Jewish orphanage Berlin
| Jewish orphanage Berlin | |
|---|---|
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| Data | |
| place | Berlin |
| architect | Alexander Beer |
| Client | Jewish community in Berlin |
| Construction year | 1912/13 |
| Coordinates | 52 ° 34 '7 " N , 13 ° 24' 44" E |
The Jewish orphanage in Berlin-Pankow is a listed building at Berliner Straße 121 in the Pankow district . The neo-baroque corner building, with its high mansard roof and a mighty segmented gable above the central risalit, shapes the image of the street. It was built by Alexander Beer in 1912/13 on the site of older buildings on the site of the Second Orphanage for the Berlin Jewish community .
The orphanage, which has existed for 53 years, was closed in 1940 during the Nazi era . Its building then served various purposes, the interior was changed and stood empty from 1991. In 1999 it was acquired by Dr. Walter and Margarete Cajewitz Foundation , had it restored and has since rented it to accommodate the district library and a school.
history
Foundation and first decades
In the years 1881/82 bloody persecution of Jews took place in Russia . In order to support Jewish refugees, a delegation from the German “Aid Committee for Russian Refugees” headed by Hermann Makower traveled to Brody on the Austro-Hungarian- Russian border in 1882 and brought 39 refugee boys, some of them orphaned, to Berlin. To accommodate them, the committee bought a country house in Pankow as a school in Pankow . The boys were schooled and were supposed to return to Brody after completing a craftsman's apprenticeship, but all went to the USA . The last Russian pupils left Pankow in 1893 for New York .
In the meantime, Jewish orphans and half-orphans from Berlin had taken over the vacancies and the Berlin Jewish community had taken over the facility from the aid committee in 1887. From 1898 it was called the Second Orphanage of the Jewish Community in Berlin . In 1901, the Jewish community acquired the neighboring property on Hadlichstrasse and connected the residential building there with the old building with a smaller new building. A bowling alley and a gymnasium were built on the extended property , donated by Emil Mosse . The institute now had 55 pupils who were trained “preferably to be craftsmen”. The activities of the orphanage promoted well-known Jewish personalities and the Empress Auguste Viktoria also donated 3000 marks to the orphanage in 1897.
After the old building was seriously damaged by fire in 1911, the Jewish community decided to rebuild the complex. It was designed and executed in 1912/13 by the head of the building department of the Jewish community in Berlin, Alexander Beer. The imposing prayer room on the second floor was donated by the cigarette manufacturer Josef Garbáty , who lives on the neighboring property, and had it designed by August Unger . The Garbáty family regularly provided financial support to the orphanage. The orphanage was a boarding school for 6–14 year-old schoolchildren who then went to secondary school or vocational training internally or externally up to the age of 18. There was space for 80 students and 25 apprentices in the new building. The orphanage offered the pupils a wide range of sporting and musical leisure activities. From 1916 they had a holiday home in Wustrow on the Baltic Sea, and later another in Agnetendorf in the Giant Mountains .
time of the nationalsocialism
In National Socialist Berlin , the situation of the Jews steadily worsened due to administrative orders, political campaigns and individual acts of terrorism. Anti- Semitically incited members of the Hitler Youth repeatedly provoked in front of the house or tried to break in. In the summer of 1938 there was an attack, but the rioters withdrew after a strong request. The racial segregation decreed in 1935 at school enrollment resulted in an expansion of the orphanage's school for external people. In 1936 it was extended to the fifth Jewish elementary school for Jewish children from Pankow, including for the first time girls who were now banned from attending public schools . The Jewish community appointed Kurt Crohn to head the orphanage and the school . In view of the November pogroms of 1938 and the accelerated disenfranchisement of the Jews, he managed to get several children to safety with Kindertransport to Great Britain and the Netherlands , and five boys were able to travel to Palestine with the youth alijah.
The home and school existed until December 1940. Then they were merged with the Auerbach orphanage in Prenzlauer Berg to form the Berlin Jewish orphanage Auerbach-Pankow . Children from other institutions also came there, including those from the infant and toddler home in Berlin-Niederschönhausen . The home was closed on December 31, 1942. In August 1942 there were 282 infants and children and 14 educators there. They were by the Gestapo on the camp in the synagogue Levetzowstraße in extermination camps in occupied eastern territories deported .
During the Holocaust , 44 pupils, teachers, educators and employees of the Pankow orphanage were murdered in German concentration and extermination camps.
After 1940, residents of vacated Jewish old people's homes moved to the former orphanage in order to be distributed to other homes in Berlin. In December 1942 the house became the property of the police administration of the German Reich , which set up the central visa of the Reich Security Main Office there at the end of 1943 . This use lasted until the end of the Second World War .
In East Berlin
Because the Soviet district headquarters claimed the Pankow town hall from 1945 to 1950, the Pankow district office had its seat in the former orphanage during this time . After the district politicians returned to the town hall, the German Sports Committee used the former orphanage until the end of 1951 and had the number of rooms for it Installation of partition walls significantly enlarged. In 1952 the building was transferred to the Polish Mission and the Polish Embassy in the GDR. It stood empty between 1968 and 1971. After renovation, it was the seat of the Cuban embassy until 1991 . During these years the house underwent a number of renovations and additions, such as a separate lift for small loads and the overbuilding of the prayer room, whereby the precious coffered ceiling , which was badly damaged due to the hanging in of a false ceiling, was preserved. The building has been a listed building since March 16, 1978.
After the reunification of Berlin
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The house, unused since 1991, was restituted to the Jewish Claims Conference in 1993 , which transferred it to the State of Israel . Its ambassador Avi Primor considered making the former orphanage his seat. Because the costs would have amounted to an estimated 20 million DM in view of the condition in need of renovation and the new usage and security requirements , Israel refrained from doing this and offered it for sale. The Dr. In 1999, the Walter and Margarete Cajewitz Foundation bought the building, which had fallen into disrepair for many years, in order to make it available to new users after extensive restoration. In 2001 the branch of the Pankow City Library named after Janusz Korczak moved into part of the former Jewish orphanage.
The prayer room with the exposed and restored coffered ceiling was inaugurated in 2002. The lettering on the building, which has never been completely invisible, was renewed based on the historical model and unveiled in April 2002. Since 2007, the building has also housed the free community school SchuleEins . In front of the entrance is the granite sculpture Stein-Händler by Alexander Polzin , who also created a bronze collage for the memorial plaques in the entrance area.
The Association of Patrons and Friends of the former Jewish Orphanage in Pankow has been remembering the home since the 2010s . Jutta Limbach and Wolfgang Thierse belong to the board of trustees of the association . Christa Wolf and Thomas Garbáty were also members of the Board of Trustees until her death . The prayer room in the orphanage serves as a memorial to Jewish life in Pankow. In the entrance area, the names of the 579 deported and murdered Pankow Jews are recorded on six bronze plaques.
literature
- Peter-Alexis Albrecht , Leslie Baruch Brent, Inge Lammel (eds.): Disturbed Childhoods. The Jewish orphanage in Pankow as a place of refuge, security and expulsion. Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-8305-1571-5 (= series of publications by the Dr. Walter and Margarete Cajewitz Foundation , Volume 1).
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Inge Lammel : The Jewish orphanage in Pankow. His story in pictures and documents. Association of the supporters and friends of the former Jewish orphanage in Pankow, Berlin 2001, ISBN 978-3-9808577-1-0 , DNB 1055916849 .
- Jewish ways of life, a cultural and historical foray through Pankow and Niederschönhausen . Edited by the Friends of the Former Jewish Orphanage Pankow with Rudolf Dörrier,… 2nd edition, Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-938485-53-8 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ From the statutes, see Albrecht (Lit.), p. 118, there also the renaming and curriculum in facsimile, pp. 118–120
- ↑ Albrecht (lit.), p. 133
- ↑ On the Beers building, see Sylvia Müller-Pfeifruck: The II. Jewish Orphanage 1912/13. Shape - use - historical building evaluation . In: Albrecht (Lit.), pp. 143–170
- ^ List of names in Albrecht (Lit.), pp. 141f.
- ↑ Entry in the Berlin State Monument List with further information
- ↑ Lammel (lit.), p. 8f., Quoting Avi Primor: "... with the exception of Germany". As Israel's ambassador in Bonn . Ullstein, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-550-07099-3 , pp. 202ff.
- ↑ Information on the Janusz Korczak Library
- ^ Homepage SchuleEins in Pankow , accessed on December 29, 2012.