Karl Marx and The Jewish Question through the eyes of Julius Carlebach

by Morwenna Silver

Morwenna Silver volunteered at The Keep last year, helping to catalogue the donation of Julius Carlebach’s papers to the German-Jewish Archive. Here she writes about Carlebach’s reading of Marx, what constitutes antisemitism, and the power of language in a politically unstable culture.

More info on the Carlebach collection can be found on The Keep’s website:

http://www.thekeep.info/collections/getrecord/GB181_SxMs92

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Julius Carlebach had the most extraordinary life. Born in Hamburg in 1922, he and his sister escaped the Nazis via the Kindertransport. He was a sailor in the Royal Navy, and went on to manage a Jewish orphanage in Norwood in South London and then served as a rabbi in Kenya. Also an accomplished academic, he was a research student at the University of Cambridge, and taught at the University of Bristol before he eventually became Associate Professor of Sociology and Israel studies at the University of Sussex.  A vast collection of Carlebach’s correspondence, academic papers and research notes has recently been donated to the German-Jewish Archive at The Keep by Carlebach’s family. Continue reading