Central voices from the margins : Hannah Arendt, Eva G. Reichmann, Eleonore Sterling, Selma Stern-Taeubler and German-Jewish traditions in the twentieth century

Hannah Arendt, Eva G. Reichmann, Eleonore Sterling and Selma Stern are important female scholars throughout the course of twentieth-century German-Jewish scholarship. Their prominence is rooted in the juxtaposition of their study of German-Jewish history and personal experience. This thesis considers their self-assertion within the German-Jewish scholarly community as it changed in shape and focus from the 1920s to the 1960s. Three distinct periods in their intellectual careers are addressed as well as their repeated transition from the margins to the centre: as female intellectuals within male-centred intellectual spheres and as Jewish scholars in the German public domain. Arendt, Reichmann and Stern mediated contemporary experience and gendered interests alongside their contribution to German-Jewish historical studies during the 1920s and 1930s. Following dispersion to new locations, their scholarship and employment contributed to the post-war reconstruction of diasporic German-Jewish life during the 1940s and 1950s, salvaging and reasserting its cultural heritage. Concerned for the post-war reconstruction of their former homeland, they forged reconnections with German society, academic life and intellectuals. Through their writings and international networking they laid the foundations for the institutionalisation of German-Jewish historiography. By exploring their contribution to the early work of the Leo Baeck Institute, the limitations of this institution for the intellectual questions and societal issues they championed are brought into focus. The third phase of their careers during the 1960s shows new examples of continuity with German-Jewish scholarship of the Weimar period. As subject-specialist advisors they promoted the integration of German-Jewish history into West German academia. In parallel with their German-Jewish studies, they led discussion of Germany’s recent history among ecumenical and academic audiences. Reichmann and Sterling reframed the narratives of Vergangenheitsbewältigung away from secular sites of interaction, to encompass the impact of religious encounters and gender dynamics of Jewish/non-Jewish dialogue, thus offering further insight into the nuanced role of former Jews from Germany in these processes.