(16) Conference “How German is Yiddish?“ - Paper by Assis. Prof. Delphine Bechtel [English version]

Assistant Prof. Dr. Delphine Bechtel (German Studies, Paris), “Germanising Ideas about Yiddish among German-Jewish Intellectuals and the Language Policy of the German Empire during WW1“ (25 October 2021, – am). The public conference “Wie deutsch ist Jiddisch“ (“How German is Yiddish”) took place on 24 and 25 October 2021 in Berlin as part of the celebratory year “1700 years of Jewish life in Germany“. It was organised by the Tikvah Institut gUG together with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The conference aimed to question common attributions and processes of othering: Can Yiddish really be excluded from the German linguistic and cultural sphere, as German legal practice has done so far? Have terms like culture, language, dialect, and identity be viewed and discussed in a more multidirectional and historically dynamic way? What are the implications of such a view for language and social policy? Find more information on the conference here: https://