Team
Dr. Lea Wohl von Haselberg
is a film and media studies scholar and researches and writes about German-Jewish subjects and memory culture. After completing a degree in theatre‑, film and media studies in Frankfurt am Main, she earned her PhD on Jewish film characters in West German film and television in Hamburg and Haifa. Her research is at the intersection of Media Studies and Jewish Studies, with a focus on the depiction of Jewish topics in the discourse of the Federal Republic of Germany, Jewish film history and (audiovisual) memory cultures. She is an associate member of the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg and co-editor of the magazine Jalta. Positionen zur jüdischen Gegenwart.
Since October 2017, she has been working at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF on a research project dealing with the work biographies of Jewish filmmakers in the Federal Republic of Germany, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research programme “Kleine Fächer, Große Potentiale”. Together with Johannes Praetorius-Rhein, she coordinates the German Research Foundation network “German-Jewish Film History of the Federal Republic (2019–2022) and since 2020 has been heading the junior research group “Jewish Film – What Is It?”, funded by the Postdoc Network Brandenburg. She is also a member of the Jewish Film Festival Berlin Brandenburg (JFBB) programme board.
Lucy Alejandra Pizaña Pérez
pursued her studies in film heritage at the master’s program at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, complemented by a bachelor’s program in film and theatre studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. Throughout her career, she has actively contributed to the coordination and programming of diverse film festivals, including the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale). Her involvement extends to organizing conferences, film distribution, and collaboration with the DEFA foundation.
Presently, Lucy serves as a research assistant within the junior research group “What is Jewish Film?” and is concurrently pursuing her Ph.D. at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, focusing on the exploration of Jewish film festivals. She also currently works as a festival distributor for German short films at interfilm Berlin.
publications
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Tirza Seene
completed her BA in empirical cultural studies and Jewish studies in Tübingen. She studied for her masters degree in Judaism in Historical Context: Modern Judaism and Holocaust Studies at Freie Universität Berlin and Touro College Berlin in 2020, combining historical Holocaust research and Jewish studies. During her master’s degree, she focused on antisemitic representation on film and spent time abroad at Tel Aviv University.
PD Dr. Anna-Dorothea Ludewig
(PhD 2007, Habilitation 2020) is a literary scholar at the Moses Mendelssohn Center in Potsdam (since 2007). From 2017 to 2019, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies (University of Regensburg) and a visiting fellow at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (USA), among others. She is an editorial board member of the online journal MEDAON and co-leader of the DFG research project “Jewish Film Heritage”.
Further information: https://www.mmz-potsdam.de/team/anna-dorothea-ludewig
Dr. Ulrike Schneider
is a literary scholar. She received her PhD from the University of Potsdam with a thesis on Jean Améry and Fred Wander. From 2010 to 2022, she was a research associate and coordinator at the Institute for Jewish Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Potsdam. In 2017, she was Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies at the University of Georgia, Athens. Her research and teaching interests include German-Jewish literature from the 19th century to the present, Holocaust literature and postwar German-German literature, as well as memory culture and issues of reception aesthetics.
She is a member of the DFG network “German-Jewish Film History of the Federal Republic.” Since October 2022, she has been working on a research project on “Jewish Film Heritage at DEFA.” It is part of the DFG-funded project “Jewish Film Heritage” within the DFG priority program “Jewish Cultural Heritage”.
publikations
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Johannes Praetorius-Rhein
is a film studies scholar and sociologist. After studying theatre, film and media studies and sociology in Frankfurt am Main and Brussels, he began working on his soon-to-be completed PhD, funded by the Ernst-Ludwig-Ehrlich Studienwerk, on the subject of Artur Brauner’s Films to Stop People Forgetting (Filme gegen das Vergessen). He worked at the Research Centre for National Socialist Education at Goethe University Frankfurt until 2016. Since 2017, together with Lea Wohl von Haselberg, he has been coordinating the German Research Foundation (DFG) network “German-Jewish Film History in the FRG” (2019–2022). He has been working as a research assistant at Goethe University since 2019, researching post-war, non-fiction cinema within the European HERA project ViCTOR‑E..
publications
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Laura Brüggemann
studied Comparative Cultural and Religious Studies in Marburg as well as Cultural Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin with a focus on cultural history and cultures of memory. After her studies, she completed a scientific traineeship at the Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, for which she most recently also worked as a freelancer in the areas of digital and memory culture. Since April 2023, she works as a research associate at the Moses Mendelssohn Center in the DFG project “Jewish Film Heritage”, focussing on the sub-project on “Jewish Utility Film”.
Former employees:
Dr. Julia Schumacher
primarily conducts research on the history and aesthetics of audiovisual media (film, television, online video), popular history representation and media theory in the fields of realism, fiction, documentary and cultural studies. She studied media culture and philosophy at the University of Hamburg and went on to work as a research assistant at the Institute for Media and Communication. Her dissertation “Realismus als Programm: Egon Monk. Modell einer Werkbiografie” (Schüren 2018), completed in 2015, was written within the interdisciplinary Graduate School Media & Communication and funded by the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg’s state excellence initiative and the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius foundation. Alongside her academic work, she has been working in the media industry for over 15 years, primarily as a location scout and manager for international film and television productions. She has also had regular lecturing assignments, giving seminars in the history, theory and analysis of audiovisual media. She returned to the Institute for Media and Communication at the University of Hamburg from 2018 to 2019 as a post-doctoral research assistant and then worked as a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts of Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands until May 2020. Since June 2020, she has been working as a research fellow on the project “Between Memory Culture and Antisemitism”, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, on a sub-project about Gyula Trebitsch.
Dr. Eik Dödtmann
is a scholar of Jewish studies and film studies, university lecturer and journalist. He researches and writes about Israeli history, society and culture. After his degree in Jewish studies, film and media studies and modern history in Potsdam, Tel Aviv, Berlin and Dresden, he completed his PhD at the University of Potsdam in 2020. He was an editor and Israel correspondent for the Jüdische Zeitung in Berlin from 2005 to 2014. As a documentary filmmaker, he portrayed Polish Jews in Israel who had to emigrate from Poland as a result of the antisemitic campaign of 1968. Dödtmann has been working on the project “What is Jewish Film?” at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF since 2020, building a collection of European and Israeli-Jewish films, and carries out research on the depiction of orthodox Jews in film.
Maximilian Breckwoldt
has been studying since 2016, first film and television direction in Berlin and then for a master’s degree in film heritage at Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. His work focuses on the history of film in East/West Germany in the 20th century in addition to interests in the field of digital aesthetics and film/thinking. He is currently preparing his master’s thesis on the topic of people and architecture in the mode of implosive science fiction and is examining the version history of Richard Williams’ The Thief and the Cobbler. Since 2020, he has been working as a student assistant in the project “Between Memory Culture and Antisemitism” (2017–2021), the DFG’s “German-Jewish Film History of the FRG” network (2019–2022) and the research group “What is Jewish Film?”.