2019 - 2020

0621-3380-01
  The City: Space and Ideology in Nazism and the Third Reich                                           
FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
Teresa WalchClassrooms - Dan David101Sun1600-2000 Sem  2
 
 
University credit hours:  4.0

Course description

This seminar will investigate the links between ideology and space (with an emphasis on cities) during the Third Reich and the Holocaust. In Nazi Germany, the city was both celebrated and despised. National Socialists blamed the modern city for the supposed corruption of society and linked city life with many of their “enemies”—Communists, Bolshevists, homosexuals, and Jews. From 1933 onward, National Socialists transformed cities to fit their worldview, seeking to “cleanse” Germany, and later all of Europe, of Jews and Jewish influences. We will discuss spatial concepts at the core of Nazi ideology—such as Lebensraum (living space), Blood and Soil, and Aryanization—and examine how the regime transformed these spatial ideologies into practice. We will also investigate various spatial solutions devised by the regime to segregate and expel Jews, such as concentration camps, ghettos, “Jew Houses,” and the Nisko and Madagascar Plans. Finally, we will delve into several case studies of European cities as sites of both refuge and terror for European Jewry during the Holocaust.

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