"Staged reconciliation: German politicians visiting Israel in the Post-War Era" Talk with Dr. Jenny Hestermann

Please join the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies on Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 5:00 PM ET, for a talk with Dr. Jenny Hestermann.

This event will be held in person at The Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies' Reading Room (2155 Guy St, Suite 740, Montreal, Quebec H3H 2L9). For those who can't make it in person there will also be an option to join via Zoom.

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About the talk:
"Since the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s politicians from the Federal Republic of Germany undertook 'private pilgrimages‘ to Israel and framed themselves as representatives of a morally renewed Germany. 

While the Israeli government kept insisting on financial reparations also beyond the Luxembourg agreement (1952), the German side pushed for so-called 'normalization‘ of the bilateral relations, especially after the establishment of diplomatic relations (1965). 

My talk will highlight some of the rhetorics of 'moral' and 'reconciliation‘ surrounding these official and private visits, while arguing that behind the scenes both sides had highly pragmatic reasons for the project of rapprochement after the Second World War."

Biography:
Dr. Jenny Hestermann is the current interim Ben-Gurion Chair for Israel and Middle East Studies at the Heidelberg Center for Jewish Studies, Germany. She has published broadly on German-Israeli relations, most significantly her PhD as her first book, titled Inszenierte Versöhnung: Reisediplomatie und deutsch-Israelische Beziehungen zwischen 1957-1984 (Campus 2016).

Jenny was a Visiting Fellow at the Hebrew University Jerusalem between 2010 and 2013, and after her PhD has held positions in Frankfurt, Florence and Potsdam. Beyond German-Israeli relations she has also taught and lectured on contemporary Israeli history, on the Israeli-palestinian conflict and on visions of Europe in Israel.