Host Desecration Legends in Czech Medieval Literature: Violence against Judaism, Polemic against Hussitism
4 February 2015 - 5 PM
Daniel Soukup (Palacký University, Olomouc and ÚČL, AV ČR) The paper focuses on the group of medieval texts related to the cases of the Host desecration accusation in the Czech lands and surrounding regions. In the...
“Why Go Be a Beggar in a Foreign Land?” Local Identity in Bohemian Jewish Literary Sources from the 1830-1840s
3 March 2015 - 5 PM
Jindřich Toman (University of Michigan) In 1828 the young poet L. A. Frankl (1810-1894) left his small Bohemian birthplace, Chrast, and moved to Vienna, where he published a collection entitled Das Habsburglied (1832),...
Myth, Politics and Empire: The Jews of Habsburg Bukovina
1 April 2015 - 5 PM
David Rechter (Oxford University) Bukovina was ‘created’ in the 1770s, along with Galicia, as part of the Habsburg Monarchy's eastward expansion. At the eastern edge of empire, geography, culture and politics combined...
Makeshift Economies: On Hunger, Shortage and Supply During World War II
6 May 2015 - 5 PM
Tatjana Tönsmeyer (Bergische Universität, Wuppertal) Wars – both past and present – go hand in hand with the interruption of economic life. This is especially true of the Second World War, since the German occupiers...
Assets and Liabilities: Synagogues and Cemeteries in the Communist Czech Lands
3 June 2015 - 5 PM
Jacob Labendz (Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung, Berlin) The postwar Jewish communities in the Czech lands came into the possession of hundreds of cemeteries and former synagogue buildings. Caring for them and determining...