Prof. Christoph Schmidt was born 1956 in Helsinki, Finland, wrote a PhD about Theodor W. Adorno’s “Hermeneutics of Shock”, i.e. his Philosophy and Aesthetics, Literature and Musical Theory. Since 1995 he teaches at the department for German Literature at the Hebrew University. Schmidt works on problems connected to modern political theology, secular culture, philosophy of arts and the relation between secular culture and religion. 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.
Schmidt has taught at the universities of Tübingen, Giessen, Berlin and Leuven (Belgium). Since 2011 he teaches as well in the departments of Philosophy and Comparative Religion.