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Dr. habil. Edith Raim †

Scientific Director

Portrait of Dr. habil. Edith Raim
Dr. habil. Edith Raim (1965–2025). Photo: Wolfgang Hauck

Biography

Already at grammar school, Edith Raim (b. 31 July 1965, d. 2 July 2025) began researching the Kaufering subcamp complex of Dachau as part of the German history students' competition. From then on, the subject of Nazi history and its traces in the post-war period stayed with her.

From 1984 she studied history and German philology in Munich and at Princeton (USA) and was a fellow of the German National Academic Foundation.

In 1991 she received her doctorate at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich with a thesis on the Dachau subcamp complexes Kaufering and Mühldorf. Between 1991 and 1995 she worked as a German Academic Exchange Service lecturer in Durham, United Kingdom, followed by positions at the House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn and, from 1999, as a research fellow at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich.

In 2012 Raim completed her habilitation at the University of Augsburg with a thesis on „Justiz zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie. Wiederaufbau und Ahndung von NS-Verbrechen in Westdeutschland 1945–1949". In 2016/17 she was Senior Fellow at the Vienna-Wiesenthal Institute. She lectured at the University of Augsburg on modern and contemporary history and published widely on the cultural, social and legal history of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi dictatorship and the early post-war years.

From July 2024 she served as Scientific Director of the project at dieKunstBauStelle e. V.

Saying goodbye

We say farewell to Dr. Edith Raim and we thank her.

She was an adviser, a researcher, a fellow traveller. And a person who shaped us all through her stance, her knowledge and her tireless commitment.

Edith Raim belonged to that generation for whom memorial work was still an act of courage — bound to backbone and persistence, and to the readiness to face rejection. She confronted hostility, exclusion and indifference with a clarity that impressed us all.

For that we bow our heads.

On 15 July 2025 we accompanied her on her final journey. Her works remain — and a great emptiness. We miss her voice. Her gaze. Her knowledge. We will carry forward what we began together.

Publications (selected)

  • Die Dachauer KZ-Außenkommandos Kaufering und Mühldorf: Rüstungsbauten und Zwangsarbeit im letzten Kriegsjahr 1944/45

    Landsberger Verlagsanstalt Martin Neumeyer, Landsberg am Lech, 1992 · ISBN 3-920216-56-3

    doctoral dissertation, LMU Munich, 1991

  • Ein Ort wie jeder andere. Bilder aus einer deutschen Kleinstadt. Landsberg 1923–1958

    Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1995 · ISBN 978-3499199134

    edited with Martin Paulus and Gerhard Zelger

  • Überlebende von Kaufering. Biografische Skizzen jüdischer ehemaliger Häftlinge

    Metropol, Berlin, 2008 · ISBN 978-3938690970

  • Zwischen Krieg und Liebe. Der Dichter Jehuda Amichai

    Metropol, Berlin, 2010 · ISBN 978-3-940938-98-5

    co-authored with Renate Eichmeier

  • Justiz zwischen Diktatur und Demokratie. Wiederaufbau und Ahndung von NS-Verbrechen in Westdeutschland 1945–1949

    Oldenbourg, Munich, 2013 · ISBN 978-3486704112

    habilitation, University of Augsburg, 2012

  • Nazi Crimes against Jews and German Post-War Justice. The West German Judicial System During Allied Occupation (1945–1949)

    De Gruyter/Oldenbourg, Berlin, 2015 · ISBN 978-3110300574

  • Ein Bericht über eine Akademie: die Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste von 1948 bis 1968

    Munich, 2018

  • „Es kommen kalte Zeiten": Murnau 1919–1950

    Volk Verlag, Munich, 2020, 2nd ed. 2021 · ISBN 978-3862223510

  • The Rise of National Socialism in the Bavarian Highlands. A Microhistory of Murnau, 1919–1933

    Routledge/Taylor & Francis, London/New York, 2022, Paperback 2023 · ISBN 978-1032003719

  • Revolution und Reaktion. Die Anfänge der NS-Bewegung im bayerischen Oberland 1919 bis 1923

    Allitera Verlag, Munich, 2023 · ISBN 978-3962333348

    edited with Ulrike Haerendel, Marion Hruschka, Susanne Meinl

  • Der jüdische Mäzen und die Nazis. James Loeb und Murnau 1919–1933

    Berlin, 2024 · ISBN 978-3111235202

Obituaries and acknowledgements