Active Museum Spiegelgasse
The Active Museum Spiegelgasse (with the official name "Active Museum Spiegelgasse for German-Jewish History in Wiesbaden eV") is a place to document the German-Jewish heritage as part of the common urban culture in Wiesbaden .
building
The Active Museum - AMS for short - includes houses No. 9 and No. 11 in Wiesbadener Spiegelgasse. House Spiegelgasse 11 is a half-timbered house from 1735 and the oldest surviving Jewish residential building in Wiesbaden. After a comprehensive restoration, it has served the AMS as an exhibition center since 1999, and it also houses the offices of the AMS's “Spiegelbild youth initiative”. The office of the association, an extensive specialist library with almost 6,000 volumes, the archive and other work rooms are located at Spiegelgasse 9. House no. 9, which today houses the “Paris Court Theater”, was a Jewish bath hotel in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Badhaus zum Parthuhn , which at that time also housed a mikveh .
history
In the autumn of 1987, numerous citizens came together with the aim of protecting house number 11 in the traditional Wiesbadener Spiegelgasse, which had been a place of Jewish life since the end of the 17th century, from decay and demolition. In March 1988, the “Active Museum of German-Jewish History in Wiesbaden e. V. “, which wanted to make the historical place Spiegelgasse a place of remembrance and to campaign for active remembrance of the German-Jewish life in Wiesbaden throughout the city. A large number of activities should contribute to this, especially in cooperation with the churches, the city youth council and other institutions. On August 30, 1992, the association organized a reminder to commemorate the murdered Wiesbaden Jews under the motto "K-A day like everyone else"; For the first time all known names of the Wiesbaden victims of the Shoah were made known. Contact with former Jewish citizens and their descendants was an important part of the work from the very beginning. Again and again some of them came to Wiesbaden and were ready to open up to the younger generation as contemporary witnesses. In 1993 the support group was able to open its office at Spiegelgasse 7, set up a small library and invite you to its own events. Historical places, especially the Michelsberg as the no longer recognizable place of the destroyed synagogue and the slaughterhouse as the place of deportation to Theresienstadt, of which numerous photos bear testimony, were repeatedly brought into public awareness, often with artistic projects. In the following years deportation to Theresienstadt or the other two was always considered. Many tours, in the city center and the suburbs, also to the 7 Jewish cemeteries took place. In the summer of 1999, Spiegelgasse 11 was renovated and could be rented as an exhibition center. In addition to films and publications, mostly in collaboration with various cooperation partners, own exhibitions have now also been developed. In November 1999, the state capital Wiesbaden awarded the association the culture prize. In 2001 it renamed itself the "Active Museum Spiegelgasse for German-Jewish History in Wiesbaden". In 2004 the co-founder of the AMS, Lothar Bembenek, and the chairwoman Dorothee Lottmann-Kaeseler, were awarded the " Obermayer German Jewish History Award ". In 2005, again in cooperation with the Wiesbaden Jewish Community and the Rhein-Main University of Applied Sciences, an intensive attempt was made to win the state capital Wiesbaden for a memorial on Michelsberg; the high bridge was torn down in 2001. A competition for this finally took place in 2006. In 2007, with financial support from the city of Wiesbaden, the position of an education officer was created and the “Spiegelbild youth initiative” was founded, which carries out youth work in the sense of the AMS and supports young people and young adults in dealing with history and memory.
concept
Despite the name, the AMS is not a museum, and certainly not a Jewish museum in the traditional sense. It is a place of collection and preservation, research and documentation. It tries to actively involve the public so that a bridge between today's Jewish and general urban culture can grow and develop. The AMS focuses its work on four areas:
- Remembrance work, contemporary witnesses, contacts with survivors of the Shoah and their descendants
- Research and documentation of local and regional German-Jewish history
- Encounters with Jewish citizens in order to promote knowledge and familiarity with Jewish life and culture , as well as to overcome foreignness
- Work with young people - including those with a migration background - to introduce them to active remembrance and to integrate them into remembrance work according to their own living environment.
In these areas there are both short-term and long-term fields of activity and projects of various kinds. For example, an open container in which 30 photos of the deportation of Wiesbaden Jews to Theresienstadt were shown in 1942 arrived at the “ Open Monument Day ” in 1998 for one year through the city, whereby the respective NS city history of the area was included at the individual locations; all reactions were documented and the photos and objects were compiled for an exhibition that opened “Spiegelgasse 11” the following year.
activities
Exhibitions (selection)
- 2007: Hai and Topsy Frankl - pictures, songs and stories
- 2007: Costa and Julia Bernstein. Virtual encounter with the Jewish St. Petersburg
- 2007: Life Again - The Robinson Album. Jewish “ Displaced Persons ” on German soil 1945–1948
- 2007: Saved from oblivion - four stories of the origins of memory sheets
- 2006: Exhibition "ZURÜCKGEBEN ?!" End point of an "exemplary" international project running over several years on questions of provenance / restitution of everyday objects
- 2006: Stars that fell from the sky. Dani Karavan , ER Nele , Wolfgang Niedecken , Miguel Rothschild , Micha Ullman and other artists
- 2005: Jewish children's literature. History, traditions, perspectives
- 2005: Jewish neighbors in Wiesbaden and Mainz. Family fates in times of plunder (1933–1945)
- 2004: Teofila Reich-Ranicki . Pictures and Studies
- 1999: The moving memorial - 30 photos of the deportation at the slaughterhouse had previously "wandered" through the city for a year
Publications and media (selection)
- Elke Steiner: Herbert Lewin and Käte Frankenthal - Two Jewish doctors from Germany . Catalog. Also screen printing. Wiesbaden 2005
- Jewish children's literature. History, traditions, perspectives . Exhibition catalog. Wiesbaden 2005
- Search for traces II. Tours in Wiesbaden . Wiesbaden 2003
- Wiesbaden youth between swastika and star of David . The years between 1933 and 1945 from the perspective of those who were young then. VHS video. 2000
- Charlotte sacrifice man, née Lotte Guthmann . The film describes in her own words the life of a Jewish woman from Wiesbaden from childhood to her deportation to Theresienstadt. VHS video. 1995
- No day like any other . Film about the persecution and deportation of the Wiesbaden Jews. Contemporary witnesses tell from the years 1933–1945. VHS video. 1992
- Trude Simonsohn tells about her life: “Trude don't give up! Hitler will die and you will live on ” . Edition witnesses of a time, Wiesbaden 2008, ISBN 978-3-941289-00-0 (1 audio CD)
- Arno Lustiger tells about his life: "I've been lucky all my life" . Edition Zeugen einer Zeit, Wiesbaden 2008, revised edition 2013 ISBN 978-3-942902-07-6 (1 audio CD)
- Edgar Hilsenrath tells from his life: “German was not the language of the Nazis. It was my language ” . In addition to Hilsenrath's self-told memories, Ulrich Matthes reads from his work. Edition Zeugen einer Zeit, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-941289-03-1 (2 audio CDs)
- Henny Brenner tells about her life: “Didn't know anything ?! You saw us with the yellow star! ” ISBN 978-3-942902-01-4 Series: Edition Zeugen einer Zeit, published by the Paul Lazarus Foundation in the Active Museum Spiegelgasse. Released 2011. 2 audio CDs
- Rolf von Sydow tells from his life: “I wanted to be made an honorary by Hitler.” ISBN 978-3-942902-02-1 Edition witnesses of a time, publisher Paul Lazarus Foundation in the Active Museum Spiegelgasse. Wiesbaden 2011. 1 audio CD
- Salomea Genin tells from her life: “I came to the GDR as a communist - and found my way back to my Jewish roots.” ISBN 978-3-942902-04-5 , Edition Zeugen einer Zeit, published by Paul Lazarus Foundation in the Active Museum Spiegelgasse . Wiesbaden 2012. 2 audio CDs
- Eugen Herman-Friede tells from his life: “I wasn't a resistance fighter. I enjoyed doing something against the Nazis. ” ISBN 978-3-942902-05-2 , Edition Zeugen einer Zeit, Ed. Paul Lazarus Foundation, Wiesbaden 2012. 2 audio CDs
- Rachel Dror tells from her life: “We were happy to get out of hell. In Palestine we were free people. ” ISBN 978-3-942902-06-9 , series: Edition Zeugen einer Zeit, Ed. Paul Lazarus Foundation, Wiesbaden 2013. 1 audio CD
- "Klaus Traube tells from his life:" The past is something that I remember, but there is nothing more oppressive to it. " ISBN 978-3-942902-08-3 , series Edition Zeugen einer Zeit , published by the Paul Lazarus Foundation, Wiesbaden 2013. 1 audio CD
Longer term offers
In addition to the special and permanent exhibitions as well as the library with around 6,000 volumes and the archive with audio, film and photo documents on the topics of persecution of Jews, contemporary witnesses , remembrance work and memorial education:
- Development and maintenance of the "Lazarus Library" with 1200 volumes (this is the library of the liberal rabbi Paul Lazarus , who emigrated to Palestine in 1938, which is dedicated to the AMS )
- Processing of the “victim file”, which will identify all Jewish citizens who were murdered in the Holocaust according to selected basic data
- Pedagogical work: teacher training; Conversations with contemporary witnesses with school classes and offers on the history of the Jews in Wiesbaden for teachers; also offers to young people as part of the “Spiegelbild” youth initiative - in cooperation with schools, youth centers and youth education providers
- Research and mentoring as part of Gunter Demnig's Stolperstein project
- Help with genealogical inquiries
- Design and publication of “memorial sheets” to commemorate the Wiesbaden Holocaust victims
- Guided tours and tours of historical places - both Jewish life and the persecution of Jews in Wiesbaden
- Religious-philosophical discussion group "Halomdim" and " Jüdisches Lehrhaus " (teaching and learning day on topics of Jewish culture and religion)
- Youth encounter between Wiesbaden and the Israeli " Beit Berl College"
See also
literature
- Stefan Weiller: Remembrance for a better future. Active Museum Spiegelgasse has been promoting the culture of remembrance for 20 years . In: Wiesbadener Tagblatt from November 26, 2007
- Anja Koch: The rescuers of Spiegelgasse . In: Frankfurter Rundschau of November 26, 2007
- Hans Riebsamen: The Enlightenment Women. War, holocaust, resistance . In: FAZ from May 19, 2007 online
- Dorothee Lottmann-Kaeseler: Active Museum Spiegelgasse: In memory of the largest deportation of Wiesbaden Jews 64 years ago, on June 10, 1942 . on-line
- Margit Fehlinger: As a reminder. Memorial sheets with the biographies of 1200 Jewish people who lived in Wiesbaden before the Holocaust . In: Frankfurter Rundschau of November 14, 2003
- Dr. Monika Hölscher (ed.): The former subcamp Stadtallendorf and the Active Museum Spiegelgasse in Wiesbaden , from the series Hessische GeschichteN 1933-1945 , HLZ 2013, Wiesbaden. ( Download pdf )
Web links
- Official website of the museum
- Active Museum Spiegelgasse . In: Wiesbaden.de
- Spiegelbild - Youth and education initiative of the Active Museum Spiegelgasse
Individual evidence
Coordinates: 50 ° 5 ′ 6.4 " N , 8 ° 14 ′ 33.9" E