Simon Dubnow Lecture

Still Lives: Jewish Photography and Experiences in Nazi Germany

23rd Simon Dubnow Lecture

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Registration required

On Tuesday, November 12, 2024, the Dubnow Institute together with the Fritz Thyssen Foundation invites you to the 23rd Simon Dubnow Lecture held at the Paulinum of Leipzig University. Prof. Dr. Ofer Ashkenazi from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will speak under the title »Still Lives« about Jewish photography and experiences in Nazi Germany.

The talk will examine how Jews used photography to document their lives in the face of National Socialism, focusing on private, non-professional images that captured everyday experiences and the environment in which they took place. These seemingly ordinary photos, intended for private viewing, offer a rich source for historians of German Jews when placed within their cultural, social and biographical contexts. By analyzing the visual narratives constructed through these images, the lecture will demonstrate how they conveyed otherwise unuttered emotions and self-perceptions, helping individuals make sense of the profound yet often fully understood changes in the German socio-political landscape.

During a time of increasing anti-Jewish rhetoric and policies, German Jews from diverse backgrounds—across age, gender, class, and religiosity—documented their lives in tens of thousands of photographs. These images have often been overlooked by historians, in part because their mundane appearance invites multiple interpretations. Ofer Ashkenazi will present a new methodology for analyzing such photographs, revealing how they shape narratives that reflect on and assign meaning to the realities they depict, offering fresh insights into German-Jews' experiences during the transition from democracy to totalitarianism.

The Simon Dubnow Lecture of this year is embedded in the festive opening of the International Research Training Group »Belongings: Jewish Material Culture in Twentieth-Century Europe and Beyond,« which is funded by the German Research Foundation and the Alfred Landecker Foundation. The cooperation between Leipzig University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Dubnow Institute will commence its work in the fall of 2024.

12 November 2024, 6 p.m.
Leipzig University, Paulinum