Mojżesz Schorr und Majer Bałaban

The study examines the life and work of the Polish-Jewish historians Mojżesz Schorr and Majer Bałaban, who both were active primarily in Lvov and Warsaw during the Second Polish Republic. Against the backdrop of a then pluralistic environment of multinational and multiethnic empires caught up in change and reeling towards ultimate collapse, they developed a perspective on Jewish history combining the long tradition of Jewry in Poland with Polish general history. Both historians shared the conviction that a Jewish consciousness of history could increasingly supplant religion in a world that was in the process of secularization. For the first time, Maria Gotzen-Dold connects a broad assessment of the works by Schorr and Bałaban, and subsequent studies by their pupils following in their footsteps, with findings from extensive archival research conducted in Poland and Ukraine. In doing so, she draws a picture of the expectations and perspectives arising from the decline and eventual fall of the old imperial order and its transition to cultures of history grounded in the nation state at the beginning of the twentieth century.