Neuer Börneplatz memorial

The Börneplatz Memorial in Frankfurt am Main commemorates the Jewish community in Frankfurt that was destroyed in the Holocaust . It was opened to the public on June 16, 1996.

The central element is the frieze on the outer wall of the old Jewish cemetery in Battonnstrasse , which individually pays tribute to the victims of the Shoah in Frankfurt with 11,908 memorial blocks. Other components of the memorial are reminiscent of the checkered history of the former Frankfurt Judengasse , Börneplatz and the destruction of Jewish life in the city. The architecture comes from Wandel Lorch Architects .

and display information about the image

Partial view of the New Börneplatz on Rechneigrabenstrasse in Frankfurt am Main.

location

The memorial is located in the eastern inner city of Frankfurt between the oldest Jewish cemetery in Frankfurt and the back of the building for the former Frankfurter Stadtwerke on Kurt-Schumacher-Straße, today the planning department of the city of Frankfurt am Main. The facility is accessible from Battonnstrasse past the entrance to Museum Judengasse and from Rechneigrabenstrasse.

1862: Row of houses on the site of today's New Börneplatz
1872: Former row of houses on today's Neuer Börneplatz , on the left the hospital of the Israelite health insurance funds
Around 1890: Building on the east side of the synagogue in place of today's New Börneplatz
1892: Synagogue on Börneplatz, location of today's New Börneplatz at the abbreviation Syn.

planning

Sketch of the location of the Neuer Börneplatz memorial

In 1985 the city of Frankfurt am Main announced a competition for the development of Börneplatz. A customer center of the municipal utilities was to be built here, whose offices were previously spread across the city. The planning was entrusted to the Swiss architect Ernst Gisel . At the same time, the city council and the magistrate decided to redesign the Börneplatz into a “New Börneplatz” with the new building. The Jewish community suggested that a memorial should be erected in the course of this, to commemorate the deportations of Frankfurt Jews from 1941 to 1945.

During the excavation work for the customer center, the planners came across building foundations and two mikvahs in Frankfurt's Judengasse, the former Jewish ghetto . Since the city government under Lord Mayor Wolfram Brück ( CDU ) stuck to the new construction of the municipal utilities, all the remains of the wall were removed. This led to violent public protest in the summer of 1987. There were demonstrations against the removal of the archaeological finds; the construction site was temporarily occupied by demonstrators. The Börneplatz conflict finally ended with a compromise: the foundations of five houses in the former Judengasse, two ritual baths and other archaeological remains were restored at the original location, albeit at a lower level, and are still the focus of the Judengasse Museum, which opened in 1992 . The Börneplatz conflict thus formed a deep cut in the city's commemorative policy.

At the same time as the construction work, the competition for the “Neuer Börneplatz Memorial” was announced. 249 applicants submitted their work. Since the jury did not initially want to award a 1st prize, the results were presented to the public and discussed again. In the end, the architects Wandel Hoefer Hirsch Lorch were selected as the winner of the competition.

description

cube

Sycamore grove with a stone cube at the Neuer Börneplatz memorial. View from the bell tower of the Imperial Cathedral of St. Bartholomew ; left and above: trees in the Jewish cemetery

Five street signs chronologically show the changes in the place names in the immediate vicinity

Memorial plaque for the orthodox Horovitz synagogue (after Markus Horovitz )

The memorial consists of several elements: In the center of the square on Rechneigrabenstrasse there is a stone cube, which is made up of the remains of the foundations of the former ghetto. It is surrounded by a plane tree grove . The ground of the square is covered with gray gravel stones. The floor plan of the Börneplatz synagogue , built in 1882 and devastated during the November pogrom in 1938, is marked by metal rails on the floor . A memorial plaque for the destroyed synagogue was installed on the back wall of the municipal utilities building , which had already been solemnly unveiled by the US military government in a memorial act on March 20, 1946, but was not installed in the right place at the time. The inscription reads:

Here stood the Börneplatz synagogue, which was destroyed by Nazi criminals on November 9, 1938.

Here stood the Börneplatz-Synagogue which was destroyed by Nazi criminals on the 9th day of November 1938.

The adjoining Old Jewish Cemetery received a new gate. It consists of two modern metal gates on which Beth Ha'Chaim ("House of Life") is written in Hebrew letters.

There are also five street signs facing Rechneigrabenstrasse, referring to the changing names of the square since the end of the 19th century: The square partially overlaps with the Jewish market that existed from the 16th century. On the occasion of Ludwig Börne's 100th birthday , it was renamed Börneplatz. Because of the Jewish name-bearer, it was named after the nearby Dominican monastery in Dominikanerplatz during National Socialism . At the suggestion of the Frankfurt historian Paul Arnsberg , the square was given its old name again in 1978. It has been called Neuer Börneplatz since the 1990s.

The center of the memorial is the frieze on the outer wall of the old Jewish cemetery, which commemorates Frankfurt Jews who were murdered during the Nazi era or died as a result of persecution. By the time the memorial was inaugurated, 11,134 people had been identified whose biographical data can be read on metal blocks. In their shape they symbolize grave sites. Visitors to the memorial can place small stones here according to the Jewish funeral rite. With the addition of short biographies and photos, the names can also be found in the publicly accessible "Neuer Börneplatz Memorial Database", which the Jewish Museum Frankfurt initiated and which can be used in the Museum Judengasse. The research for the database also enabled subsequent corrections to be made at the memorial. The name frieze on the southern wall of the cemetery was expanded by 823 name blocks in 2010.

literature

Hans-Otto Schembs: The Börneplatz in Frankfurt am Main. A reflection of Jewish history. Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-7829-0344-7
City of Frankfurt am Main / Office for Science and Art (publisher), memorial on Neuer Börneplatz for the third Jewish community in Frankfurt destroyed by the National Socialists. Red. Klaus Kemp, Sigmaringen 1996
City of Frankfurt am Main (ed.), Neuer Börneplatz Memorial, Frankfurt am Main . Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-7995-2323-5
Drummer, Heike / Zwilling, Jutta: "And nobody said Kaddisch for us ..." Deportations from Frankfurt am Main 1941 to 1945 (catalog section). Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main (ed.), Frankfurt am Main 2005, pp. 89–568.
Kingreen, Monica (Ed.), “After Kristallnacht”. Jewish life and anti-Jewish politics in Frankfurt am Main 1938–1945 , Frankfurt am Main / New York 1999.
Commission for Researching the History of the Frankfurt Jews (ed.), Documents on the History of the Frankfurt Jews 1933–1945 , Frankfurt am Main 1963.
Janine Burnicki: Stones of Memory. The conflict over the Frankfurt Börneplatz and the “memorial on the Neuer Börneplatz for the third Jewish community in Frankfurt am Main destroyed by the National Socialists”. Master's thesis, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main 2000