Six sub-projects will examine Russian-Jewish, Yiddish and Hebrew Berlin from a variety of viewpoints. All of them will address the interconnections between them and with German society.

The division of labor within the research group is based on the assumption that Eastern European Jewish Berlin can be regarded as a set of dynamic lifeworlds divided into various milieus and linguistic realms, representing a complex political, social and cultural field of action for migrants in which networks formed and discourses emerged.

The socio-cultural divisions were reflected in the political orientations and topographical organization of Eastern European Jewish Berlin. The liberal, cosmopolitan bourgeoisie spoke Russian and also German and settled mainly in ‘Charlottengrad’ in the western part of Berlin. The poorer migrants generally lived in the Scheunenviertel, and spoke Yiddish with each other. Well-known Zionist authors lived in Friedenau, which they referred to in Hebrew as ‘Neve Shalom’, the place of peace (a translation of the German Frieden).

The Sub-projects

• The Russian Revolution and the Jews as Reflected in Russian Berlin, 1917-1939 (Karl Schlögel, Karl-Konrad Tschäpe)
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• Transnationality and Yiddishkeit: Cultural Diversity in Eastern European-Jewish Berlin in the 1920s-1930s (Gertrud Pickhan, Anne-Christin Saß)
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• Bialik's Weimar – The Berlin Hebrew Movement and the Jewish Nation 1918 -1933 (Michael Brenner, Tamara Or)
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• Problematizing the Self in the Russian-Jewish Exile Literature of the 1920s in Berlin (Matthias Freise, Britta Korkowsky)
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German-Russian Partnership

• Community and Integration: The Union of Russian Jews and the Union of Russian Lawyers Abroad in Russian-Jewish Berlin (Gertrud Pickhan, Oleg Budnitskii, Aleksandra Poljan)
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• Community and Integration: Mediators between Cultures in Russian-Jewish Berlin, 1918-1940 (Gertrud Pickhan, Verena Dohrn)
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