Deborah Hertz | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | February 9, 1949 Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | PhD University of Minnesota 1971 |
| Academic work | |
| Notable works | Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin How Jews Became Germans |
Deborah Hertz (born February 9, 1949), is an American historian whose specialties are modern German history, modern Jewish history and modern European women's history. Her current research focuses on the history of radical Jewish women.[1]
Since 2004, she has taught at the University of California, San Diego, as a professor of history and is the Herman Wouk Chair in Modern Jewish Studies. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Holocaust Living History Workshop at UCSD, a joint project of the UCSD Library and the Jewish Studies Program.
Deborah Hertz was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1949 and graduated from Highland Park Senior High School in 1967.[2] She attended New York University for two years and studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for her Junior Year Abroad in 1969–70. She then returned to the United States and graduated with a major in humanities, summa cum laude, from the University of Minnesota in 1971. She remained at the University of Minnesota and received her PhD in German history in 1979.
After a year teaching at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, Hertz moved to the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1979 and remained there until 1996. In that year she accepted a position at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Hertz joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego as the Wouk Chair in Modern Jewish Studies in 2004.
Hertz has held visiting appointments at the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa, and held two visiting professorships at Harvard University.
Hertz's first book, Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin (Yale, 1988 and Syracuse, 2005).[3] It traces the rise and decline of Jewish salons in Berlin at the close of the eighteenth century. Jewish High Society appeared in a German edition called Die jüdischen Salons im alten Berlin, published by Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag.[4] A new edition of the German translation with a new preface appeared in July 2018, published by the Europäische Verlagsanstalt.
"For the first time a serious attempt is made to ascertain precisely why the salons came to exist at this time; why in Berlin; who frequented them; and for what reasons."—Lionel Kochan, Journal of Jewish Studies[5]
"A rich, sophisticated, and original social history. It contributes to our knowledge and understanding of German history in a period whose social aspects have long been neglected by scholars. It also makes a significant contribution to Jewish history and to women’s history."—Mary Nolan, New York University[5]
"An interesting and amusing book about this era."—Alexander Zvielli, Jerusalem Post[5]
Her second book is How Jews Became Germans: The History of Conversion and Assimilation in Berlin (Yale, 2007).[6] It examines the frequency and significance of Jewish conversion to the Lutheran faith from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century.[7] This book has also been translated into German under the title Wie Juden Deutsche wurden: Die Welt jüdischer Konvertiten vom 17. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, published by Campus Verlag.
"A book rich in humorous and touching vignettes, How Jews Became Germans gives human form to the themes of its history."—Christopher Clark, St. Catharine's College, Cambridge[8]
"A wonderfully crafted book, written with great empathy. It provides a careful social and political analysis of conversion trends among Berlin's Jewish population, but avoids easy moral and historical judgments.”—Ute Frevert, Yale University[8]
“A pioneering effort to explore a controversial subject commonly treated in all-too easy terms of ‘loyalty’ and ‘betrayal.’ Important."—Amos Elon, author of The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743-1933[8]
“There is no book more exciting to read than one by an author who believes he or she was born to write it. In such books every line becomes a paragraph, every paragraph a chapter, and the book itself a never-ending story. Deborah Hertz's How Jews Became Germans is such a book.”[9]
In addition, Deborah Hertz edited letters written by the Jewish writer Rahel Varnhagen to her friend and writer Rebecca Friedländer: Briefe an eine Freundin: Rahel Varnhagen an Rebecca Friedländer (Cologne, 1988 and 2018).
Hertz is married to Professor Martin Bunzl of Rutgers University and they have two grown children.
