David Hamann, born 1981 in Hemer, did his PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin. In 2011 he finished his Magister's degree at the Humboldt-University about the NS scientist Gunther Ipsen and the "Deutsche Soziologie". For several years he worked as a student assistant at the Center for the Research on Anti-Semitism in Berlin. Since 2010 he works as a freelance historian. In 2013 he became a Leo Baeck Fellow.
A Ticket from Brody to New York via Berlin. Organized Solidarity of German Jews for Eastern European Jewish Transmigrants 1881/82
The dissertation thematizes the transit of Jewish-Russian transmigrants through the German Empire during the “crisis year” 1881/82. The focus of the dissertation is on the transnational organization of a “directed” Jewish Emigration to America, which was realized by the Alliance Israélite Universelle and German relief committees. These committees provided the basis for the foundation of the Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden (aid organization of German Jews) in 1901. The logistical optimization of the Jewish transit through Germany was closely connected with the fight against the forming antisemitic movement. Actors of the “Berlin movement” instrumentalized a putative “Jewish mass immigration”, which in fact was a complete transit. They benefitted from the growing popularity of racist and antisemitic order models and the nationalistic-conservative turn of the Bismarck government. Based on causes for emigration and flight of Russian Jews and their transit from east to west, the organization history of the Jewish migration aid is investigated. In this context three important Jewish Berlin actors of the migration aid and the fight against antisemitism are portrayed to show the close connection between these two aspects: Salomon Neumann, Moritz Lazarus and the initiator of the Hilfsverein Paul Nathan. Conclusive, the future developments from the crisis year 1881/82 to the foundation of the Hilfsverein in 1901 are outlined.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111063959/html