Vortrag von Gerdien Jonker

Based on private archives and substantial photo collections, the lecture offers an introduction to the Muslim-Jewish network which existed in Berlin in the interwar period. The network consisted of several overlapping spheres of interest, in which Indian Jaddidists and Russian Halachists, Egyptian entertainers and Berlin homosexuals, German life reformers and Muslim world revolutionaries mixed and, each in their own manner, reformulated the relationship between the Self and the ‘world’ out there. While the Weimar Republic offered ample room for diversity and experiment, the totalitarian National-Socialist government that followed in its wake narrowed down the network’s options and reformulated them. Who were these people? In which social and political frameworks did their network emerge? And what happened to the web of neighborly relations once the National-Socialists rose to power?

Dr. Gerdien Jonker is Historian of Religion and senior researcher at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen. After her dissertation on the collective memory of Ancient Mesopotamia, Jonker switched to European minorities and their memory practices today. Her current research addresses Jews and Muslims in Germany and the relations the two minorities entertain. Her publications include On the Margins. Jews and Muslims in Interwar Berlin (Leiden: EJ Brill 2020);  ‚Etwas hoffen muss das Herz’. Eine Familiengeschichte von Juden, Christen und Muslime (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2018); The Ahmadiyya Quest. Missionizing Europe 1900-1965 (Leiden: EJ Brill, 2016).