Jewish History

Jaclyn Granick (Cardiff University) and Tom Stammers (Durham University)

Co-investigators of the Jewish Country Houses Project (funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council), Granick and Stammers will introduce their collaborative and pan-European research by way of one of its cross-cutting themes: philanthropy. As a small group of intramarried Jewish business families, emancipated into societies still dominated by the landed aristocracy, rose to the uppermost echelons of Europe, philanthropy became a core component of asserting their family identities, protecting and preserving their reputations and businesses, subtly shaping their societies, and remaining connected to the global Jewish world. Stammers will examine Jewish cultural philanthropy and consider how country houses themselves, and the collections they housed, became part of national heritage—as well as the resistance this process encountered. Granick will, in turn, look at Jewish philanthropy and its logic and reception among Jews. This project preview is in advance of a conference they are convening in Brno in May on “Jewish Country Houses and the Holocaust in History and Memory.”