Christoph Gann

Christoph Gann (* 1970 in Frankfurt am Main ) is a German lawyer and non-fiction author . He researches, publishes and curates exhibitions on the history of the Jews in Thuringia and the Holocaust . He became known as the biographer of Raoul Wallenberg .

Live and act

Christoph Gann studied law in Frankfurt am Main and Mainz ; he completed his studies with the second state examination in Koblenz . From 2004 to 2007 he was a research assistant at the Federal Constitutional Court with Hans-Joachim Jentsch and Herbert Landau . Christoph Gann has been a judge at the Meiningen Regional Court since then . He has been researching the life of Raoul Wallenberg since his student days.

In 1999 he published the biography Raoul Wallenberg. Save as many people as you can . In it he follows in the footsteps of the Swedish diplomat Wallenberg, who disappeared without a trace in Moscow in January 1945 after saving tens of thousands of Budapest Jews from certain extermination by the National Socialists and their Hungarian accomplices between July 1944 and January 1945. For this purpose, Gann has critically examined the sources and representations known to date, and developed and evaluated new sources in order to document Wallenberg's work as completely as possible. In the first part of his book, in which Christoph Gann followed Wallenberg's heels in Budapest, he could show that there was nothing in the revelation that Wallenberg was an American spy, wrote Jasper von Altenbockum in the FAZ . He is not interested in a memorial for Raoul Wallenberg, so Gann, it is about the truth. The reviewer of Die Zeit , Hans-Martin Lohmann , praised the work with the words:

“Like few others, Raoul Wallenberg embodied human hope in the dark 20th century. It is thanks to Christoph Gann that this hope lives on in the 21st century. "

2012, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Wallenberg, Christoph Gann held at the international scientific conference of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna in the footsteps of Wallenberg a presentation entitled Traces of Wallenberg in the Soviet Union .

In 1994 Gann already had a traveling exhibition on the life and work of Raoul Wallenberg under the title Lights in the Dark. Raoul Wallenberg and the Rescue of Budapest Jews 1944/45 , which was shown in numerous German cities as well as in Austria and Hungary, most recently in April / June 2013 in Sinsheim . He curated another exhibition in 2008 under the title Meiningers Stiefkinder. History of the Meiningen Jews , which spans an arc from the first recorded settlement of Jews in Meiningen in the 13th century to the eradication of the Jewish community by the National Socialists. Among other things, it documents the life of Moses Sachs (1800–1870), who is considered the first Jewish immigrant to Palestine . The exhibition Music followed in 2010/2011 . It heals the wounds that dealt with the ostracized composer Günter Raphael during the Nazi era . Gann presented many previously unpublished documents and photos, thus conveying new knowledge for Raphael research. The exhibition was shown in Meiningen and Saalfeld , among others . The history of the Meiningen Jews complex also includes the exhibition "If you arrive here ..." - the fate of a Jewish family between child transport and failed emigration , for which Gann published an accompanying volume in 2013.

Publications

• Lights in the dark. Raoul Wallenberg and the Rescue of the Budapest Jews 1944/45 . Booklet accompanying the exhibition of the same name, Frankfurt am Main 1994, third revised edition 1999.
• Raoul Wallenberg. Save as many people as possible , CH Beck , Munich 1999, second edition dtv Munich 2002.
• Raoul Wallenberg in Budapest , in: András Masát , Márton Méhes, Wolfgang Rackebrandt (eds.): Raoul Wallenberg - Man in Inhumanity. Results of international research , Edition Kirchhof & Franke , Berlin 2002, pp. 19–33
• Legal processing of the pogrom night of November 9, 1938 in Meiningen after 1945 , Erfurt 2011
• "12 years, Jew, signed off for England 10.5.39". The fate of Eva Mosbacher and her parents , Erfurt 2013
• Notes, "witnesses", contradicting things - a chronicle of the search for traces, in: Stefan Karner (Ed.): In the footsteps of Wallenberg, StudienVerlag Innsbruck / Vienna / Bozen 2015.
• "When you get here ..." Eva Mosbacher - a Jewish girl and the Kindertransport to England, illustrations by Dietrich Ziebart, Leipzig 2020.
• “He wasn't even EMIGRANT! Ugh, devil! And then only half-u. not even sat. ”The composer Günter Raphael in the Nazi era. In: Helen Geyer, Maria Stolarzewicz (Ed.): Persecuted Musicians in National Socialist Thuringia. A search for clues. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna et al. 2020, pp. 109–163.

items

• Raoul Wallenberg as an opera hero , in: Freiburger Rundbrief . New series, No. 3 / 2008,173–176.
• Raoul Wallenberg. The betrayed savior , in: Jüdische Allgemeine , August 2, 2012. Online
• Moses Sachs - a Jewish pioneer from Dreianzigacker (1st part), in: Hennebergisch-Fränkischer Geschichtsverein (Hrsg.): Yearbook 2012, Kloster Veßra / Meiningen / Münnerstadt 2012, pp. 121–142.
• Moses Sachs - a Jewish pioneer from Dreianzigacker (2nd part), in: Hennebergisch-Fränkischer Geschichtsverein (Hrsg.): Yearbook 2013, Kloster Veßra / Meiningen / Münnerstadt 2013, pp. 151–175.
• Fritz Bernstein - Zionist, anti-Semitism researcher and founder of the state from Meiningen , in: Hennebergisch-Fränkischer Geschichtsverein (Hrsg.): Jahrbuch 2016, Kloster Veßra / Meiningen / Münnerstadt 2016, pp. 265–292.
• Meiningen as the starting point of the anti-Jewish riots of 1819 ("Hep-Hep-riot"), in: Hennebergisch-Fränkischer Geschichtsverein (Hrsg.): Yearbook 2017, Kloster Veßra / Meiningen / Münnerstadt 2017, pp. 253–284.

Web links

• Christoph Gann's Raoul Wallenberg website
• A kite fighter from Sweden , Christoph Gann, in conversation with Susanne Führer , Deutschlandradio Kultur , March 3, 2012
• Light in the darkness , Christoph Gann on Raoul Wallenberg, SWR2 culture talk July 5, 2012
• Who was Raoul Wallenberg? SWR2 Forum with Christoph Gann, July 5, 2012 (audio file for download)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jasper von Altenbockum: Review of non-fiction book Im toten Winkel , FAZ December 22, 1999
2. ↑ Elke Schubert: The long march. The book on the search: Christoph Gann tracks down the missing human rescuer Wallenberg , Süddeutsche Zeitung November 17, 1999
3. ↑ Hans-Martin Lohmann: Light of Hope. About the life and work of Raoul Wallenberg , Die Zeit November 25, 1999
4. ↑ The conference was organized by the Diplomatic Academy together with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for War Impact Research, the Embassy of the State of Israel, the Swedish Embassy and the Embassy of Hungary. In the footsteps of Wallenberg , conference report, Swedish Embassy in Vienna, November 15, 2012 ( memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Ursula Homann: Every day cost lives. Help for Budapest Jews - Memory of Raoul Wallenberg, in: The Parliament October 15, 1999
6. ^ Meiningens Stiefkinder , Südthüringer Regionalfernsehen November 20, 2011
7. ^ Moses Sachs - a Jewish pioneer from Thuringia , Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Bildungswerk Erfurt
8. ↑ Music. She heals the wounds. Günter Raphael's Meininger Years , special exhibition by Christoph Gann, Meininger Museen ( Memento of the original from September 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.