Praktikumsbericht Alexis Kelly

While studying abroad at Heidelberg University, I was fortunate to get to work as an intern at the University Archives. As a student of Art History, I was looking to get more experience with archival work and conducting research with primary sources. However, I never expected how much I would learn about Heidelberg, its university, and its past from this internship.

One of my primary tasks at the Archives was reading documents pertaining to international students in Heidelberg and academic exchanges between Germany and other countries, about which I wrote summaries for the archive’s files. While going through these files, I felt a strange sense of solidarity with the international students that had come before me to study in Heidelberg, and it was interesting to track the development of Germany’s attitude towards foreign exchange from the early 20th century to today. I also contributed to the Archive’s collection by conducting interviews with other current American students studying in Heidelberg, which can be used in the future to characterize student life in the 2020s.

Furthermore, I answered inquiries from academics that wanted to conduct research in the archives or individuals in search of family members that were at one point active at the university. The inquirers would occasionally come into the Archives to see the materials for themselves, and it was rewarding to act as a translator and to help connect these people with primary sources for their research or with pieces of their family histories.

My favorite project from my time as an intern here was preparing a video presentation about the Archives for a group of international museums and archives dedicated to Holocaust research and remembrance. For this project, I researched students that were forced out of the university in the time of National Socialism, translated their stories from German into English, and prepared a script for the presentation. I also narrated the video. This work allowed me to familiarize myself with a dark chapter of the university’s history, and related strongly to my interest in memory culture and exploring the ways that institutions can reckon with their pasts.

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to spend this past semester working at the Heidelberg University Archives. This experience allowed me to improve my proficiency in German, my translation abilities, and my skills with conducting research in a second language. More importantly however, it helped me to integrate myself into the community here in Heidelberg and to understand how closely the university’s present is connected with its past.

Alexis Kelly
Heidelberg, 27.07.2022