Dr. Gabriele Meyer-Fellow 2026
Anthony D. Kauders, Professor Emeritus of Modern History at Keele University (UK), will be a Mercator Fellow in the DFG Priority Program “Jewish Cultural Heritage” (SPP 2357) from September 2025 to August 2028. This program explores, from the perspective of Critical Heritage Studies, how Jewish heritage is socially constructed, negotiated, and lived today. He has published numerous books and articles on German-Jewish history, antisemitism, and the history of psychoanalysis. Currently he is editing, alongside Karl Figlio of the University of Essex, a volume on History and Psychoanalysis: Interdisciplinary Dialogues (Routledge).
Funded by the Hamburg Scholarship of the Alfred Toepfer Foundation F.V.S. and the Dr. Gabriele Meyer-Fellowship
Project: The Psychology of Anti-Semitism
At the Institute for the History of the German Jews (IGdJ) I will be working on my book about psychological theories of antisemitism. This book is the first study that attempts to integrate psychology (not psychoanalysis!) and history. When psychological theories describe how people create boundaries, how they label other people as enemies, or how they do not hesitate to kill that enemy, they examine all-too-human behaviors. Prejudice, fear of status loss, or the desire for homogeneity do not care who the enemy is. Such forms of behavior will be illustrated by focusing on modern (and particularly German) antisemitism in the last two hundred years. Using various historical events, the book traces which psychological phenomena were at play when individuals and groups degraded, excluded, or murdered Jews.
