On April 30, 2020, the German government began to lift some of the lockdown restrictions put in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic as the number of new infections per day in the country decreased. Museums, along with public parks and churches, have been allowed to reopen, as long as they follow federal social distancing guidelines.¹ German museums will now be able to draw in visitors once again, but the visiting experience will be very different from what it was before. The opening procedure of the Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig, with social distancing guidelines in place, provides a demonstration of how life will continue in Germany amid the pandemic.

The Stadtgeschichtliches Museum is the municipal museum of the city of Leipzig. It consists of eight exhibition buildings spread out around the city, each containing galleries pertaining to a topic of local history or culture. The museum’s main building at the sixteenth-century Old Town Hall contains a permanent exhibit of the city of Leipzig’s cultural history from the Middle Ages to the present. The nearby Haus Böttchergäßchen, a modern building, features space for rotating exhibitions about further topics of city art and culture. This building also houses an interactive children’s museum aimed at museumgoers ten and under.

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1799

Editorial note: Betty Schaumburg is an intern at the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C. She is about to graduate with a B.A. in American Studies from the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Her High School exchange in 2012 in Wisconsin sparked her curiosity in US history. During the course of her undergraduate studies, she also participated in the exchange program of Heidelberg University and spent her junior year at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. There, she narrowed her historical interest to the post-Civil War era, Reconstruction and the New South, which contributed to the topic of her Bachelor Thesis.

When I registered my Bachelor Thesis in the beginning of March, I had little idea how my research would be impacted by the looming threat of Covid-19.

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1766

Every museum’s intention is to attract visitors: A museum wants people to experience the stories and objects it has on display, with the hope that they learn something new or understand something greater. Unique exhibitions and significant artifacts are what convince people to visit a specific museum location. The experience of being in the physical location, being able to see images or objects, hear, sounds, and sometimes even smell smells associated with a particular idea or period, is what drives people to visit a museum location. Information today is more accessible than ever, be it in books, on television, or on the internet. Yet people still visit museums, and million-dollar museum projects keep opening, because there is something so unique about the museum experience that cannot be conveyed through any other medium. It is a full immersion in a topic, in a time, and in a place. The COVID-19 crisis has presented a great problem for museums, as stay-at-home orders have made it impossible for them to perform this necessary function of attracting and educating visitors at their specialized locations. To stay in touch with their visitors and present their collections without opening museum buildings, museums have turned to the internet. New technology has allowed for innovative ways to bring a museum to one’s home.

Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1717

Many graduate history students will be familiar with the moment (or phase) in their studies when they have to make a decision about the topic of their final thesis. Some students may already know the topic early on. Others may take a few productive detours on their way to developing their final thesis topic. I am a history student from Germany who is working on the final thesis and in the latter category. With this blog contribution, I would like to share insights into the perspective of me as a historian at the end of my graduate academic education, whose final thesis research also marked my first foray into the field of digital history.

At the beginning of my Master’s degree program at Bielefeld University, Germany, I was sure that I wanted to do research on a different topic than my Bachelor thesis. World War I, albeit an exceptionally cruel war, has always been fascinating to me. I was especially interested in researching the fate of soldiers with neurotic/ psychiatric symptoms during or after their military service (today it would be called PTSD) Therefore, my general topic was clear. What was less clear was my exact research question and, related to this, the accessibility of sources.

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1709

As a German high school or college student, you will be familiar with the scenario: A homework assignment requires you to locate reliable information about William II, theEmperor of the German Empire, and the deadline is tomorrow.  It’s late in the evening, every library is closed, and the only tool left is the World Wide Web.  If this sounds familiar to you, don’t panic. Take a moment and let me take you on a digital journey to Berlin, Germany!

The Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM), physically located in Berlin, Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (HdG) and the German federal archives, the Bundesarchiv,  provide a virtual museum called LeMo, Lebendiges Museum Online. [i] It represents a historically reliable introduction in modern German History and is the biggest virtual museum in the digital landscape in German speaking countries.

LeMo addresses everyone who is interested in German History beginning in 1800 until the present day. It is a virtual museum for everyone – K-12 students, college and university students, adults, including senior citizens.

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1699

The Teutoburger Forest is rich on having myths and essays about Hermann the German. [i] According to history Hermann, in Latin called Arminius, has fought the battle of Varus against the Roman Empire successfully 9 years AD. [ii]  Because of the crushing defeat of three Roman legions the Empire has sacrificed the further extension of the Roman regions – it remained in German hand.[iii]

In this heart of German history the city Halle is located and the home of approximately 21.700 residents.[iv] This medium-sized city has grown substantially in recent years. The established fashion industry with its most popular brand “Gerry Weber” and the nearby highway have contributed to the growing population. Halle is particularly well-known for its history of transportation and the tennis stadium OWL Arena. Once a year, the best tennis professionals from all over the world visit Halle to participate in the big tournament.

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1685

“On 10-12 October 2019, the international conference ‘Digital Hermeneutics: from Research to Dissemination’ took place at the German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington DC. The conference aimed to critically reflect on the radical impact of the digital turn on all stages of historical research, including archiving, research, analysis, interpretation and dissemination on a transatlantic level.” Read the full report by Tim Van Der Heijden, Juliane Tatarinov, and Gerben Zaagsma, C2DH, posted on November 5, 2019.

Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1661

The GHI benefits tremendously from the help of its many talented interns. The following post was written by GHDI project intern Isabella Auerbach, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, who is majoring in European history. — Editorial note, Href

The Nuremberg Trials Project, an ongoing digitization effort by the Harvard Law School Library (HLSL), is an open-access initiative aimed at transporting the documents relating to the 1945 to 1949 tribunals to an online platform. The project, first conceived in the late 1990s, features a highly organized website that provides ample introductory information regarding the Nuremberg trials, along with the trial documents themselves.

I was fortunate enough to speak with Paul Deschner, the project manager for the Nuremberg Trials Project and an Application Developer at the library’s Innovation Lab, who was first brought on to the project due to his professional background in software engineering. Deschner discussed both the history and potential future of this undertaking, emphasizing the ongoing significance of these documents, which were produced over seventy years ago.

History of the Documents

Documents relating to the Nuremberg trials were published almost immediately after the conclusion of the International Military Tribunal (IMT), the earliest of the thirteen trials.

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Quelle: https://href.hypotheses.org/1606