Exhibiting: Jewish Davos

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the internationally renowned respiratory health resort Davos became a locus of European history, culture, and science. Already at first glance, the town was also shaped by Jewish history: from the founding of Jewish resort establishments in the late nineteenth century and of a Jewish community in 1918, through Thomas Mann’s ambivalent literary engagement with Jewish themes in the shape of the character Leo Naphta in his 1924 novel The Magic Mountain, to the world-famous Davos debate between the German-Jewish philosopher Ernst Cassirer and Martin Heidegger. On the other hand, Davos was home from 1932 to one of the largest organizations abroad of the Nazi Party. This is the context in which David Frankfurter assassinated the head of the Swiss Nazi Party Wilhelm Gustloff in 1936. From this perspective, Davos also appears like a place that reflects the charged history of European-Jewish entanglements. This seminar will examine key themes of Davos’s Jewish history through a selection of texts while developing exhibition units on the basis of objects.

Literature: A reading list will be provided in advance.

Open for senior students: no