Gerda Lerner,Jewish Refugee Knowledge,and Post-Unification Germany

Abstract

This article examines Jewish refugee experience and knowledge in contemporary European and transatlantic history through the life and work of Gerda Lerner (1920–2013). Having escaped Nazi-occupied Europe in 1939, Lerner later emerged as a prominent feminist historian and activist in the United States. Drawing on archival and published sources, the article reconstructs how her encounter with post-unification Germany in 1993 deepened her self-understanding as a Jewish survivor of Nazi persecution and sharpened her engagement with European memory politics, antisemitism, and German feelings of guilt. Using a micro-historical approach, the article explores the intersections of antisemitism and racism, the limitations of European and German cultures of remembrance, and transatlantic knowledge exchanges in the early 1990s. The article connects the Austrian-Jewish refugee experience, the evolution of transatlantic feminist scholarly networks, and the societal upheavals and transformations following German unification, histories previously explored separately: Tracing how Lerner's refugee experiential knowledge, her feminism, and anti-racism informed each other, the article recontextualizes the enduring legacies of Nazism and the Holocaust alongside contemporary racism and right-wing violence in post-unification Germany. Putting Lerner's Jewish refugee knowledge under a microscope shows the interconnected histories of antisemitism, racism, Holocaust remembrance, and the transnational circulation of feminist thought.