Global Humanities Junior Fellow at Freie Universitaet Berlin

May - August 2016

"Bleiben will ich, wo ich nie gewesen bin". A Prosopographical Study on Young Jewish Authors in East-Germany, 1968-1976

Encompassing the biographies of several Jewish authors in the German Democratic Republic, born after the Second World War to prominent communists of Jewish origin, Ofer Waldman's research questions the interconnections between biography, identity and literature against the backdrop of East-German society in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Deriving from a close reading of the works of Thomas Brasch, Barbara Honigmann and others, coupled with archive research, his work comprises these Jewish authors as a coherent and unique, generationally and artistically definable group.

Ofer Waldman was born 1979 in Jerusalem, Israel. He received his Diploma from the University of the Arts in Berlin, engaging in a musical career in leading German and Israeli orchestras. In 2014 he obtained his M.A. magna cum laude in German Studies from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Ofer is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the joint dissertation program of the Hebrew University and the Freie Universitaet Berlin, working on a prosopographical study of Jewish Authors of the post-war Generation in the GDR. His publications touch upon the conjunction of memory, literature and history in post war Germany.