Description

The panel examines the life and work of the distinguished Israeli historian, Gilad Margalit (1959-2014). Margalit pioneered the study of Jews and Turks, Sinti and Roma in twentieth-century German history as a story of entanglement, conflicts, and elective affinities. His work was a history of difference and diversity in a century in which fantasies of national and racial purity triumphed. Beyond that, his work explored how Germans and other Europeans came to terms with such traumatic memories of violence and suffering as the developed forms of redemptive commemoration that contemporaries labelled Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The panel will reflect on the major themes and the on-going reception, the contemporary relevance and the lasting legacy of Gilad Margalit’s work.

Organized by Randall Hansen and Till van Rahden in collaboration with Joint Initiative in German and European Studies at the University of Toronto and the Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes, the Canada Research Chair in German and European Studies, and IRTG Diversity at the Université de Montréal.