About us

The online portal [Hi]stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora is published by the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies (MMZ) in Potsdam and maintained by the center’s project team. The website forms part of the MMZ’s collaborative platform on European-Jewish history, Jewish History online, and complements the forthcoming volume from the Leo Baeck Institute in the book series German-Jewish History in Modern Times (scheduled for publication in early 2027).

Portal Team

Daniel Burckhardt, M.A. (Technical Implementation)
has been a research associate at the Moses Mendelssohn Center since 2021, where he is responsible for the technical development of all digital projects. He previously oversaw the technical aspects of the Key Documents of German-Jewish History at the Institute for the History of German Jews (IGdJ). He studied in Zurich and Berlin and held posts as a researcher at ETH Zurich, Humboldt University, the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam, and the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. He is also a member of the editorial board and steering committee of H-Soz-Kult.

Dr. Lisa Sophie Gebhard (Coordination and Editor)
is a historian and research associate at the Moses Mendelssohn Center, where she coordinates the international publication project [Hi]stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora. She studied at institutions in Berlin, Jerusalem, Kiel, and Milan, and earned her doctorate at Freie Universität Berlin in 2022. Her research interests include the history of Zionism, on which she co-edited the volume Deutschsprachige Zionismen: Verfechter, Kritiker und Gegner, Organisationen und Medien (1890–1938) together with David Hamann (Peter Lang, 2019). Her dissertation was recently published under the title Davis Trietsch – Der vergessene Visionär: Zukunftsentwürfe zwischen Deutschland, Palästina und den USA (Mohr Siebeck, 2022) and presented at the 2023 Leipzig Book Fair. She lives in Berlin with her family.

Verena Kurz, M.A. (Editor)
has served as external research assistant in the publication project [Hi]stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora at the Moses Mendelssohn Center since 2024. She studied cultural studies, Spanish philology, and Latin American studies at universities in Potsdam and Berlin and has received DAAD fellowships for study and research in Argentina, Bolivia, and Spain. In Buenos Aires, she ran the University of Potsdam’s Liaison Office and worked at a historical archive documenting the antifascist origin story of the Pestalozzi School.

Paul-Levi Mydlach (Editorial Assistant)
is a student assistant at the Moses Mendelssohn Center. He studies history and German studies at the University of Potsdam, focusing on German-Jewish history and literature.

Prof. Miriam Rürup (Project Leader)
has served as the director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center since 2020. As chair of the Academic Working Group of the Leo Baeck Institute, she supervises the conceptual development of the book and online portal [Hi]stories of the German-Jewish Diaspora. She previously directed the Institute for the History of the German Jews in Hamburg, where she initiated and ran the Key Documents project.

Translators
Andreas Bredenfeld, Berlin
Jake Schneider, Berlin

Book Publication Team

Authors
Prof. Michael Brenner
Dr. Sheer Ganor (lead author and editor)
Prof. Marion A. Kaplan
Prof. Guy Miron
Prof. Miriam Rürup (lead author and editor)

Editorial Team
Dr. Lisa Sophie Gebhard (coordinator and editor)
Verena Kurz
Paul-Levi Mydlach (editorial assistant)

Advisory Board

The content of the hybrid project benefits from the support and oversight of an advisory board of distinguished international scholars, including experts from the three countries where Leo Baeck Institutes have been located since 1955. Many of the members also contributed to earlier volumes of German-Jewish History in the Modern Era.

Prof. Ofer Ashkenazi – Director, Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Prof. Atina Grossmann – Professor of History at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Cooper Union in New York City

Prof. Dr. Simone Lässig – Director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC

Prof. Jeffrey Lesser – Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor and Director of the Halle Institute for Global Research and Learning, Emory University, Atlanta

Prof. Michael A. Meyer – Adolph S. Ochs Professor of Jewish History Emeritus at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati

Prof. David Rechter – Professor of Modern Jewish History at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford

PD Katrin Steffen – DAAD Professor of European and Jewish History and Culture at the University of Sussex

Sponsor

Since 2023, the VolkswagenStiftung has been financing the hybrid publication project of the Leo Baeck Institute’s (LBI) Academic Working Group, which is under the direction of Prof. Miriam Rürup at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies in Potsdam.