What we are researching

At the centre of this biographically oriented research project - with the CJS as the project sponsor and the David Herzog Fund as the main sponsor - is an academic professional group about whose lives under National Socialism little is known: Jewish veterinarians who studied at the Vienna University of Veterinary Medicine (TiHo) between 1930 and 1938, as well as their descendants in Israel.

The students and - exclusively male - graduates at the time - 42 people in total - came not only from Austria, but also from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania. What united them was an "old Austrian", Jewish identity with a German mother tongue, the place of study and residence Vienna and, in some cases, extensive Austrian family ties.

While the Austrian graduates of the TiHo who came from Vienna are now well documented, traces of many others have been lost from the time of their graduation. Resuming the search for these students in Israel, many of whom came from Eastern Europe, appears to be a desideratum not only from a pan-European perspective, but also for various current reasons: The 2018 publication Jüdische Studierende der Wiener Tierärztlichen Hochschule. Paths - Traces - Fates. 1930-1947 (Lisa Rettl, Wallstein Verlag, 2018), which was published in 2018, opened up numerous new references through the contact of Israeli descendants, so that important biographies can now be reconstructed and written in the context of this long-neglected Austrian university history using new sources. This gains additional importance in view of the current developments at the Vetmeduni Vienna, because it is one of the last Austrian universities to be involved in building a contemporary culture of remembrance of its own Nazi past and the Jewish victims of the university.

However, the contact between Lisa Rettl and the descendants of TiHo graduates goes far beyond the veterinary environment and touches on a highly topical issue: as part of a three-month research stay in Israel (January to April 2025), Lisa Rettl is conducting interviews with Israeli descendants of Holocaust survivors to find out, among other things, the extent to which the Holocaust survivors are still alive today.the extent to which 7 October 2023 has changed and influenced the subjective view of their own family history and European roots and to what extent this is of current significance for dealing with the current war experiences.

Academic curriculum vitae

Dr Lisa^Rettl works as a freelance historian, exhibition curator, author and therapist^. Numerous books, essays and anthologies have been published on her main areas of research - the history of National Socialism, the culture of remembrance, minority politics and anti-fascist resistance, the history of science and universities. In addition to various lecturing and teaching activities, she has regularly curated exhibitions on various contemporary historical topics since 2004, including for the City of Villach and the Wien Museum. In 2008/09, she was a member of the international curatorial team for the highly acclaimed travelling exhibition "Was damals Recht war" (What was right back then) Soldiers and civilians before the courts of the Wehrmacht, and in 2012 she took over the management and conception of the redesign of the Peršmanhof Museum. 2014 saw the publication of a biography on the Wehrmacht deserter Richard Wadani (together with Magnus Koch), as well as numerous biographical articles on women in the resistance. From 2014 to 2018, she led the FWF project "Die Tierärztliche Hochschule im Nationalsozialismus" (peer-reviewed) in Vienna, where she explored new territory in university history: two monographs on the history of the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna (Wallstein Verlag 2018 and 2019) bear witness to her multifaceted work in the field of university and academic history. Lisa Rettl has received numerous academic honours for her academic and curatorial work, including the University of Klagenfurt's appreciation award, the Theodor Körner Prize, the Hans Marsalek Prize, the Prize for Humanities and Social Sciences of the Province of Carinthia and, most recently, the Rizzi Prize for her work in the field of intercultural understanding (2023). She is currently conducting research at the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Graz, where she is following up on her last major research project and conducting in-depth research into the biographies of Jewish veterinarians as part of the "Healing Remembrance" project: During her three-month research stay in Israel (January to April 2025), she will interview descendants of Jewish veterinarians and ask, among other things, to what extent 7 October 2023 has changed and influenced the subjective view of their own family history and European roots and to what extent this is of current significance for dealing with the current war experiences, which are experienced as traumatic.

Contact: lisa(at)shecando.com

https:// www.shecando.com/

Multidirectional remembrance: memory in the classroom

Since 2022, the so-called Historikerstreit 2.0 (Historians' Controversy 2.0) has been preoccupying the German culture of remembrance. It questions whether the state-sponsored culture of remembrance with the Holocaust at its centre still does justice to the social realities of the present, which are characterised by migration. Is the Holocaust really still a central component of the historical consciousness and historical narratives of all citizens living in the country, or is it not accompanied by other (colonial) experiences of violence? So do the dominant historical narratives still correspond to people's background experiences and, if this is not the case, what are the educational policy consequences of the differences between public and private remembrance?

The Historikerstreit 2.0 is the starting point for the project "The memory of the classroom. Multidirectional remembrance in Graz schools". Firstly, curriculum and textbook analyses as well as key question interviews with teachers are used to determine which contemporary historical narratives are taught in secondary schools and grammar schools in Graz. Subsequently, life history interviews conducted by the participating pupils with their parents and grandparents will be used to empirically determine which historical narratives are present in family memories. The project is being carried out at six schools in the Graz city area, which differ from one another and therefore cover a wide range of diversity. Based on these interviews, a travelling exhibition on "multidirectional remembering in Graz schools" will be designed together with the young people and a book publication will be produced that takes into account the expected polyphony of memory. Both the travelling exhibition and the publication will be supplemented by didactic handouts and, based on the project results, guidelines will be developed for contemporary history and history didactic education and training.

Melanie Göttfried
Melanie Göttfried successfully completed her Master's degree in teaching history, political education and social studies as well as English in autumn 2024.

As part of the current project, she is working as a research assistant at the University of Vienna and is also using this position to write her dissertation, which will be thematically linked to the project.

Maria Pasaricek
Maria Pasaricek successfully completed her Master's degree in teaching history, social studies and political education as well as German in October 2024. She completed her Bachelor's degree in History in 2022.

As part of the current project, she is working as a research assistant at the University of Graz and is also using this position to write her dissertation, which will be thematically linked to the project.

Esraa Shehata
Esraa Shehata successfully completed her bachelor's degree in teaching history, political education, social studies and French in November 2023.

As part of the current project, she is working as a student assistant at the University of Graz and is also using this position to write her Master's thesis, which will be thematically linked to the project.

The website "UniGraz_1585-tomorrow" is a digital platform that tells the story of the University of Graz from its foundation to the present day. The project is characterized by a "digital public history" and offers users the opportunity to navigate through more than 430 years of university and academic history via multimedia contributions, an interactive timeline and a digital map.

UniGraz_1585-tomorrow" focuses on institutional developments, academic milestones and political ruptures and conflicts. There are articles on student life and the regional and global positioning of the university. Key players in the university's history and people who have been honored by the university are portrayed on the website. Selected museum objects from the university collections illustrate the eventful history of Graz University and science.

The project focuses on the development of the University of Graz since its foundation with an emphasis on the upheavals of the 20th century and thus a critical examination of the topics of fascism, National Socialism and war. An important part of the site is the commemoration of the victims of National Socialism. As a digital space of remembrance, the website provides information on the university members expelled in 1938 and on university memorials.

UniGraz_1585-tomorrow is a project of the Rector of the University of Graz.

Project management: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Gerald Lamprecht (gerald.lamprecht(at)uni-graz.at)

Responsible for the concept: Marco Jandl, MA, Dr. Susanne Korbel, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Gerald Lamprecht

Project staff: Marco Jandl, MA

Internally funded project

Cooperation partners: Department of Communication and Public Relations, University Archives, University Museums

In this project, I examine personal encounters between Jews and non-Jews in Budapest and Vienna around 1900. The historiography of Jews at the beginning of modernity is still characterized by a narrative of private isolation. For this reason, Jewish history has often been understood as particular and not as part of a general history. The lack of studies of private everyday life in the historiography of Jews in the Habsburg Monarchy has led to a narrative of cultural participation, but not of private involvement. Without an adequate elaboration of non-exclusive narratives about the Jews of Budapest and Vienna, we underestimate the impact of Jewish-non-Jewish relations, especially in daily routines.

My project fills this gap by analyzing the diverse encounters between Jews and non-Jews in the "private" spaces of everyday life. The aim is to examine and compare living and working spaces in Budapest and Vienna as spaces that connected Jews and non-Jews in their historical past. Where and how did people come into contact with each other in "private" spaces in Budapest and Vienna around 1900? What effects did such daily encounters have on prejudices?

To realize the project, which is located at the intersection of Jewish studies, cultural studies and history - and is also relevant for gender studies and for perspectives on interethnic relations in societies shaped by migration - I use approaches from everyday history. By focusing on identifications based on both similarity and difference within living spaces, which I refer to as "private non-spaces", I aim to gain new insights into intimacy. As such "private non-spaces", I examine spaces that have rarely been the focus of research on Jewish-non-Jewish relationships: Living and sleeping spaces (including shared flats with bedmates and lodgers, domestic servants who also lived in the households they worked for), spaces of homework (production of factory goods in private homes in production communities) and forced accommodation (spaces of enforced housing to which the state had access, such as prisons and reformatories, as well as institutions for people with disabilities).

Project management: Dr.phil. BA MA Susanne Korbel (susanne.korbel@uni-graz.at)

ESPRIT Projekt ESP120: https://www.fwf.ac.at/forschungsradar/10.55776/ESP120

Grant DOI: 10.55776/ESP120

Funded by: FWF

The tri-national D-A-Ch project aims to provide an exemplary and paradigmatic approach to German-language Jewish literature since the Enlightenment, based on a cultural studies understanding of texts, approaches from reception aesthetics, translation, transfer, spatial and media theory and the history of science. Conceptually, the six handbooks "Tradition und Glauben" (Basel), "Räume und Landschaften" (Klagenfurt), "Sprachkulturen" (Aachen), "Geschichtsdenken" (Basel), "Wissen und Lernen" (Basel/ Aachen) and "Wechselbeziehungen" (Graz) are not master narratives, but research-led paradigms, in order to show in an integral presentation that Jewish thought and German-language Jewish literature since the end of the 18th century have not been primarily assimilationist. Instead, it shows that Jewish thought and German-language Jewish literature since the end of the 18th century were not primarily assimilated to artistic, literary and scientific developments in the German-speaking world, but that they helped to constitute these developments in a dialogical way that was both sustainable and stimulating.

The handbook supervised by Graz is dedicated to comparative and literary-sociological "interrelationships" and focuses on the diverse connections, exchange processes and the interweaving of cultural practices. It understands German-Jewish literature as a discursive space for socio-cultural negotiation processes.

Project leader: Priv.-Doz. Dr.phil. M.A Olaf Terpitz

Funded by: FWF, DFG, SNF

The First World War with its social, political, economic and cultural upheavals had a fundamental impact on the social development of Europe. The phase of transition from dynastically constituted multi-ethnic empires to new 'nation' states in Central Europe was characterized by fundamental economic slumps, social tensions and shaken mentalities caused by the consequences of the war. Belonging and/or foreignness were the subject of fierce social and political controversies, with the Jewish population repeatedly at the center.
Above all, this led to a massive increase and radicalization of anti-Semitism in all its familiar but also new forms and manifestations. Based on and embedded in the pan-European development, the project presented here is dedicated to the developments of anti-Semitism in the predominantly German-speaking areas of the declining Habsburg Monarchy and the newly emerging Republic of German Austria/Austria in this area. On the one hand, the focus is on the analysis of anti-Semitism in its traditional as well as new manifestations due to political developments. The aim is to examine whether, in addition to the repeatedly noted increase and radicalization of anti-Semitism in the years from 1914 to 1923, there was also a transformation of anti-Semitic images and stereotypes.
Closely related to this is the question of the actors of anti-Semitism. Two correlated groups of actors will be examined in particular. Political parties and newly emerging anti-Semitic associations and organizations.

Funded by: Doctoral scholarship from the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.

Scholarship program: History of anti-Semitism and the Shoah

The Digital Remembrance Landscape Austria (DERLA) is an interdisciplinary documentation and mediation project. It documents the places and symbols of remembrance for the victims as well as the places of terror of National Socialism in Austria and aims to critically examine National Socialism and the memory of it and its victims. In a first step, around 700 memorials in Styria and Vorarlberg were documented and historically described. In addition, around 30 educational programs were developed for working with schoolchildren. Next year, DERLA will be expanded to include the symbols of remembrance and educational offers from Tyrol and Carinthia. Ultimately, all Austrian signs of remembrance will be documented in DERLA.

DERLA distinguishes between manifest and non-manifest places of remembrance. Manifest places of remembrance are those that are made visible to the public as places of remembrance through commemorative signs (monuments, memorial plaques, etc.). Non-manifest places of remembrance are places of remembrance that do not yet have a publicly visible sign of remembrance, but have a historical connection to victims and/or the terror of National Socialism and fascism. DERLA provides them with a virtual symbol.

Each memorial site is provided with information about the historical event or the people commemorated at the site, as well as the history of the memorial marker/place itself. Furthermore, the memorial signs/places are assigned to different categories for better orientation of the users and in relation to the mediation offers. These categories are based on the intention of the founders and builders of the memorials and, in the case of non-manifest memorials, on the historical events/experiences associated with the respective site.

DERLA consists of four main elements:

• An interactive map of remembrance leads to the individual places and signs of remembrance and makes their history visible. You can carry out extensive research using filter and search functions.
• In the archive of names, all those people who are named and remembered on the memorial signs are presented biographically. DERLA provides them with a virtual memorial. More than 1300 biographies are currently recorded in DERLA.
• The education portal contains location-based and non-location-based offers for educational work in schools. Historical learning with DERLA can take place both on site and in the classroom.
• The Paths of Remembrance lead along curated routes into specific topics of the history of National Socialism and the culture of remembrance. They are virtual exhibitions on specific topics.

DERLA is an ongoing project that also relies on the cooperation and feedback of users of erinnerungslandschaft.at. Research DERLA and use it in your daily educational work. Let us know your impressions and feedback.

Please contact us:

E-mail: derla(at)uni-graz.at

Project management: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Gerald Lamprecht

Funding bodies: Zukunftsfonds Steiermark, National Fund of the Republic of Austria for the Victims of National Socialism, Future Fund of the Republic of Austria, City of Graz: Science

Cooperation partners: _erinnern.at_ National Socialism and the Holocaust: Memory and the Present, ZIM Center for Information Modelling at the University of Graz

2023 marks the 85th anniversary of the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi Germany and thus also the racially and politically motivated expulsion of members of the University of Graz. Based on research into the Nazification and denazification of the university, this project is now for the first time dedicated to the individual fates of academics and students who were expelled from the university in 1938 and had to flee. Although previous research has already named the members of the University of Graz who were affected by Nazi persecution, further biographical research has not yet been carried out, with a few exceptions in the case of well-known personalities.

In this project, the biographies of all academics expelled from the University of Graz in 1938 due to racist and political persecution are to be researched on the basis of extensive source and literature work. The researched biographies will be published in a printed memorial book and will also be available as biographical entries on the web portal of the University of Graz "UniGraz_1585-tomorrow", thus also creating a digital space of remembrance.

Project staff: BA Mag.phil. MA Marco Jandl

Funding bodies: National Fund of the Republic of Austria, Future Fund of the Republic of Austria, City of Graz - Science, Province of Styria - Science, David Herzog Fund of the Styrian Universities