Between Facts and Prejudices
The Depiction of Jewish History, Culture, and Religion in Textbooks and History Magazines
This sub-project examines the dissemination of stereotypical concepts of Jews and Judaism in German-language history textbooks and magazines since the 1970s. Such prejudices occur frequently both in texts and images in history textbooks, whether in chapters on medieval and nineteenth-century history or in depictions of the Middle East conflict and – in this context – Israel. These run the risk of conveying a distorted image of Jews and Judaism both past and present and thereby of promoting corresponding prejudices among students. Alongside a stocktaking and analysis of relevant representations in textbooks through a representative corpus drawn from three temporal cross-sections, the project will also examine questions relating to the didactic preparation of these curricular materials, as the selection of sources and work assignments typically reveal the mental representations underlying the authors’ texts. Another object of examination here are popular magazines focusing on historical topics. These often use abbreviated or even distorted representations when discussing topics related to Jewish history.
This project is part of the cooperative project »Turning Object into Subject. Communicating Jewish Everyday Culture in Germany« funded by the BMBF.
Contact
Dr. Matthias Springborn
Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute
