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198 Jewish Studies without Jews The Growth of an Academic Field in Austria and Germany Klaus Hödl In the last few decades, Germany and Austria have experienced a staggering expansion of the field of Jewish studies.1 They have been set up either as separate institutes within a faculty or as programs that consist of courses related to Jewish history and culture offered by various departments. The development of Jewish studies is closely connected to political and cultural processes in society at large and cannot be described properly without taking them into account. The link between them became especially conspicuous in the former East Germany, where the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989 led, among other institutions and positions, to the founding of the Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für europäisch-jüdische Studien at the University of Potsdam (MMZ), which is headed by Julius Schoeps; the Simon Dubnow Institut für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur at the University of Leipzig, directed by Dan Diner; and the Lehrstuhl für Judaistik at the University of Erfurt, directed by Andreas Gotzmann.2 From an American perspective, this boom of Judaic studies in Germany may come as a surprise. It cannot be explained by the same reasons that account for their establishment in the United States: due to the attractiveness of leading a life without any assertive affiliation to a religious/ethnic group, a growing number of Jews cut their ties to their communities. The institutionalization of Jewish studies is frequently designed to countervail and reverse this development. It often serves the goal of strengthening Jewish identity.3 In Germany and Austria, the number of Jews interested in as well as ready to finance Jewish studies, and of Jewish students who would attend their courses, is too small for the issue of identity to play a decisive role and to sufficiently explain the growth of this academic field.4 In addition, the majority of its teaching staff consists of non-Jews. This fact also stands against a utilization of Judaic studies for advancing Jewish consciousness,5 as may be confirmed by comparing the situation in Austria and the United States: the first institute of Judaic studies founded in the German language area after World War II was set up at the University of Vienna and from its beginning in 1945/19666 until 1993 was headed by Kurt Schubert, a devoted Catholic.7 His religious denomination was not considered to be a problem; rather, it was regarded as an indication of growing reconciliation between Jews and non-Jews after the Shoah. In the United States, the appointment of a Catholic as head of a Jewish studies program at a well-known college in New York City raised strong criticism by the local Jewish community and finally led to his replacement.8 Jewish Studies without Jews 199 Against this background it seems obvious that Jewish studies in Germany and Austria have primarily been designed to meet the increasing interest of a non-Jewish population in the culture and history of the Jews. The founding of this academic field is hardly propelled by identity policy; rather, as will be delineated below, it is an expression of the reconfiguration of collective memory. The following pages provide a short overview of the development of Jewish studies in Germany and Austria. The focus will be directed to the question of how their proliferation in countries being largely bereft of Jews can be interpreted. What does the establishment of Jewish studies reveal about the lives of Jews in these societies? Furthermore, it remains to be asked what “Jewish” means in an environment where Jewish studies are mostly taught by non-Jews, and even Jewish cultural productions are largely performed by non-Jews. How can Jewish studies be taught to students who know Jews and Judaism only by hearsay? Early Efforts to Establish Jewish Studies The beginning of Judaic studies can be traced to the early nineteenth century, when a few Jews banded together in Berlin in order to deliver papers on and discuss scientific and cultural issues.9 Among these people were Leopold Zunz (1794–1886), Isaac Markus Jost (1793–1860), and Eduard Ganz (1798– 1830), who were to become renowned representatives of the Wissenschaft des Judentums. At that time, however, they were hardly interested in Judaism and had not yet embarked on modernizing it; rather, they dedicated their intellectual prowess to general topics. Their interest in the cultural life of society at large is indicated...

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