History graduate student Ben Wexler has been awarded the Hamburg Stipendium – Writing in Residence 2027, a fellowship jointly organized by the Institute for the History of German Jews (IGdJ) and the Alfred Toepfer Foundation. Wexler will spend the summer of 2027 in Hamburg, continuing his research on official responses to anti-Jewish threats and violence in the Hanseatic states during the Biedermeier period.

Wexler learned about the fellowship through Professor Christine Johnson, who encouraged him to apply. As he prepares to advance his dissertation research, the fellowship will provide a foundation for archival research in France and Germany.

The fellowship will provide a base for the archival research he plans to do in France and Germany. He intends to combine a top-down intellectual history on the politics of Jewish reform in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century with bottom-up studies of state responses to anti-emancipation riots. His current research focuses on the role of public opinion in projects of religious toleration and Jewish reform, ranging from Voltaire to Biedermeier Prussian officials.

During his time in Hamburg, Wexler also looks forward to reconnecting with friends from a previous visit and exploring the scholarly community at the Institute for the History of German Jews.

Opened in 1966 near the campus of the University of Hamburg, the Institute for the History of the German Jews (IGdJ) was initially the only academic institution in the Federal Republic to do research on German-Jewish history. Since then, not only has the field developed and become differentiated in terms of methodology and disciplinarity, but the profile of the IGdJ has also expanded. While the historical focus remains, Jewish life in the present, current questions of remembrance and commemoration, as well as work with new media and digital technologies are coming more into focus. As a non-university research institute that presents its findings in publications and various event formats, the IGdJ has been an important voice in national and international academic discourse for several decades.

Learn more about the Institute for the History of German Jews.