The History of the Humanities in the Third Reich
Alan E. Steinweis demonstrates that, even prior to 1933, the humanities in Germany were not characterized by the tolerant, open-minded, and democratic values that the academy embraces today. Instead, professors with a conservative nationalist orientation played a dominant role in the academic study...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Indiana University Press
2022
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| In: |
The betrayal of the humanities
Year: 2022, Pages: 41-63 |
| Further subjects: | B
National Socialism
B Holocaust B University B Jewish persecution B The Humanities B Collaboration B Third Reich B Antisemitism B History 1933-1945 B Germany |
| Summary: | Alan E. Steinweis demonstrates that, even prior to 1933, the humanities in Germany were not characterized by the tolerant, open-minded, and democratic values that the academy embraces today. Instead, professors with a conservative nationalist orientation played a dominant role in the academic study of the humanities: this was true of virtually all the disciplines. Critical study of Nazi-era humanities scholars remained almost entirely unexplored until the 1990s. This was due to a German academic establishment that, perhaps understandably, not only wished to avoid implicating itself but also deemed such study relatively trivial in comparison to other priorities, such as investigating the collapse of the Weimar Republic, the rise of Hitler, and the mass crimes committed by the Nazi regime. The few studies that did emerge prior to the 1990s tended to set the tone for subsequent scholarship. Steinweis shows how the academic study of Nazi-era humanities developed over the ensuing decades. Steinweis surveys disciplines like folklore and history, studies of individual universities, Nazi Judenforschung, and the controversial legacies of Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger. The ongoing contemporary interest in the ideas of Schmitt and Heidegger demonstrates that some people continue to recognize transcendent truths in the work of politically repulsive individuals. These explorations equally sound a warning that professors in the academy today—no less than the prestigious professors of Nazi-era German universities—remain susceptible to moral failings in their intellectual pursuits. |
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| ISBN: | 0253060796 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The betrayal of the humanities
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