The Center for Research on Antisemitism in Berlin: Purposes and Primary Research Foci

Abstract

88 SHOFAR Summer 1997 Vol. IS, No.4 The Center for Research on Antisemitism in Berlin: Purposes and Primary Research Foci* Wolfgang Benz Wolfgang Benz studied at the universities in Frankfurt am Main, Kiel, and Munich. From 1969 until 1990 he taught at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. Since 1990 he has been professor at the Technical University of Berlin and director of the Center for Research on Antisemitism. He is the editor of a number ofmonograph series and the author or editor of more than fourteen books. His most recent publications include: Deutscher Widerstand 1933-1945 (1994); Der Holocaust (1995); Antisemitismus in Deutschland: Zur Aktualitiit eines Vorurteils (editor, 1995). The Center for Research on Antisemitism of the Technical University of Berlin, founded in 1982, is the only establishment of its kind in Europe. The Center's underlying interdisciplinary research on antisemitism has been complemented by adjacent emphases on German-Jewish history and Holocaust research. Although bound up with academic instruction, the Center for Research on Antisemitism is to a large extent also a public institution that extends beyond the parameters of a university institute to service and enlighten the more general public. Because of its long existence and its multi-faceted appearances, antisemitism can serve as the paradigm for the research of social prejudice and group conflict. With the present world-wide migration process and with the new formation of societies with large ethnic minorities in Europe many conflicts and problem areas that we recognize from the history ofthe coexistence ofJews and Gentiles have been structurally repeated. The Center for Research on Antisemitism cannot, therefore, confme itself to the narrower topic of antisemitism, rather it understands itself much more as a central institution for the general and growing theoretical and methodological research on prejudice, discrimination, migration processes and minority conflicts, and the history ofdiscriminated-against minorities. The concept of antisemitism must be expanded in the sense ofa research strategy and be applied to phenomena that extend from minority conflicts to political extremism, as they are, at the moment, manifest in animosity toward strangers and in the hatred of foreigners. Real problems such as xenophobia and racism demand answers that are based on research. The opening ofthe borders of Europe make it possible and necessary to look toward the East, where old structures ofprejudice fmd new foolish soil in situations of 'Translated by Dean Phillip Bell Centerfor Research on Antisemitism in Berlin 89 real crisis. The conference on Judenfeindschaft [hostility towards Jews] organized by the Center in December of 1994 in Lettland, for example, was comprised of colloquia addressing actual problems of antisemitism in Lithuania and other states of eastern Europe. Tracking with empirical methods of the social sciences the real trends in the consciousness and in the political behavior of German antisemitism, antagonism towards strangers, and extremism is an important area of the Center's work. Holocaust research will also have an important place in the future of the Center for Research on Antisemitism. One recent project was devoted to the topic of solidarity and assistance for Jews between 1933 and 1945. The results ofthat project were published in collected volumes, the frrst ofwhich appeared early in 1996 with regional studies extending from Norway to Greece. The contact of non-Jews and Jews within the German-dominated area is described within these volumes. Fresh ground in the area of German-Jewish history was broken in a project to document and analyze Yiddish periodicals that appeared in Berlin in the early twentieth century. The image of Jews in the popular press of the second half of the nineteenth century was the focus of a folkloristic and art-historical project. In addition to the Jahrbuch fir Antisemitismusforschung [Yearbook for Research on Antisemitism] (Campus Verlag FrankfurtlNew York) the Center also publishes other series of books (by Campus and in Metropol Verlag Berlin), including a series "Lebensbilder-jiidische Erinnerungen und Zeugnisse" [Portraits of Jewish Life: Reminiscences and Testimonies] in Fischer Paperback publications.2 A series ofvideo and audio reports devoted to the survivors of the Holocaust have appeared since 1995 entitled "Erinnern als Vermachtnis" [Remembrance as Legacy]. The purpose ofthe series is to clarify important themes in exemplary personal records. Each...