Team
Migrant Connections relies on the labor and guidance of staff, volunteers, and interns; read more about the team here!
Atiba Pertilla
Atiba Pertilla is a research fellow and digital editor at the German Historical Institute
Emily Kühbauch
Emily Kühbauch is a research assistant for digital history at the German Historical Institute.
Volunteers
Regina Kunz
Regina Kunz lives in Homburg (Saarland) and worked as a programmer before her retirement. When she found old letters written in Kurrentschrift in her parents’ estate, she was prompted to learn the cursive and became interested more broadly in the transcription of historical letters. Bruno von Lutz, the director of the German-American Institute of Saarland, connected her to Maria Sturm, one of the organizers of the Horner Library’s Transcription Tuesdays. She has been a regular participant of the transcription event since autumn 2020.
Eva Tietjen
Eva Tietjen lives in Saarbrücken, where she worked as the head of a judicial authority’s cash department. Because both her grandparents and her father wrote in Kurrentschrift, she learned to read the cursive at a young age. When she later conducted ancestry research, she needed to use it again. Seven years ago, she became interested in the transcription of historical letters. Since January of 2021, she has participated regularly in the Horner Library’s Transcription Tuesday meetings alongside Regina.
Hans-Hermann Marx
Hans-Hermann Marx is a resident of Saarbrücken. Before he retired, he worked as a commercial clerk in accounting and controlling. He became motivated to learn Kurrentschrift while researching his own family history and encountering documents he could not read. Learning Kurrentschrift ten years ago was the start of a deeper study of historical forms of writing as well as contemporary history.