Fritz Bauer Institute

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The Fritz Bauer Institute for the History and Impact of the Holocaust in Frankfurt am Main is an independent, historically oriented and interdisciplinary research and educational institution. It examines and documents the history of the National Socialist mass crimes - especially the Holocaust - and their effects up to the present day. The Fritz Bauer Institute has been an affiliate of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main since 2000 . In 2017, the chair on the history and effects of the Holocaust was created at the History Seminar of the Goethe University. The chair is connected to the management of the Fritz Bauer Institute.

tasks

The institute conducts interdisciplinary research into the history and effects of National Socialist mass crimes, especially the Holocaust , and communicates the results to a broader public. The institute sees itself as the interface between scientific theory formation and cultural practice. It carries out research projects and organizes exhibitions , specialist conferences and other public events. In addition, school and extracurricular educational offers are being developed. The institute regularly publishes scientific publications in several book series, and the bulletin “Insight” appears once a year with articles on various thematic focuses and a detailed review section. The Fritz Bauer Institute regularly offers courses at the history seminar of the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.

history

On January 11, 1995, 50 years after the liberation of the National Socialist concentration and extermination camps , the Fritz Bauer Institute was brought into being as a foundation under civil law by the State of Hesse , the City of Frankfurt am Main and the Friends of the Fritz Bauer Institute.

The institute bears the name of the former Hessian attorney general Fritz Bauer , the Jewish remigrant, democratic judicial reformer and initiator of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials . Fritz Bauer understood the Nazi trials as the self-enlightenment of German society on the lines of law. By means of the legal processing of the Nazi crimes, he wanted to “hold a court day about ourselves and about the dangerous factors in our history”. The institute is committed to Fritz Bauer's intellectual and political legacy.

Frankfurt's then Lord Mayor Volker Hauff started the discussion about a Holocaust center in the “land of perpetrators” under the impression of his visit to the Yad Vashem memorial in Jerusalem in 1989. In 1992, with the final report of the planning group "Frankfurt Learning and Documentation Center of the Holocaust" - commissioned by the Department of Culture and Leisure of the City of Frankfurt am Main - the concept of the Fritz Bauer Institute presented by Hanno Loewy was presented. After several years of preparatory work by the Fritz Bauer Institute of the City of Frankfurt am Main, the Fritz Bauer Institute Foundation was established in January 1995.

Hanno Loewy was appointed founding director of the Fritz Bauer Institute (until September 2000). He was followed by the directors Micha Brumlik (2000–2005), Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar (provisional management, 2005–2007), Raphael Gross (2007–2015) and Werner Konitzer (provisional management, 2015–2017). In 2017 Sybille Steinbacher took over the management of the Fritz Bauer Institute and is also the holder of the newly created chair for research into the history and effects of the Holocaust at the History Seminar of the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main.

The founding history of the institute was presented in a lecture on the occasion of its 25th existence and received wide media coverage.

structure

The institute is supported by the Förderverein Fritz Bauer Institut eV, which has almost 1,000 members (as of August 2019) at home and abroad. The work of the institute is supported and advised by its interdisciplinary Scientific Advisory Board.

The Fritz Bauer Institute has been associated with the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main since autumn 2000 and is based in the IG Farben building on the Westend campus . The cooperation with the university was further intensified in 2017 when the chair for the history and impact of the Holocaust was established at the university's history seminar, the first on this topic in the Federal Republic of Germany. The chair is connected to the management of the Fritz Bauer Institute.

The archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute stores the documents that have been created as part of the work of the institute since 1995. It also records documents from state and private institutions on topics and research priorities of the institute and collects personal papers and bequests from important personalities. It continuously supplements these holdings through acquisitions and takeovers in the areas of image, film, sound, dependent publications and the press before and after 1945. The holdings - currently approx. 300 linear meters, are divided into the departments »House Archive«, »Collections«, »Leases«, »Selected«, »Printed publications and gray literature« - are continuously indexed and made available to an interested public. The archive of the Fritz Bauer Institute provides information on historical inquiries and offers support with regard to archive material from other public archives.

The Fritz Bauer Institute maintains its own library with around 13,000 books and other media on the history and effects of the Holocaust. It is a reference library that can be used on the Westend campus of the Goethe University Frankfurt.

The Goethe University and the Fritz Bauer Institute have been offering guest professorships for interdisciplinary Holocaust research since 2001 . Scientists who work on the history and effects of the Holocaust research for one semester at the Fritz Bauer Institute and teach at the History Seminar of the Goethe University. Since the 2015/2016 winter semester, the visiting professorship has been funded by Michael Hauck (†) and Oliver Puhl, and since 2019 it has been called "Michael Hauck Visiting Professorship".

The work of the institute enjoys international attention. It has been officially recognized as an educational institution since November 17, 2000 and works as an independent cultural institute with numerous scientific research facilities, memorials and museums all over the world. Since 1995, the Fritz Bauer Institute Member of Association of Independent Cultural Institutes eV

Awards

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ lecture
  2. ↑ Ceremonial event and media coverage