Edward Timms
Edward Timms
Edward Timms, Research Professor in German Studies, has been Director of the Centre since its inception.The range of his interests was signalled by his inaugural lecture, ‘The Wandering Jew: A Leitmotif in German Literature and Politics’ (University of Sussex, 1994). He has overall responsibilityfor the Centre’s programme of teaching and research, which has been developed in partnership with its London-based Support Group, attracting financial support from individual and institutional donors both at home and abroad.
Edward Timms is best known for his research on the Jews of Vienna in the early twentieth century, developing an innovative research methodology which involves the mapping of circles of intellectual creativity in diagrammatic form. In recognition of his work in this area, Professor Timms has been awarded the "Karl von Vogelsang-Staatspreis für Geschichte der Gesellschaftswissenschaften" for 2002, by the Austrian Ministry of Education. His book Karl Kraus – Apocalyptic Satirist: Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna (Yale University Press, 1986) has been translated into German, Italian and Spanish, and a second volume is in preparation on ‘Karl Kraus and the German-Jewish Dilemma between the Wars’. A further field of research is the early history of psychoanalysis, and in addition to the co-edited collections of conference papers Freud in Exile (Yale, 1988) and ‘Freud: Dreaming, Creativity and Therapy’ (special issue of Psychoanalysis and History, 2001), he has edited the memoirs of Fritz Wittels under the title Freud and the Child Woman (Yale, 1995), also available in German, French and Spanish translation. In 1990 he founded (with Ritchie Robertson) the annual series ‘Austrian Studies’, published by Edinburgh University Press, of which ten volumes have so far appeared on subjects ranging from The Austrian Enlightenment (1991) to Theodor Herzl and the Origins of Zionism (1997).
As Director of the Centre he has organized a programme of international conferences on Jewish political, cultural and literary history, reflected in the co-edited publications The German-Jewish Dilemma (Mellen, 1999), Writing after Hitler: The Work of Jakov Lind (University of Wales Press, 2001), Reading Karl Kraus: The Reception of ‘Die Fackel’ (Judicium, forthcoming 2002) and Intellectual Migration and Cultural Transformation (forthcoming, 2002). His interest in comparative European literature and cultural history is reflected in the co-edited volumes Unreal City (Manchester University Press, 1985) and Visions and Blueprints (Manchester, 1988). He is a member of the Turkish Area Study Group and, in partnership with his wife Saime Göksu, he has written Romantic Communist: The Life and Work of Nazim Hikmet (Hurst, 2000).
His research paper, Memories of Michaelowka: Labour Camp Testimonies in the Arnold Daghani Archive (Centre for German-Jewish Studies, 2000) provides an introduction to the voluminous collection of artistic and commemorative works by a Holocaust survivor which is located at the University of Sussex and forms part of the Centre’s Archive. He has been awarded a three-year grant by the Leverhulme Trust for a project entitled ‘Politics and Pictorial Narrative in the Nazi Period’, which will involve a comparative study (with Deborah Schultz) of the work of three persecuted Jewish artists, Arnold Daghani, Felix Nussbaum and Charlotte Salomon.
Edward Timms spent twenty-five years as a Lecturer in German at the University of Cambridge, where he developed new courses on German culture and politics and on the European avant-garde. He is a Life Fellow of Gonville and Caius College and a member of the London Board of the Leo Baeck Institute. As a Research Professor at Sussex he no longer teaches undergraduate courses, but he supervises research by postgraduate and doctoral students over a wide range of subjects from ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’ to the experiences of the ‘Kindertransport’ children. Since 1992 he has coordinated a regular German Research Colloquium, which attracts visiting speakers from Britain and many other countries.
Contact: e.timms@sussex.ac.uk