Current Projects

Weimar’s Republicans: German Jews in Democratic and Pacifist Organizations of the Interwar Period (1918 -1933)

Bearbeiter: Lutz Fiedler

 „Der Saal ist gut gefüllt, allerdings nur ein Prozent des deutschen Volkes vertreten – das jüdische“, notierte der Journalist Ernst Feder anlässlich einer Veranstaltung der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte in den letzten Jahren der Weimarer Republik. Mochte der 1914 als „Bund Neues Vaterland“ gegründete Zusammenschluss auch keine jüdische Organisation sein, so war die Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte dennoch eine Vereinigung, die mit ihrem pazifistischen, demokratischen und universalistischen Selbstverständnis ein Anlaufpunkt von einer Vielzahl deutscher Jüdinnen und Juden wurde: Albert Einstein, Stefan Zweig, Kurt Tucholsky und Berthold Jacob, aber auch Ernst Julius Gumbel und Ernst Feder. Zusammen mit der Geschichte des parallel aktiven Republikanischen Richterbundes mit dem manche Personalunion bestand, soll die Rekonstruktion des Wirkens der Deutschen Liga für Menschenrechte als ein neuer Zugang zur Geschichte der Weimarer Republik und dem gemeinsamen Engagement deutscher Juden und Nichtjuden um ihren demokratischen Charakter.

DFG-Project “Jewish Film Heritage”

Project leaders: PD Dr. Anna-Dorothea Ludewig (MMZ), Dr. Lea Wohl von Haselberg (Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf) and Dr. Ulrike Schneider (Universität Potsdam).
The project is part of the DFG Priority Program 2357: Jewish Cultural Heritage.

Jewish film history is still a young but dynamic field of research — “Jewish film heritage” on the other hand, has so far been a desideratum. It can be conceptualized following the notion of film heritage discussed in recent years, which understands films “not as interpretable texts or results of a specific production process, but as a network of relationships consisting of their material condition, their legal possession and their (ideal) appropriation, or of various actors such as film archives, rights holders and the interested public” (Chris Wahl). The term film heritage thus goes beyond film history, as it makes visible the conditions under which film history is written. This understanding of film heritage widens the perspective to include audiovisual material widely neglected by film historiography (such as amateur, industry, educational or advertising films), parafilmic and film accompanying materials as well as cinemas and other film screening venues (from DP camps to film events in communities to Jewish film festivals) or biographies of Jewish filmmakers.

The goal of the project is to develop a scientifically based working definition of the term that connects to literary studies research on the understanding of “Jewish literatures” as well as to film studies approaches to dealing with audiovisual heritage and considerations of critical heritage studies.

https://juedischefilmgeschichte.de/en/

Max Brod’s Late Years (1939-1968): Departure into Exile

Researcher: Anna-Dorothea Ludewig
Duration: 2020-2023
Supported by travel funds of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation

The life and work of Max Brod (1884-1968) marks various cornerstones of European-Jewish cultural history in the 20th century: On top of his contributions to literature and music – areas he was extremely successfully in as an author, critic, and mentor – he became known as a composer, politician (Zionist), and dramaturge. Brod spent more than five decades in his birthcity Prague, closely associated with German-speaking Habsburg culture, which was celebrated in a special way in the city on the river Vltava. Brod was a convinced pacifist and as such opposed to the First World War, fearing rightfully that it would bring the end of the multi-ethnic country. In the founding years of Czechoslovakia he also recognized that the Zionist understanding of Jewish emancipation could serve as a unique way towards recognition as a Jewish nation of itself. After the democratic system established by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was destroyed by the Nazis in 1938/39, Brod was forced to leave his hometown and fled to Palestine/Israel. There he worked in Tel Aviv from 1939 to 1968 as a freelance author and dramaturge at the Habimah Theater and exerted great influence on the constitution of a newly emerging Israeli national culture. He also devoted himself to the work of his friend Franz Kafka and developed a marketing strategy that continues to have an impact today on the reception of Kafkas work. These last almost three decades of his life and work have hardly been researched so far, a gap that this biographical project aims to fill.

Women’s Writing and Translating in Fin-de-Siècle Prague and the Bohemian Lands

Researchers: Anna-Dorothea Ludewig and Veronika Jičínská (University Ústí nad Labem)
Duration: 2023–2025
Funding: Czech Science Foundation (GAČR)

Compared to the other European metropolis around 1900, Prague and Bohemia seem to have fewer female contributions to literary and journalistic life. This is especially true of German-speaking literature: While Czech literature around the turn of the century was highly influenced by the works of Božena Němcová and Karolína Světlá (Johanna Rottová) their German-speaking colleagues stayed among themselves. Accordingly, Prague is known as a city of men: Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka or Franz Werfel are its world-famous representatives – but we hardly know any woman writers. In his autobiographical study on the Prague circle (which is also an ex post facto construction of this group) Max Brod mentions the Prague-born Auguste Hauschner (1850–1924) as the only female exception in a long list of male authors. Brod writes some kind but condescending lines about her novels, referring to her as “the good Hauschner” (“die gute Hauschner”). And this seems to be the specific ‘Prague undertone’ of the (contemporary) perception of not only female writing but also female activities in general: “In the writings of each of the women who moved to other cities we can find remarks about the stifling atmosphere of the Prague Jewish Society which they have left behind.” (Iggers, Wilma A.: Women of Prague. Ethnic diversity and social change from the eighteenth century to the present. Providence, RI 1995, 25)

But were there really fewer interesting and noteworthy women writers in Prague and Bohemia, or were they – as so often – marginalized and not canonized? De facto, a number of German-speaking Bohemian women actually were active in the literary field. Like their male counterparts, they came mainly from Jewish families; this is hardly surprising, since German-speaking Jews were an important part of the intellectual middle and upper classes. But – as indicated by Wilma Iggers above – the women lived in a strong dependence on their male relatives, stronger than in Vienna or Berlin, for example.

Thinking about the history of Jewish women writers thus involves an examination of the social history of Bohemia and Prague. Beyond social history, further important factors to consider are  gender images, female education, the relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish environments, and the understanding of nationality, nationhood, and language. This represents a major methodological challenge. By considering the translation aspect, we will move in a large, growing field of translation studies. And, in an already complex field determined by national and cultural differences, we will add the gender aspect. But the methodological complexity that these challenges entail promises valuable research results. The value is that the activities of German-speaking writers and translators (also bilingual women or women with command of German, not necessarily native speakers) in the Bohemian Lands will be recorded for the first time. They will be contextualized in the broader frame of gender discourses in the Habsburg monarchy and against the backdrop of Czech-German constellations. And their work and biographies will be analyzed under the gender perspective that will provide us with tools to bring the sub-current realities and contexts to the fore that have so far escaped academic attention.

[Hi]stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora

Duration: 2023-2026
Researchers: Lisa Sophie Gebhard, Miriam Rürup
Funding: Volkswagen Foundation

The book project and online portal “[Hi]stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora” is intended as a continuation of the acclaimed German-Jewish History in the Modern Era (ed. by Michael Brenner and Michael A. Meyer), published in five volumes by C.H.Beck. It is a project of the Wissenschaftlichen Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts (WAG), realized at the Moses Mendelssohn Center under the leadership of its director and spokesperson of the WAG, Prof. Dr. Miriam Rürup.

While the previous volumes dealt with Jewish life within the different German states, this volume of the Leo Baeck Institute's publication series will present a synthesis on German-Jewish history outside Germany: a history of the German-Jewish Diaspora as well as the afterlife of German-speaking Jewry after the Holocaust. The project is hybrid in nature and will be published as a book (anthology) on the one hand and as a website on the other.

diaspora.jewish-history-online.net

Dovid Eynhorn “Between Worlds”: A Transnational History of Yiddish-speaking Intellectuals

Duration: 2025-
Researcher: Agnieszka Wierzcholska
Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Yiddish-speaking writers, artists, historians, and social scientists born at the cusp of the 20th century are the protagonists of this project. I propose to bring them out of oblivion and show their extraordinary qualities as global intellectuals, highly interconnected, well-informed and transnationally active. This should allow to re-position them from their status of a minority at the margins of society, into the center; to give them due recognition as astute observers and analysts capable to illuminate and articulate an innovative, avant-garde outlook on the 20th century. The lives of the intellectuals took them to different countries and cities, and although they spoke many languages, they consciously decided to publish in Yiddish. As politically engaged migrants, they observed social and political developments very closely, as this was also of utmost importance for their further paths in life. They were in constant exchange with each other, whether they lived in Moscow, Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, Buenos Aires or New York. In this way, a global Yiddish-language network emerged that was reflected, especially in the 1920s and 1930s, in extensive correspondence and in the Yiddish press in which these intellectuals published and commented on each other. One of these Yiddish-speaking intellectuals and a surprisingly neglected figure up to this point was Dovid Eynhorn (1876–1973). As a sharp-sighted journalist and astute observer, he lived in and wrote about the Russian Empire, Switzerland, Poland, Weimar-era Berlin, Paris, and finally, from 1940, also New York. Dovid Eynhorn belonged to a hitherto only marginally studied group of people who, in the age of nationalisms, consistently did not think in national categories, acted in global networks, and communicated in a language - Yiddish - that was supranational. His texts and analyses provide a more nuanced picture of the times in which they were written. On the basis of Dovid Eynhorn's biography, his journalism, and his rich correspondence, an entangled history of twentieth-century will be written from the perspective of an Eastern European Jewish migrating intellectual. Furthermore, Eynhorn's global Yiddish-language network will be explored in my study, as well as the transfers of ideas within it. Eynhorn is like a window through which the circle of Yiddish-speaking intellectuals will be examined more closely.

EUMUS: European Minorities in Urban Spaces: Mutual Recognition, Social Inclusion and Sense of Belonging

Coordination: Dr. Olaf Glöckner, in cooperation with the Center for the Study of the Holocaust and Jewish Literature, Prague (Charles University, main applicant, Dr. Marcela Menachem Zoufala), the Institute of the Middle and Far East of the Jagiellonian University Krakow (Prof. Joanna Dyduch, Prof. Artur Skorek), Birkbeck College/University of London (Dr. Ben Gidley) and Comenius University Bratislava (Prof. Eduard Niznansky)
Duration: 2024-2026
Funding body: EU program Erasmus Plus

EUMES ties on the international project “Euphony: Jews, Muslims and Roma in the 21st Century Metropolises. Reflecting on Polyphonic Ideal and Social Exclusion as Challenges for European Cohesion” (2022-2024). The new project is also primarily dedicated to ethno-cultural and ethno-religious minorities in European (metropolitan) cities, examining their collective narratives, self-images and images of others, integration successes (and setbacks), and in particular their mutual perceptions, interactions and “neighborhoods”.  The focus of the research is on Jewish, Muslim and Roma minorities in and around the urban areas of London, Prague, Krakow, Bratislava and Berlin-Brandenburg. Experiences of discrimination and hostility, collective resilience, cross-group cooperation, solidarity and conflict are compared. With regard to Jewish-Muslim contacts “on the ground”, the focus is also on the extent to which the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023 and the subsequent Gaza war have affected previous mutual perceptions and contacts. The results of the project will be used to transfer knowledge to both academic institutions and the general public.

The Radical Right in Germany, 1945-2000

Project Leaders: Prof. Dr. Frank Bösch (ZZF Potsdam), Prof. Dr. Gideon Botsch (MMZ Potsdam)
Duration: 2021-2027
Funding: Volkswagen Foundation; with additional support by the Hans Böckler Foundation for three doctoral students.

The research project is dedicated to the history of the radical right in both parts of Germany in the second half of the 20th century. The aim is to analyze their development comprehensively and with archival support, also on the basis of sources that have not yet been made accessible, in a contextualized manner from a contemporary historical perspective.

The focus is on the overarching question of the social practices through which the generational transformation of the radical right in Germany took place - from the actors socialized under National Socialism to the cohorts that grew up under democracy and the SED dictatorship and that have set the tone since the 1970s.

This change will be investigated in various subprojects with socio-historical approaches and actor-oriented perspectives. The focus will be on ideological and organizational formations, cultural and lifeworld practices, and, not least, forms of violence of the radical right and its relations to state and society.

https://projekt.radikale-rechte.de/

Struggling with Justice: Antisemitism as a Judicial Challenge

Sub-project: Qualitative Analysis of Jewish Communities' Handling of Criminal Antisemitic Incidents and their Perception and Handling by the Judiciary
Researchers: Dr. Olaf Glöckner, Alisa Jachnowitsch
Duration: 2021-2025
Funding: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung. In cooperation with the University of Giessen, the University of Heidelberg, Humboldt University of Berlin and the Research and Information Center on Antisemitism (Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft RIAS).

The judicial practice with regard to antisemitic incidents in Germany has hardly been scientifically examined to date. The project aims to close gaps in scientific knowledge by systematically taking stock of how the judiciary deals with antisemitism, combined with the question of the (legal) terms of antisemitism. The judicial practice is being monitored from a transdisciplinary and in particular a sociological perspective. The often neglected perspective of those individuals being involved also plays a central role. How do affected Jews experience the judicial handling of incidents they experience as antisemitic? As a result of the project, options for action are to be developed, which are prepared in communication processes in an application-oriented manner for legal training and the judiciary.

Pilot Project “Jewish Life in Potsdam”

Researcher: Julia Kleinschmidt, Ingolf Seidel

The Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies is developing a pilot project on “Jewish Life in Potsdam” in cooperation with a Potsdam high school. In a six- to eight-hour project day, the students will learn about Jewish culture and religion as well as their Jewish environment. The local and regional history of Jewish life in Potsdam and Brandenburg will be explored through various sites and topics. The goal is to introduce the students to Jewish topics, which will be deepened and specialized in the coming years. At the same time, the media competence of the students will be promoted. Jewish history is not to be conveyed through the prism of National Socialist persecution, but rather as a German-Jewish history that spans centuries.

The content topics are tested in the classroom together with the high school and adapted to the needs of the students.  The educational program developed as part of the pilot project will furtheron be applicable to other Brandenburg schools.

Jewish History online

Researchers: Daniel Burckhardt, Miriam Rürup, Nina Zellerhoff in cooperation with Anna Menny (IGdJ Hamburg)
Duration: 2022-

A portal for European-Jewish history will be created at the Moses Mendelssohn Center in the upcoming years. The goal is to integrate various online projects on Jewish history, which are self-contained and yet remain independent, into a common portal in modular form. Individual projects at the MMZ can become part of the new platform as well as curated content from other online digital edition and database projects on Jewish history. The online edition Key Documents on German-Jewish History realized at the Institute for the History of German Jews will be a central module of the portal. The added value of this modular platform is, among other things, a unified search function, indexing and linking, as well as a sustainable and lasting research data management.

https://portal.jewish-history-online.net/

Hakhshara as a Place of Remembrance

Bearbeiter:innen: Miriam Rürup, Daniel Burckhardt, Nina Zellerhoff in Kooperation mit dem DFG-Projekt „Nationaljüdische Jugendkultur und zionistische Erziehung in Deutschland und Palästina zwischen den Weltkriegen“ an der TU Braunschweig und der Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas in Berlin
Laufzeit: 2022-

Mit einer selbstorganisierten, praktischen Ausbildung auf meist landwirtschaftlichen Gütern, bereiteten sich ab den 1920er-Jahren jüdische Jugendliche und junge Erwachsene auf die Auswanderung nach Palästina vor. Die meist landwirtschaftliche, gärtnerische, handwerkliche oder hauswirtschaftliche Ausbildung war Voraussetzung zur Einwanderung nach Palästina. Um die bislang verstreuten Quellen und Forschungen über die verschiedenen Orte der Hachschara, von denen sich viele im heutigen Brandenburg befanden, und deren Akteur:innen zu bündeln, entsteht eine Online-Datenbank zur Forschung, Vermittlung und Erinnerung der Hachschara. Ziel ist es, die lokale Ebene mit den transnationalen Strukturen dieser Bewegung zu verschränken.

National Socialist Book Burnings 1933

Researchers: Daniel Burckhardt, Julia Kleinschmidt, Werner Treß
Duration: 2022-

Based on the "Library of Burned Books" developped at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies in 2008 and the website www.verbrannte-buecher.de, the digitization project "Digital Library of Burned Books" is being created on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the student book burnings. It commemorates the beginning of the systematic persecution of Jewish, Marxist, pacifist and other politically dissenting writers immediately after the transfer of power to the National Socialists.

For the purpose of this project, the existing online content is being comprehensively revised and supplemented by a digital edition of public domain works. At the heart of this website, the digital library, you will currently find a selection of 22 representative books from the list of over 316 writings compiled together with a commission of experts. This selection will be expanded over the coming months. These publications are available free of charge on the website and freely reusable for download in PDF format. Short introductions briefly explain the content of the work, the historical context, and the reasons for its classification at the time as a “forbidden” or “burned” book. The books will be supplemented by short biographies of the authors.
 

Jewish [hi]stories in the GDR

Researchers: Lutz Fiedler, Miriam Rürup

For a variety of reasons, the history of Jews in the GDR has attracted a great deal of interest in recent years. The fact that the socialist polity is at least politically a closed chapter in German history may be favorable to such an inquiry. More important, however, are the historical experiences of Jews themselves, which provide a new and, in many respects, complex view of the German state. Based on the MMZ's collection of numerous interviews with Jews from the GDR, a research project will reconstruct their experiences, perspectives and self-perceptions and thus gain a new perspective on the GDR.

ArchivedMemory online

Researchers: Daniel Burckhardt, Julia Kleinschmidt, Nina Zellerhoff
Duration: 2022-

The original “Archive of Memory: Interviews with Survivors of the Shoah” was created in the 1990s in cooperation with the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies and the memorial site Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz.

The videographed interviews show the life stories of Jews persecuted during the Nazi era as well as the broad spectrum of Nazi persecution and the personal ways in which former victims processed their experiences. This video edition will be partially digitized for online presentation. By linking the transcripts and accompanying materials with linked open data, the integration into the portal “Jewish History online” is ensured. And it will be supplemented by educational material.

The technical and editorial experiences of the project serve at the same time as a prototype for the online presentation of further interview collections of the institute.

Traveling exhibition: Between fame and oblivion. Lea Deutsch: Child prodigy and Holocaust victim

Curators: Dr. Martina Bitunjac and Prof. Dr. Damir Agičić

Funding: Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies

Additional titles: Između slave i zaborava. Lea Deutsch: čudo od djeteta i žrtva Holokausta / Zwischen Ruhm und Vergessenheit. Lea Deutsch: Wunderkind und Holocaust-Opfer

Lea Deutsch (1927-1943) was a famous Jewish-Croatian child actress of the interwar period. Until the age of 14, the Zagreb artist appeared in various comedies, dramas, operas and operettas. When the fascist Ustashe came to power in April 1941, she was banned from acting, among other things. In May 1943, Lea Deutsch was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau with her brother and mother. She probably died during the transport. With this exhibition, we want to commemorate the young, talented actress who became a victim of the Holocaust. On display are photographs from her multifaceted theater life, press articles with her statements, but also official documents, such as her letter of request to the “Race Department” of the Ministry of the Interior of the fascist Independent State of Croatia.

On May 16, 2023, as part of the history festival at the National and University Library in Zagreb, the trilingual exhibition “Between Fame and Oblivion. Lea Deutsch: Child prodigy and Holocaust victim” was shown for the first time. The exhibition will be on display in universities, schools, meeting places, museums, libraries and theaters, among others.

Exhibition dates:
January 2 to February 6, 2025   North University (Sveučilište Sjever) in Koprivnica
October 7 to October 8, 2024   W. Michael Blumenthal Academy of the Jewish Museum Berlin
May 13 to May 16, 2024   Croatian National Theater (Hrvatsko narodno kazalište) in Zagreb
January 17 to February 29, 2024   International Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim/Auschwitz
November 8, 2023 to January 11, 024   Jewish Community Berlin
October 16 to October 30, 2023   Jagiellonian University in Kraków
May 16 to May 19, 2023   National and University Library (Nacionalna i sveučilišna knjižnica) in Zagreb