Smith, Helmut Walser 1962-

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SMITH, Helmut Walser 1962-

PERSONAL: Born December 10, 1962, in Freiburg, Germany; married 1998. Education: Cornell University, B.A. (magna cum laude; history), 1984; Yale University, M.Phil. (with distinction; history), 1988, Ph.D. (with distinction; history), 1992.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of History, Vanderbilt University, 2201 West End Ave., Nashville, TN 37235-0001. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, associate professor of history, director of graduate studies, department of history, co-director, German studies, 1991—.

MEMBER: American Historical Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Research fellowship, Vanderbilt University Research Council, 1992, 1993, 1998; summer research fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1995; research fellowship (with Lutz Niethammer), Volkswagen Foundation, 1995-96; Jeffrey Nordhaus Award, Vanderbilt University, for excellence in undergraduate teaching, 1997; fellowship, Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, 1998-99; German Academic Exchange fellowship, 2001.

WRITINGS:

German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870-1914, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1995.

(Editor) Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in Germany, 1800-1914, Berg (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor with others) The Holocaust and Other Genocides: History, Representation, Ethics, Vanderbilt University Press (Nashville, TN), 2002.

The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town, W. W. Norton (New York, NY), 2002.

(Editor with Christhard Hoffmann and Werner Bergmann) Exclusionary Violence: Antisemitic Riots in Modern German History, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 2002.

Contributor to journals, including Journal of Modern History, Bulletin of the German Historical Institute in London, American Historical Review, German History, East European Politics and Societies, Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Öberrheins, Central European History, and Geschichte und Gesellschaft; contributor to books including The Imperialist Imagination, edited by Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop, University of Michigan Press 1998; Arbeiter in der SBZ/DDR 1945-1970, Klartext, 1998; German and American Nationalism, edited by Hartmut Lehmann and Hermann Wellenreuther, Berg Publishers, 1999; and Saxony in German History: Culture, Society, and Politics, 1830-1933, University of Michigan Press, 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: As an historian specializing in modern German and European history, Helmut Walser Smith has written on subjects including imperialism, nationalism, religious conflict, and German anti-Semitism. His first book, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict: Culture, Ideology, Politics, 1870-1914, shows how a newly unified Germany was troubled by friction between Protestants and Catholics. The book was reviewed in several scholarly journals, where it was welcomed for its consideration of a previously neglected subject. This work was followed by The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town, which garnered attention beyond academic circles with its dramatic account of the discovery of a boy's dismembered body and accusations of Jewish ritual murder. Smith recreates these events from 1900, showing how hate erupted among previously well-behaved neighbors, and hypothesizes about the identity of the real murderer, who was never brought to justice. The author has also served as editor for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews in Germany, 1800-1914, a collection of essays that comment on how these religious groups interacted, and The Holocaust and Other Genocides: History, Representation, Ethics, which offers a curriculum for studying the Holocaust in the context of genocides in Armenia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and Rwanda.

In German Nationalism and Religious Conflict Smith explores the impact German unification had on the relationship between the nation's Protestants and Catholics during the period from 1870 to 1914. He shows that the governmental and intellectual move to create a national identity contradicted a longstanding divide between the two religious groups. Not only did Catholics and Protestants have distinct religious rituals and philosophies, they also had cultural, geographic, and political differences. Protestants tended to be wealthier, better educated, urban dwellers, while Catholics usually led more modest lives in the country and small towns. According to Smith, friction between these two groups was re-energized when German nationalism gave them new opportunities to express their differences.

Critics admired German Nationalism and Religious Conflict for its fresh approach and interest to those studying history, religion, and social science. Repeatedly, the book was described as an important work on an overlooked subject. In the English Historical Review S. J. Salter commented, "the neglect of popular Protestantism by mainstream historians is little short of astonishing." This work "seeks to remedy this deficit and to recapture the intensity of confessional antagonism in Bismarckian and Wilhelmine Germany." Salter concluded that the book is "one of the most stimulating monographs on the history of Imperial Germany to have been published in recent years." Lynn Abrams remarked in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History that Smith tackles a "story … [that] has remained largely unwritten." Pleased with the author's work at the level of national politics, Abrams suggested that "we are in need of further research if we are to understand the resonances of religious conflict for ordinary men and women in the new German state." Similarly, Dennis Sweeney questioned the roles of gender and race in the conflict in his review for the Canadian Journal of History. Regardless of this gap, Sweeney considered the work to be "a richly detailed and theoretically informed study." He concluded, "This careful reconstruction of the ideology and changing political style of confessional politics in imperial Germany convincingly restores religion to the narrative of Germany's troubled modernity." The book was strongly recommended by Richard W. Rolfs in Theological Studies: Smith "writes with vigor and spark. His explanation of the relation between nationalism and culture is both exciting and innovative. For historians and social scientists interested in the impact of religion on the formation of a rational identity among the European nations, this work is a pioneering contribution and should serve to encourage further study."

The seemingly happy coexistence of Christians and Jews is the background for Smith's next book, The Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town. The East Prussian town of Konitz was transformed in 1900 by the murder of a young man named Ernst Winter. The prime suspect, the town's Christian butcher, led a campaign accusing the local Jewish butcher. The victim was said to have been killed so that his blood could be used to make Passover matzo, reviving an ancient charge known as the blood libel. Smith details how mobs attacked local Jews, anti-Semitic journalists descended on the town, and the army was brought in to stop the rioting. The author not only analyzes the social, economic, and religious factors that influenced the chain of events, he reviews compelling evidence against the likely murderer.

Numerous non-academic reviews featured The Butcher's Tale, presenting it as a remarkable, multi-faceted story. The detailed and sometimes unsavory account was described as an example of skillful scholarship and a frightening lesson in human behavior. A writer for Kirkus Reviews said that Smith shows "the dexterity of a lace-worker" in creating "a braided and illuminating study." Ron Kaplan commented in BookPage that the author does "a fascinating job of trying to prove Levy's innocence and identify a likely culprit. His book may make readers uncomfortable. If so, it has served a valuable purpose." Library Journal's Michael F. Russo judged that Smith has "painstakingly explored the motives of all key actors in this drama." Russo advised that The Butcher's Tale is "a murder mystery with no solution, a striking re-creation of a gruesome and sad episode." A writer for Publishers Weekly credited Smith with "a masterful job exploring the history of the blood libel" and recommended the work to an audience beyond readers of history and Judaica, including "true-crime readers and anyone interested in the dynamics that can turn a peaceful community into a place of hatred and violence."