Clemens Heni

Clemens Heni (* 1970 ) is a German political scientist , journalist , publisher (Edition Critic) and director of the Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA).

Life

Clemens Heni studied philosophy , history , empirical cultural studies and political science at the Universities of Tübingen , Bremen and the Free University of Berlin (FU). He received his doctorate in 2006 in political science at the Leopold-Franzens University Innsbruck . The reviewers of the dissertation on “A national observer in the FRG . The salon ability of new right-wing ideologems using the example of Henning Eichberg ”were Anton Pelinka and Andrei S. Markovits .

The dissertation , funded by various foundations, was published in early 2007. Heni examines the influence of new right-wing ideology on political culture in Germany since the 1970s and presents a 10-point scheme for the question “What does new rights mean?”: 1) anti-universalism, 2) national identity, 3) the The slogan “people instead of the state”, 4) ethnopluralism, 5) anti-Americanism, 6) anti-Semitism, 7) national socialism, 8) the New Right stands for the neo-pagan, 9) the rehabilitation of the “good sides” of National Socialism, 10) conservative revolutionaries etc. Reviews were made by the State Center for Political Education Brandenburg, in the journals Neue Politische Literatur 1/2008, Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 4/2007, Tribüne. Journal for Understanding Judaism 4/2008, the 2008 Yearbook Democracy & Extremism and the online journals HaGalil and Die Juedische . Mathias Brodkorb judged for a glance to the right that Heni was trying to prove his theses absurd arguments, the results were sometimes "screamingly funny". In applying his own standards, Heni would also have to judge himself as a secondary anti-Semite. Karl Pfeifer , on the other hand, came to the conclusion that Heni proves "that you can write a scientific book in such a way that it is also exciting reading for anyone who deals with politics in Germany and Austria".

In 2008/2009 Heni was employed as a post- doctorate associate at the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA) at Yale University in New Haven , Connecticut . The center received no further funding in 2011. Heni then accused Yale University of another "insignificant place" for the spread of u. a. Postcolonialism , cultural relativism , Islamism disguised as “tolerance or multiculturalism ” , anti-Americanism and the trivialization of anti-Semitism, as the Humboldt University of Berlin , the Free University of Berlin , Columbia University , the University of California or the Berkeley University already are .

In August 2011 he published the study “Schadenfreude. Research on Islam and Anti-Semitism in Germany after 9/11 ”. The study was carried out in cooperation with the Arabist and historian Wolfgang G. Schwanitz and as part of a project supported by the Middle East Forum (MEF) and its President Daniel Pipes in Philadelphia. In 2011 Heni published the entry on Islamism in Germany in the world's first almanac on Islamism ("World Almanac of Islamism"), published by the American Foreign Policy Council (AFP) think tank in Washington DC .

His study "Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon" from 2013, which u. a. concerned with the uniqueness of the Holocaust, was particularly well received in the USA.

In November 2017, Heni wrote a text in the Times of Israel against Pipes and its support for a new right-wing website. In December 2017, an article by journalist Nico Schmidt in the weekly newspaper Die Zeit analyzed the “America Connection of the New Right”. Die Zeit criticizes the blog “ Journalistenwatch ” and quotes next to the journalist Esther Scheiner and the former chairwoman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany Charlotte Knobloch also Heni, who is against the support of this blog by Pipes.

His volume of essays “An Alternative to Germany” from 2017 received positive reviews from the columnist Wolfgang Brosche.

Positions and controversies

The Jewish weekly newspaper Jewish Ledger from the USA quoted Heni in a biographical article about him in 2010 as saying that for many of his (former) fellow students and German researchers an analysis of National Socialism and the Holocaust was often accompanied by anti-Zionist positions. In addition, after the Islamist-motivated mass murder of September 11, 2001, there was a socially acceptable anti-Americanism .

With an article in the Jerusalem Post on December 3, 2008, he was one of the initiators of an intensive debate on Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, which took place at a controversial conference of the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) of the Technical University of Berlin in December 2008 with the title "Feindbild Muslim - Enemy Jew "developed. Sharp criticism of Heni's statements came from Micha Brumlik , who accused Heni and co-authors Henryk M. Broder and Matthias Küntzel of using a "journalistic campaign" to bring Wolfgang Benz , the head of the ZfA, close to anti-Semitism and himself To behave “just as fundamentalist” as “the radical Islamists”. The Israeli Holocaust researcher Yehuda Bauer also defended Benz and the ZfA against the allegations. Also Mathias Brodkorb shared the criticism of Henis estimates and spoke of " philo - de [m] well-meaning, but also incorrect generalizations in reverse brother of anti-Semitism".

A critical scientific article by Heni about the research at the ZfA in October 2009 in the American Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA) led to his temporary suspension due to threats from several “Board” members who did not share Heni's criticism of the ZfA the "Board," as reported by the Jerusalem Post . Other JSA “board” members protested and publicly supported Heni's suspension, including Professors Paul Lawrence Rose, Robert S. Wistrich , Milton Shain, Alvin H. Rosenfeld, and Sander L. Gilman .

With two articles on the weblog "Axis des Guten" on January 15 and 27, 2010 about Karl Bosl , Wolfgang Benz's doctoral supervisor, Heni pointed out that Bosl was a former National Socialist and Benz honored him in the 1980s would have. Bosl was u. a. Member of the NSDAP and the SA and was paid for a research project by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1938 on the basis of a research application. Even after 1945, Bosl was active in anti-Semitic circles and in 1964 gave a lecture at the Witikobund , in which he equated the expulsion of Germans from the East with the Holocaust. The Mittelbayerische Zeitung reported in October 2011 on Heni's criticism of Bosl's activities under National Socialism. In November 2011 a square named after Bosl in the Bavarian city of Cham was renamed again and further honors Bosl withdrew.

In 2013, Heni again criticized Micha Brumlik, who had spoken out in favor of a change in Israeli immigration policy, and accused him of a "long-term delegitimation campaign against the Jewish state of Israel". The editorial staff of the magazine then specifically characterized Heni, due to his “malicious interpretation” of Brumlik's statements, as “crazy”. Jörn Schulz assigned Heni's criticism in the Jüdische Allgemeine to an anti-German position.

In December 2017, the journalist Katja Thorwarth conducted an interview with Heni, which was published in the features section of the Frankfurter Rundschau (p. 34/35) on December 16. On December 18, 2017, the interview was also published online with a slight extension. A core thesis of the conversation is that the “ summer fairy tale of 2006” (the men's soccer world championship that took place in Germany) promoted nationalism and “ prepared the ground for the AfD ”. His study "The complex anti-Semitism" was presented on December 3, 2018 on radio WDR 5 ("Scala") and on December 4, 2018 on WDR 3 ("Mosaik").

Awards

For an article on anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the role of Viktors Arājs in the murder of the Jews in Latvia during the Shoah, Heni received an award for the “best original essay” in the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism in New York City in October 2010 of which he was a member of the Board of Directors .

Books

• Salon ability of the New Right. “National Identity”, Anti-Semitism and Anti-Americanism in the Political Culture of the Federal Republic of Germany 1970–2005. Henning Eichberg as an example. With a foreword by Anton Pelinka . Marburg 2007 [zgl. Diss. Uni Innsbruck 2006], ISBN 978-3-8288-9216-3
• Anti-Semitism and Germany - Preliminary Studies for the Critique of an Intimate Relationship , Morrisville 2009, ISBN 978-3-00-027564-7
• Malicious joy. Research on Islam and anti-Semitism in Germany after 9/11, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9814548-0-2
• (Together with Thomas Weidauer as editor): A super GAUck. Political culture in the new Germany . With contributions by Wolfgang Wippermann , Efraim Zuroff , Anton Maegerle , Patrick Gensing , Deniz Yücel u. a., Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-9814548-2-6 (Review Publikative.org: "Ein Super-GAUck" )
• Antisemitism Specific Phenomenon. Holocaust Trivialization - Islamism - Post-colonial and Cosmopolitan anti-Zionism , Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-9814548-5-7
• Critical Theory and Israel. Max Horkheimer and Judith Butler in the context of Judaism, binationalism and Zionism (The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA) / Studies on the Middle East), Volume 2, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-9814548-8-8
• An alternative to Germany: essays. (The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism / Studies on Right-Wing Extremism and the New Right, Volume 2) Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-946193-18-0
• The complex of anti-Semitism. Dull and educated, Christian, Muslim, lechts, rinks, postcolonial, romantic, patriotic: German . (The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA) / Studies on Antisemitism, Volume 7), Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946193-21-0
• Together with Gerald Grüneklee and Peter Nowak : Corona and Democracy. Left criticism. With a foreword by Rebecca Niazi-Shahabi , Edition Critic, Berlin 2020, ISBN 978-3-946193-33-3

Editor of publications

• Robert S. Wistrich: Muslim anti-Semitism. A current danger . Translated from the English by Clemens Heni, with the assistance of Thomas Weidauer. With a foreword by Clemens Heni, an afterword by Robert S. Wistrich and a bibliography of the writing by Robert S. Wistrich since 1973 (= The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), Studies on Antisemitism, Volume 2), Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9814548-1-9 .
• Anton Maegerle : From Obersalzberg to NSU: The extreme right and the political culture of the Federal Republic 1988-2013 (= The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), Studies on Right-Wing Extremism and the New Right, Volume 1), Berlin 2013 , ISBN 978-3-9814548-6-4
• Ben Cohen: Some Of My Best Friends. A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism . (= The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA) Studies in Antisemitism, Volume 4), Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-9814548-9-5 .
• Georg M. Hafner , Esther Schapira : The child, death and the media battle for truth. The case of Mohammed al-Durah . (= The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), Studies on the Middle East, Volume 3), Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-9814548-7-1 .
• Karl Pfeifer : Once to Palestine and back. A Jewish way of life . (= The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), Studies on the Middle East, Volume 4), Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-9815919-2-7 .
• Robert S. Wistrich : The anti-Semitic madness. From Hitler to the holy war against Israel . With a foreword by Robert S. Wistrich, May 2015 and the obituary “The end of an epoch”. Translated from the English by Karl Heinz Siber (= The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), Studies on Antisemitism, Volume 5), Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-946193-13-5 .
• Wiebke Dursthoff: Kibbutz and Bauhaus. Arieh Sharon and the Modern Age in Palestine . (= The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), Studies on the Middle East, Volume 5) [zgl. Diss. Uni Hannover 2010]), Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-946193-01-2
• Fania Oz-Salzberger / Yedidia Z. Stern (ed.): The Israeli nation state. Political, constitutional and cultural challenges . (= The Berlin International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (BICSA), Studies on the Middle East, Volume 6), Translated from the English by Clemens Heni and Michael Kreutz, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-946193-05-0 .

Selected items

• Ahasver, Moloch and Mammon. The 'Eternal Jew' and the German specifics in anti-Semitic images since the 19th century, in: Andrea Hoffmann et al. (Ed.), The cultural side of anti-Semitism between Enlightenment and Shoah , Tübingen 2006, 51–79
• 1968 = 1933? Götz Alys Totalitarismusfiktion, in: Blätter für German and international politics , Vol. 53, No. 4, 2008, 47-58
• Secondary anti-Semitism. A little-explored part of post-Holocaust anti-Semitism, tribune. Journal for Understanding Judaism , Vol. 47, No. 187, 2008, 132–142
• Secondary Anti-Semitism. From Hard-core to Soft-core Denial of the Shoah, Jewish Political Studies Review , 20: 3-4, 2008, 73-92
• Antisemitism as a Specific phenomenon, Journal for the Study of Antisemitism , Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009, 29-38
• The Prague Declaration, Holocaust Obfuscation and anti-Semitism, in: Vĕra Tydlitátová / Alena Hanzová (eds.), Anatomy of Hatred: Essays on Anti-Semitism , Pilsen, University of West Bohemia. The Center of Middle Eastern Studies, 2009, 47–59
• German Ideology: Understanding Ahasver, Mammon, and Moloch, Journal for the Study of Antisemitism , Vol. 2, No. 1, 2010, 49-87
• Germany, in: The American Foreign Policy Council (ed.), World Almanac of Islamism , Lanham 2011, 437–449
• Defense against the memory of the Holocaust and the comparative obsession, in: Clemens Heni / Thomas Weidauer (eds.) (2012), Ein Super-GAUck. Political culture in the new Germany , Berlin 2012, 7–42
• Antisemitism in UK Academia, Journal for the Study of Antisemitism , Vol. 5, No. 1, 2013, 4401-4415
• Obituary: The End of an Era, in: Robert S. Wistrich: Der Antisemitische Wahn. From Hitler to the holy war against Israel. With a foreword by Robert S. Wistrich, May 2015 and the obituary »The End of an Epoch«, Berlin 2015, i – xvi
• Germans among the victims too. 70 Years of the End of National Socialism: On the Politics of Remembrance and Anti-Semitism since 1945, www.literaturkritik.de, May 4, 2015
• Kibbutz and Bauhaus. Arieh Sharon and Modernism in Palestine (as stated above), Berlin 2016, 10-18
• Studying Antisemitism: Some Troubling Trends in Academia, in: Robert S. Wistrich (ed.): Anti-Judaism, Antisemitism, and Delegitimizing Israel, Lincoln, NE 2017, 144–150
• “Beyond“ cheerful philology ”? From SS-Ahnenerbe to the Federal Republic: Karl Bosl and his pupil Wolfgang Benz ”, in: Danielle Buschinger et al., (Eds), Mélanges offerts à Jeff Richards par ses amis à l'occasion de son 65e anniversaire, Center d'Etudes Médiévales de la Picardie, Amiens 2017
• Preface: Zionism and the reality at German universities today, in: Wiebke Dursthoff,
• Prolegomena on critical anti-Semitism research in education , May 14, 2019
• Spatial turn goes Antifa - Arch + 235 , the New Right and the anti-Semitic stain of postcolonialism, September 4th, 2019
• Right Time: Against the Return of Nationalism, Political Science Portal , November 13, 2019
• The end of a left-wing radical era: On the death of Hermann L. Gremliza (November 20, 1940– December 20, 2019), December 23, 2019
• Doors open for anti-Semites : On the role of the Jewish Museum Berlin (with Michael Kreutz), Der Tagesspiegel , January 2, 2020, p. 22

Web links

• Literature by and about Clemens Heni in the catalog of the German National Library
• Clemens Heni's website
• Introduction to the book "Schadenfreude"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.editioncritic.de/
2. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated November 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Clemens Heni: Salon ability of the new right. ›National Identity‹, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism in the political culture of the Federal Republic of Germany 1970–2005: Henning Eichberg als Exempel , Marburg 2007, pp. XV – XVI .; Archive link ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on December 31, 2011) 
4. ↑ Cf. “Salon ability of the New Right”, pp. 23–27.
5. ↑ Mathias Brodkorb: Salon ability of the new right? About the "secondary anti-Semite" Clemens Heni and the "folk observer" Henning Eichberg , look to the right , March 13, 2009
6. ↑ Karl Pfeifer: Salon ability of the new right , haGalil, Sept. 30, 2007
7. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated February 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed January 3, 2012). 
8. ↑ Cindy Mindell, Former Yale Antisemitism Scholar, One Year Later (Clemens Heni), The Jewish Ledger, November 17, 2010, http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/10430 (accessed January 1, 2012 )
9. ↑ Yale kills YIISA ( Memento of the original from February 28, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Clemens Heni, June 8, 2011 
10. ↑ Schadenfreude. Research on Islam and anti-Semitism in Germany after 9/11, Berlin 2011, p. 395
11. ↑ http://almanac.afpc.org/Germany (accessed December 31, 2011); the entry of this almanac is available online and in American Foreign Policy Council (ed.), World Almanac of Islamism, Lanham 2011, pp. 437–449
12. ↑ Asaf Romirowsky: Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon . In: Asaf Romirowsky . ( romirowsky.com [accessed January 13, 2018]).
13. ↑ Kenneth Marcus: Is Anti-Semitism Unique ?: Review of Clemens Heni, Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon (Berlin: Edition Critic, 2013) . January 13, 2018 ( researchgate.net [accessed January 13, 2018]).
14. ^ Raymond Stock: Review of Anti-Semitism: A Specific Phenomenon. Holocaust Trivialization — Islamism — Postcolonial and Cosmopolitan Anti-Zionism . In: Middle East Quarterly . March 1, 2017 ( meforum.org [accessed January 13, 2018]).
15. ^ Antisemitism: A Specific Phenomenon (REVIEW) . In: Algemeiner.com . ( algemeiner.com [accessed January 13, 2018]).
16. ^ Jews should stop supporting the Alt-Right and the enemies of the Jewish people . In: The Times of Israel . ( timesofisrael.com [accessed January 13, 2018]).
17. ^ Nico Schmidt: "Journalistenwatch": The America Connection of the New Right . In: The time . December 17, 2017, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed January 13, 2018]).
18. ↑ "An Alternative to Germany" - Still there . In: The Columnists. Personally. Party. Provocative. ( diekolumnisten.de [accessed on January 13, 2018]).
19. ↑ http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/10430 Cindy Mindell: Former Yale Antisemitism Scholar, One Year Later , The Jewish Ledger, November 17, 2010, (accessed January 1, 2012)
20. ↑ Antisemitism is not the same as Islamophobia, in: Jerusalem Post, December 3, 2008, http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=122938 (accessed January 1, 2012)
21. ↑ Micha Brumlik: To compare does not mean to equate , taz, March 21, 2009
22. ^ Yehuda Bauer: Berlin conference didn't lump Islamophobia with anti-Semitism , Jerusalem Post, March 4, 2009
23. ^ Mathias Brodkorb: When in doubt, for war - Why right-wing extremism researcher Clemens Heni was campaigning for John McCain , Blick nach rechts, April 6, 2009
24. ↑ “Antisemitism as a Specific phenomenon” ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 754 kB), in: Journal for the Study of Antisemitism, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2009), pp. 29-38. 
25. ↑ Jerusalem Post, March 7, 2010, http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=170355 (accessed January 1, 2012)
26. ↑ A Nazi and his student: Karl Bosl and Wolfgang Benz, January 15, 2010, http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.php/dadgd/article/ein_nazi_und_sein_schueler_karl_bosl_und_wolfgang_benz/ ; Membership number 1884319, January 27, 2010, http://www.achgut.com/dadgdx/index.php/dadgd/article/trägersnummer/ ( accessed on January 2, 2012)
27. ^ Bosl, Karl: Nuremberg - Bohemia - Prague. Lecture to the Witikobund, given on May 12, 1964 in Nuremberg as part of the Sudeten German Day, in: ders., Nürnberg Böhmen Prag, Munich, pp. 5–18, here p. 6
28. ↑ The Bosl Case: Dark Spots from the Nazi Era. How does Cham deal with the memory of his deceased honorary citizen? The city council decides non-publicly, Mittelbayerische Zeitung, October 24, 2011, http://www.mittelbayerische.de/index.cfm?pid=10059&pk=719226&p=1 (accessed on January 1, 2012)
29. ↑ Mittelbayerische Zeitung, November 25, 2011, http://www.mittelbayerische.de/index.cfm?pid=10059&pk=730426&p=1 (accessed on January 2, 2012)
30. ↑ Jens Renner: Linksdeutsche Middle East Debates , ak - analysis & criticism - newspaper for left debate and practice, No. 588, November 19, 2013
31. ^ Jörn Schulz: Radikal pro Israel . Jewish General, February 20, 2014
32. ↑ Frankfurter Rundschau: Anti-Semitism: "Summer fairy tale prepared the ground for the AfD" . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . ( fr.de [accessed on January 13, 2018]).
33. ↑ Conversations about “The Complex Antisemitism” on the radio of WDR 5 and WDR 3 - Clemens Heni. Accessed January 4, 2020 (German). 
34. ↑ Riga and Remembering, in: Journal for the Study of Antisemitism ( Memento of the original from March 25, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 3.2 MB), Vol. 2 (2010), No. 1, pp. 157-162. 
35. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated February 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed January 1, 2012) 
36. ↑ Curriculum Vitae | Clemens Heni. Retrieved January 13, 2018 (German). 
37. ^ By Clemens Heni: Also Germans Among the Victims - 70 Years of the End of National Socialism: On the politics of remembrance and anti-Semitism since 1945: literaturkritik.de. Retrieved January 13, 2018 (German).