Description:
How did the academy react to the rise, dominance, and ultimate fall of Germany's Third Reich? Did German professors of the humanities have to tell themselves lies about their regime's activities or its victims to sleep at night? Did they endorse the regime? Or did they look the other way, whether out of deliberate denial or out of fear for their own personal safety? The Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich is a collection of groundbreaking essays that shed light on this previously overlooked piece of history.
The Betrayal of the Humanities accepts the regrettable news that academics and intellectuals in Nazi Germany betrayed the humanities, and explores what went wrong, what occurred at the universities, and what happened to the major disciplines of the humanities under National Socialism.
The Betrayal of the Humanities details not only how individual scholars, particular departments, and even entire universities collaborated with the Nazi regime but also examines the legacy of this era on higher education in Germany. In particular, it looks at the peculiar position of many German scholars in the post-war world having to defend their own work, or the work of their mentors, while simultaneously not appearing to accept Nazism.
Review Quotes:
"This collection of valuable studies shows how the German universities--already home to many conservative-nationalist and anti-democratic faculty as well as nazified students before 1933--welcomed the onset of the Nazi dictatorship and pursued a course of "self-coordination" in purging Jews and political opponents. Within the humanities, a core of Nazi activists in major disciplines such as theology, law, archeology, and history certainly exercised an inordinate influence over hiring, funding, and curriculum, but numerous opportunists and fellow travelers even in smaller departments adopted Nazi racial rhetoric and sought to demonstrate their "relevance" and "usefulness" to the Nazi cause. In the post-war period a few of the most egregious academic Nazis served as useful scapegoats, but the vast majority of faculty viewed themselves as the double victims of Hitler's dictatorship and war on the one hand and the Allies' unfair denazification on the other. But at least, in a second act of self-coordination, they sanitized their vitas, forgot their past complicities, and began to act like the non-Nazi, apolitical scholars they now claimed to have been all along."--Christopher R. Browning, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"This is a sobering study of how quickly and completely German universities and the humanities were corrupted by Nazi ideology and policies during the National Socialist era. Led by some of the most prominent scholars in their fields, entire scholarly disciplines conformed to Nazi rule, leading to the broader perversion of humanistic values, standards and ethics throughout Germany. Thoughtful and profound, the essays in this volume explore this history as a warning for our own times."--Victoria J. Barnett, Director (retired), Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
"As I read this rich collection, I found myself learning at nearly every turn, even from many of the footnotes. These are serious, well-researched and well-written studies; their authors draw upon both primary sources (not infrequently unpublished archival items) and secondary sources in the original languages to construct their arguments. Taken together, this is a compelling collection of serious essays from which readers, whether specialists or non-specialists, will learn much. The essays complement each other and even build on each other."--Saul M. Olyan, Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies, Brown University
"With Jewish students under assault on campuses across the United States, The Betrayal of the Humanities demonstrates the role academicians can play in "validating" antisemitism and producing research to underpin genocidal worldviews."--The Times of Israel
"The Betrayal of the Humanities is a testimony to what can go wrong if humanistic education is separated from ethics, from moral imperatives, and from the face of one's neighbor. We would do well to heed its warning."--Kathleen Gallagher Elkins, Review of Biblical Literature
"While these accounts and perspectives about a receding era stand very well on their own, I can't help but see resonance with some of the intense fights over the role and function of universities today."--Jonathan Zittrain, George Bemis Professor of International Law, Harvard University, The Harvard Gazette
"[W]e need more books like The Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich. In a time of intensifying anti-Semitism, the volume edited by Levinson and Ericksen ought to be read by every single academic who stands in the tradition of the universities in Germany and surrounding countries."--Kristin de Troyer, Review of Biblical Literature
"My first response was fascinated horror and then a burning need to know more This new interdisciplinary volume, The Betrayal of the Humanities, while building on a current of recent scholarship, contains material that makes it especially relevant for members of the Society of Biblical Literature who specialize in the historical humanities, including Hebrew Bible, Assyriology, Egyptology, early Christianity, and rabbinics. It covers issues known to few scholars of religion, myself included. Today more than ever it is crucial for people to study such works, given the renewed attractions of authoritarianism, anti-Semitism, and Christian nationalism in many countries."--Kristen Lindbeck, Review of Biblical Literature
"Levinson and Erickson's Betrayal of the Humanities represents a current trend in scholarship to critically reevaluate the history of the Nazi era. The editors have framed the essays concerning specific fields of study, institutions, and individual scholars within a meta-discussion about the values of the humanities in higher education."--Rannfrid I. Lasine Thelle, Review of Biblical Literature
"The editors offer a highly readable text in the spirit of Max Weinreich's Hitler's Professors (1946). Extending beyond the humanities, 15 authors delve into the process of the nazification of higher education, along with a modest comparison with Mussolini's Fascism. . . . These authors focus on examples where individuals compromised themselves in repeated demonstrations of anti-Semitism, e.g., Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt. Each article can stand on its own. Highly recommended."--D. A. Meier, Choice
"It is important for scholars to understand the history of their disciplines; yet, the influence of Nazi associated scholars on modern disciplines has been shockingly understudied. A new book, The Betrayal of the Humanities, provides an important work of historiography which digs into the role of the scholars and universities during the Third Reich and their lasting impact on the academy."--Kristofer Dale Phan Coffman, Word and World
"Just how one of the great culture nations of the West turned from the individualistic and intellectual freedom-affirming values of the Enlightenment, in whose formation it had played a major role, to an oppressive, intolerant, and xenophobic society has been a troubling topic for historians for almost a century, not least because it implies the further question: Could it happen here? The volume under review . . . contains fourteen essays discussing the experiences of participants in various intellectual professions (those covered by the native term Bildungsbürgertum) during the Nazi period. Commendably, the editors have sought a "transdisciplinary readership" (p. xviii) and have succeeded in presenting excellent articles accessible to nonspecialists."--Gary Beckman, Journal of the American Oriental Society
"The present volume is impressive."--Peter Heine, Orientalistische Literaturzeitung