Jonathan Zatlin Elected to Executive Board of the Central European History Society
Professor Jonathan was elected to serve as a Member-at-Large on the Executive Board of the Central European History Society for a three-year term beginning this year. The Central European History Society is one of the most important organization of German historians in North America, and publishes the most influential English-language journal of German and Austrian history, Central European History. Zatlin also served as I a panelist at a special roundtable convened at the annual conference of the German Studies Association, which was held in Milwaukee from October 4-7, to discuss “The Future of the European Union and the Euro.” Zatlin argued against suggestions that austerity measures might resolve the crisis, and pointed out analogies to the interwar treatment of Germany and other debtors and the technocratic and authoritarian outcomes that resulted. I also speculated that German attitudes toward its southern neighbors were inspired in part by the economic failure — and tremendous cost — of German unification.
Capping off a busy month, Zatlin also I delivered a paper on the key economic function assigned to Jews in nineteenth-century developmental economic theory at a conference on “National Economies (Volkswirtschaft): Racism and Economy in Europe between the Wars (1918-1939)” at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in October. Entitled “The Usurious Jew,” the paper analyzes the anti-Jewish content that animates historical accounts of capitalism, including the work of Werner Sombart and Max Weber.