Hermann Beck has just been announced winner of the Yad Vashem Book Prize 2024 for his book Before the Holocaust: Antisemitic Violence and the Reaction of German Elites and Institutions during the Nazi Takeover.
The Leo Baeck Institute London is devoted to the study of German-Jewish history and culture. The LBI is an independent charity and aims to preserve and research this history by organizing innovative research projects, Fellowship programmes, and public events. Through the lens of German-Jewish history, the Institute seeks to address some of the most pertinent issues of the present time.
Hermann Beck has just been announced winner of the Yad Vashem Book Prize 2024 for his book Before the Holocaust: Antisemitic Violence and the Reaction of German Elites and Institutions during the Nazi Takeover.
Since 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany has allowed former citizens, whose citizenship was revoked by the Nazis due to their Jewish faith or ‘race’, to reclaim it. Yet, over the past 75 years, there have been significant changes regarding which German Jews – and which descendants – can enjoy that right. This talk tracks those developments, from the restrictive, often antisemitic decisions made in the 1950s, to attempts to uphold those regulations in the following decades, through to the 2021 reform of the German Nationality Act that finally redressed such exclusions.
Due to the horrors of the Third Reich, we have come to think of German nationalism as inherently antisemitic, racist, antidemocratic, and violent. This talk challenges this conventional interpretation. It shows how the defenders of the Weimar and First Austrian Republics used the großdeutsch idea, the notion that Austria should be part of a German nation-state, to create a democratic nationalism. Unlike their conservative and right-wing opponents, these republicans did not view democracy and Germany, socialism and nationalism, or Jew and German as mutually exclusive categories. As…
Hitler and the history of the Nazis remain extremely popular topics and ones that never cease to attract people’s interest, even fascination. It is crucial to comprehend the nature of Mein Kampf, the mindset of its author, Adolf Hitler, and the ideology he espoused that brought untold tragedy to millions of people – death, destruction, genocide and war. The book presents a dangerous set of ideas, regrettably ones that still have followers today, one hundred years after Mein Kampf was originally penned. This lecture focusses on some key themes of the text, as well as…
Writing on the Wall: The Unfolding Persecution of Jews 1933 to 1939
Eighth international multidisciplinary conference, to be held at Birkbeck, University of London, and The Wiener Holocaust Library, London, 7-9 January 2026
Deadline: 31 March 2025
The conference will be held in-person only, with no opportunity to attend virtually.
The Leo Baeck Institute London is delighted to announce that its renowned publication series, Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts, is now available open access, offering free and unlimited digital access to our collection of publications.
The Leo Baeck Institute London proudly presents its 2025 Lecture Series: "Belonging and Exclusion". This series explores German-Jewish experiences over four lectures throughout 2025:
The LBI London is now on Bluesky! Follow us for updates on our research, events, publications, and more: https://bsky.app/profile/lbilondon.bsky.social
The Leo Baeck Institute London is pleased to announce an important update to its online presence: our website has a new academic URL, lbilondon.ac.uk. This new web address, effective immediately, reflects our status as a UK research institute.