Faculty of Theology

Main research interests:

  • Entangled-historical, genealogical, and intellectual-sociological approaches in religious studies
  • Judaism and Modernity
  • Alternative and subversive Religiosity
  • Religion and Politics (Early socialism and Zionism)
  • Messianism and Political Theology
  • Philosophy of religion


PhD project:
Metamorphoses of Messianism – An Entangled History between Jewish Saint-Simonism and Moses Hess in the Context of Socialist Religion

Presentations:

  • “The romantic constructions of Jewish-socialist intellectuals in the light of the concept of “secularized messianism”" at the XXIII International Association for the History of Religions World Congress, Jagiellonian University Kraków (25.8.2025).
  • "Metamorphoses of Messianism - An Entangled History between Jewish Saint-Simonism and Moses Hess in the Context of Socialist Religion" at the PhD-Workshop "Socialist Mysticism, Mystical Socialism: Political Radicalism and Alternative Religiosity in the Decades around 1900", University of Stockholm (19.2.2025).
  • "Zum Begriff des Säkularisierten Messianismus“ at the annual meeting of the "Sektion Religionssoziologie" & the "Arbeitskreis säkulare Weltanschauungen", at Leipzig (28.11.2024).


Reviews:

  • The Heresy of Jakob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth. By Jay Michaelson. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2022. In: Religious Studies Review, Vol. 50, No.3, Sept. 2024. 641.
  • Religion, Esoterik und Nation im frühen Zionismus (1900–1923). Eine genealogische Untersuchung zu Buber, Gordon und Borochov. By Fabian Freiseis. Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für europäisch-jüdische Studien, Band 72. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2024. In: Religious Studies Review, Vol. 50, No.3, Sept. 2024. 644.
  • Kreisky, Israel, and Jewish Identity. By Daniel Aschheim. Studies in Central European History, Culture, & Literature. New Orleans: University of New Orleans Press, 2022. In: Lukas K. Pokorny (ed.): Religion in Austria, Vol. 9, 2025 [in print]. 751-755.
  • Kabbalah and Catastrophe: Historical Memory in Premodern Jewish Mysticism. By Hartley Lachter. Stanford Studies in Jewish Mysticism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2024. In: Religious Studies Review, Vol. 51, No.2, June 2025. 537.


Memberships:

  • German Association for the Study of Religion (Deutsche Vereinigung für Religionswissenschaft, DVRW)
  • Moses Hess society
  • Association for Jewish Studies