AGI

Memory Politics

Germany’s approach to acknowledging and providing redress for past crimes has offered other nations around the world a guide to reconciliation. While Germany’s efforts resulted from a unique situation and are not considered a blueprint for other nations to emulate, they have nevertheless informed and impacted other countries dealing with the difficult processes of memory, commemoration, and rebuilding bilateral relationships.
Reset

The Dealer’s Cards:  How Gary Sternberg Has Made the Best of Them

Gerd “Gary” Sternberg was dealt a tricky hand.  Born the son of a Protestant mother and a Jewish father in Cuxhaven, Germany on August 25, 1931, he experienced discrimination firsthand …

Dr. Lily Gardner Feldman to Retire from AGI

The American-German Institute (AGI) at Johns Hopkins University announces that Dr. Lily Gardner Feldman will be retiring at the end of February 2019.  Dr. Gardner Feldman has served as Director …

A Doctor’s Mission: The Life and Work of Ernst Kisch

Read the stories of other Shanghai Jews Dr. Ernst Kisch was an opera-loving Viennese physician who was imprisoned in Dachau and Buchenwald for being Jewish.  Upon his release from Buchenwald, …

Comparing the Experiences of Discrimination Faced by Jews in Early 20th Century Germany and by Muslims in Contemporary Germany

As a DAAD/AGI Research Fellow from October to December 2018, Dr. Ufuk Topkara conducted research on a project that emerges out of the interconnected strands of intellectual inquiry: comparing the …

The Former Soviet Union and East Central Europe between Conflict and Reconciliation

Edited by Lily Gardner Feldman, Raisa Barash, Samuel Goda, Andre Zempelburg Influenced by the crisis in the former Soviet Union following the March 2014 Russian annexation/integration of Crimea, the essays …

Never Again!

A Historical Survey of Anti-Semitism in Germany between 1933 and 1935 and Implications for Contemporary Debates When an anti-Semitic loner killed 11 members of a Jewish congregation in Pittsburgh in …

Global Memory Clashes Or the End of Serenity   

Coming to terms with the past has become one of the very core features of German political identity in the second half of the twentieth century. In fact, actively dealing …

Human remains of Ovaherero and Nama: Transnational dynamics in post-genocidal restitutions

Former DAAD/AGI Research Fellow Elise Pape’s latest article is now available. Published in Volume 4, Issue 2 of Human Remains and Violence: An Interdisciplinary Journal, the article builds on Dr. Pape’s …

Mothers: Remembering Three Women on the 80th Anniversary of Kristallnacht

Ida was terrified. She figured she would never see either her husband or brother ever again. For several days she fretted, not knowing what to do. While desperately trying to …

Germany’s Confrontation with Its Colonial History:  Are There Lessons from Grappling with the Nazi Past?

The anti-immigrant riots in Chemnitz at the end of August 2018 with their expressions of hate, intolerance, and xenophobia, including Nazi salutes, have led observers to question the depth of …

The First Genocide of the Twentieth Century

The recent handover of the remains of 27 individuals from Namibia that took place at the French Friedrichstadt Church in Berlin marked an important milestone in the process of questioning …

Shedding Light on War’s Victims

Historical memory and the experiences of war’s victims continue to emerge more than seventy years after the end of World War II. AGI’s focus on reconciliation between former enemies in …