David Feldman (London)

04.02.2026 – 17:00 – 19:00 Uhr – ZfA, Kaiserin-Augusta-Allee 104-106, 10553 Berlin, Raum 1315, 1. OG – Hybrid: per Zoom erfragen Sie den Link bitte unter: sekretariat@asf.tu-berlin.de

Contrary to what has been asserted by several scholars, the first known usage of the word ‘antisemitic’ was not in Berlin by Wilhelm Marr in 1879 nor by Moritz Steinschneider in 1860. In fact, the term was first used in 1851 by a Scotsman, Thomas Carlyle, living in London. Inspired by this discovery, the paper demonstrates that not only the concept of the Semite in the mid-nineteenth century but also antisemitic politics in the 1870s were transnational phenomena. Recasting the origins of antisemitism in this way offers new ways of understanding its history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

David Feldman is a Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London where he is also Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, and a Professor of the History of Antisemitism, University of Melbourne. His most recent book, coedited with Marc Volovici, is Antisemitism, Islamophobia and the Politics of Definition (Palgrave, 2023). His writing has appeared in The Guardian, the Financial Times, Haaretz, the New Statesman, The Independent and the Political Quarterly.