College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

• A Fulbright summer

  Michelle Mattson spent part of her summer studying Jewish history in Germany.

  
  Like many people, Michelle Mattson didn't think too much about the Jewish community in today's Germany.
  
  "Honestly I didn't think about including the Jewish community in our discussions," said the assistant professor of foreign languages and literatures about a course she teaches on minority cultures in Germany. "To me they are simply a part of German society. I never thought of them as a separate group."
  
  That is until she found out about the 2000 Fulbright German Studies Seminar, "History and Memory: Jewish Past and Present in Germany." The three-week course held this summer exposed Mattson and 24 other American academics to a broad spectrum of current German culture and society.
  
  Throughout the seminar, the group met leading experts in German government, academia, cultural institutions and the media. Mattson said they also had the opportunity to discuss the seminar topic with leaders of five Jewish communities including Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich.
  
  "My experiences in Germany this summer will definitely add a new perspective to the course," she said.
  
  One of the prominent questions that came up during Mattson's stay in Germany is a common one - why do people of the Jewish faith continue to live in Germany after the horrors of the Holocaust?
  
  "Even today there is the idea of Ôwhy are you still in Germany?'" Mattson said, "But many Jewish leaders and organizations feel that if they leave Germany completely then Hitler will have won. Many people and groups don't want to see that happen."
  
  After the end of World War II, roughly 30,000 Jews remained in Germany. Most were Eastern Europeans who were placed in DP (displaced persons) camps. Some native German Jews eventually returned home - some when they couldn't adjust to life in the United States or Israel, others because they felt the German language and cultural heritage were an integral part of their identity.
  
  But the population remained constant until the fall of the Iron Curtain a decade ago. Since then, the dramatic growth in the Jewish population has been fueled almost completely by immigration from the former Soviet Union. Despite over doubling the population, it is still far below the pre-Holocaust figure of around half a million.
  
  The recent increase hasn't always had the positive effect that you might expect. "Most of our conversations during the seminar came back again and again to the influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union into Germany," Mattson said. "While it has increased the Jewish population, many of the Russian immigrants don't identify as Jewish. One reason is because they couldn't practice their faith in the Soviet Union. "We got a lot of different perspectives on the Jewish community," she continued. "Some were optimistic and some said that the Jewish community could be completely gone in Germany in 50 years."
  
  Mattson will incorporate those views and other ideas into not only the German minority cultures course, but also a course she teaches on the Holocaust.
  
  She is also completing a book on German women authors, all of whom came to age during the Third Reich's rise to power and World War II.
  
  The Fulbright program is funded and administered by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Financial support is also provided by the German government.
  
  Applicants all were U.S. college, university and community college scholars in German language and literature, German history, political science and other humanities and social sciences related to the topic, specifically Jewish studies and Holocaust Studies.
  

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September 4-10, 2000

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