Lecture Series: Beyond a »Prescribed Anti-Fascism« New Approaches to the History of the Jews in the GDR

Lecturers:
Dr. habil. Jeannette van Laak
Dr. Philipp Graf
Research Colloquium
Time: Wednesdays, 5–7 pm (every other week)

The history of the Jews in the GDR has attracted recent new attention among researchers. In the first two decades after reunification, research was principally focused on the biographies of Jewish communists and the relation of the SED ruling party to the Jewish citizens in the GDR and to the State of Israel. Yet more recent inquiry has turned to less official aspects, such as the realities of life in the Jewish religious Communities (Gemeinden) as well as individual life plans/designs for living in the dynamic locus of interaction between socialism and Jewish origin. Other studies have looked at the current presence, in retrospect  surprising, of the Holocaust in the literature, cinema and visual arts of the GDR. The Research Colloquium in Summer Semester 2017 will deal with this new interest in the history of the Jews in the German Democratic Republic, providing a window onto ongoing research projects in its lecture presentations.

Lectures:

12. April 2017
»Sojourners« (Dokumentarfilm USA/D/CZ 1993)
Filmvorführung und Gespräch mit dem Koproduzenten Jeffrey M. Peck (Berlin/New York) und der Historikerin Annette Leo (Berlin)
Veranstaltungsende 19:15 Uhr

26. April 2017
Anke Kalkbrenner (Berlin)
»Leben danach« – Jüdische Kindheit im Osten Deutschlands nach 1945

3. Mai 2017
Alexander Walther (Jena)
Der Gerichtsreporter als Zeuge. Rudolf Hirsch und die verborgene Präsenz der Schoah

31. Mai 2017
Ofer Waldman (Jerusalem/Berlin)
Thomas Brasch: Ödipus oder Isaak? Eine historisch-literarische Spurensuche

14. Juni 2017
Constantin Goschler (Bochum)
Juden in der DDR – Marginalien zu einer »Fußnote der Geschichte«?

5. Juli 2017
Cathy Gelbin (Manchester)
Judentum als Provokation. Stefan Heym und die DDR