Looking for Us at Hard Histories?

Find us in Berlin and Paris, Discovering How, Like Baltimore, These Cities Examine Their Pasts

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. — James Baldwin

You can always connect with us here on the Substack, or by tuning in on our Webinar series. What’s new for 2023-24 is our work in Europe — Berlin and Paris especially. This year, we’re launching a new phase of our research, one that invites lab members, and you our followers, to think about the practice of hard history in a comparative perspective.

The city of Berlin and the Stolpersteine or stumbling stones project launched here in the early 1990s, has always been an inspiration for our work at Hard Histories at Hopkins. Artist Gunter Demnig set out to remember the victims of National Socialism by installing commemorative brass plaques in the pavement in front of their last address of choice. The laying of stones began as “one-off artistic activity” that he hoped would cause those who encountered them to experience a “mental stumbling.” Demnig’s work, which rested upon research that remembered those removed, exiled, deported and otherwise absented from their homes, has helped to break silences while also rewriting European cityscapes. You can read more about the project, how it has expanded, and the controversies it has generated here.

On a recent tour of Berlin’s Grunewald neighborhood, our guide paused to polish stumbling stones installed in memory of Georg and Emmy Braun.

Our investigation into Hard Histories continues in the city where Deming’s project launched. We are in residence at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Germany’s Institute for Advanced Study, and those following us from back home can expect to encounter posts that challenge us to think about how our work in Baltimore and throughout the US is resonant with hard history projects — especially those which interrogate the history and memory of slavery, the Shoah, and colonialism — in Europe. Those of you closer by or passing through, please join us. You’ll find us at conferences, workshops, and colloquia in Berlin and elsewhere. Coming up next week, on November 23rd, is a colloquium at the ZZF (Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Postdam,) at 10 am CT, in person and via Zoom.

Thanks to Dr. Lauren Feldman, Hard Histories Post-Doctoral Fellow and Program Coordinator, and PhD candidate Malaurie Pilatte, who has come on board at Hard Histories to support our spring 2024 workshops in Berlin and Paris. And as always we are grateful for the support of the home team at the SNF Agora Institute and our new colleagues here in Berlin at the Wissenschaftskolleg

— MSJ