Introduction: Picturing Global Threads

Abstract

This introductory chapter explores microhistory’s potential to illuminate the history of German-Jewish life in, and exile from, Nazi Germany. Creating personal and family archives—consisting of letters, poems, photo albums and family books, as well as official documents—was integral to this experience for many. Creating such archives expressed a desire to give meaning to events, and exercise agency in political contexts predicated on the denial of that very agency. In curating their own histories in this way, German-Jewish families positioned their private selves vis-à-vis resonant public spaces and events. At the same time, they framed their persecution and flight against a long history of German mobility and migration, allowing them to portray the very act of leaving Germany as an integral part of their German identities.