Between Hope and Disappointment: German-Jewish Associations and Societal Anti-Semitism, 1914-1938

Completed Project

Project content:

It was not for the first time that German Jews were forced to deal with anti-Semitic hostility, disparagement, and violence when Hitler was named Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Historical research has thus frequently returned to the “disappointed hopes” of German Jews, who often reached the limits of their integration into non-Jewish German society due to anti-Semitism. Anna Ullrich’s dissertation project aims at an analysis of these disappointed hopes. The study not only centers on the question of how anti-Semitic experiences influenced hopes, wishes, and expectations, but also aims to reveal the different strategies that German Jews used to gird themselves against this. This approach, grounded in the history of emotions, makes it possible to systematically evaluate individual statements and to investigate the rules, principles, and recommendations pursued in dealing with anti-Semitism in private, semipublic, and public spheres of communication within German Jewish society. This reconstruction of the space of experience and horizon of expectation among historical actors will lead to new approaches to understand how German Jews assessed – and dealt with – anti-Semitism during the period in question.

Publications within the project

Anna Ullrich

Von "jüdischem Optimismus" und "unausbleiblicher Enttäuschung".

Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte

Berlin 2018


 



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