Thomas Dahms

PhD Candidate in History
Co-Convener German of the History Research Group
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I work on modern Central and Eastern Europe, particularly on Germany's former eastern territories in present-day Poland. 

My PhD dissertation challenges the increasingly popular image of eighteenth-century Prussia as a decidedly tolerant German state that treated religious minorities such as the Jews with remarkable leniency. Based on archival research in Germany, Poland, Israel and the US, the thesis examines how Prussian policies towards the Jews related to broader political, economic, and cultural objectives during the early modern period. Its findings demonstrate that previous historiography has tended to overstate and misinterpret progressive aspects of the Prussian legislature at the time. Legal improvements, where they occurred, were usually not motivated by tolerant attitudes or Enlightenment discourse on individual human rights. Instead, they constituted above all a means to increase the Jews’ utility to the state.

Since 2018, I co-convene the German History Research Group at Cambridge, and in 2019 I co-organised the conference The End of National Histories? Anglo-German Relations in Historiography at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

My broader research interests include the history of early modern Germany and Poland, the history of the Enlightenment, particularly in its German variant, and Jewish history.

Before I came to Cambridge, I studied German history and philosophy at universities in Frankfurt, Berlin, Lisbon, Berkeley and San Diego. I hold a BA in Cultural Studies and an MA in European Studies from the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany.


 

Contact

Tags & Themes

Address
Darwin College
CB3 9EU Cambridge
United Kingdom
Email
td377@cam.ac.uk
Links

Publications

Articles:

'Diligent Bureaucrats and the Expulsion of Jews from West Prussia, 1772-1786', German History, Volume 39, Issue 3 (forthcoming in 2021)


Book Reviews:

Review of Jay Howard Geller: The Sholems, A Study of German-Jewish Bourgeoisie from Emancipation to Destruction, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies (forthcoming in 2021)

Review of Wolf Christian Seifert (ed.): Christian Wilhelm Dohm. Über die bürgerliche Verbesserung der Juden, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies (forthcoming in 2021)

Review of Anne Purschwitz: Jude oder preußischer Bürger? Die Emanzipationsdebatte im Spannungsfeld von Regierungspolitik, Religion, Bürgerlichkeit und Öffentlichkeit (1780-1847), German History, Volume 37, Issue 2 (2019), pp. 248-9

Review of Günter Berger / Bärbel Raschke: Luise Dorothea von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg, Jahrbuch für die Geschichte Ost- und Mitteldeutschlands, Volume 64 (2019), pp. 254-6

Review of Robert Bernsee: Moralische Erneuerung. Korruption und Bürokratische Reformen in Bayern und Preußen, German History, Volume 36, Issue 3 (2018), pp. 449-551