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Report: German Studies Association Conference 2003 Session 119: The Quest for a Credible Antisemitism: _Judenforschung_ in the Third Reich. Moderator: Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College "A Case Study: The Two Faces of an Anti-Semite" Frank Mecklenburg, Leo Baeck Institute. "The Dissemination of Racial Phobia as Knowledge" Claudia Koonz, Duke University. "Vernichten und Erinnern: 'Judenforschung' als Musealisierungsstrategie" Dirk Rupnow, Simon Dubnow-Institut fuer juedische Geschichte und Kultur, Universitaet Leipzig. Commentator: Alan Steinweis, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Although historians have typically dismissed Nazi scholarship on Jews as disreputable quackery, the presenters on this panel take it seriously. As commentator Alan Steinweis put it, panelists endeavored to understand the motivation of the experts who contributed to supposedly objective information about "Jewry" and to assess the propagandistic function of this scholarship as "a legitimizer of policy." The papers in this panel examine racial experts' construction of knowledge about "Jewry," its dissemination in Nazi Germany and its legacy in _Gedaechtnispolitik_. Why, panelists asked, did the Nazi Party and state devote so much attention to gathering information about people they intended at first to expel and then to exterminate? Each presenter focused on a different dimension of the supposedly objective _Judenforschung_ that labeled "Jewry" not only as irrevocably "other" - but as a lethal threat to the health of the _Volksgemeinschaft_. Mecklenburg examined "Jew expert" Fritz Arlt - a dedicated Nazi who could, depending on circumstance, fulminate against Jews in the vulgar style of the _Stuermer_, deliver sober lectures on the danger of "Jewry," or entirely ignore the racial question. Mecklenburg located Arlt's racist passion in the structure of opportunity that he encountered as a youthful, well-educated party man looking for a niche within which he could make himself useful. Steinweis identified Arlt as one of several empirically-oriented antisemitic researchers who focused on local studies and demography. Mecklenburg noted that Arlt's adaptability may have also accounted for his skill at shedding his Nazi background and fitting into the BRD without coming under investigation. Using Ludwik Fleck's (1935) analysis of the construction of scientific knowledge, Koonz investigated the deployment of racial facts as credible popular science in three mass-market publications, _Neues Volk_, _Das Schwarze Korps_, and Jacob Graf's biology textbook. Perceiving a major shift of emphasis in the mid-1930s from Old Fighters' _radau_ antisemitism to _salonfaehige_ racism, she suggested that the racism fed by _Judenforschung_ was both more persuasive to non-Nazis and ultimately more lethal because it mentally prepared desk murderers as well as perpetrators at killing sites to conduct thorough, rational "cleansing" operations. Alan Steinweis disputed the suddenness of a shift from the quest for physical markers of Jewishness to the search for a unique racial _Geist_ and pointed to the continuing search for physiological evidence of Jews' otherness. Rupnow opened by criticizing the assertion that Nazis intended to wipe out every trace of Judaism and pointed out that, even as wartime extermination eliminated actual Jews from Nazi-controlled Europe, _Judenforscher_ energetically confiscated and preserved Jewish religious artifacts and books to keep the memory of Jewry alive. Steinweis questioned whether researchers already in the 1930s actually envisioned a "Jew free" future, but agreed that Nazi leaders did not want to eliminate the memory of Jews. Alongside well-funded scholarship on "Jewry," Rupnow noted, Nazi scholars wrote the history of "die Judenfrage," which included earlier campaigns to eliminate Jews from Europe, and they established a museum in Prague to preserve the memory of Jews - lest coming generations become apathetic (in Rosenberg's words). Rupnow concluded that the _Judenforscher_ themselves appreciated the paradox of simultaneously preserving Jews in historical research and expelling and annihilating European Jewry. Nevertheless, the "dauerhafte Bewahrung und Perpetuierung eines ideologisch notwendigen Feindbilds" was vital for the National Socialist system. These studies of _Judenforschung_ contributed to the recent revival of interest in Nazi ideology and suggest the reasons for Max Weinreich's and Victor Klemperer's moral rage against the German intellectuals and scholars who devoted their talents not only to glorifying Nazism, but to inciting murderous racism. Claudia Koonz Duke University For a complete listing of all sessions at the 2003 German Studies Association Conference, please visit <http://www.g-s-a.org>.
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