Shared History Conference

A conference of Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin in Cooperation with the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung) and the Jewish Museum Berlin, supported by the German Federal Foreign Office. Live online, December 7–9, 2020. Attendance via video conference is free with advance registration. The conference languages will be German and English with simultaneous translation.

Monday, Dec. 7, 2020

16:30 CET / 10:30 AM EST

Images & objects from a shared history in the collections of the Jewish Museum Berlin

Chair: Aubrey Pomerance (Jewish Museum Berlin)

• Inka Bertz: J.F.A. Darbes' painting of the bust of Moses Mendelssohn: The prohibition on graven images, the reception of antiquity, and media history
• Theresia Ziehe: Photography without fear: Werner Fritz Fürstenberg's pictures of antisemitic signs in Nazi Germany
• Dr. Tamar Lewinsky: Collecting migration stories, the Object Days of the Jewish Museum Berlin

18:00 CET/ 12:00 PM EST 

Keynote  Discussion: Jewish life today—a multitude of voices

Moderated by Dr. Josef Joffe (Die Zeit), speaking with Hetty Berg (Jewish Museum Berlin) and Max Czollek

Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020

13:30 CET / 7:30 AM EST

The Search for Belonging: The ongoing struggles for minority identity

Chair: Hannah Dannel (Central Council of Jews in Germany)

• Dr. Dani Kranz (Ben Gurion University of the Negev): Sharing is caring: Meet Cologne Jewry 2.0
• Sabine Bergler (Jewish Museum Vienna): "Erde aus Österreich": The transfigured Habsburg Empire as a component of Austrian identity
• Jo Frank (Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Scholarship Fund): Dynamics of Jewish identities in Germany today

15:00 CET/ 9:00 AM EST

Migration: From refugees to citizens

Chair: Prof. Dr. David Sorkin (Yale University)

• Prof. Dr. Tobias Brinkmann (Penn State University): Fathers and sons: Writing the history of the Morgenthau family
• J.J. Kimche (Harvard University): Migration as a national desideratum: The peregrinatory strain within German-Jewish thought
• Dr. Vera Kallenberg (University of Erfurt): Almost equally unequal? The “shared history” of Jews and gentiles in the Frankfurt criminal justice system around 1800

16:30 CET / 10:30 AM EST

A Rupture in History: Talking about the Holocaust

Chair: Prof. Dr. Deborah Dwork (Graduate Center at CUNY)

• Prof. Dr. Uzi Rebhun (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Holocaust, memory, migration: The burden of catastrophe among Israelis in Germany
• Dr. Anna Koch (University of Leeds): “I am a German; this is my language, my culture”: Reclaiming Germanness after the Holocaust

17:30 CET / 11:30 AM EST

Virtual coffee break: Breakout room for discussions

18:00 CET / 12:00 PM EST

Flight: Exile in modern times 

Chair: Dr. Simone Blaschka (Deutsches Auswandererhaus Bremerhaven)

• Dr. Emilie Kutash: Hans Jonas: Trauma, exile and German philosophy
• Malte Spitz (Selma Stern Center): Hermann Grab's Pianoforte from the workshop of J. A. Stein
• Dr. Sheer Ganor (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities): “Hilde Scott Diskutiert”: Advice for the displaced family

Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2020

14:30 CET / 8:30 AM EST

Memory and Commemoration: Historical narratives of minorities within discourse of the majority society

Chair: Dr. Andreas Eberhardt (Alfred Landecker Foundation)

• Dr. Liat Steir-Livny (Sapir College): Shared history: The hybrid identity of Jewish immigrants from Germany to Eretz-Israel in the 1930s in the Israeli documentary The Flat
• Aya Zarfati (House of the Wannsee Conference): Talking about the Holocaust in the post-witnesses era: the relation between archival sources and family memories
• Adam Kerpel-Fronius (Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe): Contemporary knowledge transmission and desiderata in the majority society

16:00 CET/ 10:00 AM EST

Withstanding the Pressure: Resilience and self-assertion in times of discrimination

Chair: Prof. Dr. Miriam Rürup (Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden)

• Dr. Christopher Brennan (London School of Economics) and Alma Hannig (University of Bonn): Jews in governmental politics and diplomacy in Germany and Austria-Hungary
• Anna Knoblauch (ShUM Cities on the Rhine): Architecture as the mirror image of societal resilience: The synagogue in Worms between the 12th century and the Shoah
• Dr. Nathaniel Weston (Seattle Central College): Sharing Vienna in Hugo Bettauer’s The City without Jews (1922)

17:30  CET / 11:30 AM EST

Shared Spheres and Cultural Exchange: Acceptance as challenge and opportunity

Chair: Dr. Aya Elyada (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

• Renate Evers (Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin): The 1484 Nuremberg Jewry Oath (More Judaico)
• Dr. Susanne Korbel (University of Graz): Private spaces as spheres of Jewish and non-Jewish relations: Encounters between Jews and non-Jews in Viennese homes
• Dr. Daniel Baránek (Czech Academy of Sciences): Crossing the Ghetto Borders: Integration of Jews in Loschitz and Mährisch Weisskirchen, 1848–1921

18:30 CET / 12:30 AM EST

Virtual coffee break: Breakout room for discussion

19:00 CET / 1:00 PM EST

Closing Discussion: “Shared” history? Reflections on a complex  interplay 

Moderated by Shelly Kupferberg, speaking with Dr. Raphael Gross (German Historical Museum) and Michaela Küchler (German Federal Foreign Office)