“Images of the Kristallnacht: Visual Representation and Remembrance”

Release date: November 03, 2008 |

Tobias Ebbrecht, professor at the Film and TV Academy in Potsdam, Germany, and a co-teacher of Goucher College’s 2009 Film in Berlin ICA, will discuss “Images of the Kristallnacht: Visual Representation and Remembrance” on Monday, November 3, at 7:30 p.m. in the Soper Room of the Julia Rogers Library.

This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be served. RSVP by October 30 by contacting Uta Larkey at 410-337-6222 or ularkey@goucher.edu.

During violent anti-Jewish pogroms that took place on November 9 and 10, 1938, all over Nazi Germany, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned, and 7,000 Jewish businesses were destroyed and looted. This lecture will investigate visual representations of the “Night of Broken Glass” and how — 70 years later — the devastation has become a universal symbol for the exclusion, expulsion, and destruction of the European Jewish population by the Nazis and their collaborators.

Even though only few “official” images of the anti-Jewish actions exist, several perpetrators and bystanders did take pictures during the November pogrom. Today these images shape the memories of the events and are often used in documentary and feature films about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Ebbrecht will analyze these visual representations and investigate their contribution to today’s collectively shared images of the Nazi past.

Ebbrecht teaches film and media history at the Film and Television Academy “Konrad Wolf” in Potsdam, Germany. His main field of research is the relation of media and history with special focus on the representation of the Holocaust in film and television.

This event is sponsored by the generous support of the Evelyn Myers ’37 Endowed Lecture Fund.