Skip to main content
History and
Cultural Heritage
in Eastern Europe
Hauptnavigation
About us
Team
Authors
Editorial Board
Translators
Network
Contribute
Contact
Topics
Migration (hi)stories
Music cultures
Culinaria
Kopernikus#550
Ukraine
Spaces
Jewish life
Blog
Search
de
en
Research in the portal
Enter search term
search
News from the Copernico portal
Our newsletter keeps you informed about new content in the portal and the news from the Copernico editorial team.
Subscribe to the newsletter now
No, thanks
Organizations
(13)
Projects
(11)
Online resources
(10)
Collections and holdings
(8)
Journals and series
(14)
Funding programs
(3)
Exhibitions
(20)
Event series
(7)
Articles
(32)
Blog post
(1)
32 Results
Sort by
Relevance
Title
Chronologically
Filter results
Selected filters:
Categories
remove filter Node type:
Articles
remove filter Subject areas:
Modern history
remove filter Subject areas:
Literaturgeschichte
remove filter Subject areas:
Migration history
remove filter Subject areas:
Macrohistory
External Image
Thementexttyp
Webdocu
"We, too, are stepping down from our role"
Web documentary about the German Drama Theater in Temirtau and the Germans in the Soviet Union between staying and leaving.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Object story
"What you can carry on your own"
On November 18, 1944, nine-year-old Elsa Beck flees the Hungarian village of Máriakéménd with her mother and sister. Elsa's mother allows her to take with her what she can carry herself. Elsa decides to take her school suitcase. Today, this is held in the Danube Swabian Central Museum in Ulm.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Object story
A Transylvanian church fur from South Africa
Among the numerous pieces of traditional costume at the Transylvanian Museum in Gundelsheim is one whose change of ownership and the resulting journey render it a fitting symbol of the collective fate of entire families, indeed entire Saxon village communities from northern Transylvania in the 20th century.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Background article
Abraham Hannibal
Abraham Petrovič Hannibal (circa 1696-1781) was a central figure during the early stages of the African Diaspora in Russia. He was one of the first Russian Enlightenment thinkers and the great-grandfather of the most important poet and creator of the modern Russian language, Alexander Pushkin.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Background article
Adam Mickiewicz
Adam Mickiewicz, the Polish romantic, poet, translator and journalist, was a migrant for most of his life. He also travelled to Berlin, Rome, Constantinople and other places for pleasure, scientific purposes and on political missions. These frequent changes of location show a mobile and transnational life story.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Biography
Bettina Bouresh
"I’m a typical post-war child," says Bettina Bouresh. Born in 1950, she grew up burdened with German guilt and the traumas of her mother's family, who had lived in Allenstein until 1945. She herself felt homeless for a long time. Until one day she found her place: in Masuria. Here she found a home – and in Steinort Palace her life’s work. Today she is vice-chairwoman of the Lehndorff Society.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Object story
Down the Danube in the Ulm Box
A flat-bottomed wooden boat with a hut on top, sides painted in black and white stripes, and two very long oars at the front and back – that's an "Ulmer Schachtel" (Ulm box). This vessel, which seems curious today, was once an important means of transport on the Danube.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Object story
Edina's beach bag
A blue and white striped bag with white handles - at first glance an inconspicuous beach bag. But it tells the moving story of the then 33-year-old Edina Rizvanović's flight from what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina to Ulm.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Introduction
Emigration, Forced Migration, and the Iron Curtain
Eastern Europe has been a "migration hot spot" since the late 19th century: Initially as a core area of overseas emigration, then of ethnic forced migration after the end of World War I. Emigration during the Cold War was nearly impossible. Today, many countries in this region benefit from the European Union's Freedom of Movement policy.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Biography
Eva Anna Therese Puschke
As far back as the 19th century, the Puschke family worked as teachers in Steinort and in the neighboring church village of Rosengarten. They played an important role in village life and had close ties to the noble Lehndorff family. The last teacher of the dynasty was Eva Puschke, a "lay teacher" in Rosengarten from 1940 to 1944. After the Germans were expelled, she lived in Hamburg. She left behind a suitcase full of family documents.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Object story
Farewell after 500 years
A document in the Silesian Museum in Görlitz testifies to the acquisition of the village of Gleinitz by the brothers Nikolaus, Georg and Ladislaus von Niebelschütz in 1446. It was only by chance that the descendent of the Niebelschütz family, Harald von Niebelschütz, then 15 years old, saved the document in 1945 and donated it to the museum in 2017.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Biography
Fritz Lamm: A diary as a companion during his escape in 1936
Fritz Lamm describes his escape from the Nazi persecution of Jews from Stettin via Switzerland and Austria to Prague in his previously unpublished diary.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Object story
From Sample Case to Museum Piece
Over 100 years, and it's still on the move – despite its rather plain appearance, this old brown case has had a rather impressive "career". It was once a sample case for woolen fabrics, a trusted companion on vacation trips, a means of transportion on the run and a piece of furniture in the bare dreariness of a home for refugees. Today, on loan from HAUS SCHLESIEN, it is an exhibit in the Museum of the Lubuskie Region in Grünberg (Muzeum Ziemi Lubuskiej w Zielonej Górze), and a silent witness to a hundred years of history.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Object story
Home in a trunk of clothes - the Garlik family's traditional costume suitcase
This suitcase has traveled far – not, as one might expect, after the Second World War, but rather in the decades after the flight of the Nessner family. It was used to transport the traditional costumes of a Danube Swabian dance troupe from Baden-Württemberg as they toured to enclaves of Danube Swabians scattered around the world.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Introduction
Jews in Poland in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times
The article offers an overview of Jewish history and the development of Jewish settlement in medieval and early modern Poland from the first recorded mentions of Jewish centers in the 11th century through to the end of the 18th century. As in the neighboring countries of Hungary and Bohemia, the Polish monarchs were also interested in Jewish settlement; the privilege of 1264 and its confirmations created the legal framework for this. Jews were involved in the economic and demographic development of Poland. The Jewish percentage of the urban population also grew, and their formative influence was particularly visible in the south-eastern provinces, which found expression in the concept of the Jewish "shtetl". In modern times, Poland-Lithuania also became a center of Jewish scholarship. The crises and wars in the mid-17th century brought an influx of messianic movements. In the 18th century, the impulses of the Jewish Enlightenment and the emancipation of the Jewish population were the subject of lengthy and lively discussion.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Biography
Liberation from forced labor and the search for a new home
21-year-old Janina Jagodzińska describes the arduous beginning of 1945 in Poland's new western territories.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Background article
Migration to Southeast Europe in the 18th Century
Migration stories can be success stories. Migration is often associated with people’s desire to improve their living situation. However, this wish does not always come true, and so migration stories are often marked by disappointments and failures – like that of Michael Kreutzer.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Webdocu
Neumann Family
The web documentary invites you to explore a family history between farewell and a new beginning.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Object story
Not a Moment to Lose
In 1944, the entire German-speaking population of the village of Novo Selo in Yugoslavia flee for their their lives as the Red Army approaches. Among them is the Neuburger family, who travel by horse-drawn wagon via Hungary to Austria.
External Image
Thementexttyp
Background article
Post-War Jewish Migration from the USSR and the refuseniki movement
The post-WW II Jewish migration from the Soviet Union (and also after its dissolution) is one of the largest in modern history. Altogether 2.75 million Soviet Jews left the USSR for Israel, the United States, Germany and elsewhere. The position of the Soviet state with respect to emigration was remarkably ambivalent: in some cases, it was allowed and even encouraged, in others, others; it was controlled and strongly limited. The Jewish emigration movement that arose in the late 1960s and continued throughout the 1970s-1980s became an example of resistance and activism within the authoritarian system, which increasingly alerted international attention. In one way or another, it affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and changed the appearance of many cities and towns within the Soviet Union and outside it.
Load more