Lecture Series 2026: The Afterlife of the German Past

During the Third Reich, German political, social, economic, and private life was transformed to such an extent that the Holocaust became thinkable and, ultimately, possible. Yet many Germans maintained a ‘not Nazi’ subjectivity, drawing a line between themselves and overly zealous ‘150%’ Nazis. This talk uses the extensive private collection of letters and documents of Annemarie and Heinrich Brenzinger, Sandra Lipner’s great-grandparents from south-west Germany, to discuss why bourgeois Germans who were not enthusiastic about Hitler still willingly embraced the Third Reich.

What role did Jewish survivors in the German Democratic Republic play in the cultural debate on the Holocaust and National Socialism? How could Jewish experiences of persecution and antifascist convictions be negotiated and articulated in the face of history, politics, and state- imposed acts of remembrance? Drawing on personal documents and works by authors like Arnold Zweig and neglected historian Helmut Eschwege, the talk explores these questions and shows Jewish and, in some cases, non-Jewish actors’ motivations and options for action. In doing so, the talk examines the tension between…

Once the driving force of antisemitism worldwide, Nazi Germany waged war against Jews everywhere, radicalising antisemitism in word and deed. After 1945, Germany was pacified by the Allies, and open antisemitism became the antithesis of the new democratic Staatsräson. Yet today, antisemitism has returned – from the far right, parts of the radical left, Islamist movements, and the centre of society. This lecture examines the German case in a global context and asks whether the postwar Staatsräson – the commitment to Jewish life and Israel’s security – can hold, and what this means for…

How did German Jews experience life as refugees from Nazism in the British Empire? Scholars of the Holocaust have often turned to frameworks of racial triangulation to answer this question, emphasizing Jews’ ‘Other-ing’ in Nazi Germany to place refugees ‘in-between’ the binaries of coloniser and colonised, European and non-European. This talk, however, takes a deep dive into the history of Indian constitutional development and legislative reform to understand the place of Holocaust refugees in the racialised socio-political hierarchy of the British Raj. Focusing on the Government of India…