Christoph Schmidt

Christoph Schmidt holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he is a professor of German literature, philosophy, and comparative religion.

Previously, Christoph served as head of the Van Leer Institute’s Research Group “Political Theology and Jewish Modernity,” and as a guest lecturer at the universities of Tübingen, Giessen, Berlin and Leuven (Belgium).

His book The Heretical Imperative (2000) describes the genesis of the cultural sciences in Germany after 1900 and their transformation into German and Jewish forms of political theology. The Apocalypse of the Subject (2003) focusses on the Dada poet Hugo Ball and his conversion to catholic Theo-politics. The Theopolitical Hour (2009) retraces modern Christian and Jewish responses to secular culture and the problem of political theology (Cassirer, Walter Benjamin, Martin Buber, Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes). Israel and the Spirits (2016) deals with the impact of the Holocaust on the German students’ movement in literature and philosophy until today.