Research

Dr. des. Imanuel Clemens Schmidt

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Affiliated Researcher

i.c.schmidt(at)em.uni-frankfurt.de
Phone: +49 341 21735-693

Working as Research Associate at the Martin Buber Professorship at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Worked at the Dubnow Institute as a Research Associate from 2009 to 2021; there, between 2010 and 2012, he was Deputy Head of the Research Unit »Mobility, Europeanness, Knowledge«; now he is an Affiliated Researcher.

Studied Medieval and Modern History, Journalism, German Language and Literature Studies at Leipzig University and completed his MA degree in 2009. Subject of the Master's thesis: »Die Stellung der Juden im spätmittelalterlichen Europa im Spiegel der deutschsprachigen Forschung nach 1945«. From 2012 to January 2018, writing a PhD thesis entitled »Hebraistische Historiografie. Protestantische Texttradition und nachbiblische jüdische Geschichte«. From July to October 2015, visiting scholar at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Since February 2018, postdoc research at the Dubnow Institute as part of a group of studies on the transition and continuity of »1918« coordinated at the Saxon Academy of Sciences. Fellow at The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati in April and May 2018. From May 2019 to July 2020, visiting scholar at the Taub Center for Israel Studies at New York University and at the Center for Jewish History in New York City.

Research Project

Protestant Canon and Jewish Experience in Horace M. Kallen's Concept of Cultural Pluralism

Research Interests

  • transnational history of American Jewish political thought
  • cultural and intellectual history of Jews and Protestantism

Publications

Essays and Articles

A Secular Tradition: Horace Kallen on American Democracy in the United States and Israel, in: PaRDeS : Journal of the Association for Jewish Studies in Germany 27 (2021), 85–100.

Historiographie juive et conversion séculière. Préfigurations protestantes de l’œuvre d’Isaak Markus Jost, in: Laurence Guillon/Heidi Knörzer/Katja Schubert (eds.), Juifs et protestants. Entre affinités électives et dialogue impossible, Louvain-la-Neuve 2020, 137–158.

A new state and a happier social order. Kallen und Brandeis zum amerikanischen Zionismus, in: Mimeo. Blog der Doktorandinnen und Doktoranden am Dubnow-Institut [Weblog], 15 January 2020.

Politische Gestaltung aus Quellen der Tradition: Horace Kallens Pluralismuskonzept und das Schlüsseljahr 1918, in: Denkströme. Journal der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig 21 (2019), 122–136.

Revealing the Absurdity of Jewish Hopes. From Polemical Ethnography to Basnage's »L'Histoire des Juifs«, in: Jonathan Adams/Cordelia Hess (eds.), Revealing the Secrets of the Jews. Johannes Pfefferkorn and Christian Writings about Jewish Life and Literature in Early Modern Europe, Berlin/Boston, Mass., 2017, 245–259.

Kulturkampf, Protestantisierung, Wissenschaft. Matthias Jacob Schleidens Konzeption vom Judentum, in: Arndt Engelhardt/Lutz Fiedler/Elisabeth Gallas/Philipp Graf/Natasha Gordinsky (Hgg.), Ein Paradigma der Moderne. Jüdische Geschichte in Schlüsselbegriffen. Festschrift für Dan Diner zum 70. Geburtstag, Göttingen/Bristol, Conn., 2016, 263–286.

Aneignung und Überschreibung. Zur Interpretation frühneuzeitlicher christlicher Hebraistik, in: Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts/Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 12 (2013), 483–515.

Art. »Edom«, in: Enzyklopädie jüdischer Geschichte und Kultur. Im Auftrag der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig ed. by Dan Diner, vol. 2, Stuttgart/Weimar 2012, 178–180.

Reviews

Yaacov Deutsch, Judaism in Christian Eyes. Ethnographic Descriptions of Jews and Judaism in Early Modern Europe, New York 2012, in: Bulletin des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts 14 (2012), 11–15.

Daniel Greene, The Jewish Origins of Cultural Pluralism. The Menorah Association and American Diversity, Bloomington, Ind., 2011, in: Bulletin des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur 13 (2011), 26–30.