Dagmar Herzog

Since the defeat of the Nazi Third Reich and the end of its horrific eugenics policies, battles over the politics of life, sex, and death have continued and evolved. Dagmar Herzog documents how reproductive rights and disability rights, both latecomers to the postwar human rights canon, came to be seen as competing ― with unexpected consequences.

Bringing together the latest findings in Holocaust studies, the history of religion, and the history of sexuality in postwar ― and now also postcommunist ― Europe, Unlearning Eugenics shows how central the controversies over sexuality, reproduction, and disability have been to broader processes of secularization and religious renewal. Herzog also restores to the historical record a revelatory array of activists: from Catholic and Protestant theologians who defended abortion rights in the 1960s–70s to historians in the 1980s–90s who uncovered the long-suppressed connections between the mass murder of the disabled and the Holocaust of European Jewry; from feminists involved in the militant "cripple movement" of the 1980s to lawyers working for right-wing NGOs in the 2000s; and from a handful of pioneers in the 1940s–60s committed to living in intentional community with individuals with cognitive disability to present-day disability self-advocates.

Herzog is a distinguished professor of history at The Graduate Center.
 

This new account of the tumultuous history of sexuality in Europe spans the waning of Victorianism, the collapse of Communism, and the rise of European Islam. Although the twentieth century is often seen as an era of increasing liberalization, Herzog emphasizes the complexities and contradictions in sexual desires and behaviors, the ambivalences surrounding sexual freedom, and the difficulties encountered in securing sexual rights. Incorporating the most recent scholarship on a broad range of conceptual problems and national contexts, the book investigates the shifting fortunes of marriage and prostitution, contraception and abortion, queer and straight existence. It analyzes sexual violence in war and peace, the promotion of sexual satisfaction in fascist and democratic societies, the role of eugenics and disability, the politicization and commercialization of sex, and processes of secularization and religious renewal. 

Only three decades after the legalization of abortion, the broad gains of the feminist movement, and the emergence of the gay rights movement, America has gone frigid. They are not anti-sex, but they're increasingly anxious about it-largely due to the tactics of the Religious Right. How has the Religious Right achieved this ascendancy? Surprisingly, argues Dagmar Herzog, evangelicals have appropriated the lessons of the first sexual revolution far more effectively than liberals. With the support of a billion-dollar Christian sex industry, evangelicals have crafted an astonishingly graphic and effective pitch for the pleasures of 'hot monogamy'-for married, heterosexual couples only, of course. This potent message has enabled them to win elections and seduce souls, with disastrous political consequences. Sex in Crisis wittily and fiercely forces America to confront its national sexual dysfunction and demand a more sophisticated national conversation about the facts of life.

In this path-breaking work, Dagmar Herzog situates the birth of German liberalism in the religious conflicts of the nineteenth century. Using insights drawn from Jewish and women's studies, she demonstrates how profoundly liberal, conservative, and radical thought in the pre-revolutionary years was shaped by Christianity's problematic relationships to both Judaism and sexuality. In particular, she reveals how often conflicts over the private sphere and the politics of the personal" determined larger political matters. She also documents the unexpected rise of a politically sophisticated religious right led by conservative Catholics, and explores liberals' ensuing eagerness to advance a humanist version of Christianity. She examines the limitations at the heart of the liberal project, as well as the difficulties encountered by philo-Semitic and feminist radicals as they strove to reconceptualize both classical liberalism and Christianity in order to make room for the claims of Jews and women. 

Scholars have increasingly been investigating human sexuality as an important field of social history in particular national cultures. This book reflects the broad variety of such recent research and will be of interest to cultural studies specialists, historians, psychologists, and sociologists. Topics include sex counseling organizations in interwar Vienna; 'foreign encounters' between Austrian women and occupation soldiers during the postwar quadripartite Austrian occupation regime; the 'sexual revolution' of the 1960s and 1970s; the legal penalties for homosexuality in postwar Austria and the liberation of the gay movement after Austria joined the European Union; an analysis of the major influence of the Catholic Church on Austrian sexuality; recent gay and sex abuse scandals in the church hierarchy; and foreign workers (gastarbeiter) in postwar Austria and their sexual contacts with natives. Also included are review essays, book reviews, and the annual review of Austrian politics.