Hendrik Althoff M.A.

Affiliated scholar

hendrik.althoff[at]igdj-hh.de

About

Hendrik Althoff has been working as an academic staff member at the IGdJ since July 2022. He studied History and African Studies in Hamburg and Zurich. In his master’s thesis, he investigated the history of the administrative building of the Hamburg Jewish Community at Rothenbaumchaussee 38. From 2020 to 2022, he has been a research associate at the Department of History at the University of Hamburg, where he supported Gewalt-Zeiten – Temporalitäten von Gewaltunternehmungen [“Violent Times – Temporalities of Violent Undertakings”], a research group operating under the state-wide research funding scheme (LFF – Landesforschungsförderung). Hendrik Althoff has served as an expert witness and consultant for the Hamburg Science Authority and the Museum of Hamburg History, among others. In addition, he coordinates the Zeitzeug:innen interview project entitled Erinnerungswerk Hamburger Feuersturm, an interview project focusing on contemporary witnesses of the Hamburg firestorm following the air raids in WWII; in addition, he serves as an editorial member of the Stormarn Lexikon Online.

Activity profile

In his research, Hendrik Althoff examines the handling of Jews’ property in Nazi Germany and the “restitution” of expropriated assets in the postwar period. At the IGdJ, he is supporting the provenance research project called LIFTProv – The handling of Jewish emigrants' resettlement goods in Hamburg after 1939 in cooperation with the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven. At the University of Hamburg, he has also been preparing a dissertation project on land ownership of the Jewish Community in Hamburg between 1930 and 1960. The expropriation and the restitution of these properties are to be understood as comprehensive transformation processes in which, in addition to the transfer of ownership, changes in the structural form, use, and significance of the sites under investigation are also taken into account.