Cassandre Lesnik – Adjunct Researcher 

Cassandre Lesnik is writing a PhD on the topic: From History to Memory: A Study of the Work and Posterity of Fritz Bauer (1903-1968), German-Jewish Magistrate from 1930 to 1968.

The primary goal of her PhD is to study the work of Fritz Bauer, a German-Jewish magistrate, to determine to what extent, he belongs to the category of Jewish authors. Indeed, German research excludes him from this category because Fritz Bauer declared not to believe in God. However, after his return to Germany in 1949, we notice that Fritz Bauer began to appeal to the history of the Jewish people and to Jewish philosophy to “justify” his legal theories, and he even began to research what “true” law is (a theme addressed by other Jewish authors, notably Franz Kafka). The ambition of this PhD is therefore to link the history and philosophy of law with Jewish history and philosophy. To do this, an important part of my research work is to analyze all of Fritz Bauer’s personal archives in the Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt am Main in order to proceed to an analysis of everything he wrote.