Dr Matthias Springborn

Dr Matthias Springborn

Knowledge in Transition
MRG C3.19
+49 531 59099-384
matthias.springborn(at)gei.de
Research portal

Matthias Springborn is a research fellow in the Knowledge in Transition department, and is currently working on a joint project that looks at how to convey information within Germany about Jewish everyday culture (Das Objekt zum Subjekt machen. Jüdische Alltagskultur in Deutschland vermitteln). He is writing a monograph on the prevalence of stereotypical images of Jews and Judaism in German history books and popular history magazines since the 1970s. He previously worked on a project that analysed how Jews and Judaism are portrayed in textbooks for North Rheine-Westphalia. His doctoral thesis, ‘Jüdische Kinder- und Jugendbildung in Deutschland seit 1945. Schulungskontexte und Wissensbestände im Wandel ’, which examines the history of Jewish youth education in Germany since 1945, was published by  be.bra wissenschaft in November 2021.

Between January 2019 and August 2021, Matthias Springborn was a research assistant for the  German-Israeli Textbook Commission (DISK).

From July 2015 to November 2018 he worked as a research fellow on the project ‘Migration and Education in Germany since 1945’. During that period he started work on his thesis project at the University of Potsdam, where his supervisors were professors Thomas Brechenmacher and Micha Brumlik.

Matthias Springborn studied history and German philology at the Georg August University in Göttingen from 2008 to 2015. His master’s thesis examined a philosophical and ethically oriented Jewish youth movement in Czernowitz in the years 1919-23. The thesis was published in a shortened version in 2017 by the publishing house Ralf Liebe as the main contribution for the Rose Ausländer Society's year book.

During his studies he chose to focus on the themes of German-Jewish history and exodus, displacement and migration and this was reflected in his selection of assignment and seminar topics.

From December 2014 to February 2015 he completed a work placement in the archive of the German-speaking Jewry Heritage Museum in Tefen, Israel.

From 2011 to 2013 Matthias Springborn worked as a student assistant in the German Philology course in Göttingen, primarily involved in literary, biographical and genealogical research for a project examining the correspondence of the German-Jewish philosopher, social critic, and opponent of anti-Semitism, Constantin Brunner (1862-1937). This was a collaborative project with the Franz Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center in Jerusalem and resulted in the publication ‘Constantin Brunner. Ausgewählte Briefe 1884-1937’ (2012) by the Wallstein-Verlag.

    Projects

    Current Project

    Earlier Projects

    Publications

    Research award

    Affiliations

    • Board member of the International Constantin Brunner Institute (The Hague) since 2014: www.constantinbrunner.net 
    • Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie e.V.
    • Deutsch-Israelische Gesellschaft e.V.

    Talks

    • Bildung im Transit. Neuanfänge jüdischer Kinder- und Jugendbildung in Deutschland nach 1945. (10 Jan. 2023) Part of the series: Lehren – Lernen – Leben. Jüdische Bildung im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert. (Talk given at the Institut für die Geschichte der deutschen Juden, Hamburg)
    • ‘Natürlich nicht in deutscher Sprache’. Der durch zugewanderte Kinder und Jugendliche aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion verursachte Wandel von Wissensvermittlung in jüdischen Ferienlagern in der Bundesrepublik zu Beginn der 1990er Jahre (3. Mai 2018). Part of the panel: Migration und Wissenszirkulation im europäischen Transformationsprozess seit 1989. Conference: Dynamiken des Wissens. Historische Perspektiven auf das Verhältnis von Wissen und Migration vom 20. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, Berlin, 2–3 May 2018.
    • Organizing Education and Knowledge in the DP Camps and the Newly Formed Jewish Communities of Germany (7. Okt. 2017). Part of the panel: Kinship, Knowledge, and Migration (2): Knowledge across Borders: Children as Learners, Producers, and Translators of Knowledge in Central Europe in the 20th Century (Organised by the Deutschen Historischen Institut Washington DC) at the 41st annual conference of the German Studies Association in Atlanta, Georgia/USA, 5–8 October 2017.
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