Historian
Dr. habil. Edith Raim †
Scientific management
Edith Raim (*31.7.1965-2.7.2025) began researching the history of the Kaufering satellite camp complex of Dachau concentration camp as part of a German history competition for pupils at secondary school. From then on, the subject of Nazi history and its traces in the post-war period never left her.
From 1984, she studied history and German language and literature in Munich and Princeton (USA) and was a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation.
In 1991, she received her doctorate from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich with a thesis on the Dachau subcamp complexes in Kaufering and Mühldorf.
Between 1991 and 1995, Edith Raim was a lecturer at the German Academic Exchange Service in Durham, Great Britain. This was followed by positions at the House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn and, from 1999, as a research assistant at the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich.
In 2012, Raim habilitated with a thesis on the “Justice between dictatorship and democracy. Reconstruction and punishment of Nazi crimes in West Germany 1945 – 1949 “ at the University of Augsburg.
In 2016/17, the historian was a Senior Fellow at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute.
Edith Raim is a lecturer in modern and contemporary history at the University of Augsburg. She has published extensively on the cultural, social and legal history of the Weimar Republic, the Nazi dictatorship and the early post-war period.
Since July 2024, she has held the position of scientific project manager at the association dieKunstBauStelle e. V.
On July 1, 2025, Dr. Edith Raim passed away in Landsberg am Lech after a serious illness. Despite her health restrictions, she remained tirelessly committed to the end and shaped our work as scientific director with her great expertise, clear vision and human depth. We will miss her work and her personality – her legacy will remain.
Photo: Wolfgang Hauck
Publications
Selection:
- The Dachau Subcamps Kaufering and Mühldorf: Armament Buildings and Forced Labor in the Last Year of the War 1944/45 (also dissertation at the University of Munich 1991), Landsberger Verlagsanstalt Martin Neumeyer, Landsberg am Lech 1992, ISBN 3-920216-56-3
- A place like any other. Pictures from a small German town. Landsberg 1923-1958 Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1995 (edited with Martin Paulus and Gerhard Zelger), ISBN 978-3499199134
- Survivors of Kaufering. Biographical sketches of Jewish former prisoners , Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3938690970
- Between war and love. The poet Jehuda Amichai Metropol, Berlin 2010 (together with Renate Eichmeier), ISBN 978-3-940938-98-5
- Justice between dictatorship and democracy. Reconstruction and punishment of Nazi crimes in West Germany 1945 – 1949 (also habilitation thesis at the University of Augsburg, 2012), Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3486704112
- 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
- A report on an academy: the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts from 1948 to 1968, Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste, Munich 2018.
- “Cold times are coming”: Murnau 1919-1950, Volk Verlag, Munich 2020, 2nd edition 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 and reaction. The beginnings of the Nazi movement in the Bavarian Oberland from 1919 to 1923 , Allitera Verlag, Munich 2023 (co-edited with Ulrike Haerendel, Marion Hruschka and Susanne Meinl), 2nd edition 2023, ISBN 978-3962333348
- The Jewish patron and the Nazis. James Loeb and Murnau 1919-1933, Berlin 2024, ISBN 978-3111235202
Acknowledgments
We bid farewell to
Dr. Edith Raim
and say: Thank you.
She was an advisor, researcher and companion. And a person who shaped us all with her attitude, knowledge and tireless energy.
Edith Raim belonged to the generation for whom remembrance work was still a risk – associated with courage, backbone and perseverance. And also the willingness to deal with rejection. She stood up to hostility, exclusion and indifference – with a clarity that impressed us all.
We bow down to that.
On July 15, 2025, we accompanied her to her final resting place. What remains are her works – and a great emptiness. We miss her voice. Her gaze. Her knowledge. We want to carry on what we started together.
In mourning and gratitude:
Wolfgang Hauck, Toby Axelrod, Soungalo Bagayoko, Margaretha Bissinger-Götz, Oliver Brentzel, Helga Deiler, Dr. Andreas Eichmüller, Edmund Epple, Katharina, Erlenwein, Sabine Ewendt, Susanne Futterknecht, Markus Hehl, Lilli Huber, Sepp, Huber, Lennart Hüper, Christian Karlstetter, Rainer E. Klemke, Klaus König, Alois Kramer, Charles Koton, Conny Kurz, Beatrice Liebsch, Michael Lutzeier, Sieglinde Müller, Sarah Nägele, Orce Jimenez Gonzalo Pablo, Rita Roth, Jörg Roth, Julia Carla Schmidt, Andrea Schmelzle, Jannis Schmelzle, Kurt Tykwer, Susanne Zehentbauer, Jakob Wolf, the team from “dieKunstBauStelle” and “das Labyrinth” and all those involved in the projects on history and remembrance.
Funeral speech by Prof. Dr. Stefan Paulus
Obituary by Ellen Presser
Jüdische Allgemeine
22. July 2025 Obituary by Ellen Presser
Acknowledgments from EVZ
