Translation is not simply the transfer of meaning between languages. It is a philosophical practice through which language, identity, and community are continuously negotiated. Rather than asking only what is translated, PHIL-TRAGEN asks why German-Jewish thinkers translated, how they translated, and what their translations reveal about modern Jewish thought.

From Moses Mendelssohn to Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, translation becomes a privileged space where philosophy, religion, politics, and culture intersect. By bringing together translation practices and philosophical reflections for the first time, PHIL-TRAGEN reconstructs a German-Jewish philosophy of translation.

Women were among the most prolific translators of German-Jewish modernity, yet their contributions have largely remained invisible. PHIL-TRAGEN brings back into view figures such as Bertha Pappenheim, Jenny Hirsch, Gertrud Kolmar, and Gertrud Kantorowicz, showing that translation was far more than an auxiliary literary activity.

Through letters, diaries, unpublished manuscripts, and archival discoveries, the project reveals translation as a space of philosophical reflection, cultural mediation, and political agency. For many of these women, translation also became a form of intellectual solidarity and empowerment: by translating the works of other women, they created new genealogies of female thought, amplified marginalized voices, and contributed to the circulation of ideas across linguistic and cultural boundaries.

Recovering these voices means rewriting the intellectual history of German-Jewish thought from a more inclusive perspective.

For German-Jewish thinkers, identities and belongings were never fixed but continuously negotiated. Living between languages meant inhabiting a space where belonging could no longer be grounded in a single territory, tradition, or mother tongue. Translation became the philosophical expression of this condition: not simply a response to exile, but a way of thinking through plurality, difference, and life between worlds.

PHIL-TRAGEN explores how translation reshaped concepts of identities, belongings, and community, revealing exile not only as a historical experience but as a distinctive mode of philosophical reflection.

Translation has never been politically neutral. It educates, shapes public discourse, and transforms cultural memory. Moses Mendelssohn conceived his Bible translation as a pedagogical project that accompanied Jewish emancipation, while Bertha Pappenheim translated the Yiddish legacy into German, preserving a disappearing cultural heritage and opening it to new generations of readers.

PHIL-TRAGEN explores how translation became a powerful instrument for education, cultural renewal, and political transformation, revealing it as a practice capable not only of transmitting knowledge but also of reshaping communities.

In Nazi concentration camps, translation became both an instrument of domination and a fragile form of resistance. In a Babel of languages, interpreters mediated between prisoners and guards, navigating impossible moral dilemmas while, at times, protecting lives and preserving human solidarity.

Through archival research, memoirs, and survivor testimonies, PHIL-TRAGEN explores one of the least studied chapters in the history of translation, revealing how language became a site of survival, memory, and cultural resistance under the most extreme conditions.