Communication Spaces in Europe

The project »Communication Spaces in Europe. Jewish Cultures of Knowledge Beyond National Borders«, was conducted from 1 February 2007 to 31 March 2010 and dealt with transnational communication forms within Jewish cultures of knowledge in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Proceeding from the diasporic character of Jewish life worlds, historians, Jewish Studies scholars, sociologists, educators and museologists explored the trans-territorial networks of Jewish life worlds from an interdisciplinary perspective. They investigated how Jewish life worlds in the past transported knowledge over long distances, spaces and cultural boundaries. They also looked at the way in which Jewish cultures of knowledge were in a sense inscribed with European elements. What is European was not viewed as a fixed place, a homogeneous unit or a  territory definable in clear boundaries. Rather, the intention was for the perspective of Jewish cultures of knowledge to sharpen awareness of what is European, namely all those attributes involving the surmounting of spatial, religious and cultural narrowness and confines. The aim of the project was to understand the general dimensions of what is European through the particular prisms of Jewish cultures of knowledge.

The Dubnow Institute was coordinating this joint project, which was financed by the Federal Ministry for Education and Research for a period of three years. Partners in the project were the Jena Center History of the twentieth century, the Jewish Museum Frankfurt and the Center for Teacher Development and Research on School at the Leipzig University. Scientific research was thus here combined with work on pedagogy and curriculum, and public relations. A total of seven individual projects were developed by the institutions in the research team. Finally, several scholarly monographs, an exhibition, a webpage and materials for teaching in the public schools arised. A volume of fifteen contributions presents the main results of the project.

 

Publication

Leipzig Studies

Volume 8 (2010)
Kommunikationsräume des Europäischen –

Ed. by Hans-Joachim Hahn, Tobias Freimüller, Elisabeth Kohlhaas and Werner Konitzer

Leipzig 2014