Robert Braun
When: Wednesday, November 20th, 12:00-1:30p.m.
Where: Knox Hall 509, 606 West 122nd Street
Bloodlines: National Borders and the Emergence of Popular Anti-Semitism in Weimar Germany
This paper explores the local level transmission of racism through the study of children’s stories in interwar Europe. In 20th century Europe, many children’s stories aimed to discipline children’s behavior through the inducement of fear. These so called “Kinderschreck” tales frequently featured rather innocent depictions of fantasy figures or animals that acted as bogeymen. In some European villages, however, bogeymen took more racist forms such as that of the “Forest Jew” or the “Blood Jew”. Exploiting fine-grained village level data gathered by folklorists throughout Germany and neighboring countries, this paper shows that xenophobic tales were rare before World War One, became more prevalent in some regions than others and had important implications for the decay of pluralism in interwar Europe. Spatial econometrics in combination with detailed archival work reveal that fear for Jews and Gypsies appeared predominantly in post-war border towns. Here, national borders operated as local focal points for a qualitatively and quantitatively distinct variety of nationalism that was particularly hostile towards groups that were perceived to transcend the nation. The localized racist narratives that emerged in border regions often strengthened xenophobic currents in conservative movements and subsequently provided a fertile breeding ground for early National Socialist mobilization. This paper extends the sociology of xenophobia through the demonstration that geographic boundaries themselves have an independent effect on the nature of intergroup relationships. As borders between nations activate borders within nations, pluralism often starts eroding at the margins of the state.
Robert Braun is an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
This event is free and open to the public. Lunch and light refreshments will be provided. All are welcome!
The Networks and Time Workshop Series is part of the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Lecture Series sponsored by INCITE (Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics).
Knox Hall is located on West 122nd Street between Broadway and Claremont (606 West 122nd Street, New York, NY 10027).
For inquiries about Networks and Time, please contact Eugene Grey (eg2646@columbia.edu) or Seungwon Lee (sl4443@columbia.edu).