Jewish Life and Culture in Germany after 1945

Jewish Life and Culture in Germany after 1945

Author: Katrin Keßler

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-08-22

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 3110750813

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How was the re-emerging Jewish religious practice after 1945 shaped by traditions before the Shoah? To what extent was it influenced by new inspirations through migration and new cultural contacts? By analysing objects like prayer books, musical instruments, Torah scrolls, audio documents and prayer rooms, this volume shows how the post-war communities created new Jewish musical, architectural and artistic forms while abiding by the tradition. This peer-reviewed volume presents contributions to the conference „Jewish communities in Germany in Transition", held in July 2021, as well as the results of a related research project carried out by two university institutions and two museums: the Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture (Technische Universität Braunschweig), the European Center for Jewish Music (Hanover University for Music, Drama and Media), the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, and the Jewish Museum Augsburg Swabia. For the first time, post war synagogues in Germany and their objects were researched on a broad and interdisciplinary basis – regarding history of architecture, art history of their furniture and ritual objects as well as liturgy and musicology. The project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) during the years 2018 to 2021 in its funding line „The Language of Objects".


Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History

Space and Spatiality in Modern German-Jewish History

Author: Simone Lässig

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2017-06-01

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1785335545

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What makes a space Jewish? This wide-ranging volume revisits literal as well as metaphorical spaces in modern German history to examine the ways in which Jewishness has been attributed to them both within and outside of Jewish communities, and what the implications have been across different eras and social contexts. Working from an expansive concept of “the spatial,” these contributions look not only at physical sites but at professional, political, institutional, and imaginative realms, as well as historical Jewish experiences of spacelessness. Together, they encompass spaces as varied as early modern print shops and Weimar cinema, always pointing to the complex intertwining of German and Jewish identity.


Synagogues in Germany

Synagogues in Germany

Author: Technische Universität Darmstadt

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

These elaborate CAD-reconstructions, developed by Darmstadt Technical University, provide a representative survey of the architecture of synagogues in Germany before their destruction. What is more, they convey visual impressions of the diversity, the splendour and the significance of the synagogue in the history of German urban architecture from the early nineteenth century until 1938. In doing so, they also demonstrate the potential of such media to contribute to a new culture of remembrance. Reactions to the first exhibition in 2000 in Bonn, Germany, were resounding, with international praise for the quality of the simulations and their value as an instrument in the service of historical truth. This publication presents the results for the first time in print, to coincide with the launching of an exhibition in Tel Aviv which will travel to New York, Los Angeles and further international venues.


Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht

Author: Martin Gilbert

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2007-05-29

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0061121355

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the early hours of November 10, 1938, Nazi storm troopers and Hitler Youth rampaged through Jewish neighborhoods across Germany, leaving behind them a horrifying trail of terror and destruction. More than a thousand synagogues and many thousands of Jewish shops were destroyed, while thirty thousand Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps. Kristallnacht—the Night of Broken Glass—was a decisive stage in the systematic eradication of a people who traced their origins in Germany to Roman times and was a sinister forewarning of the Holocaust. With rare insight and acumen, Martin Gilbert examines this night and day of terror, presenting readers with a meticulously researched, masterfully written, and eye-opening study of one of the darkest chapters in human history.


The Night of Broken Glass

The Night of Broken Glass

Author: Uta Gerhardt

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-09-11

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 150955260X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

November 9th 1938 is widely seen as a violent turning point in Nazi Germany’s assault on the Jews. An estimated 400 Jews lost their lives in the anti-Semitic pogrom and more than 30,000 were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps, where many were brutally mistreated. Thousands more fled their homelands in Germany and Austria, shocked by what they had seen, heard and experienced. What they took with them was not only the pain of saying farewell but also the memory of terrible scenes: attacks by mobs of drunken Nazis, public humiliations, burning synagogues, inhuman conditions in overcrowded prison cells and concentration camp barracks. The reactions of neighbours and passersby to these barbarities ranged from sympathy and aid to scorn, mockery, and abuse. In 1939 the Harvard sociologist Edward Hartshorne gathered eyewitness accounts of the Kristallnacht from hundreds of Jews who had fled, but Hartshorne joined the Secret Service shortly afterwards and the accounts he gathered were forgotten – until now. These eyewitness testimonies – published here for the first time with a Foreword by Saul Friedländer, the Pulitzer Prize historian and Holocaust survivor – paint a harrowing picture of everyday violence in one of Europe’s darkest moments. This unique and disturbing document will be of great interest to anyone interested in modern history, Nazi Germany and the historical experience of the Jews.


Venice Synagogues

Venice Synagogues

Author: Umberto Fortis

Publisher: Assouline Publishing

Published: 2016-03-01

Total Pages: 6

ISBN-13: 1614280525

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Commemorating the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Venice Ghetto, this magnificent hand-bound Ultimate Collection volume introduces readers to the beauty and historical and spiritual significance of the five principal synagogues in Venice, the most important markers of Jewish faith and culture in the Most Serene Republic. Behind the walls of the Ghetto, Venetian Jews expressed strong ties to the traditions of their forefathers in constructing these beautiful places of worship. The architecture, furnishings, and decorations blended the memory of their different countries of origin with traditions of Venetian artistic culture, bequeathing the City on the Lagoon enduring monuments of unparalleled eminence that remain sites of reverence and admiration.


Synagogues in Germany

Synagogues in Germany

Author: Marc Grellert

Publisher: Birkhauser

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 3764370300

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

These elaborate CAD-reconstructions, developed by Darmstadt Technical University, provide a representative survey of the architecture of synagogues in Germany before their destruction. What is more, they convey visual impressions of the diversity, the splendor and the significance of the synagogue in the history of German urban architecture from the early nineteenth century until 1938. In doing so, they also demonstrate the potential of such media to contribute to a new culture of remembrance. Reactions to the first exhibition in 2000 in Bonn, Germany, were resounding, with international praise for the quality of the simulations and their value as an instrument in the service of historical truth. This publication presents the results for the first time in print, to coincide with the launching of an exhibition in Tel Aviv which will travel to New York, Los Angeles and further international venues


Shattered Spaces

Shattered Spaces

Author: Michael Meng

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-11-29

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0674062817

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

After the Holocaust, the empty, silent spaces of bombed-out synagogues, cemeteries, and Jewish districts were all that was left in many German and Polish cities with prewar histories rich in the sights and sounds of Jewish life. What happened to this scarred landscape after the war, and how have Germans, Poles, and Jews encountered these ruins over the past sixty years? In the postwar period, city officials swept away many sites, despite protests from Jewish leaders. But in the late 1970s church groups, local residents, political dissidents, and tourists demanded the preservation of the few ruins still standing. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, this desire to preserve and restore has grown stronger. In one of the most striking and little-studied shifts in postwar European history, the traces of a long-neglected Jewish past have gradually been recovered, thanks to the rise of heritage tourism, nostalgia for ruins, international discussions about the Holocaust, and a pervasive longing for cosmopolitanism in a globalizing world. Examining this transformation from both sides of the Iron Curtain, Michael Meng finds no divided memory along West-East lines, but rather a shared memory of tensions and paradoxes that crosses borders throughout Central Europe. His narrative reveals the changing dynamics of the local and the transnational, as Germans, Poles, Americans, and Israelis confront a built environment that is inevitably altered with the passage of time. Shattered Spaces exemplifies urban history at its best, uncovering a surprising and moving postwar story of broad contemporary interest.


Exodus to Berlin

Exodus to Berlin

Author: Peter Laufer

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Exodus to Berlin" tells the story of the migration of Soviet block Jews who were invited by the German government to come make a new life in prosperous and democratic Germany.