I am a historian of Central Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on Austria and the Bohemian lands. In 2020, I joined the History Department at the Hebrew University as an Assistant Professor. In additon, I serve as Deputy Director of the Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights. Since 2023, I am a member of the Scientific Committee of Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research. In my studies, I focus on the rise of German nationalism in the Habsburg Monarchy, the intriguing interplay between liberalism, nationalism, and Nazism, and the post-1945 expulsion of ethnic German peoples from Central and Eastern Europe to Germany and Austria. Most of my research and publications explore the complex interactions between demands, practices, and discourses of compensation (Wiedergutmachung) in the intra-German, German-Israeli, and German-Jewish contexts. My research is interdisciplinary, drawing on my B.A. and M.A. degrees in political science with a focus on political theory, and my doctoral studies in modern European history. All of my degrees are from Tel Aviv University.
My recent book is titled Nationalbesitzstand und “Wiedergutmachung”. Zur historischen Semantik sudetendeutscher Kampfbegriffe (National Ownership and “Wiedergutmachung”. Historical Semantics of Sudeten German Combat Terms). Using Reinhart Koselleck’s “history of concepts approach” as well as “historical discourse analysis”, the study presents three new insights: (a) The Sudeten German redress claims against Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic after 1989 were not a new invention. Rather, Germans in Czechoslovakia had already demanded compensation (Wiedergutmachung) from Prague for damages to their national assets at the end of World War I and throughout the interwar period. (b) The Sudeten German compensation rhetoric is rooted in the conflict over national ownership in the 19th-century Habsburg Empire and is thus an outcome of the German nationalization project. (c) Among the leaders of the German minority in Czechoslovakia, who demanded compensation from Prague after 1918, were liberals of Jewish origin who identified as members of the (Sudeten) German nation.
The topic of my current book-length project is an intriguing yet understudied West German compensation law called “Equalization of Burdens Law” (Lastenausgleichsgesetz). The main aim of this 1952 law was to compensate ethnic Germans who had been expelled or forced to flee from Central and Eastern Europe to Germany and Austria at the end of World War II. Compensation was for expulsion-related material damages and losses. I am especially interested in cases where expellees demanded redress for lost property which they had acquired in the context of “Aryanization”.
For my full CV, please click here - CV