Marc David Baer

Marc David Baer

Research Interest

Europe
Middle East and North Africa
Religion
Nationalisms and Identity
1900-1945

Biography

Marc David Baer (PhD, History, University of Chicago) is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of many books: Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), winner, Albert Hourani Prize, Middle East Studies Association of North America, Best Book in Middle East Studies, translated into Turkish as IV. Mehmet Döneminde Osmanlı Avrupa'sında İhtida ve Fetih(Istanbul: Hil, 2010); The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), translated into Turkish as Selânikli Dönmeler: Musevilikten Dönenler, Müslüman Devrimciler, ve Laik Türkler (Istanbul: Doğan, 2011), and translated into Greek as Οι ντονμε τησ θεσσαλονικησ: Εξισλαμισθέντες Εβραίοι, Επαναστάτες Μουσουλμάνοι, Κοσμικοί Τούρκοι (Thessaloniki: Epikentro, 2020); At Meydanı'nda Ölüm: 17. Yüzyıl İstanbul'unda Toplumsal Cinsiyet, Hoşgörü veİhtida (Death on the Hippodrome: Gender, Tolerance, and Conversion in 17th century Istanbul) (Istanbul: Koç Yayınları, 2016); German, Jew, Muslim, Gay: The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus and Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide.

In addition, he has published works on Turks in Germany including “Mistaken for Jews: Turkish PhD Students in Nazi Germany” (German Studies Review) and “Turk and Jew in Berlin: The First Turkish Migration to Berlin and the Shoah” (Comparative Studies in Society & History) as well as German-Jewish converts to Islam including “Protestant Islam in Weimar Germany: Hugo Marcus and ‘The Message of the Holy Prophet Muhammad to Europe.’” (New German Critique) and “Muslim Encounters with Nazism and the Holocaust: The Ahmadi of Berlin and German-Jewish Convert to Islam Hugo Marcus" (The American Historical Review).

Marc David Baer published two books in 2020. The first, released in March 2020 with the Indiana Series in Sephardi and Mizrahi Studies, Indiana University Press, is called Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide (winner of the 2021 Dr Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies by the by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research). Baer confronts long-standing convictions about harmonious Turkish-Jewish relations to reflect on what moral responsibility the descendants of the victims of one genocide have to the descendants and victims of another. He delves into the history of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to tease out the origin of these many tangled truths. In this, he aims to bring about reconciliation between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, not only to face inconvenient historical facts, but to confront it and come to terms with it. By looking at the complexities of interreligious relations, Holocaust denial, democide and ethnic cleansing, and confronting some long-standing historical stereotypes, Baer sets out to tell a new history that goes against Turkish antisemitism and admits to the Armenian genocide.

The second, entitled German, Jew, Muslim, Gay: The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus was released in April 2020 with the Religion, Culture, and Public Life series, Columbia University Press. Hugo Marcus (1880-1966) was born a German-Jew, but converted to Islam, becoming one of the most prominent Muslims in Germany prior to the Second World War. He was also a gay man who never called himself so but fought for homosexual rights and wrote queer fiction under the pen name Hans Alienus during his decades of exile. Baer uses Marcus’s life and work to shed new light on a striking range of subjects, including German Jewish history and anti-Semitism, Islam in Europe, Muslim-Jewish relations, and the history of the gay rights struggle. He explores how Marcus created a unique synthesis of being German, gay and Muslim that positioned Goethe as an intellectual and spiritual model. Marcus’s life offers a new perspective on notions of sexuality and competing conceptions of gay identity in the multilayered world of interwar and postwar Europe.

The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic, Asian antithesis of the Christian, European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans' domain was multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious, reaching deep into Europe's heart. Indeed, as it expanded across Eastern Europe, Asia, and North Africa, the Ottomans saw their empire as the new Rome. In The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs (Basic Books, 2021), I offer a major new history of the Ottoman dynasty, recounting their remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, and trace their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage. Rulers viewed themselves as both devout Muslims and the rightful successors to the Roman Empire, calling themselves not only khans and sultans but also caliphs, emperors, and caesars. They managed their vast empire by striking a delicate balance: for most of the dynasty's existence, the Ottomans pioneered principles of religious tolerance, even as they used religious conversion to integrate conquered peoples and populate the ruling class. But in the nineteenth century, the dynasty embraced exclusivity and intolerance, leading to ethnic cleansing, genocide, and ultimately the empire's demise after the First World War. The Ottomans vividly reveals the dynasty's full history and its enduring impact on Europe and the world.

Other titles at LSE: Deputy Head of Department

Courses

Professor Marc David Baer usually teaches the following courses in the Department:

At undergraduate level:

At postgraduate level:

Publications

Professor Marc David Baer’s research focuses on the connected histories of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in European and Middle Eastern history, from the early modern era to the modern.

His first book, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (Oxford, 2008, Turkish translation, IV. Mehmet Döneminde Osmanlı Avrupasında İhtida ve Fetih, Hil, 2010), analyzes how Muslim proselytizers conceived and practiced converting other Muslims, as well as Christians and Jews to their interpretation of Islam. Honored by the Glory of Islam was awarded the Albert Hourani Prize of the Middle East Studies Association of North America as the best book in Middle East Studies, 2008. The monograph was also short listed as the best first book in the History of Religions by the American Academy of Religion, 2009. He ends Honored by the Glory of Islam with the conversion to Islam of a group of messianic Jews in seventeenth-century Ottoman Salonika, which is the focus of his second monograph, The Dönme: Jewish Converts, Muslim Revolutionaries, and Secular Turks (Stanford, 2010; Turkish translation, Selânikli Dönmeler: Musevilikten Dönenler, Müslüman Devrimciler, ve Laik Türkler, Doğan, 2011; Greek translation, Οι ντονμε τησ θεσσαλονικησ: Εξισλαμισθέντες Εβραίοι, Επαναστάτες Μουσουλμάνοι, Κοσμικοί Τούρκοι, Epikentro, 2020). The Dönme is the first complete history of a secretive Ottoman community from its origins to its dissolution in twentieth-century Istanbul. The Dönme was named finalist, Sephardic Culture category at the National Jewish Book Awards, 2010.

Dr Baer's subsequent book, At Meydanı’nda Ölüm: 17. Yüzyıl İstanbul'unda Toplumsal Cinsiyet, Hoşgörü ve İhtida (Death on theHippodrome: Gender, Tolerance, and Conversion in 17th century Istanbul), was published in Turkish in Istanbul by Koç Yayınları in 2016.

In early 2020 both Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks: Writing Ottoman Jewish History, Denying the Armenian Genocide (Indian University Press) and German, Jew, Muslim, Gay: The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus (Columbia University Press) were released. The former was awarded the 2021 Dr Sona Aronian Book Prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies by the by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research.

In October 2021, The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs was published by Basic Books.

In addition to these monographs, he has written a number of academic articles and chapters, including:

Books