This event was canceled due to COVID-19 precautions. It will be rescheduled in the Fall.
Prof. Kovach will offer reflections on his own journey, as the child of Jewish emigres from Europe in 1939 who both were steeped in German culture, and on the larger question as to how to reconcile the contradictory facts that for over 150 years Jews were more invested in German culture than in any other world culture, but that it was this culture that brought about the most horrendous event in Jewish history. He will describe how In his teaching, he has explored two different paths in German-Jewish studies. First, an examination of the writings of Jews in German, including giants of German-language literature such as Heinrich Heine and Franz Kafka, and including writers of the post-Shoah era as evidence that Jewish life in the German land has indeed re-emerged. Then, an examination of how Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness have been depicted in German culture through the ages — needless to say, this includes a number of antisemitic texts, but also Germans such as the Enlightenment writer Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, who saw it as one of their missions to combat anti-Jewish prejudice among their fellow Germans.
