Simone Lässig, Remarque Visiting Fellow and Director of the German Historical Institute, Washington D.C., will present her in-process research on Transnational Families and Kinship Relations in the 20th Century: The Arnholds.
Part of the Remarque Institute's ongoing Friday Lunch Seminar series, this is a hybrid event. Remarque Fellows will join in person and others may join virtually via Zoom.
Simone Laessig’s book project explores the shifting meanings of family and kinship over the course of nearly two centuries. Spanning four generations and three continents, “Family and Enterprise in the Age of Industry” takes as its subject the Arnholds, a family of German-Jewish bankers who gradually translated local success into national prominence. Since the beginning of Laessig's tenure as director of the GHI Washington in 2015, she has been working primarily on Modern Jewish history, on the history of knowledge and migration, and on transnational biographies. These research fields converge in her new book project on the Arnholds, who had to emigrate from Germany in the 1930s and resettle in several countries around the world. Taking the Arnholds as a case study, she will examine the social, cultural, and economic relevance of family and kinship from the early nineteenth century to the 1970s, focusing on the influence of spatial and social mobility, experiences of disruption, and generational change. The case of the Arnholds’ extended family network provides the opportunity to analyze the social, cultural, and economic meanings attached to the idea of family over a prolonged period and against the backdrop of recurring political and economic upheaval.