Participant Info

First Name
Leonie
Last Name
Ettinger
Country
Germany
State
Affiliation
Freie Universität Berlin
Website URL
https://nyu.academia.edu/LeonieEttinger
Keywords
Germany, World War I, World War II, Weimar Republic, Holocaust, Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Trauma Studies, Intergenerational Trauma, Theater, Literature, Cultural History, 21st Century, 3rd Generation Holocaust Survivors, Jewish, Sinti and Roma, Afro Germans
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
Currently located in Berlin, Germany
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Leonie Ettinger is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Free University of Berlin. She earned her PhD in German at NYU in 2023. Her research explores 20th- and 21st-century German literature and theater, critical theory, cultural history, fascism studies, trauma studies, and Holocaust studies.

Leonie holds an MA in Performance Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, an MFA-Equivalent from the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, and a BA in Anthropology and Media from Goldsmiths, University of London. 

Leonie’s writing has been published in Marxism in the Age of Trump (2018), Expressionismus (2020), and The Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies (2022), with forthcoming articles in Concepts of Culture: Experiments in Conceptual History (2025) and The Oxford University Press Handbook of Jewish Literature (2026). In addition to her academic work, she has contributed public writing and theater criticism to The Platypus Review, mosaik blog, EDA Magazin, Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung, der Freitag, and Caesura Magazine. She was awarded the Alpine Fellowship Academic Writing Prize for her essay “Speaking Past: Ruth Klüger’s weiter leben: Eine Jugend” (2020).

Recent Publications

Refereed Journal Articles 

2022 “Witnessing Impossibility: The Traumatic Theater of Rachel Neuburger’s Nepenthe.” Edited by Lucia Aiello and David Miller. The Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies 8.2: 25–54. 

Refereed Book Chapters

In press “The Rise and Fall of the Youth Concept: Intergenerational Conflict in Walter Hasenclever’s Der Sohn and Hanns Johst’s Schlageter.” In Concepts of Culture: Experiments in Conceptual History, edited by Michael Lipkin and Mattias Pirholt. Berghahn Books.

Forthcoming “Reimagining Jewish Identity in Contemporary Germany: Trauma, Memory, and Performance in Sascha Marianna Salzmann’s Mother Tongue Mameloschn and Yael Ronen’s Third Generation.” In Oxford University Press Handbook of Jewish Literature, edited by Victoria Aarons, Margarete Feinstein, and Phyllis Lassner. 

Journal Articles

2020 “Zwischen Freiheitsdrang und Autoritätszwang: Vaterlosigkeit in Hasenclevers Der Sohn und Werfels Nicht der Mörder, der Ermordete ist schuldig” [Between Freedom and Authority: Fatherlessness in Hasenclever’s The Son and Werfel’s Not the Murderer, but the Murdered Is Guilty]. Edited by Kristin Eichhorn and Johannes S. Lorenzen. Expressionismus, Väter und Söhne, 1: 37–48.

Articles in Preparation

Forthcoming “After Unku: Intergenerational Holocaust Trauma in Sinti and Roma Literature”

Theater Reviews

2025 “Rewriting Nora: Ibsen, Gender, and the Struggle for Self-Determination,” Caesura Magazine, 04/10/2025. https://caesuramag.org/posts/rewriting-nora-ibsen-gender-and-the-struggle-for-self-determination-leonie-ettinger

2025 “Bissige Kritik an deutschen Kulturschaffenden: Dualidarität von Avishai Milstein,” [Caustic Criticism of German Cultural Producers: Dualidarity by Avishai Milstein], der Freitag, 03/20/2025. https://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/theater-wer-braucht-hier-wen

2025 “Wiedergutmachungsjude” [Reparations Jew], Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung, 03/20/2025. 

2024 “Wenn Schicksale sich reimen” [When Destinies Rhyme], Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung, 12/22/2024. https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/kultur/wenn-schicksale-sich-reimen

2024 “Drei Welten, drei Stimmen: Das jüdische Generationendrama Muttersprache Mameloschn zieht auf die Hauptbühne des Gorki” [Three Worlds, Three Voices: The Jewish Generational Drama Muttersprache Mameloschn Hits Gorki’s Main Stage], EDA Magazin, 11/07/2024. https://edamagazin.de/drei-welten-drei-stimmen-das-juedische-generationendrama-muttersprache-mameloschn-zieht-auf-die-hauptbuehne-des-gorki/

2023 “Nie wieder ist jetzt” [Never Again Is Now], Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung, 10/26/2023. https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/kultur/nie-wieder-ist-jetzt

Public-Facing Writing

2024 “Max Czollek im Gespräch” [Max Czollek in Conversation], mosaik blog, 07/02/2024. https://mosaik-blog.at/author/leonie-ettinger/

2020 “Speaking Past: Ruth Klüger’s weiter leben: Eine Jugend,” The Alpine Fellowship. https://alpinefellowship.com/leonie-ettinger-essay

2018 “Slavoj Žižek, Donald Trump, and the Left.” In Marxism in the Age of Trump, edited by Chris Cutrone, 65–78. Platypus Publishing LLC, 2018. (Originally published in The Platypus Review 99, 09/2017. https://platypus1917.org/2017/08/29/slavoj-zizek-donald-trump-left)

Translations

2022 “Psychoanalysis and Marxism” by Stefan Hain and Andreas Wintersperger, (co-translated with Tamas Vilaghy), The Platypus Review 148, 7/2022. https://platypus1917.org/2022/07/03/psychoanalysis-and-marxism.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
Germany
Expertise by Geography
Germany, United States, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
19th century, Early Modern, Modern, 20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Capitalism, Children & Youth, Emancipation, Family, Genocide, Holocaust & Nazi Persecution, Literary History, Migration & Immigration, Politics, Public History, Rebellion & Revolution, World War I, World War II