In July 1942, Jews from Hamburg were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Thus, after a seven-month interruption, the National Socialists continued the deportations that led thousands to their deaths. The Foundation of Hamburg Memorials and Learning Centres, the VHS-Gedenk- und Bildungsstätte Israelitische Töchterschule, and the Institute for the History of German Jews (IGdJ) would like to commemorate these historic events, which will reach their 80th anniversary in 2022, with a jointly organized event on July 3, 2022.

On that day, a performance reading will take place at 11 a.m. at denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof in Lohsepark at the historic deportation site. Members of the student theater group Kalliope Universitätstheater e.V. will provide insights into the historical events based on contemporary observations as well as retrospectively written memoirs of contemporary witnesses. In farewell letters or diary entries, the victims as well as those who observed the events have their say. For the deportations took place before the eyes of the Hamburg public and were also noticed by them. Continue reading →

On November 9, on the occasion of the relaunch of our first online exhibition “Jewish Life since 1945”, we would like to discuss the significance of (re)migration for the development of Jewish life in Hamburg. In addition to a commentary on our online exhibition by Theresia Ziehe from the Jewish Museum Berlin, Hendrik Althoff (University of Hamburg), Kirsten Heinsohn (FZH), Karen Körber (IGdJ) and Sebastian Schirrmeister (Jüdischer Salon am Grindel e.V.) will reflect on central aspects of contemporary Jewish history in a roundtable discussion – such as reconstruction, culture, tradition and memory.

The event will take place on November 9, 2021, at 7 p.m. at the Jewish House of Culture, Flora-Neumann-Strasse 1, in compliance with 3G rules. Registration via schluesseldokumente(at)igdj-hh.de is obligatory.

The Key Documents project participated with two events at the ReIReS School, hosted by the Institute for Jewish Philosophy and Religion at the University of Hamburg: In April, Daniel Burckhardt and Anna Menny gave a virtual hands-on session on tagging according to TEI P5 using the Oxygen editor; in June, Anna Menny presented concept and goals of the online edition.

Anna Menny and Daniel Burckhardt presented the key document edition with a poster at the annual conference of digital humanities in the German-speaking countries in Cologne.

We would like to thank Sandra Morath from edelweiss* büro für grafik und design for the excellent graphic design.

On September 15 the “Key Documents”-Edition was presented during the conference “German-Jewish history – research and education” at the training center for teachers in Hamburg (Landesinstitut für Lehrerbildung und Schulentwicklung Hamburg). The workshop participants were highly interested.

Key Documents were present at the conference “Correspondences and Estates around 1800 – Development, digital edition and scientific evaluation.” Daniel Burckhardt presented the project to the conference participants under the title “Key Documents of German-Jewish History: an online source edition that wants to be read.”

At the workshop organized by the Max Weber Foundation, Daniel Burckhardt presented the technical concept of the key documents edition focussing on infrastructure, processes and TEI markup.

The 51st Biennal Meeting of German Historians in Hamburg offered numerous opportunities to present the online source edition to an interested public. Daniel Burckhardt and Nina Zellerhoff presented the key documents edition at the poster session of the AG Digital History.

Daniel Burckhardt and Miriam Rürup presented the key documents at the conference “Digital History Science – new tools for new questions?” organized by the CLARIN-D special interest group “Modern and Contemporary History” in Berlin on February 8 and 9, 2016.