Resisting oblivion: 70 years of the Leo Baeck Institute – DW – 06/18/2025

DW

18-06-2025

The Nazis wanted to destroy Jewish life in Germany. Jewish intellectuals founded the Leo Baeck Institute ten years after the Holocaust to save the nation's diverse German-Jewish heritage.
When the German rabbi Leo Baeck was liberated from the Theresienstadt concentration camp on May 8, 1945, the day the war ended, he no longer believed in a future for Jewish people in Germany.
Who wanted to live in the country that had planned to exterminate German Jewry and murdered millions? "The era of the Jews in Germany," Baeck said at the time, "is over once and for all."
This assessment was shared by most survivors at the time.
But what would become of centuries of German Jewish culture? Who would remember the music of Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Arnold Schönberg, the literature of Joseph Roth, Franz Kafka, Alfred Döblin or Else Lasker-Schüler?
Even during the years of persecution, preserving German-Jewish cultural heritage was part of the resistance, says the Israeli-Austrian historian, Doron Rabinovici.
After 1945, when the full extent of the Holocaustbecame visible, this task seemed all the more urgent.
"Remembrance was also resistance against forgetting, against erasure," he told DW of the attempted destruction of Jewish culture during 12 years of Nazi rule.
The Leo Baeck Institute in New York is one of three set up in major emigration points for German Jewry, including London and Jerusalem Image: Max Stein/Imago
Showing what the Nazis destroyed
In 1955, ten years after World War II ended, a group of German-speaking Jewish intellectuals including philosopher Hannah Arendt and historian Gershom Scholem founded the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI) "to show what the Nazis had destroyed," explained Michael Brenner, professor of Jewish history and culture at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich.
The institute would celebrate "cultural achievements, but also the everyday life of German Jews," said Brenner, who has also been the president of the Institute since 2013.
The LBI was named after Rabbi Leo Baeck, the "great religious and spiritual shining light of liberal German Jewry,' the historian added. Baeck became the first president, but died in 1956, one year after the institute was founded.
New York, London and Jerusalem were the most important destinations for Jewish emigrants after the war, and these were also the three locations of the LBI.
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Research institute promoting German Jewish heritage
What made the LBI special from the very beginning was its collection of historical objects come mostly from Jewish refugees or their descendants: Books, letters, photos, and also works of art.
Today, the LBI is the most important research institute for the heritage of German Jewry. The majority of the LBI collections have been digitized and made accessible online, with scholars and descendants of Jewish survivors globally using the service comprising more than 3.5 million pages.
An annual yearbook is also published, events are organized, and young people in science are supported. The LBI also produced the four-volume standard work, "German-Jewish History in the Modern Era." Work is currently underway on a history of the German-Jewish diaspora.
Some might be surprised to know that the LBI has existed so long, but few might have expected a branch to open in Berlin.
As contemporary witnesses die out and descendants lose touch with their origins, the LBI is trying to keep interest in German-Jewish cultural heritage alive with new projects.
These include the podcast "Exile,' narrated by German actress Iris Berben, which is based on letters, diaries and interviews from the LBI archive.
Aimed at a younger audience, the podcast tells stories of people whose lives have been shaped by exile, flight or persecution.
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Attacks on academic life also threaten the LBI
While the renowned research institute is celebrating its 70th birthday in 2025, this should not obscure the fact that its members, especially in the US, feel that their academic work is under threat.
'The situation in the USA, has not been made any easier by the attacks on academic life," said Michael Brenner of government policies to cut funding across universities.
Historian and author Doron Rabinovici also sees a further threat from the global rise of right-wing parties. Leo Baeck's assessment in 1945 that Jewish life in Germany was over has not come true. But what will the next few years bring?
A "resurgent Jewish existence" is only possible in an open society in which antisemitism is combated, warns Rabinovici. And combating antisemitismis not possible with right-wing extremists.
In Germany, the 70th anniversary of the Leo Baeck Institute will be celebrated with a ceremony under the patronage of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Speakers at this event will be the President of the LBI, Michael Brenner, and the Austrian historian and writer Doron Rabinovici.
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