Project Description

Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur

Historisches Seminar

✆ +49 (89) 2180-72126

Dr. Christian Riepl

IT-Gruppe Geisteswissenschaften

✆ +49 (89) 2180-3746

Tabea Henn, M.A.

IT-Gruppe Geisteswissenschaften

✆ +49 (89) 2180-6755

Dr. Gerhard Schön

IT-Gruppe Geisteswissenschaften

✆ +49 (89) 2180-1393

https://iupress.org/9780253070197/

Monographs

Cornelia Wilhelm, The Last Generation of the German Rabbinate: German Refugee Rabbis in the United States, 1933–2010 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2024),

Through the generous support of The Trustees of Indiana University, Indiana University Press is pleased to make this monograph freely available as an Open Access publication,

https://publish.iupress.indiana.edu/projects/the-last-generation-of-the-german-rabbinate/

Articles

Cornelia Wilhelm, “Saved by the Seminary: German Refugee Rabbis’ Careers during and after the Holocaust: A Transnational Perspective”, in Academics in a Century of Displacement: The Global History and Politics of Protecting Endangered Scholars, ed. Leyla Dakhli, Pascale Laborier, and Frank Wolff (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2024), 73–99,

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-43540-0

Cornelia Wilhelm, “Introduction”, European Judaism 54 (2021): 1–5.
Cornelia Wilhelm, “German Refugee Rabbis in the United States and the Formation of the ‘Last Generation of the German Rabbinate’”, European Judaism 54 (2021): 6–26.

Edited Volumes

Cornelia Wilhelm, and Sebastian Musch, eds., The Holocaust and Varieties of Migration: Beyond Flight and Displacement (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2025), forthcoming.

Cornelia Wilhelm, guest ed., “The Synagogue and the Legacies of the Holocaust: German Refugee Rabbis and Cantors”. European Judaism 54 (2021), with contributions by Judah Cohen, Björn Siegel, Astrid Zajdband, and Cornelia Wilhelm.

Media Coverage

Conversations with B’nai B’rith

July 25, 2023

German Refugee Rabbis and American Congregations

Breuers 2gether

May 24, 2019 A brief introduction to a database of German refugee rabbis in America after the war

Publications from other Projects

Astrid Zajdband, German Rabbis in British Exile: From ‘Heimat’ into the Unknown (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2016),

https://degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110471717/

Call for Contributors

In the context of our research project on German refugee rabbis in the DFG Priority Program “Jewish Cultural Heritage”, we would like to initiate a new online discussion group on German rabbis after 1933. We are proud to have the support of the Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft (WAG) of the Leo Baeck Institute in Berlin for this project. The idea follows the model of discussion groups supported by the Center for Jewish History in New York City and seeks to establish a long-term scholarly exchange that can bridge regional dispersion and will provide cohesion and collaboration in the long run.

WAG Scholars’ Working Group on German Rabbis after 1933

Conveners: Cornelia Wilhelm (LMU München), Raphael Thurm (Bar Ilan University).

Cycle: Commitment to a two-year cycle of six online meetings per year.

Schedule: Six-week schedule during the semester, i.e. October to January and April to July.

Meeting Day: Monday 6pm MEZ (Central European Time) / 12pm EST (Eastern Standard Time) / 7pm IST (Israel Standard Time).

Venue: Zoom Link will be provided by conveners.

Goals: The meetings will consist of scholars presenting work in progress, unpublished works of scholarship and/or methods of research of the German rabbinate after 1933. The conveners will organize a schedule of discussion rounds every semester and send out a call for thematic suggestions.

The working group should also consider how to engage the broader public for their work. This might take the form of sponsoring a public symposium, developing a digital platform, print publication, or other forms of disseminating the group’s results, all based on the outcome of the working group’s cumulative deliberations. Conveners will determine the specific composition of the group, but both junior and senior scholars as well as advanced graduate students (ABD) should be invited to participate as well as guest speakers. Participation is by invitation only. Annual or Bi-Annual Workshops and in-person meetings are planned from 2026 on. If you would like to join this group and commit to a long-term engagement with this topical focus, please respond by September 30, 2024 to

[email protected] and send a short bio, a statement of interest outlining your project and your interest to join the group and a suggestion for a presentation! If you know individuals who might also be interested in this topic, please let us know.

Sincerely,

Cornelia Wilhelm

Atlanta 2024

Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association

September 26–29, 2024

Courtland Grand Hotel

165 Courtland Street NE

Atlanta, GA 30303

Fürth 2024

Workshop in Germany

May 20–22, 2024

Jüdisches Museum Franken

Königstraße 89

90762 Fürth

German Refugee Rabbis and German–Jewish Cultural Heritage: Towards a Comparative Perspective

The workshop seeks to bring together work in progress on German refugee rabbis in different regions and seeks a comparative perspective on how these refugees dealt with their traditions, their knowledge and the experience during and after the Nazi era.

We would like the participants to consider a perspective of the Critical Heritage Studies and reach across disciplinary backgrounds, thematic or regional focus pursuing questions such as: How was the refugee rabbis’ (communal rabbis, students, ordained scholars and the second generation, those born in Germany and educated after emigration) expulsion and the destruction of their cultural centers part of a cultural transfer/knowledge transfer? How did they and others perceive their forced presence and scholarship? Were there discussions on the construction of cultural heritage, the re-construction of their networks and hubs (seminaries, colleges, universities), and audiences, what purposes did they serve? How have their activities after the Holocaust resonated in society, and why was their knowledge sometimes lost to future generations? Where and why did it survive? We would also like you to address how the cultural transfers materialized (in religion, society and politics and memory) and were related to local and global contexts, to nationhood, diaspora and existing Jewries in their respective countries of refuge. We would like to learn about the agency these refugees (re-)gained or lost in and after their forced flight. Finally, we are very interested in exploring the rabbis’ memory, the memory of their tradition, possible returns to Germany and also methodological questions on how to explore and evaluate these topics in such a large group.

Organized by

Prof. Dr. Cornelia Wilhelm as part of the ongoing research project “Trials and Transmissions: Mapping the Legacy of the German Refugee Rabbinate” in the DFG funded priority program “Jewish Cultural Heritage”

The workshop is sponsored by Jüdisches Museum Franken, Lehrstuhl für Jüdische Geschichte und Kultur der LMU München, Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung e.V. München, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo-Baeck-Instituts in Deutschland, Bayerische Amerika-Akademie and Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst (Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts).

Conference Program

Presentations

New York 2023

Community Sourcing Workshop in the LMU NYU Research Cooperation Program

Archival, Institutional, and Personal Files, Memoirs, Audio and Video Records on German Refugee Rabbis in the United States after 1933

October 10, 2023

Deutsches Haus @ New York University

42 Washington Mews

New York, NY 10003

October 11–12, 2023

Goldstein Goren Center for American Jewish History @ New York University

14A Washington Mews

New York, NY 10003

Presentation by Cornelia Wilhelm

Presentation by Stephan Lücke

Community Sourcing

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