The international conference officially kicks off the project “Digital Stone Witnesses. German-Jewish Sepulchral Culture between the Middle Ages and Modernity – Space, Form, Inscription,” a major project aimed at documenting the inscription on gravestones in Jewish cemeteries in Germany.
The project is being carried out by the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute for German-Jewish History at the University of Duisburg-Essen in collaboration with the Professorship of Jewish Studies and the Competence Center for Monument Studies and Monument Technologies at the University of Bamberg and is co-led by Lucia Raspe, Mona Hess and Susanne Talabardon.
PROGRAM:
Sunday, 8 September 2024
Keynote Lecture
18:00–18:30 Welcome
18:30–19:30 Carsten Wilke (Vienna): Lapidary Exuberance: European Variations on the Baroque Style in Hebrew Inscriptions
19:30–21:00 Reception
Monday, 9 September 2024
Steinerne Zeugen digital: An Introduction
10:00–10:15 Lucia Raspe (Duisburg-Essen): Research Program and Objectives
10:15–10:30 Mona Hess (Bamberg): Digitisation Methods for Jewish Graveyards
10:30–11:00 Nicola Kramp-Seidel (Essen): Introductory Remarks
Material Evidence
11:30–13:00 Tobias Arera-Rütenik (Bamberg): Formal Features of Gravestones and Possibilities of their Analysis
12:15–13:00 Vladimir Levin (Jerusalem): The Phenomenon of Signed Tombstones in Central Europe: Networks and Mental Maps
Recent Developments in Cemetery Documentation
14:30–15:15 Daniel Polakovič (Prague): Returning Names to People. The Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries in the Czech Republic
15:15–16:00 Marcin Wodziński (Wrocław): Researching Jewish Cemeteries in Poland: From Sepulchral Phonebooks to Quantitative Analysis
The German Context
16:30–17:15 Ulrich Knufinke (Hannover/Braunschweig): Jewish Cemeteries in the Focus of Monument Preservation since the Nineteenth Century
17:15–18:00 Christine Magin (Greifswald): The German Epigraphy Project Die Deutschen Inschriften des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit: Objects – Sources – Methods
Tuesday, 10 September 2024
Jewish Sepulchral Culture of the Middle Ages
10:00–10:45 Michael Brocke (Essen): Elites of Different Status: Inscriptions from the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century in Search of their Author
10:45–11:30 Ortal-Paz Saar (Utrecht): Emotions on Medieval Jewish Epitaphs
12:00–12:45 Karin Sczech (Erfurt): The Excavation of the Medieval Jewish Cemetery of Erfurt
Text and Intertext
14:00–14:45 Nathanja Hüttenmeister (Essen): Formula and Freedom: The Walsdorf Cemetery in Comparative Perspective
14:45–15:30 Avriel Bar-Levav (Ra’anana): Tombstone Inscriptions and Jewish Textual Intimacy
Settlement Patterns and Cemetery Network
16:00–16:45 Rotraud Ries (Herford): Organization and Spatial Distribution – Early Modern Jewish Cemeteries in Southern and Northern Germany
16.45–17:30 Christiane Müller (Essen): Cemeteries in the Duchy of Cleves and their Inscriptions: Levels of Belonging
Wednesday, 11 September 2024
Archival Sources
09:30–10:15 Inka Arroyo Antezana (Jerusalem): Theodor Harburger’s Private Collection for Epigraphers (with a Brief Overview of the CAHJP Holdings on Epigraphy)
10:15–11:00 Susanne Talabardon (Bamberg): Labours of a Long Journey. The Chevra Qadisha in Bamberg and their Cemetery Far Away
Jewish Cemeteries and the Larger Historical Picture
11:30–12:15 Rachel Greenblatt (Waltham, Mass.): Cemetery & Synagogue; Women & Men: Prague Gravestones as Historical Source Material
12:15–13:00 Debra Kaplan (Ramat-Gan): Plotting Communal Hierarchies: Records of Jewish Death and Burial in Early Modern Europe
13:00–13:30 Concluding Discussion
An online Zoom lecture in the Community Scholar Program, by architecture historian Dr. Samuel Gruber, an expert on synagogue architecture worldwide and president of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments.
19-20:00 CET
In Piedmont, Italy the Jewish community built many synagogues over a period of four centuries. The earliest Ghetto synagogues are usually unmarked on the street and occupy residential-type buildings with sanctuaries located on upper floors for greater security and better lighting. Nondescript on the exterior, the sanctuaries are ornately decorated within with richly carved Baroque and Rococo arks and tevahs, and gilded and painted walls and ceiling. The Piedmontese synagogues at Alessandria, Asti, Biella, Carmagnola, Casale Monferato, Cherasco, Cuneo, Ivrea, Mondovi, and Saluzzo, survive as largely unknown architectural treasures, but they are gradually being restored and opened ot the public.
In this talk, lavishly illustrated with his photos, Dr. Samuel Gruber examines some of the most dazzling synagogues in Europe and relates them to the artistic and religious movements of the time.
An expert colloquium RESTORATION, CARE AND DOCUMENTATION: Jewish cemeteries in the Czech Republic, held with the support of ESJF European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative.
The colloquium will focus on Jewish cemeteries in the Czech Republic, and their protection, restoration, care, documentation and research methodology.
The conference aims “to foster debate on the strategies applied by the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the field of Jewish cemetery preservation, as well as the research methods used by specialists and examples of the preservation of Jewish cemeteries from the perspective of their signification as cultural heritage of living communities.”
The conference is supported by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, the Alba Iulia Jewish Community, Bar Ilan University, and Alba County Council, among others.
It is seen as a follow up to several other conferences, including European Jewish Cemeteries: An Interdisciplinary Conference, co-organized by JHE in Vilnius, 2015 and Urban Jewish Heritage: Presence and Absence, Kraków, 2018; as well as published research such as Rudolf Klein’s Metropolitan Jewish Cemeteries of the 19th and 20th Centuries in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Study, 2018; and projects devoted such as those by the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, initiated in 2015.
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