Research Unit »Law«

The Research Unit »Law« is dedicated to Jewish activities in various fields of law from the late eighteenth century onwards as well as to modern legal thought. This era was characterized by manifold efforts to achieve legal equality on the one hand, contrasting with ongoing experiences of exclusion and disenfranchisement, eventually climaxing in extermination, on the other. Against this background, this research unit centers on the lifeworlds and spheres of activity of European Jews within their surrounding societies, with a particular emphasis on their historical legal implications.

Three focal points are of special significance here:

Under the keyword »Emancipation,« this research unit examines the struggle for recognition, participation, and equality before the law in Europe through the example of selected Jewish jurists of various generations as well as various legal networks and associations.

The focal point »International Law« decodes the role of Jewish organizations and agents in their various experiential contexts in the European nation states or multinational empires from the nineteenth century onwards, particularly with regard to the novel legal concepts and instruments of modern international law. Of particular importance here are the engagements with National Socialism and its consequences.

The focal point »The Restoration of Justice after 1945« focuses on two thematic contexts: The first concentrates on the process of restoring legal systems in Europe and the Jewish participation in reconceiving legal structures and dealing with the prosecution of Nazi crimes. The second concentrates on questions of restitution, property, and inheritance.

Head of Research Unit
Dr. Elisabeth Gallas

Deputy Head of Research Unit
N.N.

Research Projects

Turning Object into Subject

Negotiating Visibility
A Cultural History of Wearing the Kippah

Itamar Ben Ami (affiliated)

Democratic Thought in the Early Federal Republic
The Constitutional and Public Law Expert Walter Jellinek

Philip Emanuel Bockelmann

»We accuse« –
The History of Jewish Indictment in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Dr. Elisabeth Gallas

Nathan Feinberg and His Contemporaries:
Jewish International Lawyers and the Sovereign Condition

Dr. Rotem Giladi (affiliated)

Turning Object into Subject

City without Jews
On the Treatment of Halberstadt’s Jewish Heritage since 1945

PD Dr. Philipp Graf

German-Jewish Cultural Heritage Abroad

Books from the »Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums« and the National Library in Jerusalem

Dr. Anna Holzer-Kawałko (affiliated)

The Évian Conference of 1938
History and Memory

Dr. des. Martin Jost

Turning Object into Subject

The Jewish Cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee
Jewish Burial Culture in Germany

Dr. des. Andrea Kirchner (Fritz Bauer Institute)

Paradoxes of Witnessing
Jewish Survivors in the Federal German Sobibor Trials

Dagi Knellessen (affiliated)

Mandatory Subjects
Self-Government and Empire in Palestine, 1917–1948

Maya Kreiner

Between Loopholes and Gray Areas
A Transnational History of Illegal Jewish Networks in the 19th Century

Margarita Lerman (assoziert)

Material Traces

»An Entry to the Soul of Silesia«:
Max Pinkus’ Library in Neustadt, Upper Silesia

Judith Siepmann

German-Jewish Cultural Heritage Abroad

Studies on the Material and Intellectual Heritage of the »Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums«

Dr. Felix Steilen

Coexistence and Dissonance
The Evolution of a Polish-Jewish Townscape from the Late 19th Century to the Present

Dr. Yechiel Weizman (affiliated)

Selecting for the Nation.
Forced Academic Migrants, Their Applications and Admission Processes, 1933–1945.

Dr. des. Sebastian Willert