Tim Corbett
Junior Fellow (10/2014 - 08/2015)

The Place of my Fathers' Sepulchres - The Jewish Cemeteries in Vienna

This project explores Vienna's historical Jewish cemeteries as sites of culture, identity and memory that trace the rise of the city's great and influential Jewish culture and its almost total destruction during the Shoah. The creation, extension and maintenance of these sites, the attempts that were made during the Shoah to appropriate and destroy them as well as the continuing discussion on their restoration and maintenance provide the basis for an in-depth analysis of the political and cultural relationship between Viennese Jewry and the City of Vienna in the past and the present. The tombstone inscriptions spell out the development of a specifically Viennese code of Jewish cultural identification before the Shoah and of conflicting approaches to re-establishing Jewish life after it. The cemeteries are analysed as spaces and as texts that cover a wide spectrum of modern Viennese history, demonstrating that they are both witnesses to and actors in the complex and often controversial Jewish history of Vienna and its significant memorial sites.

Tim Corbett is PhD candidate at Lancaster University, working on The Place of my Fathers’ Sepulchres: The Jewish Cemeteries in Vienna. Lancaster University stipend, numerous research and travel grants. Research stays and presentations in Austria, Germany, Israel and USA; studied Hebrew in Tel Aviv. Publications on Jewish Vienna forthcoming. Associate Lecturer in the History Department and Assistant Dean in the Graduate College at Lancaster University.