Research

There is a colourful range of literature and approaches to the topic. First points of contact are

• Overview page of the Federal Agency for Civic Education

• Overview page of the Central Council of Jews in Germany

• Themed page of Deutschlandfunk

• Publications offered by the Federal Agency for Civic Education

• Publications offered by the State Centre for Political Education of Saxony

• Literature list of the Central Council of Jews in Germany

Jewish history is complex and multi-faceted. It touches on numerous areas that can rarely be clearly delineated: Cultural and intellectual history, economic and social history, scientific, media or art history, the history of power and migration - a look at Jewish actors can sharpen and broaden our view of Saxon and German, European and global history.

• This online encyclopaedia offers a first introduction to the history of Jewish communities in Saxony and Germany (note: the literature has hardly been updated since approx. 2018)

• Stolpersteine in Berlin provides information on researching the biographies of Jews. There you will also find numerous links that are relevant beyond Berlin

• A good introduction to the many institutions that deal with Jewish history can be found at: Jewish life in memory and present. Archives, libraries, museums, memorials and research centres in German-speaking countries, ed. by Karin Bürger and Ortwin Pelc, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2023

• In addition to the relevant portals, the first port of call for biographical research, especially on more prominent people, is the Sächsische Biografie of the Institute for Saxon History and Folklore. Further biographies, currently mainly on Jewish people of the 19th century, are gradually being added there

Before conducting research in archives, the topic should be clearly defined. This is because archives, especially those that house administrative records, work according to the provenance principle. This means that documents from the respective areas of the administration are filed there in their previous structure. Files are therefore not sorted according to content, like books in a library, but according to the structure in which they were created. A search for "Jewish" content can therefore be laborious, as it requires that people and events in the files are recognised as relevant for research into "Jewish" history.

• A first overview is provided by the volume: Quellen zur Geschichte der Juden in den Archiven der neuen Bundesländer, Vol. 4: Staatliche Archive der Länder Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Sachsen und Thüringen, by Stefi Jersch-Wenzel and Reinhard Rürup, Munich: K.G. Saur, 1999.

Saxon Archives

• The Saxon State Archives store over 108 kilometres of files. There are various ways to find the correct shelfmarks in these mountains of material:

  • You can use a keyword search to find collections and individual files in the holdings. However, by no means all files relating to Jewish persons are labelled accordingly.

  • In some locations, there are special inventories in which files containing references to Jewish persons are listed. In Chemnitz, for example, some files are labelled with a reference to the special inventory 39103 if they are relevant to questions about Jewish history.

  • If there is a specific research case, it is always advisable to request to the archive

  
  

• The holdings of individual city and district archives are partly available in the Archivportal-Deutschland. However, the majority of archives are not represented there. In some cases, holdings can be researched in the online catalogues of the respective archives. In most cases, however, a visit on site and prior contact is necessary.

• The Stiftung Sächsische Gedenkstätten also refer to various databases that can help to clarify individual fates.

National and international archive holdings

• The Center for Jewish History, New York, is home to the holdings of the Leo Baeck Institute New York, among others. These include numerous estates of Saxon Jewish families

• The Arolsen Archives manage extensive written material from the National Socialist era and the early post-war period. The documents are particularly relevant for research on victims of Nazi persecution. It is worth either looking through the catalogue yourself or, for specific questions, Anfrage to the archive, as not all holdings can be researched online

• The Memorial Book of the Federal Archives can be used to research names of people persecuted by the Nazis. The holdings of the Federal Archives are listed in the online catalogue Invenio

Archives of the Jewish Communities

• The three Jewish communities in Saxony each have their own archives to varying degrees and with different access

• The Archives of the Leipzig Jewish Religious Community have been digitised by the Arolsen Archives and are currently being prepared for use. For specific information, we recommend contacting the Community.

• The Archives of the Jewish Community of Dresden can be found at . rel="noopener noreferrer">request. Unfortunately, the files of the Association of Jewish Communities in the GDR cannot currently be used.

• The Archives of the Jewish Community of Chemnitz are relatively small and cannot currently be used due to construction work

• Further relevant files can be found in the Zentralarchiv zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland (especially for the period before 1933)

• Files can also be found in the Centrum Judaicum Archiv, Berlin, especially documents from the Association of Jewish Communities in the GDR

Various portals offer initial access to Jewish history and Jewish places:

• The Arbeitsgemeinschaft Alemannia Judaica für die Erforschung der Geschichte der Juden im süddeutschen und angrenzenden Raum also offers an overview of Jewish cemeteries in Saxony and lists further literature.

• The portal Jewish Places of the Jewish Museum Berlin lists numerous Jewish places and people on a Europe-wide map. There are also individual tours, currently for Leipzig and Dresden.

• Medieval Ashkenaz - Corpus of Sources on the History of the Jews in the Late Medieval Empire

• Ktiv | Digitised Hebrew Manuscripts

• Stolpersteine in Sachsen