Global Humanities Junior Research and Teaching Stay at Freie Universitaet Berlin

Enrico Lucca's current research aims to explore the multiple dimensions of the biography and work of Shmuel Hugo Bergman (1883-1975), and elucidate his crucial position in the cultural, intellectual, and political life of pre-state Jewish and subsequently Israeli society. Originally from Prague, where he led the Jewish-cultural renaissance of the local German speaking community, Bergman moved to Palestine, where he assumed an influential role within the Jewish yishuv. He soon became a leading institutional figure associated with the development both of the Jewish National Library and the Hebrew University. The research will generate an intellectual biography that encompasses the multiple aspects of Bergman’s political, scholarly, and cultural activity.

Enrico Lucca holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Milan (2012). During the PhD he spent nine months as a visiting research student at the University of Chicago and six months at the Hebrew University. Since 2012 he has been affiliated to the Franz Rosenzweig Center in Jerusalem first as a doctoral research fellow and then as a postdoctoral researcher. Among others, he has been awarded grants from DAAD (Summer 2008 and Autumn 2013), the Posen Foundation (Summer Fellowship 2011), and the Lakritz Prize in Martin Buber studies (2014). He has been lecturing on German-Jewish thinkers and Italian Literature at the University of Milan and at the Hebrew University.