Die Leeren Räume der Jüdischen orte,” / “”The Empty Spaces of Jewish Places (original) (raw)
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UBC Journal of Historical Studies, 2020
Previously titled "Interpreting the Reconstruction of Synagogues and Jewish Cemeteries as Holocaust Memorials In Eastern European Urban Landscapes," this paper was originally written for a 3rd/4th year undergraduate seminar paper for GMST 489 (I-witness Holocaust Field School Program) at the University of Victoria. It has since undergone peer-review and has been extensively revised with the assistance of Nathan Deschamps and Dylan Sanderson. After postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper was published in the UBC Journal of Historical Studies (Formerly, the Atlas), an undergraduate journal based out of the University of British Columbia.
Strategies of Exile Photography: Helmar Lerski and Hans Casparius in Palestine
Back to the Future: Traditions and Innovations in German Studies , 2018
The two German-Jewish photographers and veterans of the Weimar film industry, Helmar Lerski and Hans Casparius, both went into exile to Mandate Palestine in the mid-1930s and produced photographs that propagated the Zionist enterprise. This essay suggests that the apparent " Zionist " works should be analyzed as models or experiments with different strategies of exile photography. Informed by the major trends in the visual arts of the late Weimar years, they sought to develop a new aesthetics to correspond with their new experiences in exile. Their efforts resulted in two different approaches to photography, and each negotiated the emotional and ideological dispositions of the exiled observer in different terms. The differences notwithstanding, I argue that in these images they sought to identify with and criticize the social reality in both Weimar Germany and in Jewish Palestine. As a result, their works integrated criticism and doubts into mainstream Zionist culture.
4 Strategies of Exile Photography: Helmar Lerski and Hans Casparius in Palestine
Back to the Future: Traditions and Innovations in German Studies, 2021
The two German-Jewish photographers and veterans of the Weimar film industry, Helmar Lerski and Hans Casparius, both went into exile to Mandate Palestine in the mid-1930s and produced photographs that propagated the Zionist enterprise. This essay suggests that the apparent “Zionist” works should be analyzed as models or experiments with different strategies of exile photography. Informed by the major trends in the visual arts of the late Weimar years, they sought to develop a new aesthetics to correspond with their new experiences in exile. Their efforts resulted in two different approaches to photography, and each negotiated the emotional and ideological dispositions of the exiled observer in different terms. The differences notwithstanding, I argue that in these images they sought to identify with and criticize the social reality in both Weimar Germany and in Jewish Palestine. As a result, their works integrated criticism and doubts into mainstream Zionist culture.
INTIMATE GALLERIES: PHOTOGRAPHIC ALBUMS FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE JEWISH MUSEUM IN PRAGUE
Judaica Bohemiae, 2020
The full version of this article appears in the latest issue of Judaica Bohemiae: Sidenberg, Michaela: “Intimate Galleries: Photographic Albums from the Collection of the Jewish Museum in Prague”, in: Judaica Bohemiae, LV-2, Prague: Jewish Museum in Prague, 2020, pp. 69-80. The publication is available on the CEEOL platform under the following link: https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=917230 * * * The Jewish Museum in Prague (JMP) is generally acknowledged to rank among the leading world-class institutions of its kind. What makes its collection exceptional, however, is not just the early date of the Museum’s founding in 1906 (making it the third oldest public Judaica collection in the world). More decisive were the uncommon circumstances during the period of the so-called Central Jewish Museum (1942–1945), years that saw the collection greatly enhanced as objects were rescued from the systematic destruction of Jewish culture that was intrinsic to the genocide of European Jewry. Only now, almost eight decades later, are many of these objects receiving a proper evaluation. This text is just a brief introduction to the JMP’s collection of photographic albums. Although they are rather private and ephemeral in nature and outside the scope of the common classification criteria for ‘high art’, the albums afford us a singular source for the study of the history of Jewish emancipation in the Czech lands and the contributions of the Jewish population to the country’s cultural and social evolution as they were integrating into the majority society.