The annual Leo Baeck Institute Fellowship Seminar brought together the 2024/25 cohort of Fellows to present and discuss their doctoral research in the field of German-Jewish history and culture. Hosted at Birkbeck, University of London, and co-organised with the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture – Simon Dubnow, the seminar featured a series of in-depth presentations, responses, and interdisciplinary conversations.
The two-day programme included:
Presentations by nine international doctoral researchers working on topics ranging from German-Jewish exile literature to the history of Hebrew language education in Mandatory Palestine, from the reception of Jewish music in 19th-century Germany to Jewish family correspondence during the Holocaust.
A keynote lecture by Dr Till Greite (School of Advanced Study, University of London) titled ‘The Displaced Poet and his Language of Exile: Michael Hamburger and German-Jewish Writers in Britain’.
A concluding panel and open discussion reflecting on emerging trends and shared questions in the field.
A guided visit to the Wiener Holocaust Library and an informal walking tour of German-Jewish sites in Bloomsbury.
Fellows 2024/25:
Emilie Aebischer (University of St Andrews), Writing History in the Face of Fanaticism: Ernst Cassirer and his Reception as a Historian
Tamar Aizenberg (Brandeis University), The Third Generations: Holocaust Memory among Descendants of Survivors and Perpetrators
Rakefet Cohen-Anzi (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Imparting the Hebrew Language to Adults in Mandatory Palestine and Israel, 1936–1955
Tekle Ekvtimishvili (Goethe Universität Frankfurt), Networks of the Jewish Mission: Missionaries, Jews, and Converts within the Milieu of the Proselyte Institutions of the 18th Century
Ariel Horowitz (Stanford University), Redemption and Jewish Modernity: The Case of Hannah Arendt
Charles Knight (University of Southampton), Shared Worlds and Epistolary Spaces: The Correspondence of German-Jewish Families during the Holocaust
Celeste Jingyan Pan (University of Oxford), The Getty-Wittenberg Pentateuch
Melani Shahin (University of Chicago), The German-Jewish Reception of Writings on Jewish Music, 1780–1900
Anna Marion Weber (Universität Stuttgart/King’s College London), Stolen Years: German-Jewish Women’s Life Writing in Exile
Organised by:
Dr Peter Antes (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes)
Dr Joseph Cronin (Leo Baeck Institute London)
Dr Rachel Furst (Ben Gurion University of the Negev)
Dr Caroline Jessen (Dubnow Institute)
