Monday, February 13, 2006

Lecture and Book Signing
Jeffrey M. Peck: Being Jewish in the New Germany
(Rutgers University Press, 2005)

Jeffrey M. Peck is a professor in communication, culture, and technology at Georgetown University and a senior fellow in residence at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His focus has been on interdisciplinary cultural issues, especially questions of national and minority identities and German-Jewish life since reunification.

Professor Peck looks at the rebirth of a Jewish community in a country where such a development could hardly have been expected, and argues that there is, indeed, a significant social, political and professional future for Jews in the new Germany.

Germany boasts the fastest growing Jewish population in Europe today. The streets of Berlin show signs of a significant revival of Jewish culture, but it is very different from, some would say almost unrelated to, the German Jewish culture that was decimated by the Nazis. Nonetheless, Jewish immigration from Russia, changes in immigration and naturalization laws, and generous welfare benefits have resulted in a permanent Jewish community.

Professor Peck believes it is important to consider how Jews live in Germany today rather than ask why they would choose to do so in the light of 20th century history.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Lecture
Dr. Lawrence Suid:
The Image of the Holocaust and Germany in Hollywood Movies

Dr. Lawrence Suid is a military historian whose academic credentials also make him an exceptional film critic, especially when it comes to evaluating images of Germany in movies made in Hollywood in the 1940s. He is the author of Guts and Glory: The making of the American Military Image in Film (University Press of Kentucky: 2002).
In Dr. Suid’s research and analyses, U.S. Department of Defense personnel become part of the planning and production processes of war films. The insights rendered by Dr. Suid’s unique methodology include oral interviews with many of those involved in filmmaking.

Among other things, Dr. Suid suggests that the U.S. War Department was interested in resurrecting the image of Germans even while World War II was still in progress. With some awareness that in the postwar world the United States would be more closely allied with Germany than with Russia, it was in our interest to begin to change perceptions.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Stage Reading in cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum, New York and the Jewish Theatre of Austria
The Judenstadt – A Stage of Mind by Warren Rosenzweig

Inspired by the contemporary European Jewish experience and the author’s personal confrontation with questions of cultural-ethnic identity in Vienna, Warren Rosenzweig began his research for The Judenstadt in late 2001. The first draft of the play was completed and performed in 2004 at the Vienna Volkstheater, in commemoration of Theodor Herzl. A second reading was given at the Municipal Theater of Haifa, Israel, in the English original.

The Leo Baeck Institute is proud to be the venue for the first American presentation of this provocative soul-searching drama that resonates back to the themes of Herzl’s original classic Der Judenstadt.
Selections from the play will be performed, script-in-hand, by participating actors with the author, who will direct the performance. A reception will follow.

Sunday, March 12, 2006

Film screening in cooperation with Yeshiva University Museum
We Want the Light

The Leo Baeck Institute is proud to be the venue for the first American presentation of this provocative soul-searching drama that resonates back to the themes of Herzl’s original classic Der Judenstadt.

This award winning film looks at the high level of integration of the Jews into German cultural life in the latter part of the 19th century and the first 33 years of the 20th; the roles played by Moses and Felix Mendelssohn and the importance of music in the dream of unproblematic assimilation of the Jews into German society. The Gurzenich Orchestra, The Cologne Opera Chorus, and The Cologne Cathedral Children’s Choir are conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy. 

Monday, March 20, 2006

Lecture
Monica Strauss: Maria Altmann’s Case: Klimt and the Austrian-Jewish Cultural Heritage

Monica Strauss is an art historian currently writing a biography of Gustav Klimt with special emphasis on the Jewish patrons who played crucial roles in his career. Among those patrons were Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. Adele, the only woman Klimt portrayed twice, died in 1925 but her husband was forced into exile in 1938 and his art collection was confiscated by the Nazis. After the war, the six Klimts owned by Bloch-Bauers ended up in the Belvedere Museum in Vienna despite the stipulation in Ferdinand's 1945 Will that all his Austrian property be returned to his nieces and nephews.

After seven years of adjudication, a breakthrough decision was reached by an Austrian arbitration committee on January 16, 2006. Their conclusion was that the paintings by Gustav Klimt in Vienna's Belvedere Museum that were once owned by Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer should be returned to their niece Maria Altmann, now a 90-year-old American citizen living in Los Angeles. The decision made headlines around the world.

Monica Strauss' in-depth familiarity with the background of the case and the major players enable her to present this rich saga with details never before made public.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Herbert A. Strauss Memorial Seminar

Herbert A. Strauss, the eminent historian of German-Jewish migration during the Nazi period, Professor at the Julliard School and later Professor and NAACP advisor at City College of New York, founding director of the Center for Research on Antisemitism at Technical University Berlin and the Research Foundation for Jewish Immigration New York, passed away on March 11, 2005 in New York. On the occasion of the anniversary of his death and to announce the establishment of the Herbert and Lotte Strauss Collection at the LBI archives New York, a seminar will be held. The seminar will commemorate a scholar whose personal and professional life was shaped by the experience of the destruction of Jewish life in Europe and by the “conviction that survival confers an obligation.” It will include topics to which Professor Strauss devoted his career: anti-Semitism, acculturation, emigration and immigration. Former students, colleagues and friends will address different aspects of Herbert A.Strauss’ life and work.

SPEAKERS:
Moderator: Marion Kaplan, Professor of Jewish History, New York University

Greetings: Carol Kahn Strauss, Executive Director, Leo Baeck Institute

PARTICIPANTS:

Werner Bergmann, Professor at the Center for Research on Antisemitism, Technische Universität Berlin

Christhard Hoffmann, Professor of Modern European History, University of Bergen/Norway

Louise Forsyth, Chair, History Department, Poly Prep Country Day School, New York

Ursula Gehring-Münzel, Author “Vom Schutzjuden zum Staatsbürger: die gesellschaftliche Integration der Würzburger Juden, 1803-1871”

Niels Hansen, Former German Ambassador to Israel, 1981-1985

Alfons Soellner, Professor of Political Theory, Technische Universität Chemnitz

Fritz Weinschenk, President American Federation of Jews from Central Europe

Frank Mecklenburg, Director of Research and Chief Archivist, LBI New York

The seminar will be followed by a reception. For those interested, at 5 p.m. there will be a presentation of the hour-long film “We were German Jews” (director: Michael Blackwood, 1981).
The event is co-sponsored by Leo Baeck Institute, New York; American Federation of Jews from Central Europe; Jewish Philanthropic Fund of 1933. We also wish to acknowledge the generosity of Mrs. Lotte Strauss in supporting this event.