Introduction: Picturing Global Threads

This introductory chapter explores microhistory's potential to illuminate the history of German-Jewish life in, and exile from, Nazi Germany. Creating personal and family archives-consisting of letters, poems, photo albums and family books, as well as official documentswas integral to this experience for many. Creating such archives expressed a desire to give meaning to events, and exercise agency in political contexts predicated on the denial of that very agency. In curating their own histories in this way, German-Jewish families positioned their private selves vis-a-vis resonant public spaces and events. At the same time, they framed their persecution and flight against a long history of German mobility and migration, allowing them to portray the very act of leaving Germany as an integral part of their German identities.