Panel Discussion: 60 years “Institut für die Geschichte der Deutschen Juden”
Creating a Pan-European Imagined Jew?
Narratives, Projections, and Political Uses Across Borders
Date: 7 May 2026
Duration: Approx. 90 minutes
Host: Dr. Julia Pohlmann
Abstract:
This panel explores how representations of “the Jew” are constructed, circulated, and politically mobilized across various national European contexts in times of both crisis and peace after 1945.
While national discourses on the imagined Jew differ significantly, recent developments—such as the events of 7 October 2023—highlight the need to approach this issue from a broader, pan-European perspective. The growing political momentum behind initiatives such as proposed European task force against antisemitism further calls for critical reflection on how the figure of “the Jew” functions as a political trope across Europe.
The panel raises the question: How do national perceptions of Jews and Judaism—shaped by politics, journalism, and culture—inform broader European discourses on identity, memory, and nationhood? What happens to these discourses in times of peace and how are they updated in times of war and crisis?
Focusing on five Western European countries—Poland, the Netherlands, Spain, France, Britain, and Germany—the panel addresses three core questions by analyzing how the trope of the imagined Jew is shaped by memory politics surrounding the Shoah, geopolitical alignments, and national identity constructions.
Experts will discuss how Jewishness has been instrumentalized in cultural, political, and media narratives after 1945, both within national frameworks and in pan-European contexts.
Key Questions:
- How do different actors—state institutions, intellectuals, media—mobilize the figure of the Jew as symbolic national capital in debates on memory, cultural crisis, democracy, and identity?
- To what extent does a shared, pan-European narrative of “the Jew” exist, and how does it intersect or clash with divergent national memory cultures and supranational identity projects (e.g., EU Holocaust remembrance)?
- How is the imagined Jew invoked by pan-European political parties—across religious and ethnic lines—to support initiatives against antisemitism and promote “Western values”?
This panel welcomes comparative, theoretical, and case-based contributions from the fields of history, cultural studies, Jewish studies, memory studies, and political theory.
Format:
Standard panel with five 15-minute papers followed by a 20-minute chaired discussion. Participants are invited by the host.