Kick-off EHRI-DE

On 27 April 2026, the members of the EHRI-DE research consortium officially marked the foundation of the German branch of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure ERIC at the Leibniz Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ). Isabel Heinemann, Director of the IfZ, opened the ceremonial event, to which external guests from the field of Holocaust studies had also been invited. Andrea Löw, Head of the Center for Holocaust Studies, and Frank Bajohr, former head of the Center, reflected on the history of the EHRI project(s) and related it to current debates within the field. Johannes Meerwald, project coordinator of EHRI-DE, and Katharina Freise, User Engagement and Impact Officer at the Central Hub of EHRI-ERIC, spoke about the mission of EHRI-DE in both national and transnational contexts. The event concluded with a keynote lecture by Maximilian Strnad on current challenges and perspectives concerning the digital representation of biographical data in digital environments.

On the following day, the project partners convened for a first internal in-person workshop, during which the development of the national research infrastructure and potential fields of collaboration within the network were discussed.

EHRI-DE has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) since February 2026. The establishment of EHRI-DE marks an important milestone for Holocaust research in Germany and opens new perspectives for transinstitutional and transnational collaboration as well as for the networking of sources, data and knowledge.

An overview of the project partners can be found here.