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.
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 meta-genealogical 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.
A few years ago, literary critics have defined a new area of research, literary anti-Semitism. These scholars analyze the material, and comment on its political nature and implications. Museum officials have a perhaps more difficult task, as they address a more general audience, and would like to inform as well as educate. Only fairly recently, anti-Semitic objects that were part of private collections made their way into public shows. Curators are still exploring ways to present anti-Semitic texts. This essay discusses the difficulties involved, and offers examples of recent exhibits.
This article deals with the French Hegel-reception by Jean Hyppolite and its conflict with `Orthodox' Marxism.
This article examines how Julian Kulski - the mayor of the largest city in the General Government - acted during the persecution and the murder of the largest urban Jewish community in Europe. Taking into account the ghettoization, anti-Jewish regulations, forced labor, dismissal of Jewish employees, appropriation of property, tax collection and deportations, the article shows that the city administration of the former Polish capital and its mayor were deeply involved in the persecution of Warsaw Jewry and should be included in the history of the Holocaust and German occupation in Poland. Because Kulski came from a family with a Jewish background and helped his wife to hide a few Jews, his administrative collaboration with the Nazis during the German occupation of Poland and the annihilation of Warsaw Jewry suggest that he was a man of contradictions and that we need a complex approach to research the collaboration of Polish civil servants with the Nazis.
