How did the academy react to the rise, dominance, and ultimate fall of Germany's Third Reich? Did German professors of the humanities have to tell themselves lies about their regime's activities or its victims to sleep at night? Did they endorse the regime? Or did they look the other way, whether out of deliberate denial or out of fear for their own personal safety? The Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich is a collection of groundbreaking essays that shed light on this previously overlooked piece of history.
The Betrayal of the Humanities accepts the regrettable news that academics and intellectuals in Nazi Germany betrayed the humanities, and explores what went wrong, what occurred at the universities, and what happened to the major disciplines of the humanities under National Socialism.
The Betrayal of the Humanities details not only howindividual scholars, particular departments, and even entire universities collaborated with the Nazi regime but also examines the legacy of this era on higher education in Germany. In particular, it looks at the peculiar position of many German scholars in the post-war world having to defend their own work, or the work of their mentors, while simultaneously not appearing to accept Nazism.
Author(s): Bernard M. Levinson. Robert P. Ericksen
Series: Studies in Antisemitism
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 623
City: Bloomington
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Contributors
Illustrations
Abbreviations
Preface
Introduction: The Betrayal of the Humanities under National Socialism / Bernard M. Levinson and
Robert P. Ericksen
Part I. Nazi Germany and the Historical Humanities
1. The History of the Humanities in the Third Reich / Alan E. Steinweis
2. The “Orient” and “Us”: Making Ancient Oriental Studies Relevant during the Nazi Regime / Suzanne L. Marchand
3. Luther Scholars, Jews, and Judaism during the Third Reich:From the Hallowed Halls of Academia to the Sacred Spaces of German Protestantism / Christopher J. Probst
4. Gerhard von Rad’s Struggle against the Nazification of the Old Testament / Bernard M. Levinson
5. Jewish Studies in the Service of Nazi Ideology: Tübingen’s Faculty of Theology as a Center for Antisemitic Research / Anders Gerdmar
6. Hermann Grapow, Egyptology, and National Socialist Initiatives for the Humanities / Thomas Schneider
7. German Assyriology: A Discipline in Troubled Waters / Johannes Renger
8. National Socialist Archaeology as a Faustian Bargain: The Contrasting Careers of Hans Reinerth andHerbert Jankuhn / Bettina Arnold
Part II. Law, Music, and Philosophy in the Third Reich
9. Hitler’s Willing Law Professors / Oren Gross
10. The Music of Arnold Schoenberg: Catastrophe and Creation / Michael Cherlin
11. Political Philosophy: Hannah Arendt and Aurel Kolnai as Interpreters of the Nazi Totalitarian State / Emmanuel Faye
Part III. Nazi Germany and Beyond
12. The Nazification and Denazification of the University of Göttingen / Robert P. Ericksen
13. The University of Göttingen and Its Postwar Response to Persecuted Colleagues: A Broken Relationship / Anikó Szabó
14. Italian Fascism: Decentering Standard Assumptions about Antisemitism and Totalitarianism / Franklin Hugh Adler
15. Is There an Anti-Jewish Bias in Today’s University? / Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Index of Scholars and Related Academic Figures Examined
Index of Paramilitary and Military Roles Held
Index of Universities and Academic Institutions Examined
Index of Authors
Subject Index
About the Author
