Obermayer German Jewish History Award

“In one way it is a form of survival”

Norbert Giovannini has devoted himself to understanding and resuscitating Heidelberg’s Jewish past

When Norbert Giovannini began his education dissertation at Heidelberg University in the 1980s, he initially focused on student politics in the city from 1918 through World War II. But in the course of his research, he discovered a history of diverse Jewish student populations—conservative and traditional, Zionist and liberal—who formed the first Jewish political community at one of Germany’s most prestigious universities. His fascination with the subject compelled him to dig further.

 “I was interested in what happened with Jews, who had always been in this problematic situation—as a minority discriminated against on the one hand, and on the other hand as [a people] interested in modern science and participation in democracy. I had read the diary of Anne Frank and other books about the Holocaust—a kind of fundamental socialization through literature that was very formative for me—but this was really the first time I began to work on Jewish historical subjects,” he says. “Until 1933 this was a history of successes, of integration, of Jews finding a position in the society around them, and it was important to see this Jewish history as part of German history.” 

Giovannini was soon giving guided tours of Jewish Heidelberg, delivering lectures at points of Jewish interest such as the old Jewish cemetery, the site of a synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht, and the house where members of the city’s Jewish student community once lived. “It was a double engagement: first, my scientific and historical research, then communicating that research to people who were interested,” he says. “The city had not made a real effort in the 1960s or ’70s to go deeper into the history of its Jewish inhabitants, and for me it was a new beginning to look back at what happened in the centuries before.”

In the 30 years since, Giovannini has published four books and numerous articles, devoting himself tirelessly to examining and resuscitating Heidelberg’s Jewish past. His 1992 edited collection of articles, Jewish Life in Heidelberg (Jüdisches Leben in Heidelberg), chronicled the city’s Jewish contributions and achievements from the Middle Ages through World War II and explored how the community reconstituted itself in the years after the war. Giovannini later contacted many of Heidelberg’s former Jewish inhabitants, assembling their oral histories. In 1996 he helped organize the first formal return of 80 Jewish residents and their descendants to the city from Israel, the U.S., Britain, France, and other countries.

Through meticulous research at city and state archives, Giovannini helped families rediscover and reconstruct their histories. That experience led, in 1998, to another collective publication, Remembered Life (Erinnertes Leben), featuring autobiographical articles written by descendants about their families. “It was an emotional event as they saw their family histories preserved,” he recalls. “Now it’s done. It’s in a book; it’s existing.” 

A passionate educator inside and outside the classroom, Giovannini is driven to bring the past to light, both to give former Heidelberg Jews back their history and to show German citizens the rich, integrated culture they lost with the rise of the Nazis. “By looking at the [anti-Semitic] laws and social processes, and recognizing the real loss from the beginning of the Nazi epoch, the extermination, the manner of being re-ghettoized—this was a way to reconstruct the whole Jewish history on the level of a city, and to remember the period in which there was integration and a respect between beliefs, between civil society and minorities,” he says.

Born in 1948 in the Baden-Württemberg city of Freiburg, Giovannini was adopted when he was one and raised by a family of devout Roman Catholics who had strong anti-Nazi principles, though they never discussed the Holocaust. His first exposure to the destruction of the Jewish community came through his own readings as a teenager, in particular the 1946 book The SS State: the System of German Concentration Camps” (Der SS-Staat—Das System Der Deutschen Konzentrationslager) by German journalist and Buchenwald camp survivor Eugen Kogon. 

“I was so astonished, and I couldn’t understand what it all really meant. It was unbelievable that this could happen—that in the period of the Nazi regime this extermination had taken place, and that it was a part of the history of my parents that I had never heard about before. This was my first step to walk in this field of history, and I never left it.”

Giovannini finished high school amid the political and cultural upheaval of the late 1960s and went on to study education and German language and literature at the University of Freiburg. He later transferred to Heidelberg, where he earned a doctorate in education. During his professional career he worked as a teacher at primary and secondary schools, trained teachers, and was a senior lecturer for literature and literary didactics. As a specialist in Heidelberg’s Jewish legacy he has, since his retirement, worked with schools on student projects. He also supports the association Heidelberger Lupe, which was founded by a group of college students and researches the region’s Jewish past.

He has helped organize exhibitions in Heidelberg’s town hall, including one addressing the deportation of the city’s Jews to the Gurs internment camp in southern France. He also installed commemorative plaques at the site of the old synagogue, listing the names of hundreds of Heidelberg Jews deported to Dachau, Gurs, Auschwitz, Theresienstadt, and elsewhere. In 2011, after more than a decade of painstaking research, Giovannini published Remembering, Preserving, Commemorating: The Jewish Inhabitants of Heidelberg and Their Relatives 1933-1945 (Erinnern. Bewahren. Gedenken. Die jüdischen Einwohner Heidelbergs und ihre Angehörigen 1933-1945), an encyclopedia containing the family histories and documentation of all 2,600 former Jewish inhabitants of Heidelberg.

At one point, a rabbi approached Giovannini and asked him whether he would like to write about “the good Heidelbergers,” people who had shown decency and civic courage during the Nazi regime. The result was Silent Helpers (Stille Helfer), published in August 2019. It describes Heidelberg residents, both prominent and ordinary citizens, who helped Jews during Nazi times by preparing their emigration papers, providing legal assistance, relocating them to neighbors’ or friends’ homes, and helping them escape or survive the war. The intention, Giovannini says, was to show “the importance of moral society and engagement and civic courage, and to show that everybody can do something, everybody has the opportunity to engage himself in helping refugees or helping politically or religiously oppressed people.”

Given recent right-wing empowerment in Germany, Giovannini says the ongoing work of remembrance may be more critical now than ever. “I think it is absolutely important that we commemorate and preserve this memory. In one way it is a form of survival, remembering all those who were oppressed and murdered in this era and remembering what could happen if there are no morals or democratic institutions or civil rights—when the moral foundations of civilization are lost,” he says.

— Obermayer Award recipient 2020