Erin HochmanDue to the horrors of the Third Reich, we have come to think of German nationalism as inherently antisemitic, racist, antidemocratic, and violent. This talk challenges this conventional interpretation. It shows how the defenders of the Weimar and First Austrian Republics used the großdeutsch idea, the notion that Austria should be part of a German nation-state, to create a democratic nationalism. Unlike their conservative and right-wing opponents, these republicans did not view democracy and Germany, socialism and nationalism, or Jew and German as mutually exclusive categories. As such, the triumph of Nazi ideas about nationalism was far from inevitable.Erin Hochman is Associate Professor of History at Southern Methodist University. She is the author of Imagining a Greater Germany: Republican Nationalism and the Idea of Anschluss (Cornell University Press, 2016). Her current book project examines how various political groups in the Weimar Republic used the concept of a German diaspora to support or challenge democracy, as well as the involvement of so-called Germans abroad in Germany’s political struggles.Does belonging always require exclusion? This lecture series explores this universal question through the lens of the German-Jewish experience, a community deeply shaped by its complex relationship to inclusion and exclusion. Spanning key moments in modern history, these talks examine German-Jewish thinkers’ responses to the dominant ‘Protestant ethic’, debates over nationalism in interwar Germany and Austria, the warped ideology of Adolf Hitler, and the long struggle of German Jews to reclaim citizenship after the Holocaust. Join us as we situate these experiences within today’s urgent debates about identity and belonging.Lecture recorded on Zoom on Thursday, October 9, 2025Images from the lecture, and other streaming links, are available on the Leo Baeck Institute London website: https://www.lbilondon.ac.uk/hochman-25