Moscow on the Spree: Russian Jews as Cultural Brokers in Berlin, 1919-1933
PhD project
The project explores the social history of overlapping circles of Russian-speaking Jewish migrant intellectuals who settled in Berlin in the interwar era. Some of them belonged to the large wave of Russian emigration prompted by the 1917 October revolution and the ensuing Civil War. Others were emissaries of the Soviet government, sent to Germany following the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1922. The project focuses on their engagement in in transnational cultural production and social activism that bridged disparate communities and political camps.
Of what nature were the ties between the post-1917 émigrés and the representatives of Soviet institutions in the Weimar Republic? Did the interaction between these two groups impact the emerging Soviet-German relationship? In addition, Russian-speaking Jews in Weimar Germany were active participants in a robust debate concerning the desired nature of modern Jewish culture. What imprint, if any, did their agendas voiced in this debate leave on Jewish life beyond the chronological confines of interwar Germany? What traces of their role in it survive, if at all, a hundred years after this period of intense cultural creation?
Based on biographical case studies that paint a composite picture of non-Zionist Russian-Jewish cultural activity in the German capital in 1919-1933, the project offers a more nuanced understanding of the transfer of ideas between German, Jewish, and Soviet societies in the interwar period. By tracing both the movement of people and the circulation of ideas, it is part of an acutely relevant conversation about migration, violence, identity, and propaganda - issues that shaped the twentieth century and have once again become urgently pertinent in our time.
During her stay at ZZF Potsdam Anna (Anya) Zhuravel Segal researches in Department I: Communism and Society.