Event

The Baron: Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish Nineteenth Century (Stanford University Press) is an award-winning book by Matthias B. Lehmann. Prof. Lehmann will discuss his book in a Zoom webinar. 

Please register for the webinar here.

Baron Maurice de Hirsch was one of the emblematic figures of the nineteenth century. Above all, he was the most influential Jewish philanthropist of his time. Today Hirsch is less well known than the Rothschilds, or his gentile counterpart Andrew Carnegie, yet he was, to his contemporaries, the very embodiment of the gilded age of Jewish philanthropy. Hirsch's life provides a singular entry point for understanding Jewish philanthropy and politics in the late nineteenth century, a period when, as now, private benefactors played an outsize role in shaping the collective fate of Jewish communities.

Speaker: 

Matthias B. Lehmann is a scholar of modern Jewish history. His main interests are nineteenth century Jewish history, international Jewish philanthropy, and Sephardic cultural history. He is professor of modern Jewish history and director of the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Cologne. Among his publications are The Baron: Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish Nineteenth Century, winner of the Jordan Schnitzer Book Award, Emissaries from the Holy Land, a co-edited volume on Jews and the Mediterranean, and Ladino Rabbinic Literature and Ottoman Sephardic Culture. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Jewish Research and co-editor of Jewish Social Studies.

Please register for the webinar here: