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GHIL Lecture

Martina Kessel

An Empire of Shaming

Reading Nazi Germany through the Violence of Laughter

Gerda Henkel Foundation Visiting Professorship Lecture

26 November 2020

(0:46 h)

Line drawing of the frontage of the GHIL building, in white on a blue background.

GHIL Lecture

Martina Kessel

An Empire of Shaming
Reading Nazi Germany through the Violence of Laughter

Survivors of the Shoah have often described how the SS liked to define torturing practices during the genocide as ‘jokes’. The paper discusses the systematic presence of derisive laughter in Nazi Germany and analyzes its meanings as a way both to act out understandings of Germanness and to ‘justify’ violence.

The Gerda Henkel Foundation Visiting Professorship Lecture 2020, hosted by the German Historical Institute and London School of Economics and Political Science, was held as an online event on Thursday, 26 November 2020.

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