Jewish Museum Frankfurt

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Jewish Museum on Untermainkai
Museum Judengasse on Börneplatz
Opening exhibition (1988)

The Jewish Museum of the City of Frankfurt am Main is the oldest independent Jewish museum in the Federal Republic of Germany. It was opened by Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl on November 9, 1988, the 50th anniversary of the November pogrom , and is part of the Frankfurt Museum Bank .

The Jewish Museum collects, preserves and communicates the nine hundred years of Jewish history and culture in the city of Frankfurt am Main from a European perspective. It includes a permanent exhibition at two locations with site-specific references: The Judengasse Museum at Battonnstrasse 47 deals with the history and culture of Jews in Frankfurt during the early modern period, including the ruins of the former Frankfurt Judengasse and the second oldest Jewish cemetery in Germany. The Jewish Museum in the Rothschild Palais at Untermainkai 14/15 is dedicated to Jewish history and culture since the Jewish emancipation and has been closed since July 20, 2015 due to renovation and expansion.

In addition to the Judengasse Museum and its main location on Untermainkai, the Jewish Museum, together with the Fritz Bauer Institute for research into the history and reception of the Holocaust, runs the Frankfurt am Main Pedagogical Center, which carries out educational work in schools. The museum is responsible for the mediation work in the memorial at the wholesale market hall next to and under the building of the European Central Bank , which opened in November 2015. The focus of the collection lies in the field of ceremonial culture, the fine arts and family history in general and the Ludwig Meidner Archive and the Frank Family Center in particular. The museum also has an extensive collection of documents and photos on German-Jewish history and culture.

Museum history

Museum of Jewish Antiquities

Even before today's museum was founded, there was a Museum of Jewish Antiquities in Frankfurt. The show, which opened in 1922, was one of the first of its kind in Germany and mainly presented Jewish cult objects. It emerged from the Society for Research on Jewish Art Monuments, which was founded in 1897 with the support of the Frankfurt patron Charles Hallgarten . The museum was on Frankfurter Fahrgasse in the Rothschild family's former banking house , which had been given to the Jewish community. In 1938, in connection with the November pogrom, SA and SS men broke into the building, demolished the facility and started several fires. A large part of the collection was destroyed, almost 1,000 objects were brought to the Historical Museum in Frankfurt , and the remaining metal objects were melted down.

After the end of the war, pictures, books and ceremonial objects that were originally in Jewish possession were collected by the Allied forces in the Rothschild Palais and in a former IG Farben building in Offenbach and recorded by the Commission on Jewish Cultural Reconstruction . A large part of the looted Jewish cultural property was given to Jewish institutions and museums in the USA and what is now the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, a minor part of the newly founded Frankfurt Jewish Community.

Commission for Research into the History of Frankfurt Jews

After the Second World War , former Jewish citizens of Frankfurt who had emigrated to London , together with Rabbi Georg Salzberger , suggested collecting and publishing material on the history of Frankfurt's Jews and, in particular, documenting their fates between 1933 and 1945. The city supported this project. In 1961 a separate commission was founded to research the history of Frankfurt's Jews, which presented a series of publications. Her members included Rabbi Kurt Wilhelm , Max Horkheimer , Rabbi Georg Salzberger, the founder of the Wiener Library , Alfred Wiener , and the publicist Robert Weltsch .

Foundation of the museum in the Rothschild Palais

At the end of the 1970s, the head of the cultural department of the city of Frankfurt, Hilmar Hoffmann , initiated the project for a museum bank. In addition to a film museum and a museum for architecture , a Jewish museum in the Rothschild Palais and an adjoining building on Untermainkai had been planned for this since 1979, which was confirmed by the city council in 1980.

The house at Untermainkai 15 was built in 1820 by city architect Johann Friedrich Christian Hess for the banker Joseph Isaak Speyer in the classical style . In 1846 Mayer Carl von Rothschild bought Speyer's house as a residence. Three representative rooms from this period have been preserved. In 1895 the Freiherrlich Carl von Rothschild public library opened on the ground floor . It was founded in 1887 as the first public library in Frankfurt by Hannah Louise von Rothschild in memory of her father Mayer Carl von Rothschild, who died in 1886. In 1928 the house, together with the adjacent Palais at Untermainkai 14, which the banker Simon Moritz von Bethmann had also built by Johann Friedrich Christian Hess, was handed over to the city of Frankfurt. In 1933 the institution was renamed "Library for Modern Languages ​​and Music (Freiherrlich Carl von Rothschild'sche Bibliothek)", in November 1935 the addition in brackets was also deleted and further memories of the donor family in the building were deleted. After the Second World War, the Rothschild library was incorporated into the university library. From 1967 the palace served as a branch of the historical museum.

In the years after 1980, a commission of historians developed a concept for the museum that was to present the history of Frankfurt's Jews from the 12th century to 1945. The buildings on Untermainkai have meanwhile been expanded. Donations made it possible to create the basis for an own collection. Georg Heuberger was appointed the museum's first director in 1985 . The opening of the first Jewish Museum in the Federal Republic of Germany took place on the 50th anniversary of the November pogrom, on November 9, 1988, by Helmut Kohl.

Museum Judengasse

View into the Judengasse museum

In 1987, during construction work for an administration building on Börneplatz, foundations of 19 houses on Judengasse were discovered. It was the largest archaeological find to date of a Jewish settlement from the early modern period in Europe. The discovery sparked a public conflict of nationwide importance over the question of how to deal with this evidence of a repressed Jewish history. While the client, the city of Frankfurt, endeavored to only document the remains and remove them for the new building, numerous people protested against the removal as "history disposal". At the end of the so-called Börneplatz conflict , which was also an epochal conflict with regard to the German-Jewish relationship, there was a compromise: five of the found house foundations were removed and rebuilt in the basement of the administration building on the original square.

Frankfurter Judengasse was the first Jewish ghetto in Europe. It was built in 1460 on the old Hohenstaufen city ​​wall; two years later, the Jewish residents of Frankfurt, who previously lived in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral , were forced to resettle . The Judengasse developed over the centuries into a cultural center that was widely known for its scholarship and was visited by students from far and wide. Its population grew to over 3,000 in the 17th century, until the order for the Jewish population to settle in Judengasse was lifted after the end of the Napoleonic Wars . The ghetto was demolished in the 1870s; the immediately adjacent old Jewish cemetery, however, was preserved, even if no more funerals were carried out on site at that time. Immediately next to the cemetery and at the southern end of the former Judengasse, the Börneplatz synagogue was built in 1881/82 , which was destroyed during the November pogrom. In 1942 the National Socialist city administration issued the order to also demolish the old Jewish cemetery, but this was not fully implemented.

The Judengasse Museum was opened in 1992 as a branch of the Jewish Museum. It presents the history and culture of Frankfurt's Jews from the Middle Ages to emancipation in the foundations of 5 houses on Judengasse. In March 2016 the house was reopened with a newly designed exhibition. It borders on the Neuer Börneplatz memorial , which commemorates the Frankfurt Jews murdered in the Holocaust, and the old Jewish cemetery Battonnstrasse, which is included in the audio tour.

extension

The north side of the palace with the extension area

In December 2011, the Frankfurt city council decided to expand the structure and content of the Jewish Museum and to renovate the current Rothschild Palais. A two-stage architecture competition with 20 participants was carried out for the project in 2012, which Staab Architects were able to win with a revised design in 2013. The green area to the north of the Rothschild Palais is planned as the building site.

At the presentation of the extension in May 2013, the then museum director Raphael Gross stated that the construction project envisaged an increase in the permanent exhibition from 600 to 1,010 m² and the temporary exhibition area from 240 to 600 m². The expansion was approved by the Frankfurt magistrate in the summer of 2015 and the public sector provided 50 million euros for this purpose.

Memorial at the wholesale market hall

In November 2015, the Großmarkthalle memorial, designed by the architects Katzkaiser, opened next to and on the premises of the European Central Bank on Sonnemannstrasse. From 1941 to 1945 Jews from Frankfurt were rounded up in the eastern part of the Großmarkthalle , registered, robbed of their goods and then deported to the ghettos, concentration and extermination camps in the east. More than 10,000 Frankfurt citizens waited there to be abducted, most of which ended in murder. The mediation work in the part of the memorial that is not open to the public is organized by the Jewish Museum. The visit is only possible as part of guided tours with registration.

Awards

In September 2016, the Jewish Museum was awarded the Museum Prize of the Sparkassen Kulturstiftung Hessen Thuringia for the Museum Judengasse.

Museum collections and facilities

Ceremonial culture

The Jewish Museum has an extensive and outstanding collection of ceremonial objects and valuable textiles from the 17th to 20th centuries. The collection consists of important ceremonial objects that were used in the Frankfurt synagogues of the 19th and 20th centuries or come from Central and Eastern Europe. Only a few objects from the former Museum of Jewish Antiquities survived the destruction during National Socialism and could be taken over from the Historical Museum. In addition, outstanding examples of Judaica from Eastern and Central Europe as well as from German rural Jewry were and are being acquired. Other important objects were loaned to the museum by the Jewish community. The collection has been continuously expanded through acquisitions, loans and donations. Prominent donors are Ignatz Bubis and Josef Buchmann .

Historical collection

The historical collection, which is being expanded further, includes a. Objects and documents on everyday Jewish life and the Jewish economic history of Frankfurt. The collections of Jewish families who had to emigrate from the city form a special focus. The collection also includes topographical representations of Jewish places in Frankfurt, predominantly from the 19th and 20th centuries, and documents on the history of Jewish student associations.

Art collection

The museum's art collection was rebuilt with the opening of the museum. One focus is on forgotten Frankfurt artists of the "lost generation" who have been ostracized and expelled. These include the expressionist Hanns Ludwig Katz (1892–1940) and Samson Schames (1898–1967). The museum also has works by the German-Jewish painter Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (1800–1882), who was the first Jewish artist to receive academic training. The graphic collection includes a. Works by Jakob Steinhardt (1887–1968), Jakob Nussbaum (1873–1936) and Lea Grundig (1906–1977) as well as an extensive bundle of prints with portraits of poets and writers, which Marcel Reich-Ranicki donated to the museum in 2003.

Ludwig Meidner Archive

A special focus of the collecting activity is in the field of exile art. In 1994 the Jewish Museum succeeded in acquiring the artistic estate of Ludwig Meidner (1884–1966), comprising around 1,800 works . They form the core of the Ludwig Meidner archive, which manages Meidner's copyright. It also looks after the artistic legacy of his student and later wife Else Meidner (1901–1987), the painter Kurt Levy (1911–1987), who emigrated to Colombia , the publicist and painter Arie Goral (1909–1996) and the painter and art mediator Henry Gowa (1901-1990).

Frank Zentrum family

In 2012, the Jewish Museum founded the Frank Family Center in cooperation with the Anne Frank Fund Basel. The Anne Frank Fund and its then President Buddy Elias have given the museum the extensive holdings (paintings, photographs, letters, memorabilia, everyday objects and furniture) from the Anne Frank family, who have lived in Frankfurt since the 16th century, on permanent loan. These will form an important part of the future permanent exhibition of the Jewish Museum. The Frank-Elias family's archives and the Anne Frank Fund, founded in 1963 by Otto Frank , form further holdings of the Frank-Family Center . The archive holdings of the Frank Family Center are made digitally accessible in the library of the new museum.

Library and documentation

More than 25,000 books and other media items are available in the museum's public library. The collection focuses on evidence of the history of the Jews in Frankfurt from the late Middle Ages to the present day and also includes literature on Judaism, the history of the Jews in Germany and Central Europe, as well as films on the subjects of the individual exhibition areas of the museum. The holdings can be viewed online via the Opac of the Frankfurt Museum Libraries, which is linked to the Opac of the Southwest German Library Network.

The documentation collection area consists of over 300 meters of written material and more than 21,000 photos on the history and culture of Jews in German-speaking countries. The core of the collection is the evidence of the history of the Jews in Frankfurt from the Middle Ages to the present day. Among them are numerous bequests on Frankfurt's Jewish family history as well as eyewitness reports from the Nazi era. Other regional focuses are Hesse, Westphalia, Silesia and the former Prussian province of Posen.

Exhibitions (selection)

Permanent exhibition

The permanent exhibition in the Rothschild Palais will be completely redesigned while the house is closed and should reopen in April 2020. It will depict the history of Frankfurt's Jews since emancipation around 1800. The Frankfurt families Rothschild, Senger and Frank form a special focus . The museum's Judaica collection is also presented here.

The exhibition in the Museum Judengasse reopened in March 2016. It tells the history and culture of Jews in Frankfurt using objects and documents that are staged in the ruins of five houses on the former Judengasse. The diverse relationships that the residents of Judengasse maintained with the Christian residents of the city, the Frankfurt council and the emperor are emphasized. Further focal points are the literature and music that was created, read or printed on site.

Special exhibitions (selection)

  • 2014/2015: In the light of the menorah. Jewish life in the Roman province
  • 2013/2014: 1938. Art, artists, politics (in collaboration with the Fritz Bauer Institute)
  • 2014: Fritz Bauer - The Public Prosecutor (in cooperation with the Fritz Bauer Institute)
  • 2010: Germany of all places! Jewish-Russian immigration to the Federal Republic
  • 2010/2011: Else Lasker-Schüler . The pictures
  • 2010: The Frankfurt School and Frankfurt. A return to Germany
  • 2006/2007: The Emperor Makers: Chamber Servants - The Emperor and the Frankfurt Jews
  • 2005: "And nobody said Kaddish for us ..." - Deportations from Frankfurt am Main 1941–1945
  • 2004: Revered and ostracized. Chagall and Germany
  • 1994/1995: The Rothschilds. A European family
  • 1990: Expressionism and Exile. The Ludwig and Rosy Fischer Collection
  • 1988/89: What was left: The Museum of Jewish Antiquities Frankfurt am Main 1922–1938

Pedagogical Center Frankfurt

The Pedagogical Center Frankfurt am Main is supported by the Jewish Museum Frankfurt and the Fritz Bauer Institute. It offers teacher training and courses at Frankfurt's Goethe University , workshops and other educational offers for school classes as well as teaching materials. The educational offers of the Pedagogical Center address Jewish history as part of German history and reflect Jewish life with reference to the present. They thus complement the current approach to Jewish history, the starting point of which is the crimes of the Holocaust . For this purpose, the Pedagogical Center is developing separate educational programs for Jewish history and the present on the one hand and dealing with the mass crime of the Holocaust on the other.

organization

Museum management

The founding director of the Jewish Museum was Georg Heuberger , who ran the museum from 1988 to 2006. Raphael Gross followed him. The museum has been run by Mirjam Wenzel since January 1st, 2016 .

Society of Friends and Supporters of the Jewish Museum eV

The museum is supported by the non-profit association Society of Friends and Patrons of the Jewish Museum, headed by the former Lord Mayor of Frankfurt, Andreas von Schoeler . He regularly uses donations to finance events and the purchase of objects for the collection.

Cooperations

In some cases there are long-term collaborations with other institutions that are active in thematically related areas, including a. with the Fritz Bauer Institute, the Simon Dubnow Institute and the Anne Frank Fund.

Visitor numbers

In 2017 the Jewish Museum (with Museum Judengasse) was visited by around 30,000 people.

See also

literature

  • Paul Arnsberg: The history of the Frankfurt Jews since the French Revolution . 3 volumes. Eduard Roether Verlag, Darmstadt 1983, ISBN 3-7929-0130-7 .
  • Fritz Backhaus, Raphael Gross, Sabine Kößling, Mirjam Wenzel (eds.): The Frankfurter Judengasse. Catalog for the permanent exhibition of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt. History, politics, culture . CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-406-68987-1 .
  • Georg Heuberger (Hrsg.): The splendor of the commandments - The Judaica collection of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main . Verlag Wienand, Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-87909-882-4 .
  • Rachel Heuberger, Helga Krohn: Out of the Ghetto ..., Jews in Frankfurt am Main 1800–1950 . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-10-031407-7 .
  • Isidor Kracauer: History of the Jews in Frankfurt am Main (1150-1824). Kaufmann, Frankfurt am Main 1925. Frankfurt University Library
  • Katharina Rauschenberger: The creation and destruction of the Museum of Jewish Antiquities . In: Angela Jannelli (ed.): Bought collected stolen? From the way of things to the museum; Documentation , Frankfurt am Main: Henrich Editions 2019, ISBN 978-3-96320-024-3 , pp. 18-23.

Web links

Commons : Jewish Museum in Frankfurt am Main  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main - Current News , accessed on July 21, 2015.
  2. ^ Katharina Rauschenberger: The Museum of Jewish Antiquities 1922–1938. The emergence of a new science and its violent end. In: Georg Heuberger (ed.): The splendor of the commandments. 2006, pp. 12-23.
  3. ^ Georg Heuberger: On the prehistory of the founding of the Jewish Museum. In: Georg Heuberger (ed.): The splendor of the commandments. 2006, pp. 24-39.
  4. ^ History of the Rothschild Palace in Frankfurt
  5. ↑ Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek : Place of Remembrance: From Judengasse to Börneplatz. In: Fritz Backhaus, Raphael Gross, Sabine Kößling, Mirjam Wenzel (eds.): The Frankfurter Judengasse. Catalog for the permanent exhibition of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt. History, politics, culture. 2016, pp. 41–42, 80–54.
  6. ^ Architecture of the new Jewish Museum
  7. ↑ Renovation and expansion of the Jewish Museum
  8. ↑ Großmarkthalle Memorial
  9. ↑ Museum Prize 2016 for the Museum Judengasse
  10. ^ Ludwig Meidner archive in the Jewish Museum Frankfurt
  11. ↑ Frankfurt Museum Libraries
  12. ^ Documentation department in the Jewish Museum Frankfurt
  13. ^ The Frankfurt Pedagogical Center
  14. ^ Society of Friends and Sponsors of the Jewish Museum eV
  15. ↑ Frankfurt statistik.aktuell. (PDF) Retrieved February 26, 2020 .

Coordinates: 50 ° 6 ′ 26 ″  N , 8 ° 40 ′ 28 ″  E