Geographical Overviews

The ge­o­graph­i­cal overviews ex­am­ine var­i­ous coun­tries where German-​speaking Jews resided, ei­ther while in tran­sit or as long-​term des­ti­na­tions. As ref­er­ence guides, they out­line de­vel­op­ments and key themes, com­bin­ing fac­tual in­for­ma­tion with an­a­lyt­i­cal in­sights into the German-​Jewish Di­as­pora as it took shape in the con­text of each coun­try. They fol­low a con­sis­tent the­matic struc­ture, high­light­ing rel­e­vant na­tional cir­cum­stances be­fore and after 1933 that are rel­e­vant to Jew­ish his­tory.

Their length varies by coun­try or re­gion and re­flects var­i­ous types of di­as­poric life­worlds – from cen­ters of German-​speaking Jew­ish life to tran­sit coun­tries that only hosted tem­po­rary local com­mu­ni­ties of Ger­man(-​speaking) Jews. The for­mat fo­cuses on the­matic focus areas, thus con­sid­er­ing sev­eral top­ics on a re­cur­ring basis to cre­ate a con­sis­tent tex­tual struc­ture and fa­cil­i­tate com­par­isons be­tween in­di­vid­ual coun­tries. The project does not limit its por­trayal of the highly di­verse German-​Jewish Di­as­pora to the na­tional level, but also con­sid­ers in­di­vid­ual cities, neigh­bor­hoods, and pe­riph­eral areas. This also makes it pos­si­ble to show­case the his­tory of German-​speaking Jews’ day-​to-day local ex­pe­ri­ences.

Re­cur­ring the­matic cat­e­gories in the ge­o­graph­i­cal overviews in­clude:

1. Every­day Life | 2. In­sti­tu­tions | 3. Iden­tity and Re­li­gios­ity | 4. Gen­der and Gen­er­a­tions | 5. Transna­tional Net­works | 6. Lan­guage | 7. En­coun­ters | 8. Cul­tural and Knowl­edge Trans­fer | 9. Re­turn | 10. Legacy and Mem­ory.

The ten the­matic cat­e­gories and their de­fined sub­cat­e­gories are not in­tended as strict tem­plates to be ad­dressed for every re­gion. In­stead, the as­signed au­thors have in­de­pen­dently se­lected the themes rel­e­vant to a given coun­try and ad­dressed them in their overviews.

How­ever, cer­tain top­ics have been cov­ered as con­sis­tently as pos­si­ble across all stud­ies, in par­tic­u­lar the in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of the German-​Jewish Di­as­pora through clubs or pe­ri­od­i­cals; the every­day chal­lenges com­mu­nity mem­bers faced; and en­coun­ters with other mi­nor­ity groups and main­stream so­ci­ety. In ad­di­tion, the texts ad­dress the sig­nif­i­cance of mem­ory and nos­tal­gia for con­struct­ing a shared ‘di­as­poric iden­tity’ as well as transna­tional net­works ex­tend­ing be­yond the coun­try in ques­tion – in­clud­ing on­go­ing ties to the Old Coun­try. These key the­matic areas make it pos­si­ble to iden­tify par­al­lels and dif­fer­ences in a ge­o­graphic cross-​section.

Biographies

In ad­di­tion to ex­plor­ing the var­i­ous des­ti­na­tions, the por­tal por­trays in­di­vid­u­als who left the German-​speaking world. Through in­di­vid­ual and group bi­ogra­phies, the German-​Jewish Di­as­pora is given a human face, coun­ter­ing the de­per­son­al­iza­tion of mi­gra­tion dis­course. Fa­mil­iar­ity or renown is not the basis for in­clu­sion. Along­side ‘fa­mous’ his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, we also con­sider less fa­mil­iar life sto­ries to il­lu­mi­nate par­tic­u­lar as­pects of the German-​speaking Jew­ish Di­as­pora in all their breadth.

These bi­ogra­phies ex­pand the over­all scope of the ge­o­graph­i­cal overviews through in­di­vid­ual ex­am­ples. They cen­ter on life in the Di­as­pora, but also in­clude many ref­er­ences to dreams of re­turn to the coun­try of ori­gin, which were oc­ca­sion­ally ful­filled. These case stud­ies par­tic­u­larly make clear how hy­brid, frag­mented af­fil­i­a­tions de­vel­oped and changed over the course of a per­son’s life. The the­matic cat­e­gories of the ge­o­graph­i­cal overviews are also re­flected in the short bi­ogra­phies.

Source Interpretations

The Di­as­pora por­tal in­cor­po­rates sources – tex­tual, vi­sual, audio, or au­dio­vi­sual doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing pho­tographs of three-​dimensional ob­jects – to ‘drill down’ into the specifics. These sources shed light on in­di­vid­ual pe­ri­ods of a per­son’s life as well as the­matic areas. Each source (or group of re­lated sources) is ac­com­pa­nied by a de­scrip­tion and in­ter­pre­ta­tion that sit­u­ates it in its his­tor­i­cal and func­tional con­text. The ‘source in­ter­pre­ta­tion’ rubric in­cludes tran­scrip­tion and trans­la­tion, as well as a dig­i­tal fac­sim­ile. As with the bi­ogra­phies, the source in­ter­pre­ta­tions are linked to the the­matic cat­e­gories used in the ge­o­graph­i­cal overviews.

The sources have been lo­cated in a va­ri­ety of places: pub­lic archives, li­braries, and mu­se­ums, as well as pri­vate col­lec­tions and es­tates. In some cases, only ex­cerpts of a source are shown, but then al­ways along with in­struc­tions on how to ac­cess the full doc­u­ment and a hy­per­link when tech­ni­cally fea­si­ble.

The source se­lec­tion is in­spired by the con­cept of ‘key doc­u­ments’ de­vel­oped by Miriam Rürup, Anna Menny, and Daniel Bur­ck­hardt for the Key Doc­u­ments of German-​Jewish His­tory project.

Key doc­u­ments are de­fined as sources that pro­vide ex­em­plary in­sights into his­tor­i­cal de­vel­op­ments and events – serv­ing as entry points into larger sto­ries. This source-​based layer is a cen­ter­piece of the web­site.

Bring Your Own Story

Along­side tra­di­tional ar­ti­cles, the on­line por­tal in­vites con­tri­bu­tions from in­di­vid­u­als with per­sonal con­nec­tions to Di­as­pora his­tory. The Bring Your Own Story sec­tion aims to make in­di­vid­u­als’ life tra­jec­to­ries in the Di­as­pora tan­gi­ble using ‘sto­ry­telling ob­jects.’ These in­clude every­day items, let­ters, pho­tographs, or post­cards, as well as ap­plied art or dis­tinc­tive fab­ric items. Such ob­jects link per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ences to the broader his­tory of the German-​Jewish Di­as­pora. As dis­tinc­tive ves­sels of mem­ory – often re­flect­ing mul­ti­ple mi­gra­tion ex­pe­ri­ences within a sin­gle fam­ily – they hold deep, in­ter­gen­er­a­tional sig­nif­i­cance. In short per­sonal videos (of 10–15 min­utes each), par­tic­i­pants re­flect on their own mi­gra­tion sto­ries and the role of the German-​Jewish Di­as­pora in their fam­ily his­to­ries.