VOM KAFTAN ZUR KIPPA: GESCHLECHTLICH CODIERTE (UN-)SICHTBARKEITEN IN MEDIALEN INSZENIERUNGEN DES JÜDISCHEN IN BERLIN VON DEN 1990ER JAHREN BIS IN DIE GEGENWART

Abstract

This article explores media representations of Jewishness in Berlin from the 1990s to the present, with a particular focus on gendered regimes of visibility and invisibility. Building on the visual traditions of Scheunenviertel photography from the 1920s, in which Orthodox Jewish men were stereotypically staged, it shows how these motifs were revived and romanticized in the 1990s as part of constructing a Jewish Berlin. Contemporary media portrayals perpetuate this male and religious coding, with the kippah replacing the kaftan as the central icon. The effect is a double in/visibility: on the one hand, certain images are overexposed (male, Orthodox, religious), while on the other, alternative forms of Jewish life (non-male, secular, diverse, everyday) remain systematically marginalized. The analysis argues that media representations do not merely mirror but actively constitute Jewishness in Berlin, with their memory-political work of reassurance for the German majority society depending structurally on the obscuring of plurality.