interwar Central Europe, the presentation argues that their writings represent a distinctive form of Jewish conservative cultural critique.

The paper also challenges the widespread historiographical tendency to associate German-speaking Jewish thought primarily with liberal or left-wing political traditions.

VIKTORIA PÖTZL

The Theater of Misogyny, Nationalism, and Colonialism: A Discussion of Max Nordau’s Plays

Although the influence of Max Nordau on Theodor Herzl has been thoroughly researched, an examination of Nordau’s theater texts is essential for understanding the nuances of Zionism and its interplay with colonialism, racism, and misogyny. In my presentation, I analyze Das Recht zu lieben (The Right to Love, 1893), paying particular attention to its misogyny and how it connects to Nordau’s version of Jewish nationalism. My analysis of Doktor Kohn (1898), labeled a “Zionist drama” by Theodor Herzl in 1899, considers Hans-Peter Söder’s (1995) assertion that the play’s “moral and didactic message is surprisingly ambiguous” and that it cannot be classified solely as Zionist theater.

ROSA REICHER

Gershom Scholem and Conservative Discourse: A Critical Analysis of His Engagement with Tradition and the Right-Wing Movement

This paper critically examines Gershom Scholem’s engagement with conservative discourse, especially his ambivalent relation to tradition, authority, and movement. Scholem valued conservative thought for preserving Jewish cultural and religious continuity, including the transmission of mystical knowledge, yet warned against rigidity, dogmatism, and resistance to historical change. His scholarship shows how even radical mystical movements could contain conservative elements through their reverence for inherited forms and authority. Shaped by a conservative milieu, Scholem questioned tradition’s limits while analyzing its intellectual force. The paper asks how this engagement informed his understanding of German Jewry, antisemitism, and the tension between tradition and modernity in the early twentieth century. It argues that Scholem’s dialogue with conservatism reveals tradition as both a resource and a problem.

MICHAEL A. ROSENTHAL

Did Martin Buber Have a Conscience? The Argument with Carl Schmitt

Martin Buber’s Kingship of God (1932) is a text born of two radically opposed and unnamed influences: the religiously tinged anarchism of Gustav Landauer and the authoritarianism of Carl Schmitt. Buber sought to defend what he understood as the core ethical demand of Landauer’s anarchism against Schmitt’s conservative and statist view through his dialogical interpretation of biblical theocracy. However, despite the apparent opposition, Buber partially agrees with Schmitt on one crucial point: they both dismiss the notion of a liberal subject with a moral conscience. Thus, the main question of this paper arises: how can Buber, in terms of his dialogical and communitarian philosophy, avoid the lures of conservatism and justify resistance to tyranny?

ABRAHAM RUBIN

Hermann Borchardt in America: The Cold War Conservatism of a Converted Communist

This paper explores the ideological transformations and literary legacy of forgotten émigré writer Hermann Borchardt (1888-1951), who fled Nazi Germany and resettled in New York in 1937. A member of the German Communist Party in the 1920s, and a concentration camp survivor of Jewish origins, Borchardt surprised many in the émigré community when he embarked on a new path as a political reactionary and staunch anti-Communist, cementing his ideological bona fides by converting to Catholicism in the last years of his life. The talk reconstructs Borchardt’s ideological trajectory from leftwing Weimar intellectual to Cold War Christian conservative. Focusing on the author’s anti-Communism, conspiratorial antisemitism, and Christian nationalism, I unpack the cultural logic of these overlapping and mutually affirming discourses.

AJ SOLOVY

“The Spirit of Yesterday:” German- and Austrian-Jewish Interpretations of the Extreme Right after 1945

This paper examines how German and Austrian Jews responded to the proliferation of Nazi civic associations in the 1950s. It argues that in calling for an injunction against the incorporation of SS veteran organizations, Jewish critics arrived at a definition of democracy that stood at odds with that advanced by the West German and Austrian states. Whereas both governments only curtailed former Nazis engaged in antidemocratic political activities, Jewish critics argued that supposedly “apolitical” fascist cultural and civic movements should also be regarded as incompatible with democracy. Ultimately, the paper concludes, the presence of ex-Nazis in postwar civil society limited Jews’ experiences of belonging and safety, while also prompting them to reconsider the very definition of “post-fascist” democracy.

SIBEL TAYÇIMEN

Between Belonging and Exclusion: German-Jewish Engagement with Nationalism in the Early Years of Nazi Rule

In the early years of National Socialist rule, German-Jewish intellectuals used the press and literature to negotiate questions of belonging, identity, and the future of Jewish life in Germany. This presentation examines articles by Zionist editor Robert Weltsch in the Jüdische Rundschau alongside Max Samter’s narrative Die Versuchung (1934). Both authors responded to the political transformations set in motion in 1933 by reflecting on how German Jews might assert their identity under Nazi rule.

While Weltsch called for a stronger sense of Jewish collective identity and engaged ambivalently with nationalist ideas, Samter’s narrative presents exclusion as a divine trial culminating in the protagonist’s affirmation of his Jewish identity. Taken together, these texts reveal the complexity of German-Jewish self-assertion under Nazi rule.

MARGARETE TIESSEN

Between Jewish Identity and German Nationalism: The Deutsche Rundschau, 1874-1914

Through the prism of Julius Rodenberg’s journal Deutsche Rundschau—a leading forum of cultural and political debate in the German Empire—the paper examines how nationalist, conservative Jewish liberals addressed the rise of antisemitism and the question of Jewish integration. As a response to antisemitic exclusion, the Deutsche

Rundschau emphasized cultural assimilation and national belonging over political emancipation. It thus offers a revealing case of how conservative Jewish intellectuals navigated the tensions between Jewish identity and German nationalism in the Kaiserreich.

FABIAN WEBER

Jewish Wit and Jewish Conservatism: Salcia Landmann—A Portrait in Paradox

Best known for her bestselling 1960 anthology Der jüdische Witz, Salcia Landmann (1911–2002) led a largely hidden political double life. As a self-described conservative, she contributed regularly to far-right publications, attempting to steer their political agendas in a pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist direction. This presentation uses Landmann as a primary case study to investigate the broader phenomenon of Jews on the Right. It asks whether Landmann represents an isolated anomaly or a paradigmatic archetype of right-wing Jews who were strategically instrumentalized by far-right endeavors. The paper analyzes the complex interplay of political appropriation and individual Jewish agency. Ultimately, it asks how Landmann and similar actors can be categorized within modern Jewish history.

LIEVEN WÖLK

Belonging without Regret? German Patriotism of Jewish Youth in History and Memory: The Case of the Schwarzes Fähnlein (1932–1934)

Around one thousand Jewish youth (male and female) of the Schwarzes Fähnlein claimed to be German first and Jewish second, taking a patriotic stance in late Weimar and early National-Socialism. This fraction of the former Kameraden movement represented a broader trend of young Germans from the Bünde (fellowships) turning to the political Right. In the case of the Jewish youth, their belonging was always contested.

Analyzing contemporary publications on the relation of Jews and the German Volk (people) by various authors and problematizing the process of historiography plus archival practice neglecting, misrepresenting, or distorting the Jewish right-wingers’ past, it will be shown how members of the Schwarzes Fähnlein substantiated, defended, and rediscovered their patriotic belonging as part of German-Jewish history before and after catastrophe.