Mendelssohn to Mendelsohn: Visual Case Studies of Jewish Life in Berlin Studies in German Jewish History

Images ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 221-222
Author(s):  
Bruce Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
German Jewish

scholarly journals Useful Sites of Memory: Jewish Museums in Belgrade and Sarajevo

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 237-249
Author(s):  
Yulia Oreshina
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Entire Region ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way ◽  
Jewish Museum

Understanding museum as a tool of mediation, premediation and remediation of cultural memory, I focus in this article on two case studies — the Jewish Museum in Sarajevo and Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade. While the Jewish Museum in Sarajevo positiones the city of Sarajevo as the first center of Jewish life in Balkans, the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade claims to be the only museum in ex-Yugoslavia presenting the history of Jews in the entire region. Both museums, therefore, claim to be the most important museums on this topic in the region, and certainly in a way compete to each other. What are the real stories hidden under these narratives, and which political and historical circumstances influence the fact that these two museums represent such contrasting stories? With the help of content analysis of the museum exhibitions, I detalize the narratives presented in the both case studies. In the focus of my interest is contextualization of Jewish history in the region and juxtaposition of the ways it is presented in the chosen museums. Obviously, Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade still represents the unifying Yugoslavian narrative, serving as an umbrella museum for the entire region. In case of Sarajevo, close connection between ongoing process of victimization of the recent past of the city and mythologization of preYugoslavian life in Sarajevo, together with idealization of Bosnian-Jewish relations can be observed. Additionally, I look into the way of representation of the topic of the Holocaust. In the both case studies, the way of narration of the Holocaust is closely linked to the dominant historical narrative of the country, and the museum exposition serves as yet another justification of it. In both cases, the narrative of the Holocaust is shadowed by the previously existing historical tradition — in Yugoslavian times, the Holocaust was predominantly connected to the Ustasha regime and was symbolized by Jasenovac. Nevertheless, within current political realities, the Holocaust memory and the memory of Jewish life in Serbia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina undergoes certain changes and becomes instrumentalized in many contexts.

Archival Totality in the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden

2021 ◽  
pp. 20-51
Author(s):  
Jason Lustig
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Archival Science ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
German Jews ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Jewish

This chapter uncovers the history of the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden, the central archive of the German Jews, which operated from 1903 until it was confiscated by the Nazis in 1943. It details the Gesamtarchiv’s attempt to create a singular archive of German Jewish history in Berlin, and also opposition to the project of centralization, and it situates the archive within the wider trends of archival science. It thereby explicates the Gesamtarchiv’s vision of total archives and traces its legacy across the arc of the twentieth century. This archive was intended to help produce the history of Germany’s Jews and also to help manage its communities, but it was ultimately turned into an instrument for the domination of Jewish life by the Nazi regime. Altogether, this chapter offers the Gesamtarchiv as a starting point for a global network of Jewish archives that followed the Gesamtarchiv’s vision of archival totality.

German-Jewish History in Modern Times, Volume 4, Renewal and Destruction: 1918-1945

2001 ◽  
Vol 106 (4) ◽  
pp. 1487
Author(s):  
Donald L. Niewyk ◽  
Michael A. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
German Jewish

Digitization, Virtual Collections, and Total Archives in the Twenty-First Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 148-173
Author(s):  
Jason Lustig
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Materials ◽  
The World ◽  
Cairo Genizah

This final chapter argues that struggles over archival ownership and the possibility of archival totality continue far beyond the years immediately following World War II. It considers three case studies to consider new forms of total archives being created through virtual collections and digitization: The Center for Jewish History in New York City (formed in 1994/1995 and opened in 2000), the efforts by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research to digitize materials found in Lithuania and reunite them with their own files, and the Friedberg Genizah Project’s initiative to digitize and join together fragments of the Cairo Genizah found in repositories around the world. These case studies showcase enduring visions of monumentality and indicate how archival construction is not merely the province of the past. Instead, the process of gathering historical materials is a continual process of making and remaking history.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 261-266
Author(s):  
Philipp Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
German Government ◽  
German Jews ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Camp System ◽  
German Jewish

THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT might have intended to eliminate Jewish life in Germany, and it succeeded in depriving of their German lives the individuals who illustrated the (im)possibilities of Jews being engaged on and with the German Right in this book. Yet it did not succeed in ending their lives altogether. The majority of the German Jews appearing on these pages managed to survive the Holocaust, through emigration, hiding, or perseverance in the concentration camp system. After the Holocaust they gave testimony, archived their records, and collected those of others. Without their efforts this book on German Jewish conservatives would not exist; and though it ends with their emigration—all but one never returned to Germany for any lengthy period of time—their individual stories were not over. By briefly recounting their lives after 1938, I want to conclude by paying them my respects....

Sounding Jewish in Berlin

2021 ◽  
pp. 190-222
Author(s):  
Phil Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Her Family ◽  
Historical Materials ◽  
Jewish Music ◽  
The Rich ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This chapter devotes specific consideration to the complex relationship between contemporary Jewish identity and klezmer music in the city—as seen in two case studies that both directly address Berlin Jewish history through music. The first of these is a project that unearths the rich recorded legacy of two prewar Berlin Jewish record labels (Semer and Lukraphon) and re-presents their music for a modern concert audience. Despite the pre-Holocaust provenance of this music, a post-Holocaust framing is unavoidable, making these materials both a way of hearing the past and also a commentary on the present (including changing German-Jewish relations). In the process, Semer Ensemble raises important questions about the relationship of bounded historical materials to contemporary performance practice. The chapter also critiques the project, arguing that while it powerfully illustrates the wealth of talent and creativity in Berlin’s Jewish music scene, it also bends certain historical narratives to better suit its own artistic aims. Secondly, the chapter discusses the life story and work of singer Tania Alon, one of the few Berlin-born Jews on today’s klezmer and Yiddish scene. Tania’s deeply felt testimony as the granddaughter of Holocaust victims stands as a powerful contrast to the easy fluidity of the contemporary milieu and reminds us of the very personal resonances that this music also contains. In particular, Tania’s singing at Stolpersteine ceremonies is explored, through her own words, as a way of sounding the silenced voices of her family and simultaneously an aural part of the urban fabric.

Simone Lässig and Miriam Rürup (eds.), Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History. New York: Berghahn Books, 2017. 327 pp.

2020 ◽  
pp. 301-303
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Spatial Turn ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Conceptual Apparatus ◽  
Extensive Introduction ◽  
German Jewish

This volume is a collection of 17 essays originally presented at a workshop at St. Antony’s College, Oxford almost a decade ago. The essays follow an extensive introduction by the two editors that lays out both the theoretical justifications and the methodological advantages of this project, all conceived in the spirit of the so-called “spatial turn” in historiography. Beginning in the 1990s, interest in concrete places and in real or imaginary spaces became part of the new cultural history, with this topic often considered on its own in an ever-growing historical research landscape. In this case, promise the editors, the conceptual apparatus developed by the new turn would be applied to the study of minorities, specifically to the Jews in modern times, and in what may be called their German diaspora. Using concepts such as place, space, and boundaries, they explain, is a means of opening new perspectives on the intensively researched field of German Jewish history, while also newly illuminating matters of integration and seclusion, belonging and identity. The book is divided into three parts: “Imaginations,” “Transformations,” and “Practices,” and as one moves from the heavily theoretical introduction to the concrete historical contributions, the potential of this overall approach begins to unravel....

Singer, Isaac Bashevis (1904–1991)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Furnish
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
York City ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Religious Study ◽  
Jewish Immigrant ◽  
Entire Life ◽  
Isaac Bashevis Singer ◽  
German Jewish

Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in Leoncin, Poland, where his father was a Hasidic rabbi. He grew up between 1908–1917 in Warsaw and from 1917–1921 in Bilgoray (Biłgoraj), which shaped his knowledge of small-town Jewish life. The younger brother of Yiddish writers Israel Joshua Singer and Esther Kreitman, Singer began reading secular literature at 10, and after years of religious study, he eventually followed his brother into Warsaw’s bohemian literary Yiddish community, translating several modern writers into Yiddish. Singer’s first novel, Der Sotn in Goray [Satan in Goray], set in seventeenth-century Poland with the background of pogroms and the false messiah Sabbatai Zevi, appeared in 1934, and the next year, he joined Israel Joshua in New York City where both wrote for the Yiddish press. In 1950, Singer married Alma Haimann Wassermann, a German Jewish immigrant from a once-wealthy family, who supported the couple by working as a retail clerk. Singer wrote in Yiddish for his entire life; most of his novels were serialized in the Jewish Daily Forward Yiddish newspaper. Unlike most great Yiddish writers, he found success in translation, particularly after Saul Bellow’s translation of the story ‘Gimpel the Fool’ appeared in Partisan Review in 1953.

scholarly journals George L. Mosse Memorial Symposium

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Phyllis Cohen Albert ◽  
Alex Sagan
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Memorial Symposium ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
The Many

George L. Mosse died on January 22, 1999, leaving a legacy of scholarly innovation in the study of European, German, and German-Jewish history. The memorial symposium of October 1, 1999 that produced the following articles brought together some of the many students, colleagues, and friends who were deeply influenced by Mosse’s life and work. They offered reflections on his contributions as researcher, author, teacher, and friend.

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