This series of Jerusalem Mosse Lectures was originally scheduled for December 2020 but was postponed two years due to the COVID-19 global pandemic.
This lecture series was published as The Work of Music: Labor and Creativity in Germany’s Long Nineteenth Century (Madison: University of Wisconsin Madison, 2025).
Maiersdorf Faculty Club and Conference Center The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Mount Scopus Jerusalem 9190501 ISRAEL
Chair: Ofer Ashkenazi (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Sponsored by: George L. Mosse Program in History Global Mosse Lecture Series Hebrew University Department of History Koebner-Minerva Center for German History
Lecture Overview: Long before there was Muzak and AirPods, workers would often sing as they worked. This lecture will spread out from fields and factories and army barracks to the organized activities of workers in factory bands and workers’ festivals, and of soldiers at war. This was music not for listening but for playing and singing, accompanying work and after work. Rather than professional musicians, this lecture will focus on amateurs and their self-organization.
Celia Applegate studies the culture, society, and politics of modern Germany, with particular interest in the history of music, nationalism, and national identity. She is the author of A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley, 1990), the co-editor (with musicologist Pamela Potter) of Music and German National Identity (Chicago, 2000), the author of Bach in Berlin: Nation and Culture in Mendelssohn’s Revival of the St. Matthew Passion (Cornell, 2005), winner of the DAAD/GSA Book Prize, and of The Necessity of Music: Variations on a German Theme (Toronto, 2017). She is currently working on comprehensive interpretation of musical life in Germany from the seventeenth century to the present, titled “Music and the Germans: A History.” She is Past President of the German Studies Association, Past President of the Central European History Society, and incoming chair of the AHA’s Modern European section. Professor Applegate teaches courses on modern European politics, society, and culture; the history of the Holocaust; and the history of European nationalism and ethnic conflicts.Ofer Ashkenazi is a Professor of History and the Director of the Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He currently serves as the Vice Dean for Teaching Affairs in the Humanities. He is the author of four monographs that explore Jewish contribution to German “national culture” throughout the twentieth century. They include Weimar Film and Modern Jewish Identity (2012); Anti-Heimat Cinema: The Jewish Invention of the German Landscape (2020); and the forthcoming (co-authored) Still Lives: Jewish Photography in Nazi Germany. He has published articles and edited books on various topics in German and Jewish history, including memory culture in Germany and Israel; Nazi-related humor in Germany; Jewish youth in Nazi Germany; German-Jewish immigrants in Mandate Palestine; the German antiwar movement; and exile photography.
