Heidi Hein-Kircher

Prof. Dr. Heidi Hein-Kircher is Director of the Martin-Opitz-Library in Herne and Professor of German Culture and History in Eastern Europe at the Ruhr-University Bochum since 2024. From 2003-2024 she worked at the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg and was head of the department "Academic Forum" since 2009. She studied Eastern European and Modern History as well as Political Science and Yiddish Studies at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, where she received her PhD in 2000 on the topic of the Pilsudski cult. Since 2018, she has worked as a lecturer at the Philipps University in Marburg, after completing her habilitation there with a monograph on municipal politics in Lemberg (L'viv/Lwów) from 1861/62 to 1914. Her work focuses on security and conflict history, family and gender history, the history of ethnic and religious minorities, and cultures of memory in Eastern Europe.

Martin-Opitz-Library Institute of History at the Ruhr University Bochum

Seeufer bei Bartschin mit Fischerbooten und Gänsen

Background Article

“As in heaven and in Warmia”

Gänseschwarzsauer – a dish to remember the East Prussian and Pomeranian region

The period in the run-up to Christmas is full of customs, traditions, and special foods. Gänseschwarzsauer is a soup made with goose (“Gänse” in German) blood and dried fruit. Its name derives from the fact that the blood is very dark red in colour (hence “schwarz” or black in English) and...