This post was automatically translated from the German original at
NGHM-Tracker (6/2025).
The monthly newsletter of the Research Group for Contemporary History and Historical Migration Research at the University of Osnabrück
By Benjamin Look & Jessica Wehner
In May, we not only devoted ourselves to teaching and research in the ongoing summer semester, Team NGHM was also travelling to conduct research, present, discuss and exchange ideas with colleagues at home and abroad. In Osnabrück, the highlight of the month was the opening of the exhibition #ChallengingDemocracy – From Helmut Schmidt to Today, which we are showing together with the Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Foundation and the University Library.
Our May newsletter edition reports on the team’s diverse activities.
Insights
From 6 May to 21 June 2025, the Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Foundation is making a stop in Osnabrück with its exhibition #ChallengingDemocracy – From Helmut Schmidt to Today. The hosts are the University Library and the Chair of Contemporary History and Historical Migration Research.
The exhibition opening took place on 6 May. After a welcome by Prof. Dr. Kai-Uwe Kühnberger, Vice-President of the University of Osnabrück, and Dr. Meik Woyke, Board Member of the Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Foundation (BKHS), Lea Horstmann presented the student project for the exhibition on behalf of the students of the University of Osnabrück – students at UOS examined regional perspectives on shaping a democratic society in the 1970s and 1980s in a seminar and are incorporating these into the exhibition. The BKHS curator, Dr. Magnus Koch, addressed the central questions of the exhibition in a keynote presentation and subsequently provided insights into the concept and content in an exclusive guided tour.
On 14 May 2025, as part of the accompanying programme, Dr. Noa K. Ha,
Scientific Managing Director of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), Dr. Patrice G. Poutrus from the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS), University of Osnabrück and Prof. Dr. Lale Yildirim (University of Kiel) from Collaborative Research Centre 1604 discussed the history and future of an inclusive migration society in Germany, with moderator Dr. Magnus Koch, Head of Exhibitions and History, Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Foundation.
Elsewhere, Team NGHM contributed to the discussion on digital methods and their potential: At the University of Osnabrück , Digital Humanities methods are not only applied in teaching and research in many areas, but are also being developed, tested and made applicable. To further develop the bundling and networking of these approaches and to discuss the question of what infrastructures the social sciences and cultural studies in particular need in the field of Digital Humanities for their work, the University Library invited scholars active in this field, representatives of university infrastructure institutions and representatives of university management to a workshop on 12 May.
Also participating was the team from the Chair of Contemporary History and Historical Migration Research (Prof. Dr. Christoph Rass), from which a whole series of scholars have been participating for some time in an initiative group that would like to encourage the establishment of a dedicated DH centre at UOS. In the poster exhibition that accompanied the workshop programme, the NGHM Research Group was represented with contributions that presented the use of DH methods in research projects whilst also presenting ideas for expanding corresponding competencies in research and teaching.
But projects, ideas and research results were not only presented and discussed locally. Team NGHM used May for diverse travels:
Jessica Wehner ventured into the digital distance on 8 May. As part of the digital lecture series “Remembering, Reflecting, Understanding: 80 Years After the End of the Second World War” at the University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein she gave a lecture on the topic The Second World War and its Consequences: ‘Displaced Persons’ and the ‘European Refugee Crisis’ 1946-1952. She addressed the significance and organisation of post-war migration by the International Refugee Organization. In doing so, she showed how many different actors were involved in the negotiations on regulating the consequences of violence-induced migration and mobility in the context of the Second World War and what goals and strategies they pursued.
On 8 May, Christoph Rass was a guest speaker at the central commemoration ceremony of the Emsland district in remembrance of the end of the Second World War and Nazi rule 80 years ago. In the War Memorial Church in Rhede, Rass spoke under the title “Crime, Responsibility, Memory” on the local and global dimensions of the war of extermination, genocide and Holocaust. Rass advocated for a differentiated approach to the past. He emphasised that the Second World War had not only been a European event, but had claimed up to 80 million lives worldwide – about three per cent of the world’s population at the time.
He recalled the unprecedented scale of German crimes: the Holocaust with six million murdered Jewish people, the genocide of Roma and Sinti, the murder of 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, and the “euthanasia” programme with 250,000 victims. In the Emsland too, thousands had died in camps and Jewish communities had been destroyed.
The current development is alarming, he noted, as for the first time a relative majority of 38.1 per cent of Germans favour drawing a “final line” under the Nazi era, whilst at the same time knowledge about Nazi crimes is declining and antisemitic attitudes are increasing. Using the example of the Emsland, the historian showed how the culture of remembrance had developed from the suppression of the post-war period through an initial “excluding” consensus to an inclusive commemoration that includes all victim groups. This critically reflexive attitude must be preserved. For the future, he called for continuous historical education without relativisation, multiperspective remembrance in dialogue between different groups, and a future-oriented engagement with history as a resource against hostility to democracy. Only through the recognition of ambivalence and a critical engagement with the past could the annual commemoration on 8 May transform from a “burdensome obligatory exercise” to an active contribution to democratic values and against misanthropy.
On 21 May, Christoph Rass travelled to the Emsland region once again. At the Georgianum in Lingen, he participated in a panel discussion on questions of historical and memorial culture in the context of Nazi rule, the Second World War and the Holocaust. Students created a radio programme from this as part of their seminar course together with Ems-Vechte-Welle. So what does the Nazi past mean for our society today? The students wanted to clarify this question in an interdisciplinary dialogue and brought together academia, media, justice and memorial culture: Prof. Dr. Christoph Rass from the University of Osnabrück represented historical scholarship, Marko Schnittker contributed the media perspective as managing director of Ems-Vechte-Welle, Dr. Sebastian Weitkamp, director of the Esterwegen Memorial, participated from the perspective of practical memorial and educational work, and Markus Hardt, director of the Lingen District Court, brought legal and juridical expertise to the debate.
Travels took Sebastian Musch in May to Heidelberg, where a meeting of the Landecker Lecturers took place, and to Milan. As part of a short-term guest professorship at the Philosophy Department of Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Sebastian Musch gave a lecture there on the construction of the Abrahamic triad (Judaism–Christianity–Islam) in the 19th century. The focus was particularly on attempts by Christian thinkers to deny Judaism its shared roots as an Abrahamic religion.
In May, Annika Heyen travelled to New York City and Washington, DC for three weeks for archival research. At the Center for Jewish History, the New York Public Library, the Seeley G. Mudd Library in Princeton, and in the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, she searched for documents that would reveal the Jewish perspective on the Bermuda Conference in April 1943, which she is researching as part of her doctoral project. Not only were the collections on influential Jewish organisations such as the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Labor Committee fascinating, but also the papers of two members of the US delegation to the Bermuda Conference, Sol Bloom and Harold W. Dodds, which provide small but no less surprising insights into the negotiation process in spring 1943.
On 16 May 2025, students undertook an excursion to the Emsland region under the leadership of Lukas Hennies and Imke Selle. The excursion focused on the history of the Emsland camps during the Nazi period and the immediate post-war period, as well as the culture of remembrance in the region. The first stop was the former Emsland camp Oberlangen, where soldiers of the Polish Home Army were also imprisoned after the failure of the Warsaw Uprising. After the end of the war and liberation, many liberated Polish prisoners of war and civilians initially remained in the Emsland as so-called ‘Displaced Persons’ – approximately 18,000 in total. On the orders of the British military government, the small town of Haren/Ems was evacuated in May 1945 to make room for these people. The town was first renamed ‘Lwow’ and later ‘Maczków’ and remained Polish until 1948. In Haren, the group visited the newly established Documentation Centre on the History of Maczków. There, director Rüdiger Ritter provided insights into the memorial work on site and with the urban community.
The excursion concluded at the Groß-Fullen War Cemetery, where alongside some of the dead from the Emsland camps, those who died in Maczków are also buried.
Notes
In May, the NGHM colloquium programme offered a particularly exciting range of presentations with additional external speakers.
On 8 May, Dr. Trond Kuster presented ideas for his research project “Germany’s Dark Legacy” – A History of the Causes, Consequences and Management of Unexploded Ordnance and Armaments Legacy Sites from 1918 to the Present
On 15 May, Christina Wirth (SFB 1482 “Human Differentiation”, Mainz) presented her doctoral project entitled From “Displaced Persons” to “Refugee”. Legal-Bureaucratic Human Differentiation in the Post-War Period.
On 22 May, Lennart Schmidt’s (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Research Potsdam) lecture dealt with the digitalisation of migration control in West Germany and Western Europe since the late 1950s, particularly the emergence of the Central Register of Foreigners (AZR) and its role in administrative practice.
At the beginning of May, the podcast episode Between Repatriation and Resettlement: Displaced Persons in Post-War Germany was released, produced by Matthias Bertsch as part of the “Perspectives” podcast from the Museum Friedland. Dr. Sebastian Huhn and Jessica Wehner were able to contribute to the podcast episode.
In mid-May, the second issue of Historia Prima was published, a scholarly magazine for history students that is published annually under the direction of the Institute of History at the University of Hildesheim. This year, the University of Osnabrück is represented with two contributions. Under the title “‘What we are experiencing here is 1933 on a global level, the total seizure of power.’ The Functionalisation of History as Political Argument Using the Example of Corona Protests from 2020 to 2022”, Valentin Loos, also a member of NGHM, is among the authors. The contribution fits into recent developments in historical research that examine the functionalisation of references to the past as political arguments for their historical facticity. Drawing on Jörn Rüsen’s theories of meaning-making and plausibilities, Valentin Loos shows how the protesters condense three conspiracy-theoretical narratives (‘dictatorship’, ‘victim’ and ‘resistance’) into a counter-history in order to assert themselves in political discourse. The complete edition of Historia Prima is available through open access. A detailed article about this contribution will follow shortly.
In May 2025, the Chair of Contemporary History and Historical Migration Research, along with the entire University of Osnabrück, switched to a new version of its website. After months of intensive work, our newly designed NGHM website is now online. The revised platform offers a fresh design with a newly structured overview of our activities in research, teaching and particularly digital history & public history.
The menu items “Conflict Landscapes” and “Negotiating Migration” have also now gone online as extensions of our research profile.
Blog Posts in April
- Jessica Wehner & Benjamin Look: NGHM-Tracker (5/2025), 5 May 2025.
- Malte Künne & Marvin Sonntag: There and Back Again | Excursion to the Zivilcourage Time Centre in Hannover on 27 March 2025, 9 May 2025.
- Team NGHM: Online now | New Website of the Chair for Contemporary History and Historical Migration Research NGHM@UOS, 10 May 2025.
- Team NGHM: Challenge accepted: The ‘We’ in Migration Society. Panel Discussion on 14 May 2025 at the UB@UOS, 11 May 2025.
- Team NGHM: Digital Humanities at the University of Osnabrück. UB Workshop with Cultural and Social Sciences in May 2025, 19 May 2025.
- Team NGHM: NGHM as Guest | “80 Years Later – Using History for Democracy”: Panel Discussion at Georgianum in Lingen, 23 May 2025.
- Team NGHM: StreitBar: Between Lecture Hall and Debate Room – Studying (Un)politically? A Conversation Between Student Generations at UOS, 26 May 2025.
- Team NGHM: NGHM Website 2.0 | Negotiating Migration & Konfliktlandschaften are online, 27 May 2025.
Outlook and Current Events
For June, Team NGHM would like to highlight some events and cordially invite students and other interested parties:
On 12 June, as part of the accompanying programme for the exhibition #Challenging Democracy – From Helmut Schmidt to Today, we cordially invite you to the StreitBar. Under the motto “Between Lecture Hall and Debate Room – Studying (Un)politically?”, Gloria Sherif and Frederik Göcke (both students at UOS) will discuss with Heike Tennstädt and Heiko Schulze (students in the 1970s) under the moderation of Lisa Querner (BKHS).
The evening will focus on questions such as: How has political engagement in studies and at universities developed over the decades? And what role do universities play as places of opinion formation and social discourse?
From 24 to 26 June 2025, the NGHM working group will be represented with their Digital Humanities projects in Holocaust and conflict landscape research at Connective Holocaust Commemoration Expo I at the University of Sussex. The Osnabrück historians will present eight research projects as part of the exhibition to discuss their approaches, methods and findings. Additionally, NGHM will conduct an interactive workshop on digital citizen-science projects.
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