My name is Franziska Kleybolte and
I’m a doctoral student and research associate at the cluster “Religion and Politics”.
Basically I investigate the conversion of religious spaces in the Middle Ages and particularly
the conversion of synagogues into churches on the Iberian Peninsula.
I started by making a list of synagogues on the Iberian Peninsula
and then looked at what happened to them
to find out which ones had been converted and to identify correlations between them
so that I could define the central research topic.
I want to understand the process of conversion and the motivation
between these conversions, also to what extent they reflect a Judeo-Christian
relationship. And then I look at the architecture of these places
and investigate how the architecture and art in these churches make
reference to this conflict.
Of course, there are days when it’s terrible and
it seems there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, and I ask myself why
I’m doing this to myself, but when all is said and done, especially at those bright moments
like when an archive writes back “yes, we have material for you”
or when I run across an article that interests me – that’s when it becomes clear
why I’m doing this and how much fun I am having.