Abstract Using files from the Marburg University Archive, this article reconstructs the habilitation of Hans-Joachim Schoeps (granted on February 12, 1947), which had been withheld by the Nazi regime in 1934 and was compensated for. Returning from his Swedish exile as the author of several significant books and articles, Schoeps was spared most of the duties of the “normal” habilitation process and thus ready to accept the chair in Erlangen which was offered to him less than ten weeks after his habilitation.
Abstract This article examines how European Jewish communities experienced and responded to the aftermath of the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza. Based on 27 semi-structured interviews with senior representatives of Jewish communities and Jewish organizations across Europe, it argues that a “double reality” emerged: while Jewish communities received strong political, institutional, and security support from governments and public authorities, they simultaneously faced rising antisemitism, social polarization, and growing insecurity in everyday life. The study highlights the gap between formal inclusion and societal acceptance, showing how institutional solidarity coexisted with experiences of exclusion and fear. The analysis draws primarily on original interview material and is contextualized through contemporary scholarship, surveys, and reports on antisemitism, Jewish communal life, and post-October 7 developments in Europe.
Abstract If we consider the phenomenological constellation of origins, as described by Bataille and Henry, among others, as an ‘excess of life’, then the original reference to silence/excess as the pathic basic structure of physical affectivity results in a metagenealogical reappraisal of purely discursively oriented analyses of origins as a passive basis of experience. Such a demonstration therefore also involves a discussion of Christology as ‘incarnation’, including a ‘co-suffering of God’ in the sense of originally excessive self-giving, as was partly conceived in early Christian ‘theopaschitism’. This results in an original passibility of body/life as that absolute ‘more of life’ which is at work in all our living actions as an irrevocable ‘I can’ or self-affectively revealing ‘word of life’ in order to test the ‘possibility of experience’ of appearance in its ‘impossibility’ itself.
Abstract Many of the scholars who gathered at the Marxistische Arbeitswoche in 1923, and went on to found the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt am Main, were of Jewish background. At first, however, their work was hardly concerned with the social and political issues pertaining to Jews at that time. This changed in emigration. The present essay describes the shift in the Institute’s sociological research during its years in New York and its work on anti-Semitism, while focusing on the development of Theodor W. Adorno’s work.
Abstract Theodor Fritsch is considered one of the most important figures in the anti-Semitic and voelkish movements during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic. He had a decisive influence on its ideological and strategic course as an energetic demagogue, omnipresent agitator and enterprising publisher of Weltanschauung . His fatal legacy extended beyond his death in 1933 and the end of Nazi rule in 1945, reaching into the present day.
Abstract The author develops main aspects of the highly inspiring philosopher Markus Gabriel, focussing on his hidden anthropology.
This essay argues that the figure of the dog (Kitmīr/Qitmir) in the Seven Sleepers tradition serves as a test case for poetic and conceptual regimes in early nineteenth- century German reception. Reading Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan and Friedrich Rückert’s Ein Hündlein, das einst Wache that bei Schäfern … (published in the Taschenbuch für Damen , 1822, in the same context that also produced the Östliche Rosen ) alongside Qurʾān 18, Ṭabarī, Ṯaʿlabī, Hammer’s versified Qurʾān and Claudius James Rich in Fundgruben des Orients , as well as Gregory of Tours and Jacob of Serugh, the study shows how Goethe aestheticizes and stabilizes doctrinal tensions, whereas Rückert elevates the creature within a mediating, barzakh -like framework. The comparison tracks a shift from ornamental adaptation to transformative re-coding and locates key pressure points in seemingly marginal narrative details. The case sheds light on broader patterns in German engagements with Sufi metaphysics between 1800 and 1850.
This article deals with the French Hegel-reception by Jean Hyppolite and its conflict with ‘Orthodox’ Marxism.
