Woolf Institute people
.JPG)
Dr Lars Fischer, FRHistS
Academic Director, CJCR
Contact
lars.fischer@woolf.cam.ac.uk
+44 (0)1223 742157
Grounded in a strong interest in historiographical issues and intellectual history, Lars Fischer’s work focuses predominantly on the history of antisemitism and Jewish/non-Jewish relations in the later modern German context. Fischer was educated at Queen Mary and Westfield College (University of London) and UCL. He held lectureships at King’s College London and UCL before joining the CJCR and is also an Honorary Research Associate of the Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department at UCL. He serves on the Council of the Royal Historical Society and was Secretary of the British Association for Jewish Studies (BAJS) from 2010 to 2012. He edited the review section of East European Jewish Affairs from 2002-2004 and 2008-2012 and acts as a contributing review editor for Biography. An Interdisciplinary Quarterly. He is involved in the critical theories of antisemitism network.
Since fully-fledged ideological antisemitism would stand little chance of exerting any sort of influence beyond the lunatic fringe if it depended merely on the ingenuity and stamina of the self-avowed antisemites or those whose attitudes towards Jews are self-evidently pathological, Fischer is primarily interested in its ability to draw, to varying degrees, on a prevalence of rather more low-key susceptibilities to anti-Jewish stereotyping among those who mean well and whose stance vis-à-vis social conventions and prejudices is generally critical. In short: he focuses predominantly on the (problematic) attitudes towards Jews held not by ‘nasty’ but by ‘nice’ people. He is also interested, inter alia, in all things to do with Gertrud Mayer-Jaspers and her family, as well as Margarete Susman and Robert Oboussier.
Select Bibliography
Books
The Socialist Response to Antisemitism in Imperial Germany. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007; paperback 2010.
Co-edited with François Guesnet and Helen Klier: John Klier, Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881-1882. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Articles
Anti-“Philosemitism” and Anti-Antisemitism in Imperial Germany, in Adam Sutcliffe, Jonathan Karp (eds.), Philosemitism in History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, 170–189.
[Review article] The Non-Jewish Question and Other “Jewish Questions” in Modern Germany (and Austria), in Journal of Modern History 82, 4 (2010), 876–901.
[Review article] Continuity and Discontinuity in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century German History, in Canadian Journal of History 45, 3 (2010), 565–588.
[Review article] After the "Strauss wars", in East European Jewish Affairs 40, 1 (2010), 61–79.
The Social Democratic response to antisemitism in Imperial Germany. The case of the Handlungsgehilfen, in Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 54 (2009), 151–170.
[Review article] Contextualizing Fred Wander’s “The Seventh Well”, in East European Jewish Affairs 39, 1 (2009), 107–119.
[Review Article] Public Knowledge of the Shoah in Nazi Germany, in Holocaust Studies 14, 3 (2008), 142–162.
Whither Pogromshchina – Historiographical Synthesis or Deconstruction? in East European Jewish Affairs 38, 3 (2008), 303–320.
[Review article] Carl Schmitt: a scholarly Nazi, in Political Quarterly 79, 3 (2008), 454–458.
Professor John Klier, 1944–2007, in Slavonic and East European Review 86, 1 (2008), 111–114.
Review article on antisemitism and modernity in East European Jewish Affairs 37, 2 (2007), 249–255.
Hegel in Support of Jewish Emancipation: A Deliberate Political Act? in Owl of Minerva 37, 2 (2006), 127–157.
[Review article] The meanings of genocide, in Political Quarterly 77, 2 (2006), 295–299.
‘“Es ist überall derselbe Faden, den ich spinne.” Annäherungen an Franz Mehrings Haltung zu Antisemitismus und Judentum,’ in Dieter Bähtz, Manfred Beetz, Roland Rittig (eds.), Dem freien Geiste freien Flug. Beiträge zur deutschen Literatur für Thomas Höhle. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2003, 129–154.
The Pogromshchina and the Directory: A New Historiographical Synthesis? in Revolutionary Russia 16, 2 (2003), 47–93.
