End of Laughter, Back to Tears: Modern Jewish Historiography Revisited

We are pleased to welcome Prof. Michael Brenner to be the inaugural lecturer in the new Five Points Lecture Series at the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies. This occasional lecture series invites scholars to reflect on five statements, questions, or quotations that have driven their research agenda or their outlook on teaching over the course of their work. We envision this series as an opportunity for scholars to reflect on what they do and how they do it — and perhaps, for some, even why.

Michael Brenner (Ph.D., Columbia University) holds the chair of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He is also Distinguished Professor of History and Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies at American University in Washington DC, where he serves as director of the Center for Israel Studies. He is the International President of the Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of German-Jewish History and Culture and an elected member of the Bavarian Academy of Science, the Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana in Italy and the American Academy for Jewish Research. Prof. Brenner is author or editor of several dozen books including, most recently, In Hitler’s Munich: Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism (Princeton University Press 2022, German original Suhrkamp 2019) and In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2018, German original C.H. Beck 2016).