Jeffrey Herf
Encyclopedia
Jeffrey Herf is a professor of history
at the University of Maryland
. His specialty is in 20th century European intellectual history, especially in Germany
.
Herf received his PhD. from Brandeis University
in 1980. Before joining the faculty at the University of Maryland, he taught at Ohio University
in Athens, Ohio
. He has published essays in The New Republic
, Die Zeit
, Partisan Review
and elsewhere.
In his 1984 book, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, Herf coined the term “reactionary modernism
” to describe the mixture of robust modernity
and an affirmative stance toward progress
combined with dreams of the past
- a highly technological romanticism
- which was a current in the thinking of ideologues of Weimar's "conservative revolution" and of currents in the Nazi Party and Nazi regime.
His subsequent books (see below) examine the political culture of West Germany before and during the battle over the euromissiles in the 1980s; memory and politics regarding the Holocaust in Germany; Nazi Germany's anti-Semitic propaganda; and Nazi Germany's propaganda aimed at North Africa and the Middle East.
Herf has had a variety of fellowships including at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the German Historical Institute in Washington, the Yitzak Rabin Center for Israel Studies in Tel Aviv, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC and at the American Academy in Berlin in Fall 2007.
Herf has described himself as a "liberal hawk
."
Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). The work examines the Nazi regime's propaganda aimed at North Africa and the Middle East. It was awarded a the Bronze Book prize from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in 2010.
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
. His specialty is in 20th century European intellectual history, especially in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Herf received his PhD. from Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
in 1980. Before joining the faculty at the University of Maryland, he taught at Ohio University
Ohio University
Ohio University is a public university located in the Midwestern United States in Athens, Ohio, situated on an campus...
in Athens, Ohio
Athens, Ohio
Athens is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Athens County, Ohio, United States. It is located along the Hocking River in the southeastern part of Ohio. A historic college town, Athens is home to Ohio University and is the principal city of the Athens, Ohio Micropolitan Statistical Area. ...
. He has published essays in The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, Die Zeit
Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
, Partisan Review
Partisan Review
Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...
and elsewhere.
In his 1984 book, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, Herf coined the term “reactionary modernism
Reactionary modernism
"Reactionary modernism" is a term coined by Jeffrey Herf in 1984 book, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, to describe the mixture of "great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of...
” to describe the mixture of robust modernity
Modernity
Modernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
and an affirmative stance toward progress
Progress (history)
In historiography and the philosophy of history, progress is the idea that the world can become increasingly better in terms of science, technology, modernization, liberty, democracy, quality of life, etc...
combined with dreams of the past
Nostalgia
The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of , meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and , meaning "pain, ache"...
- a highly technological romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
- which was a current in the thinking of ideologues of Weimar's "conservative revolution" and of currents in the Nazi Party and Nazi regime.
His subsequent books (see below) examine the political culture of West Germany before and during the battle over the euromissiles in the 1980s; memory and politics regarding the Holocaust in Germany; Nazi Germany's anti-Semitic propaganda; and Nazi Germany's propaganda aimed at North Africa and the Middle East.
Herf has had a variety of fellowships including at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the German Historical Institute in Washington, the Yitzak Rabin Center for Israel Studies in Tel Aviv, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC and at the American Academy in Berlin in Fall 2007.
Herf has described himself as a "liberal hawk
Liberal Hawk
The term liberal hawk refers to a politically liberal individual who supports a hawkish, interventionist foreign policy. Past U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson have been described as liberal hawks for their roles in bringing about...
."
Works
- Nazi Propaganda For the Arab World, Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN 9780300145793
- “Western Strategy and Public Discussion: The "Double Decision" Makes Sense”. Telos 52 (Summer 1982). New York: Telos Press.
- Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge University Press, 1984) has become a standard work and was published in GreekGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
and SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
translation. - War By Other Means: Soviet Power, West German Resistance and the Battle of the Euromissiles (The Free Press, 1991. ISBN 9780029150306) examined the intersection of political culture and power politics in the last major European confrontation of the Cold WarCold WarThe Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. - Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Harvard University Press, 1997. ISBN 9780674213036). It was the co-winner of the Charles Frankel Prize of the Wiener Library and Institute of Contemporary HistoryWiener LibraryThe Wiener Library is the world's oldest institution devoted to the study of the Holocaust, its causes and legacies. Founded in 1933 as an information bureau that informed Jewish communities and governments worldwide about the persecution of the Jews under the Nazis, it was transformed into a...
in London in 1996. In 1998 it received the George Lewis Beer Prize of the American Historical AssociationAmerican Historical AssociationThe American Historical Association is the oldest and largest society of historians and professors of history in the United States. Founded in 1884, the association promotes historical studies, the teaching of history, and the preservation of and access to historical materials...
. - The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the HolocaustThe Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the HolocaustThe Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust is a book by University of Maryland professor Jeffrey Herf. In it, Herf postulates that the Nazi government maintained its hold on the German people by controlling the press and claiming that Germans were already being attacked...
(Harvard University Press, 2006. ISBN 9780674021754). The work examines the Nazi regime's radical anti-Semitic propaganda as a bundle of hatreds, an explanatory framework, and effort to legitimate mass murder. It won the National Jewish Book Award in 2006 for works on the Holocaust.
Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010). The work examines the Nazi regime's propaganda aimed at North Africa and the Middle East. It was awarded a the Bronze Book prize from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in 2010.
External links
- Herf bio at University of Maryland's site
- "The Historian as Provocateur: George Mosse’s Accomplishment and Legacy", Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 29 (2001), pp. 7–26.
- The "New World Order": From Unilateralism to Cosmopolitanism by Herf
- “What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean in the ‘Berlin Republic’ in 2007?"
- http://www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=282"An Age of Murder: Ideology and Terror in Germany," TELOSTELOS (journal)Telos is an academic journal published in the United States. It was founded in May 1968 to provide the New Left with a coherent theoretical perspective. It sought to expand the Husserlian diagnosis of "the crisis of European sciences" to prefigure a particular program of social reconstruction...
144 (Fall 2008): 8-37]