Skeletons in the closet: remnants of Medieval blood libel in postwar Central Europe

• Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies

In the framework of the Max Weber Programme's October Lecture, this event features a discussion with Professor Alison Frank Johnson (Harvard).

Blood libel has haunted European history since the Middle Ages. A flurry of false allegations led to the displacement, torture, and murder of Jewish men in cities and towns across the German states and into the Italian peninsula in the 15th century. The legends surrounding these medieval and early modern accusations that Jewish men had murdered Christian children left behind a physical and theological legacy that endured well into the postwar period. In this lecture, Alison Frank Johnson will discuss efforts to distance the Catholic church from this history. She will focus on the role of physical relics of blood libel legends and the campaigns to remove them from churches.

Speaker:

Alison Frank Johnson's teaching and research focus on the history of German-speaking Europe and the Habsburg Monarchy. Her first book, Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (2005), was awarded the Barbara Jelavich 2006 Book Prize, the Austrian Cultural Forum 2006 Book Prize, and the Polish Studies Association 2006 Orbis Book Prize. She is currently working on a book about the de-memorialisation of alleged ritual murder sites in Germany and Austria in the postwar period. This project examines popular religiosity, longstanding prejudice against Jews and the work to fight its literal and symbolic relics. Additional research interests include environmental history, capital punishment, the Alps, and the Mediterranean slave trade. She offers general exam fields in German-speaking Europe, Eastern and Central Europe, and European Environmental History.