University of Sussex/University of Erfurt
Hebräischer Humanismus - Hans Kohns (1891 - 1971) Konzept eines ethischen Nationalismus im Kontext des deutschen Kulturzionismus
At the beginning of the 20th century in Prague, a group of Jewish nationalists committed themselves to the moral and politically positive strength of nationalism. Amongst others Robert Weltsch, Hugo Bergmann, Siegmund Kaznelson, Oskar Epstein and Hans Kohn belonged to this Zionist Prague Circle.
Hans Kohn was born in 1891 as a German Jew in the multi-national Habsburg monarchy. Due to the beginning national separation of Germans, Czechs and Jews, he could – already in his early years – sense the power and influence of nationalism. Although he was the son of mostly acculturated parents, he became a member of the Zionist student association Bar Kochba in 1908. This circle was not so much shaped by the political-secular Zionism of Theodor Herzl, but by the national-cultural ideas primarily developed and represented by Achad Ha’am and Martin Buber. The main objective of the latter was not the creation of a Jewish nation state, but the renewal and revitalisation of the Jewish heritage in every single Jew. Especially Buber focused on a spiritual dimension of nationalism so that Zionism was not only the self-affirmation of the Jews as ethnic community but a spiritual conversion, the unity of nation, ethic and religion. This was also the ideal that Kohn tried to reach when he was searching for the possibility of a peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jewish communities during his work for BrithSchalom. Among the founders of this «covenant of peace» in 1925 were Arthur Ruppin, Hugo Bergmann, Martin Buber, and Hans Kohn. They supported the establishment of a bi-national state with a peaceful coexistence of Jews and Arabs in Palestine under a British Mandate. But facing the bloody excesses of 1929 in Jerusalem, Kohn declared that his ideals of Zionism had failed. He instantly broke with the Brith Schalom – that itself broke down in 1933 – and left Palestine finally in 1934. He emigrated to America where he became a researcher on and a teacher of modern nationalism. Hans Kohn died in 1971.
On the basis of a systematic analysis of Kohn’s writings the dissertation aims to examine Kohn’s relevance for the presence and for the contemporary research on ethical nationalism. Therefore elements of an intellectual biography are also essential. Central concern of this approach is the reconstruction of the different facets of Kohn’s lifework, which contains crucial issues of Jewish existence and experience in the 20th century, such as: German-Jewish existence in the Habsburg monarchy during World War I, the manifold forms and ideologies of German Zionism, the specific character of experiences and activities of German Zionists in Israel as well as the emigration to the USA.
Geb. 1982 in Leipzig, 2000–03 Bachelorstudium der Linguistik und Religionswissenschaft an der Universität Erfurt, 2003/04 Studium der Judaistik und Hebraicum an der Freien Universität Berlin, 2004–06 Masterstudium der Religionswissenschaft (Schwerpunkt Kulturgeschichte des Judentums) an der Universität Erfurt (Titel der Masterarbeit: Rabbinerausbildung im deutschsprachigen Raum im 19. Jahrhundert in vergleichender Perspektive; Note: 1,3), 2006/07 zunächst wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft, ab 2007 wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin im Rahmen der Exzellenzinitiative am Max-Weber-Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien der Universität Erfurt, seit 2007 Stipendiatin des Leo Baeck Fellowship Programms.