The online exhibition “Between Hamburg and Jerusalem. Archival Excursions,” curated jointly by Dr. Anna Menny and Dr. Sebastian Schirrmeister and technically realized by Helena Geibel, explores the material traces of German-Jewish history in various estates and collections. In cooperation with the Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts” at the University of Hamburg and as part of the research project “A Fresh Look. Visualising Digitised German-Jewish Archives,” it is the 12th exhibition to be published as part of the Key Documents Edition.
The individual chapters follow the migration movements of people and archives, while also documenting networks between German-speaking Jewish intellectuals over a period of several decades. Most of the objects on display originate from the digitization of 24 German-Jewish estates and collections comprising approximately 750,000 individual pages, which was carried out between 2021 and 2022 by the NLI in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the University of Hamburg.
Given the wealth of material available, the exhibition can only highlight certain aspects a few selected materials, which naturally leaves many others unexplored. The exhibition attempts to address the aspect of randomness in the selection process in a self-reflective manner, for example by means of a generator that randomly selects a starting point from which to explore the exhibition. The final chapter provides ideas for placing the materials presented in a broader context and addressing wider questions.