LBI Year Book Essay Prize Winners

The Leo Baeck Institute London is pleased to announce Angelina Palmén as the winner of the 2026 LBI Year Book Essay Prize for her essay, Rethinking the Jewish Public Sphere: The Case of the Imperial German Trade Journal Der Confectionair. Palmén’s work was published in the 2025 edition of the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book.

We are delighted to announce that Theresa Eisele has been awarded this year’s Leo Baeck Essay Prize for her outstanding essay, “With a gesture, a smile, a glance”: Felix Salten performing Vienna and decoding acculturation. Her essay was selected for its original contribution to the understanding of cultural assimilation and performance in early 20th-century Vienna. Eisele’s work was published in the 2025 edition of the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2024 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book Essay Prize is Matthew Johnson for his article Off-Translation: Bertha Pappenheim’s Yiddish-German. The article will be published early, in our 2024 volume of the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book.

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2023 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book Essay Prize is Sam Shonkoff for his article Gender in Martin Buber’s Hasidic Tales. The article will be published in the 2023 volume of the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book. 

The Leo Baeck Institute London is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2022 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book Essay Prize in German-Jewish Studies is Stefan Boberg for his article Implementing the Reichsbürgergesetz: Registration, Statistics, and the Deportations of German Jews, published in the 2022 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book.

The Leo Baeck Institute London is pleased to announce that Susanne Korbel is the winner of the 2021 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book Essay Prize in German-Jewish Studies for her article Spaces of Gendered Jewish and Non-Jewish Encounters: Bed Lodgers, Domestic Workers, and Sex Workers in Vienna, 1900–1930, featured in the 2020 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book. 

Congratulations to 

The Leo Baeck Institute London is pleased to announce that Daniel Herskowitz is the winner of the 2020 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book Essay Prize in German-Jewish Studies for his article Between Exclusion and Intersection: Heidegger’s Philosophy and Jewish Volkism, featured in the 2020 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book.

The Leo Baeck Institute London is pleased to announce that Adi Armon is the winner of the 2017 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book Essay Prize in German-Jewish Studies for his article The Parochialism of Intellectual History: The Case of Günther Anders, featured in the 2017 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book.

The Leo Baeck Institute London is pleased to announce that Joseph Malherek is the winner of the 2016 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book Essay Prize in German-Jewish Studies for his article Victor Gruen’s Retail Therapy: Exiled Jewish Communities and the Invention of the American Shopping Mall as a Post-War Ideal, featured in the 2016 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book.

This year’s Leo Baeck essay prize for recent PhDs in German-Jewish studies goes to Nick Block for his essay On Nathan Birnbaum’s Messianism and Translating the Jewish Other. The article was published in the 2015 volume of the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book. 

This year’s Leo Baeck essay prize for recent PhDs in German-Jewish studies goes to Susanne Hillman for her piece ‘“A Few Human Beings Walking Hand in Hand”: Exposing Margarete Susman’s key role in the emerging Jewish-Christian dialogue in Zurich. The article examines the as yet unpublished correspondence of the prominent Weimar literary critic and philosopher with the former pastor and social activist Leonhard Ragaz, which sought to give meaning to Christian and Jewish destinies on the eve of the Shoah. The essay is featured in the 2014 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book.

Verena Hutter’s ‘Identity Politics and the Jewish Body in Edgar Hilsenrath’s The Nazi and the Barber’ is this year’s winner of the Leo Baeck Essay Prize for young researchers in the field of German-Jewish Studies. Examining the role of physical transgression in Hilsenrath’s novel, Hutter argues that The Nazi and the Barber self-consciously conjures up a world in which lies, hatred, and violence are blissfully perpetuated. The essay is featured in the 2013 Leo Baeck Institute Year Book.

The Leo Baeck Institute London is pleased to announce that the inaugural LBI Year Book Essay Prize was won by Barry Stiefel, with his essay on “The Architectural Origins of the Great Early Modern Urban Synagogue”, which appeared in the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 2011.