EAJS Conference Grant Programme 2021/22
Workshop Report
Space and Place in the German-Jewish Experience of the 1930s
University of Rostock, 12-13 May 2022
Organised by:
- Ofer Ashkenazi (The Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History)
- David Jünger (University of Rostock, Historical Institute)
- Björn Siegel (Institute for the History of the German Jews)
- Katrin Steffen (Sussex Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Sussex)
Supported by:
- the European Association for Jewish Studies (EAJS)
- the Axel Springer Foundation
- the Academic Working Group of the Leo Baeck Institute in Germany (WAG)
- the Association for Jewish Studies Germany (VJS)
- the University of Rostock
- the Koebner-Minerva Center for German History at the Hebrew University
- the Institute for the History of German Jews Hamburg (IGdJ)
- the Sussex Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Sussex
Report
The workshop Space and Place in the German-Jewish Experience of the 1930s was carried through successfully and according to plan. During the conference, 13 scholars from Germany, Israel, Austria, the United Kingdom and the United States presented papers and participated in thorough discussions on the workshop’s theme. The papers offered an in-depth overview of the research projects of the participants. The ensuing discussions analyzed the strengths of the arguments and underscored the (methodological and thematical) relations between the presented projects.
The workshop’s aim was to explore spatial aspects of the experiences of German-Jews during 1930s, in Germany and in transit. In highlighting the convoluted relations between place and identity — and the essential influence of these relations on the history of emotions, thoughts and culture — the workshop focused on the spaces that shaped German-Jewish self-perceptions in the face of National Socialism. Professor Marion Kaplan from the New York University delivered the keynote lecture on Thursday night, with the title The Emotional Dissonance of Space: German Jewish Refugees in Portugal. The talk discussed the experiences of the German-Jewish refugees in Portugal during the WWII years, with emphasis on gender-related experiences, interactions with local people and local authorities, and the maintenance of correspondence with relatives who were still in Nazi Germany (and later deported to Eastern Europe). Marion Kaplan considered three spaces that governed refugees’ experiences in transit: waiting lines (such as consulates, travel agencies, ship companies), cafés and letters. Each of these spaces dictated and enabled different connections between the refugees and their social environment. Prof. Kaplan showed how a careful examination of the spatial aspects of experience leads to new insights on German-Jewish history, and opens new paths for scholars of modern migration, fascism, women history and Jewish history. The talk was followed by a lively discussion that included the workshop participants, alongside with students and faculty from Rostock.
Most of the speakers presented case studies and applied concepts and methodologies of space and place to their topics. Some of the papers demonstrated how the writing of history of specific locations leads to new understanding of supposedly well-known times. Thus, for instance, Joachim Schlör’s analyzed the versatility of Jewish experience through a consideration of the tenants and experiences in one building in Brückenallee 33, Berlin. Katrin Steffen (Brighton) offered similarly insightful findings in her analysis of Jewish Heritage Societies (Heimatvereine) in 1930s Berlin. Other papers enhanced the scope looking at various public, private and ‘Jewish’ spaces in Nazi Germany and in the 1930s. A panel that included Guy Miron (Jerusalem), Teresa Walch (Greensboro), Kim Wünschmann (Hamburg) and Miriam Rürup (Potsdam) dealt with a variety of such spaces and their changes in the course of the 1930s and 1940s. The papers in this panel showed how scholars’ shift to space, and to the contemporaneous thinking about space, vitally affects the study of German-Jewry and of Nazism. A third group of speakers, including David Jünger (Rostock), Charlie Knight (Southampton) and Björn Siegel (Hamburg/Graz) explored the interplay of migration, tourism and vacation at various stages of the 1930s and the interdependencies of expectations, imageries and geographical or physical boundaries of movement. A fourth set of papers by Robert Mueller-Stahl (Potsdam), Sarah Wobick-Segev (Hamburg) and Ofer Ashkenazi (Jerusalem) considered the aforementioned topics through visual sources. Their papers indicated the benefits of combining methodologies (and questions) related to the “spatial turn” in historiography with the ones related to the “pictorial turn.”
While there was some general discussion about the concepts of space and place as analytical tools, in the course of the workshop it became obvious that more than abstract theoretical concepts, the discussion of spatial elements would benefit from specific case analyses. In doing so, the discussions of the papers as well as the final discussion at the end of the workshop yielded some general observations. First, a spatial approach necessarily goes hand in hand with other adjacent approaches, such as ones that emphasize transnational, visual or emotional aspects of historical experience. Second, a spatial approach does not require reinterpreting the 1930s in a radically different way, but it does allow for broader perspectives that expand our understanding of the period, especially with regard to Jewish agency.
Last but not least, the workshop brought together a wide range of scholars – from young researchers to the prominent scholars of the field. We expect that this combination of scholars will lead to new research collaborations and prompt new inquiries in the field of German-Jewish history, with emphasis on space and place. We believe that the workshop papers should be published in an academic journal. We are currently in negotiations with the workshop participants and publishers.
Programme
Thursday, 12 May
12:00–12:30 | Arrival
12:30–13:00 | Introduction
13:00–15:00 | 1. Creating Spaces of Memory
Gerald Lamprecht (Graz): Entangled Memories. Jewish and non-Jewish Discourses on the Great War in Interwar Austria
Katrin Steffen (Brighton): East German-Jewish Spaces in Berlin. Jewish Heritage Societies (Heimatvereine) and their diasporic milieu in the 1930ies
Joachim Schlör (Southampton): Brückenallee 33, Berlin
15:30-17:30 | 2. Being In-Between
David Jünger (Rostock): From Myth to Reality. German Jews Discover Palestine (1933–1938)
Charlie Knight (Southampton): Mapping your coordinates. Space and Transnationality in Refugee Correspondence
Björn Siegel (Hamburg/Graz): Ships to Nowhere. A Maritime Space and Its Relevance to Decode Jewish Refugees’ experiences in the 1930s
18:00-19:30 | Keynote Lecture
Marion Kaplan (New York): The Emotional Dissonance of Spaces. German Jewish Refugees in Portugal
Friday, 13 May
09:00-11:30 | 3. Vanishing Jewish Spaces
Guy Miron (Jerusalem): Synagogues, Cemeteries, Sports facilities. Jewish spaces and places in Nazi Germany
Teresa Walch (Greensboro): Rendering Germany ‘judenrein’: Space, Ideology, and German Jews in the 1930s
Kim Wünschmann (Hamburg): Filming the destruction of the Munich Main Synagogue in June 1938. A spatial history-approach to the reading of visual sources
Miriam Rürup (Potsdam): Dejudaization before Deportation. The removal of Jewish traces in urban topographies of German cities
12:00-14:00 | 4. Visualizing Jewish Spaces
Robert Mueller-Stahl (Potsdam): Capturing crisis. German-Jewish private travel photography between the Weimar Republic and Nazism
Sarah Wobick-Segev (Hamburg): Being and Not Being in Time and Place
Ofer Aschkenazi (Tel Aviv): The Displacement of the Ordinary. The German-Jewish Home in Photography Narratives of Emigration
14:15-15:30 | Round table: Final Discussion with Sandwich lunch
End of conference & farewell