In November 2024, I was a visiting research fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. This visit was part of the ongoing exchange programme between the DAAD Cambridge Hub and the Institute for Contemporary History, which sends Cambridge-based researchers to visit Munich for four-week stays and vice-versa.
The Institute for Contemporary History was founded by the West German government in 1949 for the purpose of documenting and studying the National Socialist era. This continues to be an important focus of the institute’s research agenda and for its public outreach activities. But, over the years, its research focus has expanded to also encompass scholars working on German history from comparative or transnational perspectives. It was in this context that I visited as a scholar of British-German cultural relations.
During my stay in Munich, I conducted archival research using the Bavarian State Library’s substantial music holdings. Particularly noteworthy for my work were the deposited estates of the British-Moravian violinist Wilma Norman-Neruda and the impresario Hermann Levi.
I also presented a work-in-progress research paper at the Institute’s graduate seminar, where I dealt with the cultural and political identities of the German migrant community in Victorian Manchester. This paper, which I titled “Die deutsche Community im viktorianischen Manchester: Ihre Kultur, Politik und Institutionen”, grew out of research conducted for the final chapter of my PhD dissertation.
Over the month, I especially enjoyed meeting with colleagues in Munich from both the Institute for Contemporary History and the Ludwig Maximilian University and learning about their areas of research.