The Central European University

Jewish Studies Program

cordially invites you to a lecture by

Ulrich Wyrwa

University of Potsdam, Technical University, Berlin

Radicalisation of Antisemitism in Europe During and After the First World War.

Presenting a brief overview about the changing features of antisemitism and the activities and attitudes of European antisemites as well as the experiences of Jews during the Great War, the lecture discusses the question whether antisemitism radicalized in Europe during the First World War. It will also be asked, if the subsequent dramatic developments after the war, namely the revolutions and counterrevolutions, must be seen as even more important for this development. The question is, with a nod to Eric Hobsbawm’s presentation of the ‘short’ 20th century, if one can observe the emergence of an extreme antisemitism at the beginning of the Age of Extremes? Provided that this process of radicalisation had taken place, it will be discussed whether this development should be seen as a peculiarity of German history or rather as European phenomenon. 

Tuesday, December 1 at 6 p.m.

In Gellner Room, Monument Building

Ulrich Wyrwa is Professor of modern History at the University of Potsdam and head of European Research Groups on Antisemitism in Europe (1879-1914/1914-1923) at the Centre for Research on Anti-Semitism at the Technical University, Berlin. He studied history and philosophy in Heidelberg, Rome and Hamburg. After his PhD on alcohol consumption among the nineteenth-century working class in Hamburg at the University of Hamburg (1988), he presented his habilitation thesis on Jewish emancipation in Prussia and Tuscany in comparative perspective (2003)  at the University of Potsdam. He has been Visiting professor at the Fritz-Bauer-Institut in  Frankfurt/Main in 2008/9, at the Centrum für Jüdische Studien in Graz in 2012, and at the The Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History in Jerusalem in 2015. He works on European Jewish history and on the emergence and development of Antisemitism in 19th and early 20th century Europe, with special focus on Germany and Italy. Forthcoming publication: Gesellschaftliche Konfliktfelder und die Entstehung des Antisemitismus. Das Liberale Italien und das Deutsche Kaiserreich im Vergleich (Studien zum Antisemitismus in Europa, Bd. 9), Berlin, Metropol, 2015.

A reception will follow