Christhard Hoffmann Knihy

The Norwegian Constitution of May 1814 was regarded as the most liberal constitution of its time, yet it was also radically exclusive against Jews, Jesuits and monastic orders. None of these groups were allowed to enter the kingdom, and those who did, even accidentally, were subject to imprisonment and deportation. Why did the Norwegian Constituent Assembly introduce Europe’s most antisemitic clause to Europe’s most liberal constitution? The essays collected in this volume present new historical research on the exclusion of Jews in the Norwegian Constitution to an international public. They examine the intellectual origins of the anti-Jewish clause, explore the enforcement of the constitutional ban in vivid detail and place the Norwegian case into a broader transnational European context.

Founded in May 1955 in Jerusalem by German-Jewish intellectuals who had survived the Holocaust - among them Martin Buber, Ernst Simon, Gershom Scholem, and Robert Weltsch - the Leo Baeck Institute of Jews from Germany (LBI) has been engaged in preserving the legacy of German Jewry by collecting material, doing research, and presenting historical narratives. Published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of its founding, the present volume is the first to reconstruct the LBI's fascinating history, from its beginnings as a memorial community of surviving German Jews to its present status as an internationally renowned research institute. The authors are social and cultural historians from various countries, the majority of whom are not directly affiliated with the LBI.

Die 1988 erstmals publizierte Studie untersucht die Darstellung von Juden und Judentum in der althistorischen Historiographie zwischen der Aufklärung und dem Holocaust. Konzentriert auf einzelne Meinungsführer (Heinrich Leo, Johann Gustav Droysen, Theodor Mommsen und Eduard Meyer) und jüdische Altertumswissenschaftler (Eugen Täubler, Isaak Heinemann, Elias Bickermann) verbindet die Untersuchung forschungsgeschichtliche, biographische und politische Fragestellungen und arbeitet so grundlegende Wertungs-und Deutungsmuster zu Juden und Judentum innerhalb des deutschen Bildungsbürgertums des 19. und frühen 20 Jahrhunderts heraus.