1. Dezember 2025 | 15:00 c.t. | Seminarraum 2.138 | UNIPARK | Erzabt-Klotz-Straße 1 | 5020 Salzburg | Präsenz | Vortragender: Dan Deutsch (University of Haifa)

What is the relationship between unsettling, threatening, or even horrific realities and the activity of artists and intellectuals who pursue “purely” aesthetic or academic endeavors? Can art or scholarship have a direct effect on socio-political reality, and should it aspire to do so? Conversely, when does aesthetic, artistic, or historical contemplation become a kind of escapism, a healthy or unhealthy coping mechanism with unbearable realities?

In confronting these questions and similar ones, in this lecture I connect the experiences of late-nineteenth-century Austrian-Jewish composers – which are central to my musicological research – and my own experiences in contemporary Israel. Clearly, my situation as an Israeli musicologist today is by no means comparable to that of fin-de-siecle Austro-Jewish composers. However, by making this juxtaposition, I will shed important light on how one might continue working in seemingly detached academic or artistic realms while confronting urgent social and political threats. In doing so, I address enduring issues in past and present Jewish experiences, including identity and self-cultivation (Bildung), and more broadly, reflect on the precarious position of contemporary academia in capitalist, nationalist, and increasingly illiberal democracies.