RESEARCH CROSSING BOUNDARIES Lectures The GHIL regularly holds lectures on topics of general interest to British and German historians. GHIL Lectures are held on Tuesdays at 5.30pm during term time. Papers are normally presented in English; knowledge of the German language is not necessary for participation. GHIL Joint Lectures are presented in cooperation with the Faculty of History, University of Oxford; Modern German History Seminar, Institute of Historical Research; and other distinguished institutions. The Leo Baeck Institute Lecture Series is organised by the LBI in cooperation with the GHIL. Currently all lectures are held as online events. Gerda Henkel Foundation Visiting Professorship Lecture 2021 There are currently no lectures GHIL Lectures Autumn Lecture Series 2021 AUTUMN LECTURES For a full list list of our autumn lectures, please see the brochure. 7 December 2021 (5.30pm) GHIL LECTURE Hannah Ahlheim (Giessen) and Elizabeth Hunter (QMUL) Sleeping Through the Ages: Two Lectures on the History of Sleep in the Seventeenth and Twentieth Centuries Elizabeth Hunter: Wonderful Sleepers: Medical and Supernatural Explanations for Extraordinary Sleep in Seventeenth-Century England Seventeenth-century readers were fascinated with stories of wonderful sleepers. Wonder books contained marvellous and terrible tales of people who slept without interruption for days, months, or even years, and of those who got out of bed while still asleep to compose poetry, walk on rooftops, or commit terrible acts of violence. These were linked to descriptions of the amazing sleeping habits of the dormouse and the snake in books of natural history, and to accounts of witchcraft, possession, and ghost sightings. While wonderful sleep might appear to provide evidence of a world beyond the material, it was generally agreed that the explanation could be found in the secret workings of the body. Elizabeth Hunter is an Honorary Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. She is currently writing a monograph entitled The Secrets of Sleep, funded by the Wellcome Trust. Some of this research has been published in the journals Social History of Medicine (forthcoming) and The Seventeenth Century (2020). Hannah Ahlheim: The Sleep of our Dreams? We sleep away almost a third of our lifetimes. This unconscious, unproductive third often seems to be an obstacle to a lively 24/7 society. At the same time, sleep is not only vital for life and health, but offers space for dreaming. How does a modern society governed by science, rationality, and efficiency deal with the unruly phenomenon of sleep? The lecture tells a history of sleep in the twentieth century that is linked to a history of work and tired soldiers, but also to a history of culture, consumption, and the sciences. Hannah Ahlheim is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Giessen. After studying in Berlin, she received her doctorate from the Ruhr University Bochum and taught at the University of Göttingen. Her research interests include the history of National Socialism and antisemitism, the social and cultural history of sleep, and science and the history of time. This lecture will take place as a hybrid event on Zoom and at the GHIL with limited in-person attendance at the GHIL. Elizabeth Hunter will be speaking from the GHIL while Hannah Ahlheim will be present virtually via Zoom. In order to register for this event, please follow this link to Eventbrite. Online/GHIL 9 December 2021 (5.30pm) POSTPONED GHIL LECTURE Bernhard Dietz (Mainz) (NEW DATE: 11 January 2022) Following the Neo-Tories from Interwar Fascism to Postwar Democracy This lecture has been postponed to 11th January. If you have already signed up to attend then you should receive an email about the change. 14 December 2021 (5.30pm) GHIL LECTURE Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann (Berkeley) Charlotte Beradt and Reinhart Koselleck on Dreaming in the Age of Extremes Recently, there has been an uptick of interest in the late Reinhart Koselleck’s theoretical writings. Whenever scholars across the humanities deal with issues of temporality, with present pasts or past futures, Koselleck’s work is invoked. Yet new histories of fascist and Nazi times oddly omit one of Koselleck’s most incisive essays, ‘Terror and Dream’. This talk will explore Koselleck’s thinking in conversation with Charlotte Beradt’s TheThird Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation, 1933–1939, especially their insistence that dreams are the most telling historical source for understanding how experiences of time fundamentally changed in the 1930s. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann is Associate Professor of Late Modern European History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is working on several books at the moment, including an intellectual biography of Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006). This lecture will take place online via Zoom. In order to register for this event, please follow this link to Eventbrite. Online 11 January 2022 (5.30pm) GHIL LECTURE Bernhard Dietz (Mainz) Following the Neo-Tories from Interwar Fascism to Postwar Democracy: The Revolt of British Conservatives against Political Modernity – and its Aftermath Why did right-wing extremism fail in interwar Britain? This question is usually answered with reference to the failure of British fascism. This lecture, however, argues that the threat to British parliamentary democracy also came from a network of radical British Conservatives known as Neo-Tories. The Neo-Tories regarded liberal democracy as being in a state of degeneration and worked towards anti-democratic change through a ‘revolution from above’. The lecture will examine this thread of political history from the 1930s, but it will also look at the aftermath of the story and investigate whether and how the Neo-Tories came to terms with the overseas immigration and European integration which marked post-war democracy. Bernhard Dietz teaches Modern History at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. He received his Ph.D. in history from the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2010 and finished his second book on the cultural history of West German capitalism in 2018. He has been President of the German Association of British Studies (AGF) since 2016. Postponed from 9th December This lecture will take place online via Zoom or possibly as a hybrid event with limited in-person attendance at the GHIL. Please check back later for more information on the venue. In order to register for this event, please follow this link to Eventbrite. Online/GHIL Previous GHIL Lectures GHIL Joint Lectures The GHIL regularly presents lectures in co-operation with the Faculty of History, University of Oxford; the Modern German History Seminar, Institute of Historical Research; and other distinguished institutions. Previous GHIL Joint Lectures Leo Baeck Institute Lecture Series Conceptions of ‘Heimat’ in Jewish Visual History and Culture Organized by the Leo Baeck Institute London in cooperation with the German Historical Institute London. The lecture series examines the German-Jewish and European-Jewish notion of Heimat and its diverse and changing visual representations and interpretations during the course of history. It looks at the subject through a prism of visual media, such as the arts, photography, film and fashion, as well as literature and social media, etc. For more information on this lecture series, see the flyer issued by the Leo Back Institute. Previous Leo Baeck Institute Lectures Contact and Enquiries German Historical Institute London 17 Bloomsbury Square London WC1A 2NJ Tel. +44-(0)20 7309 2050 Data Protection and Legal Notice Follow the GHIL Blog Subscribe to the GHIL Newsletter Browse the Library Catalogue