Conference: Transforming Berlin's Urban Space

Conference: Transforming Berlin's Urban Space

(ISJM) This October the Centum Judaicum in Berlin and the Berlin Jewish Museum and local academic partners team up to present what looks like a fascinating and important conference.

The conference focuses on the spatial dimensions of the migration experience and also inquires into how migrants perceived and shaped urban space. We will be particularly interested in exploring the diverse functions and meanings of Berlin as a crucial migration center between East and West.

Here is the schedule:

Transforming Berlin's Urban Space: East European Jewish Migrants in Charlottengrad and the Scheunenviertel, 1918-1939

Osteuropa-Institut, Freie Universitaet Berlin

In cooperation with Juedisches Museum Berlin and Wissenschaftliche
Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts

Berlin 2009, Centrum Judaicum and Juedisches Museum Berlin, October 17-19

Saturday

19:00 Centrum Judaicum
Opening Gertrud Pickhan
Key note Dan Diner, The Short Jewish Axial Time: 1918-1938 as an
Existential Constellation

Sunday

9:00
Introduction Gertrud Pickhan, Verena Dohrn

9:30-11:00
Topography

Chair: Trude Maurer
Anne-Christin Sass, The Scheunenviertel: A Transnational Social Space in Weimar Berlin
Gennady Estraikh, Weimar Berlin as an International Yiddish Press Center
Shachar Pinsker, The Urban Cafes of Berlin as Spaces of Hebrew and Yiddish Modernism

11:00 Coffee Break

11:30-13:00
Perceptions

Chair: Dan Laor
Mikhail Krutikov, Afterlifes of Weimar Berlin in Yiddish Literature
Marc Caplan, The Corridors of Berlin: Proximity, Peripherality, and Surveillance in Dovid Bergelson's Boarding House Stories
Karin Neuburger, Artificial and Real Spaces: Micha Yosef Berdyczewski's Life and Work in Berlin (1912-1921)

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30
Negotiations

Chair: Michael Brenner
Barry Trachtenberg, Weimar and Yiddish Universalism: the making of Di algemeyne entsiklopedye
Vladimir Khazan, The Brothers Aaron and Isaak Steinberg's Contribution to the History of the Russian-Jewish Berlin
Tamara Or, Berlin, Nachtasyl and Capital of Hebrew Diaspora

15:30-16:00 Coffee Break

16:00-17:30
Identifications

Chair: Karl Schlogel
Avidov Lipsker, Berlin: Heterotopia of Hesitation and Decisiveness. The Case of Benjamin Harz
Albert Baumgarten, The Russian Identity of Russian Jews living in a Third
Space: Joseph Bikerman and the Patriotic Union of Russian Jews Abroad
Markus Wolf, Russian Jews against Jewish Bolshevism: The Example of the Patriotic Union in 1920s Berlin

Monday

9:00-10:30
Transfers

Chair: Oleg Budnickij
Alexander Ivanov, Berlin's ORT and German Jewry: Communication, Interaction, Cooperation (1920/30s)
Alexandra Poljan, Productive Help in Russian-Jewish Berlin. The Union of the Russian Jews in Germany: Charity and Politics
Arndt Engelhardt, Disseminating Knowledge: Jewish Intellectuals and the lieu of the Encyclopedia Judaica (1928-1934) in Weimar Berlin

10:30-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-12:30
Translations

Chair: Matthias Freise
Olaf Terpitz, Translatio imperii: How Russian Jews negotiated Russia in Berlin
Britta Korkowsky, The Narrator that Walks by Himself: Sklovskij's Narrator, Kipling's Cat and the Paradox of Freedom in "ZOO or Letters not about Love"
Zsuzsa Hetenyi, Nomen est ponem? Names and Identity in Emigre Literature

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:00
Transformations

Chair: Monika Richarz
Susanne Marten-Finnis, Artist-Animators: Russian Display Culture in 1920s Berlin and the Transformation of Domestic Space in the West
Rachel Seelig, A Yiddish Poet in Berlin: Moishe Kulbak's "Naye lider"and the Flourishing of Yiddish Poetry in Exile
Anat Feinberg, "Wir laden Sie hoflich ein": The Grungard Salon and Jewish-Zionist Sociability in Berlin in the 1920s

15:00-15:30 Coffee Break

15:30-17:00

Transitions
Chair: Gertrud Pickhan

Tobias Brinkmann, Passage City: Berlin as a Focal Point of Jewish (Trans-)Migration after 1918
Gerben Zaagsma, The Place of Berlin in the Transnational Networks of Jewish Migrant Radicals
Jeffrey Wallen, Migrant Visions: The Scheunenviertel and Boyle Heights, Los Angeles

17:15-17:45
Conclusions David Myers