Professor Mirjam Wenzel

Director of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt

Professor Mirjam Wenzel studied general and comparative literature, political science, and theater studies in Berlin and Tel Aviv. Afterward she worked as a research assistant at the Institute of German Philology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and earned her doctorate with a dissertation on the Holocaust discourse in Germany in the 1960s.

Mirjam Wenzel is the author and co-editor of various books and exhibition catalogs on German-Jewish art and cultural history. Her publications include essays, articles, and blog entries on questions of cultural theory, aesthetics, and museology, on representations of the Holocaust in the visual arts, photography, and film, on critical theory, and particularly on the life and works of Siegfried Kracauer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Hannah Arendt. She also works as a curator and has developed several international exhibitions.

From 2007 to 2015, as head of the media department, she was responsible for communicating Jewish history and culture in digital and print media at the Jewish Museum Berlin. In 2016, Mirjam Wenzel became head of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt, the oldest Jewish museum in the Federal Republic of Germany, which has since been fully renovated and expanded. In 2019, she was appointed honorary professor at the Department of Jewish Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, and in the winter semester of 2020/21 she was appointed visiting professor at Bauhaus University in Weimar. Since 2024, she has been Chair of the Board of the Association of European Jewish Museums.

Wenzel is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Foundation Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe (from 2017); the German Nomination Committee for Memory of the World, the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage program (from 2022); the Scientific Advisory Board of the Federal Agency for Civic Education (BpB, from 2023); the Scientific Advisory Board of the Sites of German Democratic History Foundation (from 2023); the jury for General Project Funding of the Federal Cultural Foundation (KSB, from 2024); and the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Social Research (IfS, from 2024).

Quote by Professor Mirjam Wenzel
“Jewish life in Europe is diverse and threatened. It is rooted in a centuries-long history that is marked by the struggle for equal rights and social participation and by the age-old experience of discrimination and violence. These topics continue to be highly relevant today. Jewish museums touch a raw nerve of our time with their examinations of current issues. They raise the question of how we want to and can live together in an increasingly diverse and polarized society.”

CV and list of publications Mirjam Wenzel

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Since 01/2016 Director, Jewish Museum Frankfurt
Since 04/2019 Honorary Professor for Jewish Studies, Goethe University Frankfurt
10/2020 – 07/2021 Guest Professor, Bauhaus-University, Weimar
10/2007 – 12/2015 Head of Media Department, responsible for conveying Jewish history and culture in print and digital media, Jewish Museum Berlin
01/2008 PhD thesis: »The Impact of Legal Proceedings on the Formation of Holocaust Memory in Philosophy, Film and Literature«
03/2001 – 09/2007 Research Assistant, Institute for German Literature, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich
10/2006 – 09/2007 Leo Baeck Fellowship, Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes
06/2000 – 10/2007 Freelance Curator for Contemporary Fine Art
06/2000 Master of Fine Arts in the Department of Humanities, Free University, Berlin
09/1995-03/1996 Guest Student at the Minerva Institute for German History, Tel Aviv University / Volunteer at the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation, Tel Aviv
10/1992 – 06/2000 M.A.-Studies in Comparative Literature, Theater and Film Studies and Political Science at Free University, Berlin