Articel Content
History’s biggest fan.
Text: Christoph Dieffenbacher
A researcher at the Center for Jewish Studies, Erik Petry is devoted to remembrance and making sure the past is not forgotten. His other great passion is sports – as an academic, as a fan and as an active participant.
The shelves are crammed almost to bursting with volumes by Theodor Herzl, Siegfried Kracauer and Ernst Bloch. Every inch of the small offi ce under the roof seems to be piled high with books, binders, stacks of paper, boxes and cases. In the midst of it all stands an open laptop. A sports calendar and a medal on the wall complete the scene. My host at the Center for Jewish Studies, accommodated in a Basel town house, is a tall, slender man in jeans and a black shirt. His voice is deep and sonorous; lively eyes peer out from behind black horn-rimmed glasses.
Sports clubs and the Middle East conflict
“Too little room for too many books,” he quips with a hearty laugh. Erik Petry, who has lived in Basel for two decades, is wellliked by his students. Along with his open and accessible manner, this can undoubtedly be attributed to the topics of his lectures, seminars and excursions: Zionism, Jewish culture, refugee stories, Shoah and the Middle East conflict. His enthusiasm
for these subjects is clearly contagious to many. “History is simply the best: Nothing could be more exciting,” he says. It sounds convincing.
History, literature, music and refi ned language were held in high esteem in Petry’s family. His father, a bookseller, read voraciously in his free time and spent his Sundays writing soccer bulletins – invariably accompanied by his wife and child. Petry’s mother would knit scarves in the colors of his favorite club, and later on gave her son a Schalke 04 shirt that lasted for years, as Petry vividly recounts.
Consequential reading
Petry got into Jewish history and culture via a peculiar route. He can clearly remember the moment it all began, he says: At school, he was assigned an essay on the novella “Die Judenbuche” by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff , in which he had to discuss whether the Jew Aaron had deceived the village as a moneylender.
From then on, his interest in Jewish history grew and grew, ultimately leading to extended research trips to Israel for his doctoral studies. In Israel he met fellow PhD students from Basel, and it was these encounters that led him to the university at the elbow of the Rhine, first for an exhibition project and later
as an assistant.
Sports and Jewish remembrance culture are the topics closest to Petry’s heart. His connection with sports dates back almost to his birth, he recalls with a laugh: “Six hours after I was born, I became a member of the VfL Kassel soccer club – and still am to this day.” Until the age of 35, he played in various amateur clubs, and has volunteered as a coach and referee. Since moving to Basel – his current abode is a terraced house in the suburbs – he does judo and long-distance running, and completed the spectacular Jungfrau Marathon this year. He also goes jogging early every morning. He is a loyal spectator at FC Basel soccer matches, accompanied by his girlfriend and soccer-loving colleagues.
Sports and society
“Sports can tell us a great deal,” says Petry. What context are sports played in? What role do they play for people? Who infl uences whom? “Sports reflect an entire society,” says Petry, “and they play a part in how a society evolves, for example where the integration of foreigners is concerned.” The historian often finds himself discussing sports and is frequently interviewed by the media on the subject. He notes that violence in soccer is not a new phenomenon: “Even in the game’s earlier days, punch-ups at soccer matches were a common occurrence.”
Although top-level sports are nowadays the object of highly professional
marketing eff orts, this has not diminished their appeal, Petry says, pointing out that commercialization is clearly no deterrent for most people. Nevertheless, scientifi c research in the fi eld is virtually non-existent, he laments. For instance, Petry complains that the Swiss sports museum in Basel still struggles to find financial support – even though it is one of many institutions housing a wealth of material on the history of sports.
A Jewish society
Petry’s postdoctoral habilitation thesis also touched on the topic of sports, albeit marginally. His research focused on a Jewish society formed by a group of friends in Zurich in the 1920s that endured for decades. Initially created as an opportunity for members to get together and play chess, the club survived until the death of its last surviving members this year. In the wake of World War II, the group named itself “the pack”, deliberately adopting the expression used by Goebbels in his hate speeches. “The club worked like a lodge: Members helped each other their whole life long.”
A central aspect of the project was the concern – on the part of the pack’s members and Petry himself – that an important piece of culture would be lost with the club’s demise. Petry was able to talk to the last members in person. In the absence of written sources, he employed the oral history method, conducting and evaluating interviews. To establish trust, he spent a great deal of time in conversation with his subjects before even switching on the tape recorder. The thesis makes use of the concept of lifeworlds, in which the individual is placed at the forefront of the story.
University admin
Alongside his research and teaching, Petry has plenty of administrative and organizational work on his plate too: as the representative of a minor subject he is expected to participate in numerous university committees and boards. The upside is that this often means information reaches him faster, he claims. And he doesn’t really have a problem with this kind of work in any case: “Working at a university is not exactly a nine-to-five kind of job,” he says. He goes on to explain that he feels very much at home in Basel – thanks in no small part to the great interest in his fi eld among the population.
What is more, anyone who has been at the Center for Jewish Studies since it was established 20 years ago – as Petry has – knows their way around, he says, before turning back to his laptop, nestled among books and piles of paper, to continue working on the article he was busy with when I came in.
Erik Petry was born in 1961 in Kassel, Germany. He is Professor of Modern General and Jewish History, and Deputy Head of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Basel. After studying history and sports science in Göttingen and traveling to Israel on research trips, he obtained his doctorate in 1998 with a dissertation on early Zionism. He then moved to Basel, where he completed
his post doctoral habilitation in 2010 at the University of Basel.
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