The Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich

624 Pages·2022·59.767 MB·English

by  Bernard M. Levinson. Robert P. Ericksen

THE BETRAYAL OF
THE HUMANITIES
Studies in Antisemitism
Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor
THE BETRAYAL OF
THE HUMANITIES
The University during
the Third Reich
k
EDITED BY
BERNARD M. LEVINSON
AND
ROBERT P. ERICKSEN
Indiana University Press
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CONTENTS
Contributors vii
Illustrations xiii
Abbreviations xv
Preface xvii
Introduction: The Betrayal of the Humanities under
National Socialism / Bernard M. Levinson and
Robert P. Ericksen 1
part I. Nazi Germany and the Historical Humanities
1. The History of the Humanities in the Third Reich /
Alan E. Steinweis 41
2. The “Orient” and “Us”: Making Ancient Oriental Studies Relevant
during the Nazi Regime / Suzanne L. Marchand 64
3. Luther Scholars, Jews, and Judaism during the Third Reich:
From the Hallowed Halls of Academia to the Sacred Spaces
of German Protestantism / Christopher J. Probst 114
4. Gerhard von Rad’s Struggle against the Nazification of the Old
Testament / Bernard M. Levinson 154
5. Jewish Studies in the Service of Nazi Ideology: Tübingen’s Faculty
of Theology as a Center for Antisemitic Research /
Anders Gerdmar 205
6. Hermann Grapow, Egyptology, and National Socialist Initiatives
for the Humanities / Thomas Schneider 263
7. German Assyriology: A Discipline in Troubled Waters /
Johannes Renger 306
vi Contents
8. National Socialist Archaeology as a Faustian Bargain:
The Contrasting Careers of Hans Reinerth and
Herbert Jankuhn / Bettina Arnold 332
part II. Law, Music, and Philosophy in the Third Reich
9. Hitler’s Willing Law Professors / Oren Gross 361
10. The Music of Arnold Schoenberg: Catastrophe and Creation /
Michael Cherlin 402
11. Political Philosophy: Hannah Arendt and Aurel Kolnai
as Interpreters of the Nazi Totalitarian State /
Emmanuel Faye 423
part III. Nazi Germany and Beyond
12. The Nazification and Denazification of the University
of Göttingen / Robert P. Ericksen 449
13. The University of Göttingen and Its Postwar Response to
Persecuted Colleagues: A Broken Relationship /
Anikó Szabó 491
14. Italian Fascism: Decentering Standard Assumptions
about Antisemitism and Totalitarianism /
Franklin Hugh Adler 522
15. Is There an Anti-Jewish Bias in Today’s University? /
Alvin H. Rosenfeld 545
Index of Scholars and Related Academic Figures Examined 571
Index of Paramilitary and Military Roles Held 575
Index of Universities and Academic Institutions Examined 581
Index of Authors 583
Subject Index 593
CONTRIBUTORS
Franklin Hugh Adler is the G. Theodore Mitau Professor of Political
Science Emeritus at Macalester College, Saint Paul. He specializes in politi-
cal theory, comparative politics, movements of the Far Right, and Holocaust
studies. He is the author of Italian Industrialists from Liberalism to Fascism:
The Political Development of the Industrial Bourgeoisie, 1906–1934 (Cambridge,
1995) and has published articles in numerous academic journals. He has also
contributed to the anthologies Antonio Gramsci: Critical Assessments of Leading
Political Philosophers (Routledge, 2001) and Dizionario del Fascismo (Einaudi,
2002) and serves as an editor of the journal Telos.
Bettina Arnold is Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Wisconsin–Milwaukee and serves as Adjunct Curator of European Archae-
ology at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Her research interests include the
archaeological interpretation and analysis of complex societies as reflected in
mortuary contexts and in the production and consumption of alcoholic bever-
ages and the archaeological interpretation of gender. She has also studied the
sociopolitical history of archaeology and museum collecting, especially their
involvement in identity construction in nineteenth- and twentieth-century
nationalist and ethnic movements in Europe and the United States. She pub-
lished a groundbreaking article on the use and abuse of archaeology for politi-
cal purposes in Nazi Germany in Antiquity in 1990.
Michael Cherlin is author of Schoenberg’s Musical Imagination (Cambridge,
2007) and Varieties of Musical Irony: From Mozart to Mahler (Cambridge, 2017).
His essay “Ritual and Eros in James Dillon’s Come Live with Me,” a study of a
vii
viii Contributors
contemporary setting of verses from “Song of Songs,” appears in Transforma-
tions of Musical Modernism (Cambridge, 2015). In 2019, he was awarded a life-
time membership in the Society for Music Theory. He is Professor Emeritus,
University of Minnesota.
Robert P. Ericksen is the Kurt Mayer Chair of Holocaust Studies Emeri-
tus at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. He has written or
edited six books, including Theologians under Hitler (Yale, 1985), Complicity in
the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany (Cambridge, 2012),
and Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust (edited with Susannah Hes-
chel, Fortress, 1999). He is Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation;
serves as Chair of the Committee on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and sits on the board of editors
of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte and an online journal, the Contemporary Church
History Quarterly.
Emmanuel Faye is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Philosophy at
the University of Rouen and has written or edited ten books, including Hei-
degger, l’introduction du nazisme dans la philosophie: autour des séminaires inédits
de 1933–1935 (Albin Michel, 2005), which has been translated into six languages
and published in English as Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Phi-
losophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933–1935 (Yale, 2009). He has
recently published Arendt et Heidegger: Extermination nazie et destruction de la
pensée (Albin Michel, 2016). He received an honorary doctorate from the Bra-
zilian Academy of Philosophy and serves on the editorial board of the German
open-access journal theologie.geschichte.
Gerald Fetz is Dean Emeritus of Humanities and Sciences and Professor
Emeritus of German Studies at the University of Montana. He received his
PhD at the University of Oregon. He has received major fellowships (DAAD,
NEH, American Philosophical Society) and was appointed Fulbright Visiting
Professor at the University of Heidelberg. He served as Secretary-Treasurer of
the German Studies Association for twenty years. He was also the refound-
ing director and chief editor of the University of Montana Press and is on the
editorial board for Ariadne Press. His publications include a book on Martin
Walser (Metzler, 1997), as well as articles and essays on Thomas Bernhard,
Franz Kafka, Friedrich Wolf, Franz Innerhofer, Lilian Faschinger, Walser, W.
Georg Sebald, and German Theater at the Wende. He is editor of a new book
on Christa Wolf (Spektrum, 2021). He is currently writing a book on Vienna
novels since 1945.
Contributors ix
Anders Gerdmar is President of the Scandinavian School of Theology in
Uppsala, Sweden. He is also Associate Professor in New Testament Exegesis
at Uppsala University and Full Professor (at large) at Southeastern University,
Lakeland, Florida. His research focuses on the Jewish matrix of the New Testa-
ment, the construction of Judaism and Hellenism in New Testament research,
and the impact of Nazi ideology on Christian exegesis. He is the author of Roots
of Theological Antisemitism: German Biblical Interpretation and the Jews, from
Herder and Semler to Kittel and Bultmann (Brill, 2009).
Oren Gross is the Irving Younger Professor of Law at the University of Min-
nesota Law School. He holds an LLB degree magna cum laude from Tel Aviv
University, and LLM and SJD degrees from Harvard Law School. He has
taught and held visiting positions in prominent institutions, such as Harvard
Law School and Princeton University. His work has been published extensively
in leading academic journals, such as the Yale Law Journal and Yale Journal of
International Law. His book Law in Times of Crisis: Emergency Powers in Theory
and Practice (Cambridge, 2006) was awarded the prestigious Certificate of
Merit for Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship by the American
Society of International Law in 2007. His most recent book, Guantanamo and
Beyond: Exceptional Courts and Military Commissions in Comparative Perspec-
tive (edited with Fionnuala Ni Aoláin), was published by Cambridge in 2013.
In 2017, he received the Stanley V. Kinyon Tenured Faculty of the Year Award,
University of Minnesota Law School.
Bernard M. Levinson serves as Professor of Classical and Near Eastern
Studies and of Law at the University of Minnesota, where he holds the Ber-
man Family Chair in Jewish Studies and Hebrew Bible. His research focuses
on biblical and cuneiform law, textual reinterpretation in the Second Temple
period, and the relation of the Bible to Western intellectual history. The inter-
disciplinary significance of his work has been recognized with appointments
to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu
Berlin, the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, and the Israel Insti-
tute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, where he codirected a research team of
eight international scholars working on Pentateuchal theory. He is the author
of four books, including Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation
(Oxford, 1997) and Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (Cam-
bridge, 2008), and six edited volumes.
Suzanne L. Marchand serves as the Boyd Professor of European Intellec-
tual History at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. She received her BA