Research
Research groups
Research interests
- German-Jewish history in modern times
- German-Jewish emigration after 1933 as a transnational phenomenon
- Urban history (Berlin, Tel Aviv, Odessa)
- Material objects and their meaning in the emigration process
- The sea voyage in the emigration process
Current research
My new research project refers to a lost house in Berlin. Brückenallee 33 in the Tiergarten district was home to the Kaiser’s personal doctor, the Prussian ‘Generalfeldmarschall’, von Moltke, but also the residency of the Freudenheim family and the home of the artist and early Zionist Hermann Struck – a place of Jewish/non-Jewish encounters. The Freudenheims had come to Berlin from Samter near Posen in the 1860s and worked in the timber trade. Ernst Freudenheim, born 1904, worked as a Judaica dealer, became a Zionist and, after the Nazis' rise to power, joined the family business in the city of Stuttgart. After a longer trip to Palestine, he emigrated with his family to Buffalo in upstate New York. On the way he sat down to write the history of his family - ‘We Jews are wandering again. […] We pray for their peace of mind to ask: Whence do we come?’ – and to explain to future generations what the house on Brückenallee 33 meant for him: 'A concept of home'. I will use this document to discuss the house as a point of arrival, residence, departure, and memory, using Guy Miron’s work on Jewish time and Jewish space in Nazi Germany as well as my own earlier work on German-Jewish emigration in a transnational perspective.