The Fall and Rise of Jewish Historicism: The Evolution of the Akademie für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (1919-1934)
This article studies an intriguing, and largely unexplored, institution of Jewish research in Berlin whose development spans the brief history — and mirrors the initial optimism and ultimate tragedy — of the Weimar Republic. A central point of historical interest is the dissonance between the Akadem...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
HUC
1993
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| In: |
Hebrew Union College annual
Year: 1992, Volume: 63, Pages: 107-144 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | This article studies an intriguing, and largely unexplored, institution of Jewish research in Berlin whose development spans the brief history — and mirrors the initial optimism and ultimate tragedy — of the Weimar Republic. A central point of historical interest is the dissonance between the Akademie's original impetus, provided by Franz Rosenzweig, and its subsequent evolution under the stewardship of Eugen Täubler and Julius Guttmann. Whereas Rosenzweig envisaged the Akademie as an institution in which Wissenschaft would be actively mobilized to the task of communal self-definition, Täubler and Guttmann both insisted that the Akademie be a house of pure science. Moreover, while Rosenzweig first advanced his proposals for the Akademie as a reaction against a dry and dispassionate historicism, Täubler and Guttmann tended to affirm the virtues of esoteric scholarly inquiry. In analyzing the shift from the Rosenzweig initiative to the Täubler/Guttmann model, this article relates the intellectual and institutional course of the Akademie from its inception in 1919 to its closing in 1934. In concluding, the article surveys the range of cultural and institutional expressions among Weimar Jewry by comparing the Akademie's development to that of two contemporaneous institutions: the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt and the Institut für Sozialforschung also in Frankfurt. |
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| Contains: | Enthalten in: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Hebrew Union College annual
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