CEP Webinar 2020: material

Topics and theses of German Judaica researchers on the pre-war period. Examples from the collections

Most important pioneers of research into the material Jewish cultural heritage were German-speaking researchers who published relevant articles and monographs from the end of the 19th century up to the interwar period, which are still only available in German today and are therefore not accessible to many students, researchers and thus also employees of Jewish museums, but should actually belong to the canon of Judaica research. We have compiled a collection of articles and excerpts from larger publications, which were translated into English during the summer and sent to the participants for reading. These texts formed the basis for the first focus of the seminar. Participants were asked to read one or more of the translated articles in pairs, summarize the most important theses and question their validity for today. The topic of the articles was illustrated by two objects from the respective collections and presented during the webinar.

The translations into English are herewith made available publicly and can be found here. The original articles (in German) can be found on this page.

The essays of the participants are available to all AEJM members, and can be found below.
In addition, the biographies of some of the women and men who wrote these groundbreaking texts are included, as well as two contributions by Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, which deal with two classics of Judaica research.