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Anecdotes and Exciting Finds while Working with our Collections

Employees of our archive and our collections provide insight into their work and share stories and insights

  • Left: black and white portrait photo of a young lady. She wears a high-necked dress with hat in the style of the 1910s. Right: cover of a worn diary with leather binding and the golden lettering “Tage-Buch” (diary).

    “No, I Want Dr. O.”

    Leonie Meyer’s diaries from the years before her marriage (1910–12), presented by Jörg Waßmer

    Online Feature
    2021

  • Black-and-white photograph of a man holding a scalpel to the upper arm of another man who is smiling for the camera

    From Cowpox to Covid-19

    The Archive staff members write about nearly 200 years of vaccine certificates in our archive

    Online Feature
    2021/22

  • Drawing of a young woman leafing through a diary. She is sitting inside in front of a window

    Anna meets Leonie

    Drawings by Anna Justicz, inspired by Leonie Oliven’s diaries from 1901–1928

    Art Project
    2020

  • Cover of a landscape photo album with leather binding

    Documenting Brutality

    Historical sources on the antisemitic violence in Germany between 1930 and 1938 in the holdings of the Jewish Museum Berlin

    Online Project
    2020

  • Label on the cover of a diary

    Berlin in Times of Cholera

    Doreen Tesche and Jörg Waßmer discover some parallels to the current corona pandemic in Louis Röhmann’s diary entries about cholera in Berlin in 1837.

    Report
    2020

  • Excerpt from a letter.

    “Since that day, Iʼve felt like a newborn”

    A striking document about the 1945 Day of Liberation

    Online Feature
    2020

  • A woman holds a picture with a building view into the camera.

    That can’t be! Can it?

    Jörg Waßmer about coincidences in the archive

    Online Feature
    2020

  • The illustration shows a young man climbing a wall made of puzzle pieces.

    Kurt: Hunting for Clues

    Initially, all we have is a first name, but Jörg Waßmer’s intensive research brings some details to light.

    Online Feature
    2018

  • Boy sits naked and a little upset at the table; the living room is wallpapered with a floral wallpaper.

    Born in 1918, two minutes from his parents’ perfumery on Kurfürsten­damm

    Fritz Scherk and the history of a family business in Berlin

    Essay
    2018

  • self written marriage contract, signed with a kiss mark of red lipstick

    All for Love

    Jörg Waßmer searches for sexual diversity in the collection of the Jewish Museum Berlin

    Essay
    2018

  • Zeichnung eines Rabbiners, der ein Brautpaar segnet

    A Joyful Occasion for the Lustig Family

    Paula and Bernhard Lustig’s Wedding Album, presented by Susanne Schuur

    Online Feature
    2017

  • Memorial stones in rows, grass in between, a small wall in the background

    12 of 12,000

    Fallen German-Jewish Soldiers in the First World War

    Online Project
    2016

  • Black and white photograph of people at a grave with flowers.

    Shot by German Police in 1946

    Aubrey Pomerance, Head of Archives, on the tragic fate of Shmuel Dancyger Z. L.

    Essay
    2016

  • Cover of a Hebrew-German edition of the Haggadah with handwritten entries on the inside flaps

    A Small Window onto History

    Aubrey Pomerance, Head of Archives, on a newly acquired Passover Haggadah and its previous owners in Kreuzberg

    Essay
    2014/16

  • Studio portrait of a woman and a man with a child, about four years old.

    “The best solution would be that the baby is a girl”

    Jörg Waßmer prepared the inventory of Fritz Wachsner’s estate and got some insights into an internal Jewish debate about circumcision.

    Essay
    2015

  • Portrait of a woman holding laces in front of her face

    Salvaged from the Trash

    Anna Rosemann on the photo albums of the artist Olga Irén Fröhlich

    Essay
    2015

  • Letter with handwriting and stamps.

    Conservation of Letters and Seals

    Stephan Lohrengel reports about his work as paper conservator in the Jewish Museum Berlin.

    Report
    2015

  • Black and white photograph with three uniformed soldiers standing in front of a green area.

    From idyllic landscape views to the trenches

    Seeing the First World War through an army doctor’s photographs

    Essay
    2014

  • Tweezers lift stamp in an album.

    The World in Miniature

    Kirsten Meyer on conserving and storing a stamp album

    Report
    2014

  • Handwritten letter on a letterhead form from Berlin-Plötzensee.

    Farewell Letter, Ink on Paper

    Exhibition curator Maren Krüger and paper conservator Stephan Lohrengel about a touching historical document and why we could only exhibit it so shortly

    Essay
    2013

  • A racing wheelchair rider in a black jersey rides on a racetrack.

    Ludwig Guttmann, Father of the Special Olympics

    Archivist Manfred Wichmann on the Life and Work of Ludwig Guttmann

    Essay
    2012