Sebastian Huebel, Fighter, Worker, and Family Man: German-Jewish Men and Their Gendered Experiences in Nazi Germany, 1933-1941
Thursday, 8 September 2022 14:00 CST
ZOOM
Chaired by Chad S.A. Gibbs (College of Charleston)
Comment by Sarah Imhoff (Indiana University)
Sponsored by:
Mosse Lectures
George L. Mosse Program in History
College of Charleston Zucker/Goldberg Center for Holocaust Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of History
George L. Mosse/Laurence A. Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies
Based on the recent publication, Fighter, Worker, and Family Man: German-Jewish Men and Their Gendered Experiences in Nazi Germany, 1933-1941 (University of Toronto Press, 2021). When the Nazis came to power, they used various strategies to expel German Jews from social, cultural, and economic life. Fighter, Worker, and Family Man focuses on the gendered experiences and discrimination that German-Jewish men faced between 1933 and 1941. Sebastian Huebel argues that Jewish men’s gender identities, intersecting with categories of ethnicity, race, class, and age, underwent a profound process of marginalization that destabilized accustomed ways of performing masculinity. At the same time, in their attempts to sustain their conceptions of masculinity these men maintained agency and developed coping strategies that prevented their full-scale emasculation. Huebel draws on a rich archive of diaries, letters, and autobiographies to interpret the experiences of these men, focusing on their roles as soldiers and protectors, professionals and breadwinners, and parents and husbands. Fighter, Worker, and Family Man sheds light on how the Nazis sought to emasculate Jewish men through propaganda, the law, and violence, and how in turn German-Jewish men were able to defy emasculation and adapt – at least temporarily – to their marginalized status as men.
Sebastian Huebel was born in Germany and together with his family, moved to British Columbia, Canada, in 2001. Sebastian studied History and Geography at the undergraduate level at Thompson Rivers University, completed a Master’s degree at the University of Victoria where he looked at the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras in the Third Reich. Sebastian completed his PhD at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver. His interest lies in modern German history and the Holocaust and its intersection with gender. Sebastian has been a lecturer at the University of the Fraser Valley since 2018. His 2018 dissertation “Stolen Manhood? German-Jewish masculinities in the Third Reich” has been revised into his new book, “Fighter, Worker and Family Man” that was published by the University of Toronto Press in December 2021. In his free time, Sebastian enjoys going fishing and beekeeping.
Chad S.A. Gibbs serves as director of the Zucker/Goldberg Center for Holocaust Studies and assistant professor of Jewish Studies. He is a historian of the Holocaust, antisemitism, modern Germany, and war and society. Chad’s current project focuses on gender, geography, and social networks in Jewish resistance at Treblinka. Chad has held fellowships from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Yale University Fortunoff Video Archive, the George L. Mosse Program in History, and the USC Shoah Foundation, where he remains an Affiliated Researcher. His extensive work in oral histories at several archives contributes teaching and scholarly interests in the collection and analysis of survivor testimonies as well as the generational transmission of knowledge and trauma. Prior to academic life, Chad served eight years in the US Army, including combat deployment to Iraq. He was wounded there in 2006 and medically retired in 2009. The intersection of Chad’s military background and research interests drives his desire to bring the lessons of the Holocaust in the form of genocide and atrocity prevention training to military audiences. In this area, he has recently led professional development sessions for US Army leaders at Fort Hood and Fort Bliss, TX.
Sarah Imhoff is Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies and Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University. She writes about religion and the body with a particular interest in gender, sexuality, disability, and American religion, as well as maintaining a research specialty in religion and law. She is author of Masculinity and the Making of American Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2017) and The Lives of Jessie Sampter: Queer, Disabled, Zionist (Duke University Press, 2022). She is the founding co-editor of the journal American Religion. She is also working on a co-authored book with Susannah Heschel about women and gender in Jewish Studies (Princeton University Press, 2023).
