Studies in Digital History and Hermeneutics
The series “Studies in Digital History and Hermeneutics”, edited by the C2DH and De Gruyter Oldenbourg, addresses key questions for historians in the digital age:
- how do digital infrastructures and technologies interfere in our practices of thinking, doing, and narrating history?
- what are the methodological and epistemological implications of using digital data and tools for historical interpretation and argumentation?
- what new historical questions can be asked when exploring the big data of the past?
In offering a platform for cutting edge scholarship in the emerging field of digital history and hermeneutics, the series aims at making a critical intervention in the field of digital humanities and introducing key debates and concepts of digital history to the historical community at large.
Volumes published in 2024:
Zoomland. Exploring Scale in Digital History and Humanities.
- Volume 7 edited by Florentina Armaselu and Andreas Fickers.
- Funded by the University of Luxembourg.
Connected Histories. Memories and Narratives of the Holocaust in Digital Space.
- Volume 8 edited by Eva Pfanzelter, Dirk Rupnow, Éva Kovács and Marianne Windsperger.
- Funded by the University of Innsbruck, the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies and the University of Luxembourg.
Online Virality. Spread and influence.
- Volume 9 edited by Valérie Schafer and Fred Pailler, University of Luxembourg.
- Funded by the Luxembourg National Research Fund.
Producing and Debating History. Historical Knowledge on Wikipedia.
- Volume 10 by Petros Apostolopoulos, University of Luxembourg.
Luxembourg and the Holocaust. Spoliation, deportation, memory
Luxembourg has hitherto rarely been the focus of Holocaust researchers, yet its particular status during the Second World War and its relationship with its Jewish minority merit closer examination. This country at the intersection of France, Belgium and Germany was home to nearly five thousand Jews before the German invasion of 10 May 1940, but fewer than a thousand returned after the war.
In the 1930s, Luxembourg became a place of refuge for many exiles from Germany and Austria, but following the invasion in May 1940, a civil administration was set up on 2 August under the leadership of Gauleiter Gustav Simon to prepare for the country’s annexation to the Reich. Anxious to win the support of the population, Simon promoted the Volksgemeinschaft and the exclusion of other populations, starting with the Jews. The latter were forced to leave or deported, and their property was confiscated and Aryanised (transferred to non-Jewish ownership). In June 1943, the seventh and last deportation convoy left Luxembourg City.
Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah 2024/1 no. 219
In the aftermath of the war, as efforts were being made across Europe to preserve the memory of the genocide, nothing was done in Luxembourg, and there were no public monuments evoking the persecution of the Jews. The turning point in 2015 and the apology offered by the government to the Jewish community gave new impetus to these efforts.
This special issue of the Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah explores the complex workings of these multiple processes, rigorously organised by the Nazi administrative machine. In the light of the latest research, we examine the modalities of exclusion and dispossession, the structures of concentration and deportation of the Jewish population, as well as the difficult return of survivors and the development of a policy of remembrance.
The spoliation of Jewish property
In 2024, researchers at the C2DH began working on a series of articles in cooperation with Tageblatt focusing on the expropriation of Jewish property in Luxembourg during the Second World War. This series continues in 2025.
- 12 November 2024. La spoliation des biens juifs (1): in Luxemburg während des Zweiten Weltkriegs – Die Arisierungs-Maschinerie.
- 19 November 2024. La spoliation des biens juifs (2): Das Forschungsprojekt ProviLux – Lange Schatten der NS-Enteignung und Spoliation in der Geschichte Luxemburgs by Andreas Fickers, Anna Jagos, Marc Adam Kolakowski and Yasmina Zian.
- 26 November 2024. La spoliation des biens juifs (3): La Shoah à Luxembourg: 80 ans pour sortir du “flou” by Blandine Landau.
- 3 December 2024. La spoliation des biens juifs (4) “Biens perdus sans collier” – Les Deutsch: une famille de grands collectionneurs by Blandine Landau.
- 10 December 2024. La spoliation des biens juifs (5): Das “Verzeichnis über das Vermögen von Juden”: Instrument der Verfolgung und Zeugnis individuellen Selbstausdrucks by Linda Graul.
- 17 December 2024. La spoliation des biens juifs (6) La restitution, une affaire d’élite? by Fabio Spirinelli and Yasmina Zian.
History of the Chamber of Employees in Luxembourg
To mark the 100th anniversary of the Luxembourg Chambre des salariés (Chamber of Employees – CSL), Estelle Berthereau and Denis Scuto published a book entitled Le “Parlement du travail”. Histoire de la Chambre des salariés du Luxembourg. Released in 2024, the book offers a detailed and insightful account of a century of advocacy for workers’ rights and interests in Luxembourg.
The CSL is both a guarantor of social rights and a driver of new initiatives on issues affecting Luxembourg society. It is a key player in the Luxembourg social model. Over the course of a century, the Chambre de travail, representing manual workers, and the Chambre des employés privés, representing private employees – which merged in 2008 to form the Chambre des salariés –, have developed their influence in a variety of ways. Free to approach issues such as safety, health, the environment and well-being in the workplace from innovative angles, the CSL thinks in terms of what is possible, striving to remain realistic in a context shaped by political decision-making. It delivers opinions on the country’s social and economic laws and runs training courses for trade unions and employees. The CSL, this “Workers’ Parliament”, with some 600,000 members, democratically represents Luxembourg probably more than any other institution on a national scale.
Minett Stories
In 2024, the Remixing Industrial Pasts team published the comic stories that are part of the Minett Stories online exhibition as print editions, with three comics telling the story of an Italian miner and four short stories about air pollution in the Minett region.
Irène Portas Vázquez and Jens van de Maele used the storytelling format of a graphic novel to tell three of the 21 stories that the Remixing Industrial Pasts team has published in the online exhibition Minett Stories. They worked with two different comic illustrators. The more colourful drawings of the story about an Italian miner who was involved in illegal communist activities are complemented by the black and white drawings of four short stories about air pollution in the Minett region.