Michael Brenner (historian)

Michael Brenner (born January 4, 1964 in Weiden ) is a German historian . He researches and publishes in the fields of Jewish history and Jewish culture .

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Michael Brenner was born in 1964 in Weiden in the Upper Palatinate, where he grew up as the son of two Shoah survivors. Brenner's mother Henny Brenner (née Wolf) came from Dresden , his father Hermann Brenner (1916–2004) from Chrzanów . Michael Brenner studied at the College for Jewish Studies in Heidelberg , the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Columbia University in New York . He received his doctorate from Columbia University on Jewish culture in the Weimar Republic . From 1993 to 1994 he was an assistant professor at Indiana University in Bloomington and from 1994 to 1997 at Brandeis University in Waltham , Massachusetts . Since 1997 he has been teaching at the newly established Chair for Jewish History and Culture at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . In addition, he has held the Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair for Israel Studies at the American University , Washington DC, since 2013.

From 1998 to 2009, Brenner chaired the Scientific Working Group of the Leo Baeck Institute in the Federal Republic of Germany and has been a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences since 2009 . In 2013 he was elected International President of the Leo Baeck Institute. In 2014 he received the Federal Cross of Merit.

Brenner, who repeatedly takes a position on public issues, was in 2016 a proponent of the Muslim publicist Navid Kermani for the office of Federal President, whom he described as "the most interesting voice in Germany". He is also considered a prominent critic of the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), against which he repeatedly took a position.

Brenner also became known through his studies of the socialist Kurt Eisner. On the political activity of numerous left-wing Jews for the Soviet Republic, Brenner wrote: "Many of them saw socialism as an opportunity to escape their own social plight".

Fonts (selection)

As an author

• Using Weiden as an example: everyday Jewish life under National Socialism. Arena, Würzburg 1983, ISBN 3-401-04025-1 ( Oldenburg Children's and Young People's Book Prize 1983).
• After the holocaust. Jews in Germany, 1945–1950. Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39239-3 .
• Jewish culture in the Weimar Republic . Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46121-2 (first published as: “The renaissance of Jewish culture in Weimar Germany”, Yale University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-300-07720-3 ).
• History of zionism. Beck TB, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-47984-7 .
• Prophets of the past. Jewish historiography in the 19th and 20th centuries. Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54981-0 .
• Little Jewish story. Beck, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57668-3 .
• Israel. Dream and Reality of the Jewish State. Beck, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-68822-5 .
• The long shadow of the revolution. Jews and anti-Semites in Hitler's Munich 1918–1923 . Jewish publishing house in Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2019. ISBN 978-3-633-54295-6 .

As editor

• Israel Studies. History - Methods - Paradigms, ed. with Johannes Becke and Daniel Mahla In: Israel Studies. Culture - history - politics; Vol. 3, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2020 ISBN 978-3-8353-3451-9
• German-Jewish History in Modern Times. Beck, 4 Bde. Munich 1996–1997, ISBN 3-406-39703-4 (together with Michael A. Meyer ).
• Jews in the Upper Palatinate (= studies on Jewish history and culture. Vol. 2). Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58678-7 .
• Jewish Munich. From the Middle Ages to the present . Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54979-9 (together with Richard Bauer ).
• History of the Jews in Germany from 1945 to the present. Politics, culture and society. Beck, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-63737-7 .
• Science of Judaism. Approaches after the Holocaust, ed. with Stefan Rohrbacher . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 978-3-525-20807-6 .
• with Stefan Jakob Wimmer and Helga Rebhan: From Sulzbach to Tel Aviv: Hebrew new acquisitions from 50 years; 1965-2015 . Treasury exhibition in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in cooperation with the Consulate General of the State of Israel in Munich on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Israel on May 12, 1965; ed. by the Bavarian State Library, and with the help of Steven Langnas, translated into Hebrew Eitan Levi. Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-88008-009-6 (= Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. Small Exhibition Guide , No. 2).

Web links

• Literature by and about Michael Brenner in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website at the LMU

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Olga Havenetidis: The bombing night of Dresden The fate of one night . In: Der Tagesspiegel , May 6, 2015, accessed on May 21, 2017.
2. ↑ Thomas Muggenthaler: Pioneer in the Upper Palatinate . In: Jüdische Allgemeine , April 23, 2013, accessed on May 21, 2017.
3. ↑ Michael Brenner , full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on March 15, 2013.
4. ^ Website at the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection.
5. ↑ Michael Brenner: Navid Kermani: The most interesting voice that Germany has . In: The world . October 25, 2016 ( welt.de [accessed December 9, 2018]).
6. ↑ Google search .
7. ↑ The long shadow of the revolution. Jews and anti-Semites in Hitler's Munich 1918–1923 . Jewish publishing house in Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2019. ISBN 978-3-633-54295-6 . ( limited preview in Google Book search)