University of Cambridge
German Politics and the ‘Jewish Question’, 1914-1919
The First World War confronted German politicians with a range of unprecedented, vital questions in the spheres of domestic as well as foreign policy. As the fortunes of war shifted, so did borders, populations and national allegiances. In a period of acute and almost constant political crisis, the German government faced issues concerning citizenship, minority rights, religious identity, nationhood and statehood. My dissertation analyses these issues through the prism of the so-called ‘Jewish Question’. The Jewish Question, I contend, casts important new light on Germany’s difficult path towards a new democratic and pluralistic constitution in 1919. Jewish questions revealed the paradoxes of German state-building and the difficulties of breaking down older forms of corporate identity for the sake of national-cultural homogeneity. My principal aim in this dissertation is to offer a novel interpretation of the role that the ‘problem’ of German Jewry played in the political debates and decisions that paved the way for the Weimar Republic. The relevant historiography still tends to read the Jewish Question with hindsight, that is, in the context of the Holocaust and from a social or cultural historical perspective. While it does not ignore the short- and long-term effects the Jewish Question had on the rise of German antisemitism, my dissertation stresses its contingency and ambivalence. It offers the first sustained examination of the ways in which questions about German-Jewish citizenship and religious as well as national identity shaped the politics of the last Imperial government and influenced the processes of parliamentarisation and democratisation in the final years of the war. The Jewish Question, I argue, affords revealing new perspectives on the difficult birth of the Weimar Republic.
PhD Candidate History October 2015 – Present
Darwin College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England
Dissertation – German Politics and the ‘Jewish Question’, 1914-1919
MPhil in International Relations and Politics (Distinction) October 2015 – July 2015
Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England
Dissertation – Violence Within Peace: The Institutional Culture of Sexual
Exploitation and Abuse in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations
BA (Honours) History and Politics (First Class) October 2010 – July 2013
Langwith College, University of York, York, England
Dissertation – Freedom Fighters: Austrian Women of Jewish Descent and the Spanish Civil War
International Baccalaureate (Diploma: 43 out of 45 points) January 2000 – May 2010
Vienna International School, Vienna, Austria
SCHOLARSHIPS AND AWARDS
Fund for Women Graduates, FfWG, BFWG, United Kingdom 2017 – 2018
Simon-Dubnow Fellowship, Simon-Dubnow Institute, Leipzig 2017
Graduate Archive Fund, History Department, University of Cambridge 2017
Leo Baeck Fellow 2016 – 2017
Leo Baeck Institute, London and Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Bonn
Excellence Award, Kusuma Trust, Gibraltar 2016 – 2018
Awarded for excellence in academic and extra-curricular activities
Kate Bertram Award, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge 2016
Awarded for First Class results in MPhil in International Relations and Politics
PhD Tuition Fees Scholarship, Department of Education 2015 – 2018
HM Government of Gibraltar
CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS
‘Translation in Multi-language research’ September 2017
Alma College, Tel Aviv Israel (organiser)
Financed by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes
Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme Workshop in Freudental (paper) August 2017
Organised by Leo Baeck Institute and Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes
‘Jews, Liberalism, Anti-Semitism: The Dialectics of Inclusion, 1750-1950’ January – March 2017
Hilary Term Visiting Scholar at the Oxford Centre of Hebrew and Jewish Studies
Attended seminar in Advanced Jewish Studies and International Conference (13-14 March)
PhD Colloquium on Modern European Jewish History (paper) November 2016
Organised by Leo Baeck Institute London
Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme Workshop in Brighton (paper) October 2016
Organised by Leo Baeck Institute London and Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes
Women’s Lunch History of Political Thought Workshop (paper) March 2016
St John’s College, University of Cambridge, England