Overview

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 how individual 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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Bernard M. Levinson ,  Robert P. Ericksen ,  Alan E. Steinweis ,  Suzanne L. Marchand
Publisher:   Indiana University Press
Imprint:   Indiana University Press
Weight:   0.903kg
ISBN:  

9780253060792

ISBN 10:   0253060796
Pages:   624
Publication Date:   06 September 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"List of Contributors List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Preface I. Nazi Germany and the Historical Humanities 1. The History of the Humanities in the Third Reich, by Alan E. Steinweis 2. The ""Orient"" and ""Us"", by Suzanne L. Marchand 3. Luther Scholars, Jews, and Judaism during the Third Reich, by Christopher J. Probst 4. Gerhard von Rad's Struggle against the Nazification of the Old Testament, by Bernard M. Levinson 5. Jewish Studies in the Service of Nazi Ideology, by Anders Gerdmar 6. Hermann Grapow, Egyptology, and National Socialist Initiatives for the Humanities, by Thomas Schneider 7. German Assyriology, by Johannes Renger 8. National Socialist Archaeology as a Faustian Bargain, by Bettina Arnold II. Law, Music, and Philosophy in the Third Reich 9. Hitler's Willing Law Professors, by Oren Gross 10. The Music of Arnold Schoenberg, by Michael Cherlin 11. Political Philosophy, by Emmanuel Faye III. Nazi Germany and Beyond 12. The Nazification and Denazification of the University of Göttingen, by Robert P. Ericksen 13. The University of Göttingen and Its Postwar Response to Persecuted Colleagues, by Aniko Szabo 14. Italian Fascism, by Franklin Hugh Adler 15. Is There an Anti-Jewish Bias in Today's University?, by 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"

Reviews

This collection of valuable studies shows how the German universities--already home to many conservative-nationalist and anti-democratic faculty as well as nazified students before 1933--welcomed the onset of the Nazi dictatorship and pursued a course of self-coordination in purging Jews and political opponents. Within the humanities, a core of Nazi activists in major disciplines such as theology, law, archeology, and history certainly exercised an inordinate influence over hiring, funding, and curriculum, but numerous opportunists and fellow travelers even in smaller departments adopted Nazi racial rhetoric and sought to demonstrate their relevance and usefulness to the Nazi cause. In the post-war period a few of the most egregious academic Nazis served as useful scapegoats, but the vast majority of faculty viewed themselves as the double victims of Hitler's dictatorship and war on the one hand and the Allies' unfair denazification on the other. But at least, in a second act of self-coordination, they sanitized their vitas, forgot their past complicities, and began to act like the non-Nazi, apolitical scholars they now claimed to have been all along.--Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill This is a sobering study of how quickly and completely German universities and the humanities were corrupted by Nazi ideology and policies during the National Socialist era. Led by some of the most prominent scholars in their fields, entire scholarly disciplines conformed to Nazi rule, leading to the broader perversion of humanistic values, standards and ethics throughout Germany. Thoughtful and profound, the essays in this volume explore this history as a warning for our own times.--Victoria J. Barnett, Director (retired), Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum As I read this rich collection, I found myself learning at nearly every turn, even from many of the footnotes. These are serious, well-researched and well-written studies; their authors draw upon both primary sources (not infrequently unpublished archival items) and secondary sources in the original languages to construct their arguments. Taken together, this is a compelling collection of serious essays from which readers, whether specialists or non-specialists, will learn much. The essays complement each other and even build on each other.--Saul M. Olyan, Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University

Author Information

Bernard M. Levinson serves as Professor of Classical and Near Eastern Studies and of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he holds the Berman Family Chair in Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible. He is the author of four books, including Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation and Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel, and six edited volumes. Robert P. Ericksen is the Kurt Mayer Chair of Holocaust Studies Emeritus at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. He has written or edited six books, including Theologians under Hitler, Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany, and (edited with Susannah Heschel) Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust.

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