European Film Gateway

The European Film Gateway is a single access point to films, images and texts from selected collections of 24 film archives across Europe: ‘The EFG Portal gives you quick access to hundreds of thousands of film historical documents as preserved in European film archives and cinémathèques: photos, posters, programmes, periodicals, censorship documents, rare feature and documentary films, newsreels and other materials.’

Journal Review: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 01/13

In the current issue of Geschichte und Gesellschaft Philipp Nielsen writes about German Jews between ‘Heimat’ and German-ness:

Philipp Nielsen:  „Blut und Boden“. Jüdische Deutsche zwischen Heimat und Deutschtum, 1892–1936

Klaus Mann diaries online

The Monacensia archive in Munich has digitalized the original pages of Klaus Mann’s diaries (1931-1949). An amazing source for literary scholars and historians alike.

Online Encyclopedia of the First World War

In 2014, the project “1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War” will go live. It promises to be an indispensable source for the research fo the Great War and its aftermath, but the website is already worth a look. Particularly the collection of WWI websites is a handy guide for anyone interested in the era.

Jewish periodicals online

The Compact Memory project has digitized 118 German-language Jewish periodicals, from Sulamith (1806-1843) to Central Verein-Zeitung (1922-1938) and Jüdische Welt-Rundschau (1939-1940). This amazing collection, financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), offers a wealth of material for scholars of German-Jewish history.

New book on Maria Leitner

This new book unearths some texts by Maria Leitner, a socialist reporter working in Weimar Germany who sadly is nearly forgotten today. As a female investigative journalist, she paved the way for the likes of Grace Drummond-Hay and Marie Colvin.

Julia Killet, Helga W. Schwarz: Maria Leitner oder: Im Sturm der Zeit

New Rathenau biography

A new biography investigates how Walther Rathenau reconciled his Germanness and his Jewishness: ’This deeply informed biography of Walther Rathenau (1867–1922) tells of a man who—both thoroughly German and unabashedly Jewish—rose to leadership in the German War-Ministry Department during the First World War, and later to the exalted position of foreign minister in the early days of the Weimar Republic. His achievement was unprecedented—no Jew in Germany had ever attained such high political rank. But Rathenau’s success was marked by tragedy: