Lectures: Sandor Gilman to deliver Sherman Lectures at the University of Manchester

Lectures: Sandor Gilman to deliver Sherman Lectures at the University of Manchester

Next week Prof. Sandor Gilman of Emory University will be in England delivering the Sherman Lectures at the University of Manchester. Gilman, who has written extensively on the intellectual life of German Jews will focus on the topic of German-Jewish Exiles in London from 1933-1950. Of course, many renowned and even mroe lesser known artists, architects and art historians passed through London or settled there during the 1930s. Art history is treated in a lecture Ernst Kris, E. H. Gombrich and Edgar Wind. Architecture and Architectural History are not included in the week long presentation. That leaves out one of my favorite Jewish architects - Fritz Landauer - and, of course, the German-Jewish-English dean of modern architectural history and arbiter of taste Sir Nikolaus Pevsner. Still, if you are in the UK, Gilman is not to be missed! - SDG

2009 Sherman Lectures: German-Jewish Exiles in London 1933-1950

The 2009 Sherman Lectures are being delivered by Prof. Sander Gilman (Emory University) between 10 and 14 May on “German-Jewish Exiles in London 1933-1950”. With the exception of the Community Lecture (details below) these will be held at 5.15pm each day in the Arts Lecture Theatre, Samuel Alexander Building (formerly Lime Grove, building 67 on campus maps).

Booking is not necessary, but we would be grateful if you could indicate your intention to attend so that we have an idea of numbers. Email cjs@manchester.ac.uk.

Sunday 10 May (Community Lecture): “Mark the Music”: Jews, Music, and Modern Life. The Community Lecture will be held at Manchester Jewish Museum, 190 Cheetham Hill Road, Manchester at 7.30pm for 8.00pm.

Sander L. Gilman will explore why Jews were so prominent in the world of high music a hundred years ago and how high culture became a tool for integrating into European society. The question about what 'Jewish music' could be was hotly debated, even shaping early Zionist thought and notions about the future State of Israel. Gilman's illustrated talk will connect the passionate violin performances of one of the most legendary Jewish exiles, Albert Einstein, with the role of minorities in our contemporary classical music scene.

Monday 11 May: Freuds: Sigmund and Anna Confront the Present in the Past. Followed by informal kosher reception, kindly sponsored by Mr Joe Dwek.

Looking at Sigmund Freud's celebrity arrival in London, we can begin to sense the contours of an exile response to British society in the 1930s, with its complexity distorted by the sense of refuge given to the exiles. Anna's response is quite different than her father's - as it mirrors her experience of the war.

Tuesday 12 May: Anti-Freud: Elias Canetti and the Jews

Elias Canetti's seeing the Past in the Present is mirrored in the reception that his novel Auto-de-Fe, published in Vienna, has in the UK and Canetti's own struggle with the culture of England, including that of the exiles, and what it came to mean to be a Jew in a London seemingly obsessed with Sigmund Freud.

Wednesday 13 May: Learning to See: Ernst Kris, E. H. Gombrich and Edgar Wind Confront the Present in the Past

Ernst Kris and E. H. Gombrich come to England and create a new art history that sees the past in the present in its attempt to provide an overarching theory of art and politics. Humor plays a major role in their initial use of psychoanalysis to provide a theory of seeing.

Thursday 14 May: After the Shoah: H. G. Adler – From Terezin to London

After 1945 the new exiles such as H.G. Adler arrive in London from their experiences in the concentration and death camps. They react to the exiles already present in British culture. Their experiences come to be absorbed in the creative life of the child exiles who had come much earlier and whose creative lives extend into the present.