The Jewish cemeteries in Bleicherode, Ellrich and Nordhausen^, are the last remaining testimonies to Jewish history in the district of Nordhausen that did not fall victim to National Socialism. However, the approximately 670 gravestones are threatened by weather-related decay. Some of the inscriptions are barely legible. As the restoration of gravestones is not possible indefinitely and is also very cost-intensive, innovative technical processes for documentation and information visualisation must be used. This also makes new formats of communal remembrance work possible: commemorative events on various occasions, through which remembrance is kept alive, promoted by linking valuable and historically irreplaceable sources and places of remembrance with participatory formats for an interested public.

Without such information and communication structures, remembrance will fade and ultimately be forgotten. Against this background, the content of the theme year Nine centuries of Jewish life in Thuringia to be advocated and emphasised. As part of the theme year, Nordhausen University of Applied Sciences is supporting the project "Digitisation of Jewish cemeteries" under the direction of Dr Marie-Luis Zahradnik.

She had already researched the history of the Jews in Nordhausen in detail as part of her doctorate (title of dissertation: "Vom reichsstädtischen Schutzjuden zum prußischen Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens. Opportunities and limits of the integration of Nordhausen Jews in the 19th century"). She organises guided tours of the Nordhausen Jewish cemetery for the Nordhäuser Altertums- und Geschichtsverein e.V. and has published a scholarly essay about it, in which she also encouraged the documentation of the gravestones with transcription of the inscriptions.

The project met with a positive response and is supported by various partners in terms of funding, materials and technical advice:

• Thuringian State Chancellery
• Jewish Community of Thuringia
• Friedrich Christian Lesser Foundation
• Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Thuringian University and State Library (ThULB)
• Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute for German-Jewish History at the University of Duisburg-Essen
• City of Nordhausen, City Archive
• City of Nordhausen, Museum "Flohburg|The Nordhausen Museum"
• Nordhausen History and Antiquities Society e. V.
• Verein Gegen Vergessen Für Demokratie e.V.

The digital documentation and virtual contextualisation of the Jewish cemeteries in Bleicherode, Ellrich and Nordhausen and their individual gravestones is currently being carried out in 2D and 3D. To this end, the site situation is first being recorded virtually and linked with contextual information on the gravestones and transcriptions and translations of the inscriptions on the gravestones. However, the transcription work reaches its limits as soon as the inscriptions are heavily faded or even fogged up due to the weather. To a certain extent, the inscriptions can be made legible using photogrammetry, as far as the stone substance still allows.

Further information, such as biographies, photos, newspaper articles and historical address books from libraries, archives and museums are to be compiled via a publicly accessible research and presentation platform, so that it will be possible to secure these historic facilities in the long term and conduct research in digital space regardless of time and location.

The publication of the project results in the form of digitised copies of the cemetery grounds and gravestones with the linked data records will take place in a digital repository of the Thuringian University and State Library Jena, which will be publicly accessible via the Internet. The repository will be accessible via the Digital Culture and Knowledge Portal Thuringia (www.kulthura.de).

As part of the theme year and the project, a two-part special exhibition on "Stone evidence of Jewish life in digital form - Jewish cemeteries in the 19th century in the district of Nordhausen" and "Jewish life in Nordhausen in the 19th century" will be on display in the municipal museum Flohburg|Das Nordhausen Museum. Independently of access via a home PC, a PC with a screen or tablet is to be installed in the municipal museum Flohburg|Das Nordhausen Museum, on which museum visitors can view the digital copies, among other things.

Furthermore, the characteristics of the gravestones will be recorded with photos in the epigraphic database (Epidat) of the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute for German-Jewish History at the University of Duisburg-Essen. There will be a link to the 3D digital copies in the Thuringia digital culture and knowledge portal kulthura.de. Further links to the digitised material are planned, e.g. on the homepage of the town of Nordhausen and the homepage of the Nordhäuser Geschichts- und Altertumsverein e.V. The publication of a book on the history of the Jewish cemeteries in Bleicherode, Ellrich and Nordhausen is also planned, in which the project, an overview of the project results and in-depth descriptions of selected gravestones will be presented.

An article about the project and its initial partial results will be published in the new edition of the series "Contributions to the history of the town and district of Nordhausen" in December 2021. Two further parts will follow in 2022 and 2023.