"Judenforschung in the Third Reich"
Professional Background
Dr. Dirk Rupnow received a Ph.D. with distinction in history from the University of Klagenfurt in Austria and an M.A. with distinction in history from Vienna University. During his fellowship at the Museum, he was a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the Austrian Programme for Advanced Research and Technology, Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, and a guest researcher at the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture in Leipzig. For his Charles H. Revson Foundation Fellowship for Archival Research, Dr. Rupnow researched “Judenforschung in the Third Reich.”
Dr. Rupnow is the recipient of numerous prestigious fellowships and awards. He received the Juerg Brenner Foundation Scholarship for the Research and Study of Jewish History and the History and Impact of the Holocaust for his dissertation which addressed “Annihilating and Remembering in the Third Reich.” He has received fellowships from the Benyamin and Chaya Schapelski Chair of Holocaust Studies at Tel Aviv University; the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna; and the David Herzog Foundation, and a research scholarship from the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research where he conducted a study on Nazi anti-Jewish policy in textbooks during the Nazi era and in postwar Germany. In 2003 he was a visiting scholar at Duke University and from 1999 to 2000 was a project researcher with the Historical Commission of the Republic of Austria. At the time of his fellowship, Dr. Rupnow was awaiting the publication of a book that he wrote with Gabriele Anderl and former Center fellow Alexandra-Eileen Wenck, Die Zentralstelle für Jüdische Auswanderung als Beraubungsinstitution (Oldenbourg Verlag, 2004). He is also the author of Täter, Gedächtnis, Opfer: Das “Jüdusche” Zentralmuseum in Prague, 1942-1945 (Picus Verlag, 2000) in which he explores the deep complexities of memory with respect to the Jewish Central Museum in Prague, arguing that within the context of museumization both annihilation and conservation are possible. Dr. Rupnow has also written dozens of scholarly publications including an article on the aforementioned Prague museum in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (vol. 16. no.1, Spring, 2002). He has authored several newspaper articles and has lectured extensively on his work. In coordination with the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture, he conceived of and organized an international conference on anti-Jewish research from the early twentieth century to the Nazi era.
Fellowship Research
During his tenure at the Museum, Dr. Rupnow’s research on “Judenforschung during the Third Reich” examined the works of Nazi historians and Nazi institutions that conducted research on Jewish history and culture and the history of the so-called “Jewish question.” Judenforschung, which was primarily the work of historians, also borrowed from different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences and was closely associated with racial biology and anthropology in the natural sciences. Dr. Rupnow researched this “discipline” and the way in which it, within the academic landscape of the time, rooted itself in accepted scholarly methodologies and turned antisemitism into a course of study in and of itself.
Dr. Rupnow was in residence at the Mandel Center from May 1 to October 15, 2004.