We work with people uncovering history related to oppression and using the lessons of that history to create a more just world today.
“Every day, the haters and the aggressors of this world get the headlines. But that’s not the whole story. There are so many people full of love … who stand up every day against prejudice and hate.”
— Gabriele Hannah, Obermayer Award winner
Our Initiatives
Widen the Circle confronts long-standing injustice rooted in racism, antisemitism, and attacks on democratic values. We do this by empowering local activists in Germany and the United States who expose legacies of persecution, bring communities together, and promote healing.
Obermayer Awards
Honoring people and organizations that work creatively and selflessly to raise awareness of Jewish history and culture in their communities in Germany, and to fight modern antisemitism and bigotry.
Widen the Circle Network
Bringing together community activists in Germany engaged in powerful projects that use remembrance to fight modern prejudice.
Berlin Fellowship
A yearlong program that connects American activists and thought leaders dealing with important current issues involving remembrance and historic injustice with counterparts in our network in Germany.
Meet the 2026 Obermayer Award Winners
Congratulations to the inspiring winners of the 2026 Obermayer Awards: Daniel Burmann, Sandra Butsch, Ellen Grünwald, Rainer Klemke, and the Hotel Silber Memorial and Learning Center. You can read about them here.
This year’s winners were honored in a ceremony at the Jewish Museum Berlin on February 1. Watch the livestream.
Dan Wolf
Dan Wolf brings together helps young people interested in performing arts and helps them weave their talents into truly impactful remembrance work. Wolf, a member of Widen the Circle's Berlin Fellowship, typically brings group to a memorial site where trauma and oppression have occurred. Participants spend three intensive days learning about the site’s history. Then, with the help of group leaders, they develop individual artistic expressions based on what they learned. The result is meaningful for the performers and the audience alike.
Teachers at the Forefront
“Be courageous, be creative…make a difference”
Sandra Butsch has a gift for inspiring young people about history and remembrance. Her students, in Germany and France, perform concrete research projects and produce creative contentin the form of graphic novels, podcasts, documentary films, and rap verses,.
“It is the difference between knowing and understanding.”
Teacher Dirk Erkelenz changed the culture of his high school in Cologne by training students to do research that commemorates Jews who attended the school and were victims of the Nazis.
"If she wants to do it, she does it.”
Teacher Anja Listmann helps students discover the city’s Jewish history. She wants her students to understand the Holocaust in human terms. They research where families lived, worked, and went to school. In 2023 she organized a five-day reunion of 170 former Jewish residents and descendants.
“This is not learning from a history book but from life.”
Jörg Friedrich set out to nurture democratic thinking in his high school students and teach them what intolerance can lead to. His creative approach, which includes letting students choose the projects has resulted in a traveling exhibition, a website, a remembrance trail, two films, an app, and more.
“I saw that there is a need to act, that we…must pass on the baton.”
History teacher and biographer Margit Sachse has empowered a generation of students to find out about history on their own, through direct encounters with witnesses, survivors, scholars, and historical documents—not only in Germany but also internationally.
“How do people deal with their history? How does society deal with its history?”
Harald Höflein helps young people take an active and meaningful role in remembrance work. He has helped students learn research skills, connect with survivors and descendants, create exhibitions and events, install public murals, and contribute to the public debate on Nazi-related street names.
Simple, powerful, unforgettable: These yellow bricks fight hate
Sixth-graders at the Löcknitz primary school in Berlin have been building a wall of yellow bricks since the 1990s. It delivers a lasting educational experience about the importance of standing up against hate and prejudice.
American civil rights leader Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, talks about how stumbling stones and a yellow brick wall in Germany inspired his work in the United States. This message was presented at the 20th annual Obermayer Awards Ceremony.