Synopses & Reviews
Taking up the Torch is an unusual narrative in that it successfully combines subjectivity how an English person was led by a sequence of educational developments, personal encounters and historical constraints to become the founder of the German-Jewish Centre at the University of Sussex; and objectivity a book that introduces English and American readers to important and evolving fields of historical and cultural studies through intellectual autobiography.
It documents the formative experiences of a scholar who was to become a pioneering teacher and researcher in the field of German culture and politics. The aim is to relate the shaping of self to the drift of history in a period of radical social change, extending from the refugee crisis caused by Hitlers seizure of power through the ordeals of the Second World War to post-war reconstruction, and the transformation of Britain into a modern multicultural society. The focus is on the formative role of institutions: vicarage childhood, Anglican schooling, Cambridge and other university environments especially the new map of learning at Sussex University in the 1960s. The book concludes with an account of the formidable challenges facing British universities fifty years later.
The Torch” in the title alludes to the transmission of a radical intellectual tradition and to a specific commitment to the study of Die Fackel, the satirical journal edited by Karl Kraus in Vienna from 1899 to 1936. From this emerged the innovative agenda developed by the Centre for German-Jewish Studies.
Review
“A fascinating intellectual odyssey, showing how Timms came to fall under the spell of German literature and culture, and how as a graduate student he decided to research the challenging figure of Karl Kraus.” —Anthony Grenville, Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies
Synopsis
Documenting the formative experiences of a scholar who became a pioneering teacher and researcher in the field of German culture and politics, this narrative aims to relate the shaping of self to the drift of history in a period of radical social change, extending from the refugee crisis caused by Hitlers seizure of power through the ordeals of the Second World War to post-war reconstruction, and the transformation of Britain into a modern multicultural society. With a focus on the formative role of institutions—vicarage childhood, Anglican schooling, Cambridge and other university environments—the book concludes with an account of the formidable challenges facing British universities 50 years later.
About the Author
Edward Timms is the author of the two-volume work Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist and the coauthor of Pictorial Narrative in the Nazi Period and Romantic Communist. He was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to scholarship in 2005 and in he was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Arts and Sciences in 2008.