Mirjam Wenzel is the Bauhaus Guest Professor for the 2020/21 Winter Semester

During her Bauhaus Guest Professorship, Prof. Wenzel will be encouraging an exchange on shaping social coexistence via lectures and workshops within the context of her academic analysis of Jewish cultural history and the current lives of Jewish people in Europe. This topic is already an important part of studying and doing research at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.

»It's both a great pleasure and honour as a Bauhaus Guest Professor to be able to communicate with students, doctoral candidates and colleagues at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar on the topic of contemporary Jewish life in Europe and the responsibilities of Jewish museums«, said Prof. Wenzel. »Jewish life in Europe is diverse and currently under threat. It is based on a centuries-long history of struggle for equality and social participation, plus the equally old experience of being subject to discrimination and violence. Both topics are essentially timeless. In fact, turning to modern Jewish museums does touch a contemporary raw nerve. They raise the question of how we can and want to live together in an increasingly diverse and polarised society«.

»With Prof. Wenzel, we now have an impressive Scientist and Museum Director for this year's Bauhaus Guest Professorship«, said the President of the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Prof. Dr. Winfried Speitkamp. »She will provide a fresh approach and raise hot and politically divisive topics for discussion at our university. We are looking forward to her contributions«.

Prof. Wenzel studied general and comparative literature, theatre and political science in Berlin and Tel Aviv. She then worked as a Research Associate at the Institute for German Philology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where she earned her Doctorate on the German-language Holocaust discourse of the 1960s. Prof. Wenzel is the author and co-editor of numerous books, essays, articles and blog posts on Jewish cultural history, the reception of the Holocaust, contemporary art and critical theory. She is also a curator and has designed several exhibitions, some on an international level. From 2007, Prof. Wenzel was the Head of the Media Department at the Jewish Museum Berlin until she took over as Director of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt in 2016. In 2019, she was appointed honorary professor at the Goethe University Frankfurt, where she teaches in the Department for Jewish Studies.