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German/European & Jewish History

Modern German history and the history of German-speaking Jewry have been core research fields at the GHI since the institute’s founding in 1987. German migrations to North America, relations between Germany and the United States, and the flight of German Jews from Nazi Germany have been major research topics since the GHI’s early years. More recently, the GHI has given increased attention to the transnational and global dimensions of German, Central European, and Jewish history.

Photo Credit: E. Zimmermann, Satirical Map of Europe, ca. 1914, Library of Congress.

Team

Projects

German Heritage in Letters

German Heritage in Letters is a project to create a digital collection of German-language correspondence currently held in private hands, by archives, by special collection libraries, museums, and other institutions.

German History in Documents and Images (GHDI)

GHDI is a comprehensive collection of primary source materials documenting Germany's political, social, and cultural history from 1500 to the present.

German History Intersections

The German History Intersections project is a transatlantic initiative that will begin by examining three broad themes – German identity; migration; and knowledge and education – over as many as five centuries.

Innovation through Tradition? Jewish Educational Media and Cultural Transformation in the Face of Modernity Religion, Knowledge, and Education as Key Elements of Socio-Cultural Transformation

German-Israeli cooperative research project bringing that investigates the transformation of Jewish daily life through the prism of its central spaces of teaching, learning and knowledge.

"Remnants Saved from the Fire": A Transnational History of Jewish Ceremonial Objects after 1945

Anna-Carolin Augustin

In Pursuit of Knowing: Nineteenth-Century Jewish Education and the Transformation of Jewish Knowledge

Kerstin von der Krone

Family and Enterprise in the Age of Industry: The Arnholds, 1808-2000

Simone Lässig

Coping with Disruptive Change: Jews, Middle Class Culture, and Social Transformation in Germany, 1800-1860

Simone Lässig

The Politics of Punishment: Penal Reform in Modern Germany, 1870-1970

Richard F. Wetzell

Racial Science and Nazi Biopolitics

Richard F. Wetzell

Events & Conferences

Apr 17, 2023

Knowledge Production in Displacement and Forced Migration

Workshop at the University of California, Santa Barbara | Conveners: Joshua Donovan (GHI Washington | Pacific Office), Vitalij Fastovskij (GHI Washington | Pacific Office), and Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky (University of California, Santa Barbara)

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Apr 25, 2023

Diaspora and Debris: Material Culture in German-Jewish History

Seventh Junior Scholars Conference in Jewish History at GHI Washington | Co-organized by Anna-Carolin Augustin (GHI Washington), Mark Roseman (Indiana University Bloomington), and Miriam Rürup (Moses Mendelssohn Centre for European-Jewish Studies, Potsdam), with additional support from the Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts

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Apr 27, 2023

GHI Colloquium

Speakers: Jan Hua-Henning (Duke Kunshan University) and Andrew Gibson (Georgetown University)

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Apr 29, 2023

Fifth West Coast Germanists’ Workshop: Scholarship-in-Progress

Workshop at University of British Columbia, Vancouver | Conveners: Heidi Tworek (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) and Richard Wetzell (German Historical Institute Washington)

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May 03, 2023

Research Seminar (Hybrid)

Jana Weiß (University of Texas in Austin)

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May 18, 2023

German Art and Culture in the Age of the Thirty Years' War

14th Gerald D. Feldman Memorial Lecture at the German Historical Institute Washington | Speaker: Ulinka Rublack (University of Cambridge)

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May 19, 2023

31st Annual Symposium of the Friends of the GHI

Award of the 2023 Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize at the GHI |

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May 25, 2023

Work, Class, and Social Democracy in the Global Age of August Bebel (1840-1913)

Conference at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto | Conveners: James Retallack (University of Toronto), Simone Lässig (GHI Washington) and Swen Steinberg (GHI Washington) | Partners: Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Bonn); Institute for Social Movements (Bochum)

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Jun 29, 2023

28th Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar: German History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Seminar at the Villa Vigoni, Loveno di Menaggio, Italy | Conveners: Anna von der Goltz (Georgetown University) and Richard Wetzell (GHI Washington)

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Jul 04, 2023

Historicizing the Refugee Experience, 17th–21st Centuries

Third Annual International Seminar in Historical Refugee Studies Duisburg | Organized by the University of Duisburg‐Essen (UDE), the German Historical Institute Washington (GHI) and the American Historical Association (AHA), in cooperation with the Interdisciplinary Center for Integration and Migration Research (InZentIM), the Institute for the Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) and the Centre for Global Cooperation Research (KHK/GCR21)

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Sep 18, 2023

Bucerius Young Scholars Forum Histories of Migration: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives

Seventh Annual Bucerius Young Scholars Forum | Pacific Office of the GHI in Berkeley & Sitka, AK | Conveners: Holly Guise (The University of New Mexico), Sören Urbansky, and Nino Vallen (both Pacific Office of the German Historical Institute Washington, Berkeley)

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all events

Publications

Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk

End Game: The 1989 Revolution in East Germany

Studies in German History. Vol. 26. New York: Berghahn Books, 2022.

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Bulletin 70 (Fall 2022)

Forum: Rethinking Cross-Border Connections

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Anna Corsten

Unbequeme Erinnerer: Emigrierte Historiker in der westdeutschen und US-amerikanischen NS- und Holocaust-Forschung, 1945–1998

Transatlantische Historische Studien. Band 62. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2022.

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Andrew Kloiber

Brewing Socialism: Coffee, East Germans, and Twentieth-Century Globalization

Studies in German History. Vol. 27. New York: Berghahn Books, 2022.

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Bulletin 69 (Fall 2021 & Spring 2022)

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Moritz Föllmer and Pamela E. Swett, eds.

Reshaping Capitalism in Weimar and Nazi Germany

Publications of the German Historical Institute. Cambridge University Press, 2022.

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Paul Lerner, Uwe Spiekermann, Anne Schenderlein, eds.

Jewish Consumer Cultures in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Europe and North America

Worlds of Consumption. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2022.

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all publications

Latest News

Call for Papers

Chinese Migration and the Imagination of Pacific Worlds

Deadline: May 15, 2023 | International Workshop & Lecture Series in Berkeley and Stanford, CA, December 4-7, 2023

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Alumni

Richard H Tilly: An Obituary and an Appreciation

Richard Tilly, our 2009 Helmut Schmidt Prize honoree, sadly passed away on February 18, 2023. Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, one of Tilly's first doctoral…

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Call for Papers

Bucerius Young Scholars Forum Histories of Migration: Transatlantic and Global Perspectives

Deadline: April 1, 2023 (deadline extended) | Seventh Annual Bucerius Young Scholars Forum at the Pacific Office of the GHI in Berkeley & Sitka, AK

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Fellowship

Senior Fellowships at GHI's Pacific Office, UC Berkeley

Deadline: May 1, 2023 | GHI's Pacific Office awards fellowships to up to three senior scholars per year to come to Berkeley for four to twelve weeks…

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Fellowship

Doctoral and Postdoctoral Research Fellowships

Deadline: April 1, 2023 | The GHI awards short-term fellowships to European and North American doctoral students as well as postdoctoral scholars to…

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