The Center for Research on Antisemitism (, ZfA) at

Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin; also known as Berlin Institute of Technology and Technical University of Berlin, although officially the name should not be translated) is a public university, public research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was the first ...

is a research centre dedicated to researching

antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

. It was founded in 1982. Historian

Wolfgang Benz Wolfgang Benz (born 9 June 1941) is a German historian and Antisemitism, anti-semitism researcher from Ellwangen (Jagst), Ellwangen. He was the director of the Berlin Research Centre on Anti-Semitism, Center for Research on Antisemitism of the Te ...

headed the institute from 1990 to 2011.

History

Historian Moshe Zimmermann considers Heinz Galinski, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, and Rolf Berger, president of

as the founding fathers of the center. According to Zimmerman, Galinski saw the 40th anniversary of the

Kristallnacht ( ) or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilia ...

pogrom in 1978 and the gap in the systematic study of antisemitism as the ideal time to launch an academic research center. Berger approached Mayor of West Berlin

Dietrich Stobbe Dietrich Stobbe (25 March 1938 – 19 February 2011) was a German politician who served as the Mayor of West Berlin from 1977 to 1981, as a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Stobbe also served as President of the Bundesrat from 1 Nov ...

, who was keen to support as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish community in Germany. After an initial faculty meeting in November 1978, the university struggled to establish the center. The Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) was officially established in 1982. Founding director Herbert A. Strauss gave his inaugural address on November 9, 1982, called "Research on Antisemitism as a Science". According to Zimmerman, Strauss followed the socio-historical methods of prejudice research in the United States and Great Britain, which emphasized the uniqueness of antisemitism. Under Strauss's successor

, who took over in 1990, ZfA was part of the public debate about to what extent antisemitism should be researched within the context of research into general prejudice. Under Benz, the center became the first Holocaust research center in Germany. Stefanie Schüler-Springorum has been the center's director since 2011.

References

External links

Official webpage

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

Technische Universität Berlin Jews and Judaism in Berlin Opposition to antisemitism in Germany {{Berlin-stub