Jewish Cronicle (London):
Fury as top German uni votes to keep antisemite in its name
Eberhard Karl University in Tübingen, near Stuttgart, will not scrap its formal name despite calls for the change - Count Eberhard Im Bart was a virulent 15th-century antisemite who expelled all the Jews living in the city
A leading German university has
voted to keep the name of a notorious antisemite as part of its official
title —prompting fury among students and Jewish groups.
Eberhard Karl University in Tübingen, near Stuttgart, made the
decision not to scrap its formal name despite calls for the change.
Count Eberhard Im Bart was a virulent 15th-century antisemite who
expelled all the Jews living in the city and surrounding area.
Hanna Veiler, vice-president of the Jewish Student Union of
Germany (JSUG), told the JC the university’s decision was “utterly
disappointing”, while Michael Blume, the commissioner against
antisemitism for the state of Baden-Württemberg, where the university is
located, called it “wrong”.
Ms Veiler said: “Of course we respect the fact that it was a democratic decision, but it is utterly disappointing.
“We find it so disappointing that the university had the chance to change this situation and to set an example.
“We realise that you cannot just change a difficult past, but it
had the opportunity to draw the right conclusions. Here the university
has just failed.” In a written statement to the JC, Mr Blume said: “The
fact that the senate of my alma mater did not even listen to me before
making its brief and wrong decision, despite my letter of support for
the Jewish students, unfortunately speaks for itself.”
Founded in 1477, the university is internationally renowned, particularly in the sciences, producing 11 Nobel Prize winners.
In the hope of ending a decades-long controversy over its name,
it commissioned a six-strong team of expert historians to determine the
extent to which Count Eberhard could be deemed antisemitic. The
investigation was led by Sigrid Hirbodian, director of the Tübingen
Institute for Regional History, who concluded in her report: “Eberhard
is hostile to Jews and thus in no way differs from the vast majority of
his contemporaries and peers.”
The university senate then voted 16-15 to keep the name, with
two abstentions. As a two-thirds majority was needed to change the
title, the university will continue to be called the
Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen.
Mr Blume said: “I consider the present report on the exculpation
of Count Eberhard im Bart to be historically one-sided and weak and
assume that there will be a new vote on renaming in just a few years.
Nobody should have to study at a university that is named after a Jew
hater, Jew expeller and public adulterer.”
He suggested to the university’s rector, Bernd Engler, that the
university should be renamed after Eberhard’s mother, Mechthild von der
Pfalz, a book collector and patron of the arts.
Students have campaigned since the 1970s to rename the
university. Ms Veiler wrote in the Jewish newspaper the Jüdische
Allgemeine last year: “How is it possible that with all the lip-service
German politicians repeatedly claim to have learned from history, Jewish
students still have to go in and out of institutions named after
staunch antisemites? And how can it be that the discourse on this is
conducted so far away from the students?
“We cannot and will no longer tolerate the unwillingness of German institutions to stand by their antisemitic past.”
Another name proposed is that of Ernst Bloch, a Jewish Marxist
philosopher who died in 1977 and remains a popular figure with radical
students. Flags bearing the legend “Ernst Bloch University Tübingen” are
a familiar site at left-wing protests.
However, some Jewish students want the name to remain the same.
Josef Peskin, board member of the Jewish Student Association for the
Region of Baden, told the JC: “The JSUD (Jüdische Studierendenunion
Deutschland) started a large-scale campaign last year: ‘Remembering
means changing.’
“But we say changing does not mean deleting and erasing. Changing also means changing a perception.
“By just deleting something, this possibility, this opportunity
for a necessary confrontation with the person is thereby completely
taken away. ”
The controversial Mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer, who is of Jewish descent, is also opposed to the change.
He posted on Facebook: “The demand for this clearly stems from
woke cancel culture. The evidence for Eberhard’s antisemitism is by no
means drastic in the context of the time.” Despite repeated attempts by
the JC, Mr Palmer was unavailable for comment.
Last year the Beuth University, Berlin, changed its name to the
Berlin University of Applied Sciences and Technology because of the
antisemitic history of 19th-century Prussian statesman Christian Peter
Wilhelm Beuth.