Ella Falldorf

Ella Falldorf is a PhD candidate at the Art History Department at Jena University, where she works at the DFG-funded research project “Beyond the Limits of Representation. Artistic Artifacts of Concentration Camp Inmates as Visual Interpretation of the Camp Reality.”External link For her research, focussing on the Buchenwald concentration camp, she received a two-year-scholarship from the Ernst-Abbe-Foundation.

From 2018-2020 she worked as a freelancer at the Art Collection of the Buchenwald Memorial. She is a graduate of the international MA program in Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa. Her MA Thesis was awarded the Herbert Steiner Anerkennungspreis and the Rector’s Price of Haifa University in 2020. From 2012-2016, she studied art history and film studies as well as sociology at the Jena University. Meanwhile, she worked as a teaching assistant at the Chair of Art History and as a student assistant at the European Kolleg "Representing the 20th Century".

From January until April 2025 Ella Falldorf will be a Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., funded by the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Contemporary History-Munich & Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, supported by the Sosland FundExternal link.

• Art of the 20th and 21st century
• Holocaust Studies
• Representations of History in Art

Articles:

Mit Pinsel und Spaten. Visuelle Kommentare zu Zwangsarbeit unter Künstlern des KZ Buchenwald, Reflexionen. Jahresmagazin der Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau Dora, 4, 2024, pp. 68–76.

(with Kobi Kabalek) Meaningful Work: Cultural Frameworks of Forced Labour in Accounts of Nazi Concentration Camp Inmates, German History, 41:1, 2023, pp. 41–66.

"Ihr Werk ist gerade aus ihrem selbst erlebten Leiden heraus entstanden." Lagerbilder französischer Kommunisten im KZ Buchenwald und der frühen Nachkriegszeit, in Philipp Neumann-Thein, Daniel Schuch and Markus Wegewitz (eds.): Organisiertes Gedächtnis. Kollektive Aktivitäten von Überlebenden der nationalsozialistischen Verfolgungs- und Vernichtungspolitik, Göttingen: Wallstein 2022, pp. 305–339. 

The Many Faces of the Inmate as a Worker: Artworks of Political Prisoners in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, The Journal of Holocaust Research, 35:4, 2021, pp. 257–281.

Die Kunst der Ironie: Lisl Pongers Gone Native. Selbstportait und Nico Sommers Schwarz Weiß Deutsch, in: Verena Krieger (ed.): BrandSchutz. Aktuelle künstlerische Strategien gegen intolerante Mentalitäten, Jenaer Schriften zur Kunstgeschichte und Filmwissenschaft, Bd. 3, Weimar: VDG 2018, pp. 209–236.

Editor: 

“To tear these images from time”: Exploring Visual Representations from Nazi Camps, Ghettos, and the Holocaust (co-edited with Verena Krieger), Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau 2025 (in preparation).

Bodies and Borders. Papers from the 26th Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites (co-edited with Hana G. Green; Daan de Leeuw; Théophile Leroy; Paweł Michna), Berlin: Metropol 2025 (in preparation).

Sebastian Jung: Ost Deutsch Now. Betrachtungen zu Ostdeutschland aus Kunst, Theorie und Praxis, Berlin/Bielefeld: Kerber 2019.

Small Contributions:

Über Ästhetik gesellschaftliche Fragen polyvalent beantworten. Ein Gespräch mit Claudia Tittel, in: Elisabeth Fritz (Hg.): Der Beitrag der Kunst/Geschichte zu Herausbildung, Diskussion und Aushandlung gesellschaftlicher Fragen. Festschrift für Verena Krieger, Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau (forthcoming).

Rauchend beim Barbier. Ein Bildzeugnis aus dem KZ Buchenwald, Holzen 1945, in: Selbstzeugnisse revisited, 21/10/2024, https://selbstzeugnisse-revisited.de/rauchend-beim-barbier/External link.

Review of Korn, Florian: Künstlerische Aufarbeitung. Die NS-Vergangenheit im deutsch-deutschen Erinnerungsdiskurs, 1960 bis 1990. Bielefeld 2022: ISBN 978-3-8376-6288-7 External link, in: H-Soz-Kult, 03/02/2023, <www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-118342>External link.

(with Katharina Langolf and Galina Lochekhina) Art of the Holocaust until 1989: Beyond an East/West Divide, in: H-Soz-Kult, 26/10/2022, <www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/fdkn-130431>External link.

Einleitung in: Drachen Burgen Juden HassExternal link. Jüdisches Leben in ostdeutschen Realitäten - ein Kunstprojekt von Sebastian Jung (online).

Auf der Suche nach den Werten der Aufklärung im "Abendland", in: Sebastian Jung für die Imaginata Jena (ed.): What's up Abendland. Magazin für ständige Aufklärung, Leipzig 2019, pp. 3–7.

Oliver Bekiersz – Renée Reichenbach, in: Robert Sorg (ed.): Dialektik der Formen – Dialektik der Moderne, Jahresprogramm des Jenaer Kunstverein e.V. 2019, pp. 30–41.

Organization of Workshops and Conferences: 

23–24 September, 2024: Death: Cultural Histories of the HolocaustExternal link, Symposium of the Holocaust Culture Network, Penn State University, US

with Dr. Kobi Kabalek (Penn State University) and Dr. Sabine Doran (Penn State University)

09–12 October, 2023: "To tear these images from time": Exploring Visual Representations from Nazi Camps, Ghettos, and the Holocaust, international conference as part of the DFG-Project "Beyond the Limits of Representation. Artistic Artifacts of Concentration Camp Inmates as Visual Interpretation of the Camp Reality" 

with Prof. Dr. Verena Krieger (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena) and in cooperation with the Buchenwald Memorial

04–10 September, 2023: Bodies and Borders: 26th Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing SitesExternal link, Łódź, Poland.

with Daan de Leeuw (Clark University, Worcester); Esther Renee Selman (Freelance Education Officer, Berlin); Hana G. Green (Clark University); Jesse E. Lillefjeld (European University Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder); Paweł Michna (Jagiellonian University, Cracow); Théophile Leroy (Historical Research Center of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris) in cooperation with the Center for Jewish Research at the University of Łódź

07–08 October, 2022: Bildkünstlerische Deutungen der Lagerwirklichkeit im Konnex von historischer Realität, subjektiver Erfahrungsperspektive und Spezifik bildlicher Artikulation, as part of the DFG-Project "Beyond the Limits of Representation. Artistic Artifacts of Concentration Camp Inmates as Visual Interpretation of the Camp Reality" with Prof. Dr. Verena Krieger, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (with own contributions)

20–21 May, 2022: Der Beitrag der Kunst/geschichte zu Herausbildung, Diskussion und Aushandlung gesellschaftlicher Fragen, Symposium on the occasion of the 60th birthday of Prof. Dr. Verena Krieger, cooperation in the preparation and moderation of the symposium by Dr. Elisabeth Fritz, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

Presentations (selection):

25 May, 2023: Bilder von Freunden – Bilder von Fremden: Gezeichnete Deutungen der Häftlingsgesellschaft des KZ Buchenwald, lecture in the research colloquium Nationalsozialismus und Rassismus, Humboldt University Berlin

19 April, 2023: "Aber die Kunst zeigt etwas anderes als das Dokument." Einblicke in Bildzeugnisse aus dem KZ Buchenwald, public lecture in the art exhibition Stille Zeugen of the Erfurter Kunstvereins, Kunsthalle Erfurt

14–16 April, 2023: Lagergesellschaften in der Häftlingskunst. Bilder aus dem KZ Buchenwald, Workshop: Wider das Vergessen. Kunst und Kultur in Lagern und über Lager, Papenburg

23–25 November, 2022: “At the fence of the 'Little Camp' they stood all day long like captive animals”: Buchenwald prisoners’ artistic perspectives on the Muselmann, conference: Life Behind Fences. Artistic Production and Coping Mechanisms in Ghettos and Camps During the Second World War, Trieste

13–14 September, 2022: Empathic Unsettlement in Art from the Holocaust? (with Dr. Rachel Perry), online Workshop: Emotions and Holocaust Studies

8–10 June, 2022: More than Symbols of Resistance: “Images of Solidarity” in Concentration Camps and their Transformation in the Aftermath, conference: Art of the Holocaust until 1989. Beyond the East/West Divide, CEU Budapest 

3–5 April, 2022: “Remember What You See, and Draw!”: Artist-Inmates in Buchenwald and the Production of Visual Knowledge about the Concentration Camps, workshop: Knowledge on the Move: Information Networks During and After the Holocaust, USC Los Angeles 

12 October, 2021: Guest lecture in the course „The Holocaust in Film and Literature“, Penn State University

14–16 July, 2021: Kinderzeichnungen aus dem KZ Buchenwald (with Mackenzie Lake), Workshop: Paradoxe Bildung – Widerstand – Überleben, Hildesheim University in cooperation with the Ravensbrück Memorial

16 June, 2021: Between Allegory and Reality. The Danse Macabre in Artworks about the Holocaust, workshop: The Fantastic Afterlives of the Holocaust, Vienna Wiesenthal Institut

16 December, 2020: Collecting Art at Buchenwald. From the Creation of a 'Visual Inventory’ in the Camp to an Art Exhibition at the Memorial, lecture series: Art in Extremis: Creative Resistance during the Holocaust, Haifa University

19–24 October, 2020: On the Edges of Buchenwald. Artistic Interpretations of the “Little Camp” between Accusation, Fascination, and Fear, workshop: 24th Workshop on the History and Memory of National Socialist Camps and Killing Sites, Salzburg

10 November, 2019: „Zwischen Assimilation und Zionismus? Die jüdische Gartenbauschule in Ahlem während der Weimarer Republik“, public lecture at the Ahlem Memorial, Hannover

Other Projects: 

Holocaust Culture NetworkExternal link with Dr. Kobi Kabalek (Penn State University)

Board member of the association Riebeckstraße 63 e.VExternal link. in Leipzig 

Arrivals – Departures. The Oscar Ghez Collection,External link Hecht Museum at Haifa University, curated by Dr. Rachel Perry (Spring 2018)