Professor Miriam Ruerup

Miriam Ruerup is a historian of modern German-Jewish history. She works on the history of statelessness from a Jewish perspective. Since 2020 she has been director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies in Potsdam and teaches as a full professor of history and European Jewish studies at the University of Potsdam which is part of the Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg. Currently she is working on a project of the German-Jewish Diaspora, focussing on German-Jewish history outside Germany after its expulsion under National Socialism. For the academic year 2025-2026, she is the Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the European Studies Centre. Her most recent book is a brief introduction into German-Jewish history with Berghahn (Social History of German Jews. A Short Introduction, New York 2024). 

The Richard von Weizsäcker Annual Lecture

Belonging in exile: How to write an almost global history of the German-Jewish diaspora

Tuesday, 13 November 2025 – 5:00pm

Mirium Ruerup (Weizsacker Fellow, St Antony’s College, Oxford)
Chair: Paul Betts (St Antony’s College, Oxford)

Abstract: In this talk Miriam Ruerup will discuss the challenges of writing a history of the experience of statelessness. At the centre of her research are the “victims” of the development of strong nation-states — those who experienced a fundamental loss of rights and security through the loss of their citizenship. The focus will, however, not only lie on the experience of loss, but also on those who translated their displacement into the creation of a diasporic community bound by their shared experiences of exile and trauma, as well as by a common cultural heritage.

In her project, Prof. Dr. Ruerup addresses German-Jewish migration history, embedding the story of refugees from Germany within the context of the massive population movements and migratory streams after 1933. How the question of belonging is played out in the experience of losing and regaining citizenship, or in phases of in-betweenness and statelessness, will be the central case study around which she explores the German-Jewish diaspora. The book will show to what extent they maintained their German-Jewish culture, and how this was reflected not only culturally but also in their continued ties to their country of origin — for example, through questions surrounding uncertain citizenship status, the experience of denaturalization, and the issue of regaining (or not) German citizenship after the war.