Germany: Multiple Memorials for Berlin's Munchener Strasse Synagogue

Berlin, Germany. Image of the former Münchener Straße 37 on view in the Bayerischer Platz U-Bahn station. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Germany: Multiple Memorials for Berlin's Munchener Strasse Synagogue
by Samuel D. Gruber

In November 2016, I was in Berlin for a few days and had the chance to visit more Jewish and Holocaust-related historical and commemorative sites than usual. I've already posted about the Jewish cemetery on Grosse Hamburger Strasse and the monument and burial section at the Weissensee Cemetery for Jewish soldiers who died in World War I. Here's information on a lesser known commemorative site.

The domed synagogue at Münchener Straße 37 in the Schöneberg section of Berlin, designed by Jewish architect Max Fraenkel (1856-1926), was dedicated in 1910 and was at the center of a heavily Jewish neighborhood around Bayerischer Platz.  It was looted but not burned on Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938), but was subsequently damaged by aerial bombing during the war years, and  torn down in 1956. The synagogue, which was a transitional structure between historicism and modernism, was notable for its large dome, and as one of the more architecturally distinctive buildings in the largely residential neighborhood. The composer Kurt Weill had a job as the synagogue choir conductor for a few months in 1921. 

Today, there is a part of a school building on the synagogue site, but the synagogue is remembered in the neighborhood in various ways. Each memorial corresponds to a particular phase of Berlin's facing the past and acknowledge the Shoah. There is an official abstract street level monument (1960s), a student-built collaborative memorial (1990s) and recently an extensive photo exhibit underground in the nearby U-Bahn station.

At the school, the original synagogue outline is remembered through garden design and in 1994-95 students erected a memorial brick wall on the school grounds to remember local Jews who lived in Berlin-Schöneberg. According to school officials,"the idea was based on the artist Horst Hoheisel from Kassel who gave stimulus on his "memorial from down below" in the framework of the 6th grade teaching lesson "National Socialism".

Berlin, Germany. Löcknitz Primary School on site of the synagogue at Münchener Straße 37. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

In front of the school and near the street is a more traditional monument, designed in a cubist style by Gerson Fehrenbach in 1963. It declares: "Hier stand der 1909 erbauten synagoge der jüdischen Gemeinde" (Here stood the Synagogue of the Jewish Community built in 1909).

Berlin, Germany. Monument to destroyed at synagogue at Münchener Straße 37. Gerson Fehrenbach, arch., 1963. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

Berlin, Germany. Monument to destroyed at synagogue at Münchener Straße 37. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

A plaque beneath gives further information about the fate of the building.  

Hier stand von 1909-1956 eine Synagoge. Sie wurde während der Reichspogromnacht
am 9. Nov. 1938 wegen ihrer Lage in einem
Wohnhaus nicht zerstört.
Nach der Vertreibung und Vernichtung
der jüdischen Mitbürgerinnen und Mitbürger
durch die Nationalsozialisten verlor sie
ihre Funktion und wurde 1956 abgerissen.”

In the nearby U-Bahn station there is a extensive photo exhibition on the history of the neighborhood. Since it was a heavily Jewish district in the interwar period, there is are many images of the synagogue and of prominent Jews who lived nearby. When I visited the station in November 2016, the former synagogue - already destroyed once - was suffering the indignity of having a temporary construction barrier interrupting the view of its full facade.
 

Berlin, Germany. images of the former Münchener Straße 37 on view in the Bayerischer Platz U-Bahn station, with a construction barrier further "destroying" the synagogue today. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Berlin, Germany. Image of the memorial wall constricted by local students on the site the former Münchener Straße 37. Photo on view in the Bayerischer Platz U-Bahn station. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016

Berlin, Germany. Image of the memorial wall constricted by local students on the site the former Münchener Straße 37. Photo on view in the Bayerischer Platz U-Bahn station. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

Bayerischer Platz neighborhood, including Münchener Straße, is also the location of the noteworthy "Places of Remembrance," (Orte des Erinnerns) project designed by artists Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock and installed in 1993.  The memorial, which consists of 80 signs which flatly state the dates and essence of laws promulgated by the Nazis in the 1930s to curb the rights of Jews.  This project remains one of the most thought provoking Holocaust commemorative installations anywhere - if one takes the time to look.

Berlin, Germany. Bayerischer Platz and "Places of Remembrance," (Orte des Erinnerns) project designed by Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

ABerlin, Germany. Bayerischer Platz and "Places of Remembrance," (Orte des Erinnerns) project designed by Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

Berlin, Germany. Bayerischer Platz and "Places of Remembrance," (Orte des Erinnerns) project designed by Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2016.

Exhibitions: German Jewish Museums Focus on Eastern European Jews in Germany Before and After the Shoah

Entrance to the Kempler pastryshop and Krakow Café, Grenadierstraße, Berlin 1926
© JMB, Schenkung von Hillel Kempler

D H. Lewin bookshop, Grenadierstraße 28, Berlin, ca. 1930 © bpk

Looking into Schendelgasse, Herbert Sonnenfeld, Berlin, ca 1935-1938
© JMB, purchase funds from the German Lottery Foundation Berlin

Sale of dry goods in Grenadierstraße , Frederick Seidenstücker, Berlin, 1932 © bpk

Exhibitions: German Jewish Museums Focus on Eastern European Jews in Germany Before and After the Shoah

Two exhibitions at German Jewish museums focus on the history and legacy of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to Germany before and after the Shoah. At the Berlin Jewish Museum the exhibition Berlin Transit traces the lives, settlement patterns and cultural expressions of Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe in the 1920s, especially those poorer Jews who settled in the neighborhood of Scheunenviertel, near Alexanderplatz, others in middle-class Charlottenburg.The exhibtion includes photos form the old neighborhoods as well as objects from the time, but it also includes works of fine art by some of the best Jewish artists of the interwar period, including Issachar Ber Ryback and Leonid Paternak. A cycle of pogrom images by Ryback is on display in Berlin for the first time since 1924. The imagery in these works will remind viewers of similar scenes in Marc Chagall's crucifixion series of the later 1920s. Rybacks' avant-garde watercolors join in dialogue with Leonid Pasternak's paintings and Naum Gabo's sculptures.

Meanwhile, an exhibition at the Munich Jewish Museum the exhibition Jews 45/90 From Here and There - Survivors from Eastern Europe examines the fate of Eastern European Holocaust survivors who settled in Germany after 1945. The Munich exhibitions examine the lives of DPs in the Munich area after the World War II, when Germany became home for tens of thousands of Eastern European survivors. This exhibit is purported to be the most comprehensive presentation to date about the everyday life, history and culture of Jewish Displaced Persons. The exhibit especially focuses on the stories of individuals, and also the varied living conditions of DPs. While some DPs remained in Germany and until the recent large influx of Russian Jews constituted the majority of Germany's post-war Jewish community, most emigrated again to Israel, the United States and other countries.

Berlin Transit: Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe in the 1920s at the Jewish Museum Berlin

Through July 15, 2012

As a hub connecting East and West, Berlin was a place of refuge and a way station for tens of thousands of Jews from Eastern Europe starting in the late nineteenth century, and particularly after the First World War. Most of them were fleeing westwards, away from the war, revolution and pogroms of the former Russian Empire and the Habsburg Monarchy.

With its multilingualism and complex internal networks, the community of Eastern European immigrants brought about a heyday of Jewish culture in Berlin. Many of the poor Jewish immigrants lived in the Scheunenviertel area near Alexanderplatz, others in middle-class Charlottenburg, a district of the city referred to as "Charlottengrad" on account of the high proportion of Russians who lived there.

This cultural-historical exhibition focuses on the diverse worlds of Eastern European Jews in Berlin of the Weimar Republic, and presents a wealth of unknown materials: literary and autobiographic texts can be heard in their original languages (Russian, Yiddish, Hebrew and German), largely unknown photographs of the Scheunenviertel are subject to critical analysis and newly interpreted.

After the  Pogrom, series by Issachar Ber Ryback, drawing, Kiev/ Moskow, 1918/1920
© Mishkan LeOmanut, Museum of Art Ein Harod, Israel

Birds in Yiddish children's book, Leib Kwitko and Issachar Ber Ryback, Schwellen Verlag, Berlin, 1922
© Gross Family Collection, Tel Aviv

 Die Berlinerin, Issachar Ber Ryback, Kiev and Berlin, 1919/1921-1924, oil on canvas

© Bat Yam Municipality, Israel

Max Liebermann opened an exhibition at the Berlin Academy of Arts, Leonid O. Pasternak, Berlin, 1930, oil on canvas © Jerusalem, The Israel Museum

The exhibition was developed in cooperation with the research project "Charlottengrad and Scheunenviertel: Jewish Immigrants from Eastern Europe in Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s" at the Eastern Europe Institute of the Free University of Berlin.

At the end of the exhibition visitors are invited to explore urban space for traces of the largely forgotten places that reflect the immigration of Eastern European Jews to Berlin.

A catalog of the exhibition (in German) is available.

Jews 45/90: From Here and There - Survivors from Eastern Europe

November 30th, 2011 through June 17th, 2012

Divided into nine different themed displays, the lives of DPs are described from their liberation until their emigration to Israel or other countries. It is not a straightforward story that is told. Depending on the occupation policies of the Allied Forces, the relief organizations, and international political developments, Jewish refugees did not know how long and under what conditions they had to carry on living in DP camps. Visitors therefore make their way through a maze - with a view of the next displays always barred. Many of the exhibits may seem at first glance to be everyday objects of little value. Their significance unfolds through the stories and memories that the lenders associate with them.

On the second exhibition level visitors are led into the Föhrenwald DP camp, now the Waldram district of Wolfratshausen, that existed from 1945-1957, longer than all other DP camps in Germany. Insights into the various aspects of camp life and the stories of individual families open up between the silhouettes of the characterstic Föhrenwald estate houses.

The richly illustrated exhibition catalog From Here and There Survivors from Eastern Europe provides further information on the DP era and on the exhibited objects. In the essay section, the children of former Displaced Persons such as the authors Lily Brett and Savyon Liebrecht, reflect their own family histories inspired by the objects in the exhibition.

Germany: Berlin Jewish Museum to Keep Growing with New Libeskind Designed Addition

Berlin, Germany. Jewish Museum. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber, 2003.

Germany: Berlin Jewish Museum to Keep Growing with New Libeskind-Designed Addition

The Berlin Jewish Museum unveiled plans in mid-May for an expansion to be completed by the fall of 2011. The new facility, located across from the current site on Lindenstrasse will be designed by Daniel Libeskind, architect of the Museum's original zig-zag building which opened in 2001. Since then there have been more than six million visits to the museum, with 750,000 visiting in 2009. During the past decade the Museum has increased it programmatic, educational and archival offerings requiring more space.

The Jewish Museum consists of two buildings, the Kollegienhaus, a former Baroque Prussian courthouse which was originally the Berlin City Museum to which the first Libeskind building was added, connected by underground passageways. A few years ago the Museum built the glass courtyard, also designed by Libeskind, between the rear wings of the Baroque building to serve as a venue for large gathering and events.

Berlin, Germany. Jewish Museum. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber, 2003.

The 10-million-euro (12.7-million-dollar) extension will consist of the conversion of a large existing warehouse currently housing a flower market, to which will be added three cubes for entrance, library and auditorium.

Conference: Transforming Berlin's Urban Space

Conference: Transforming Berlin's Urban Space

(ISJM) This October the Centum Judaicum in Berlin and the Berlin Jewish Museum and local academic partners team up to present what looks like a fascinating and important conference.

The conference focuses on the spatial dimensions of the migration experience and also inquires into how migrants perceived and shaped urban space. We will be particularly interested in exploring the diverse functions and meanings of Berlin as a crucial migration center between East and West.

Here is the schedule:

Transforming Berlin's Urban Space: East European Jewish Migrants in Charlottengrad and the Scheunenviertel, 1918-1939

Osteuropa-Institut, Freie Universitaet Berlin

In cooperation with Juedisches Museum Berlin and Wissenschaftliche
Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts

Berlin 2009, Centrum Judaicum and Juedisches Museum Berlin, October 17-19

Saturday

19:00 Centrum Judaicum
Opening Gertrud Pickhan
Key note Dan Diner, The Short Jewish Axial Time: 1918-1938 as an
Existential Constellation

Sunday

9:00
Introduction Gertrud Pickhan, Verena Dohrn

9:30-11:00
Topography

Chair: Trude Maurer
Anne-Christin Sass, The Scheunenviertel: A Transnational Social Space in Weimar Berlin
Gennady Estraikh, Weimar Berlin as an International Yiddish Press Center
Shachar Pinsker, The Urban Cafes of Berlin as Spaces of Hebrew and Yiddish Modernism

11:00 Coffee Break

11:30-13:00
Perceptions

Chair: Dan Laor
Mikhail Krutikov, Afterlifes of Weimar Berlin in Yiddish Literature
Marc Caplan, The Corridors of Berlin: Proximity, Peripherality, and Surveillance in Dovid Bergelson's Boarding House Stories
Karin Neuburger, Artificial and Real Spaces: Micha Yosef Berdyczewski's Life and Work in Berlin (1912-1921)

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:30
Negotiations

Chair: Michael Brenner
Barry Trachtenberg, Weimar and Yiddish Universalism: the making of Di algemeyne entsiklopedye
Vladimir Khazan, The Brothers Aaron and Isaak Steinberg's Contribution to the History of the Russian-Jewish Berlin
Tamara Or, Berlin, Nachtasyl and Capital of Hebrew Diaspora

15:30-16:00 Coffee Break

16:00-17:30
Identifications

Chair: Karl Schlogel
Avidov Lipsker, Berlin: Heterotopia of Hesitation and Decisiveness. The Case of Benjamin Harz
Albert Baumgarten, The Russian Identity of Russian Jews living in a Third
Space: Joseph Bikerman and the Patriotic Union of Russian Jews Abroad
Markus Wolf, Russian Jews against Jewish Bolshevism: The Example of the Patriotic Union in 1920s Berlin

Monday

9:00-10:30
Transfers

Chair: Oleg Budnickij
Alexander Ivanov, Berlin's ORT and German Jewry: Communication, Interaction, Cooperation (1920/30s)
Alexandra Poljan, Productive Help in Russian-Jewish Berlin. The Union of the Russian Jews in Germany: Charity and Politics
Arndt Engelhardt, Disseminating Knowledge: Jewish Intellectuals and the lieu of the Encyclopedia Judaica (1928-1934) in Weimar Berlin

10:30-11:00 Coffee Break

11:00-12:30
Translations

Chair: Matthias Freise
Olaf Terpitz, Translatio imperii: How Russian Jews negotiated Russia in Berlin
Britta Korkowsky, The Narrator that Walks by Himself: Sklovskij's Narrator, Kipling's Cat and the Paradox of Freedom in "ZOO or Letters not about Love"
Zsuzsa Hetenyi, Nomen est ponem? Names and Identity in Emigre Literature

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:00
Transformations

Chair: Monika Richarz
Susanne Marten-Finnis, Artist-Animators: Russian Display Culture in 1920s Berlin and the Transformation of Domestic Space in the West
Rachel Seelig, A Yiddish Poet in Berlin: Moishe Kulbak's "Naye lider"and the Flourishing of Yiddish Poetry in Exile
Anat Feinberg, "Wir laden Sie hoflich ein": The Grungard Salon and Jewish-Zionist Sociability in Berlin in the 1920s

15:00-15:30 Coffee Break

15:30-17:00

Transitions
Chair: Gertrud Pickhan

Tobias Brinkmann, Passage City: Berlin as a Focal Point of Jewish (Trans-)Migration after 1918
Gerben Zaagsma, The Place of Berlin in the Transnational Networks of Jewish Migrant Radicals
Jeffrey Wallen, Migrant Visions: The Scheunenviertel and Boyle Heights, Los Angeles

17:15-17:45
Conclusions David Myers

Germany: University of Potsdam and Jewish Museum Berlin Collaborate on Memmelsdorf Genizah

Germany: University of Potsdam and Jewish Museum Berlin Collaborate on Memmelsdorf Genizah
by Samuel D. Gruber

(ISJM) On July 22, 2009 Jan Kixmüller reported in the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten that the University of Potsdam is partnering with the Jewish Museum Berlin to further identify, investigate, transcribe and translate various items discovered in a geniza in Memmelsdorf (a Franconian town in Southern Germany) in February 2002. The Genizah was discovered during the renovation of an old half-timbered building, when a ceiling fan was removed, and a linen bag containing a variety of Judaica fell from the ceiling. In the bag were fragments of Jewish prayer book, a community order, letters, a calendar, lottery tickets and business cards. Investigation of the space in the ceiling revealed other items – not all typical of a Genizah - including childrens' shoes, tobacco and prayer belt pouch. Though many genizot from synagogues have been found, including one in the (conserved and open to the public in 2004) former synagogue of Memmelsdorf discovered in 1979, such finds from private houses are rare (I can’t recall any). Researchers have determined that the house in Memmelsdorf had been owned by Jews from 1775 until 1939. The fate of final Jewish owners is unknown. The Geniza materials date from 1770 to 1830.

Now, Jewish Studies students at Potsdam University’s Wintersemester are selecting items from the Genizah for research and exhibition. This the first cooperative project between the University and the Museum. The full significance of the collection, which was purchased by the Jewish Museum Berlin in 2003, remains to be researched.

Material from the Memmelsdorf synagogue genizah comprised about 20 percent of the items shown in an exhibition created the Hidden Legacy Foundation of London, in the mid-1990s, that traveled to many German and European cities, Jerusalem and the United States. Much of the material form that genizah has been conserved and is stored in the Jewish Documentation Center in Wuerzburg. The catalog of the Hidden Legacy edited by Falk Wiesemann remains an excellent introduction to the subject and materials of south German genizot. See: Genizah - Hidden Legacies of the German Village Jews / Genisa - Verborgenes Erbe der Deutschen Landjuden (Vienna: Hidden Legacy Foundation, 1992. ISBN 3-570-10501-6)

The 1990s was a period of renewed interest in rural German Jewish culture. Hundreds of forgotten former synagogues - many reused as homes, garages, workshops, and firehouses - were identified. Researchers were on the lookout for genizah materials. Some of these were literally rescued from dumpsters where they had been tossed during local construction work, as this was also a period of renovation of older buildings by a new and more prosperous generation. In addition to materials from Memmelsdorf, much material was found in the former synagogue of Veitschocheim near Wurzburg and has been studied and conserved and is on view in a permanent exhibition next to the restored synagogue in that small town.

Genizot materials as especially valuable to historians for several reasons. They usually contain otherwise unknown printed works - often ephemeral but once popular items including religious and secular texts. Genizot also often contain original unique documentary material often of a personal nature, including receipts and contracts. In Germany they shed light on many aspects of everyday life for Jews in small towns and villages, and they also include material valuable in the interpretation of local Hebrew and Yiddish language usage.

The Potsdamer Institute of Jewish Studies Potsdamer is one of the largest (perhaps the largest) such program in Germany, with more 300 enrolled students. The Berlin Jewish Museum is the most visited Jewish Museum in Europe. The collaboration between Potsdam and Berlin in intended to benefit both institutions, and to help shape the next generation of German Jewish museum scholars and professionals.

Czech Republic: Stolpersteine Project Memorializes Shoah Victims in Prague

Stolpersteine in Braunschweig, Germany (photo: Samuel D. Gruber Oct 2007)


Stolpersteine Project Memorializes Shoah Victims in Prague

Ruth Ellen Gruber has linked to a story about the Stolpersteine project ("Stones of the Vanished" or "Stumbling Stones") which began in Germany, and has now spread to the Czech Republic. Holocaust victims remembered by new ‘Stones of the Vanished’ project, describes the beginning of the project in Prague's historic Jewish quarter. The project, originated in 1994 in Cologne by artist Gunter Demnig, embeds small stones resembling cobbles, in the pavements near houses where Jews lived before their deportation out of Germany, or to their deaths.

The stones are actually concrete cubes about 10 cm each ( Four inches), with a thin sheet of brass on top inscribed with: ‘here lived – the name of a person, the date of birth, the date of transport, where that person was deported and the place and date of that person’s murder’. Each stone costs about 95 euro, paid for by contributions.

As of last year, 13,000 "stones" had been placed in 280 cities in Germany, Austria, Hungary and Holland. The largest numbers can be found in Cologne, Hamburg and Berlin.

The project is representative. It makes no attempt to identify and commemorate every deported Jew, homosexual or communist. If it did, some German neighborhoods would be entirely paved with brass.

Germany: "Looting and Restitution. Jewish-Owned Cultural Artifacts from 1933 to the Present" Exhibition at Berlin Jewish Museum

Germany: "Looting and Restitution. Jewish-Owned Cultural Artifacts from 1933 to the Present" exhibition at Berlin Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum of Berlin has mounted a major exhibition highlighting the still controversial issues surrounding the looting and restitution of Jewish art during the Nazi period and the Holocaust. The exhibition "Looting and Restitution. Jewish-Owned Cultural Artifacts from 1933 to the Present" narrates the historical events, context, and consequences of the looting carried out by the Nazis throughout Europe. The exhibition will be on view through January 25, 2009.
A special website has been created for the exhibition.

The art and artifacts around which the exhibition is formed are not Jewish art, but art once-owned by Jews. If anything, exhibitions of this type show just how assimilated and conventional Jewish art collectors were in the inter-war period. There is a common perception of Jews as patrons of the avant-garde - and of course there were artistically progressive Jews. But most Jewish collections of art and art objects were stolidly middle-class and bourgeois in their taste in acquisition and presentation. And yet, despite the Jewish predilection for popular and predicable taste, this art as well as the so-called "degenerate art," was fair game for pillage. For the lucky, art was detached from owners by coercion or force, but the owners escaped with their lives. For millions of others all possession were forfeit to official plunderers and illegal scavengers. How to treat this legacy, which continues to circulate in the art market today, remains a persistent and unresolved ethical, legal and practical problem ot this day.

A German language publication has been prepared to accompany the exhibit.

Looting and Restitution. Jewish-Owned Cultural Artifacts from 1933 to the PresentEdited by Inka Bertz and Michael Dorrmann commissioned by the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Jewish Museum Frankfurt am Main.
German language edition only
320 pages, approximately 170 illustrations, paperback
Price: 24.90 euros
Wallstein Publishers, 2008
ISBN-10: 3-8353-0361-9
ISBN-13: 978-3-8353-0361-4

The well-illustrated exhibition book provides extensive information on the historical background to the looting of cultural artifacts and how their loss through persecution is handled today.
Two essays by Dan Diner and Constantin Goschler explore the historical, political, and moral dimensions of confiscation. Seventeen authors, among them experts of international renown such as Michael Bazyler, Patricia Grimsted, Jürgen Lillteicher, and Frank Kuitenbrouwer examine the procedures used by Nazi looting organizations and the often disreputable role of museums, libraries, and art dealers. The first restitutions of cultural artifacts by the Allies just after the war and the restitution procedures of the 1950s and 60s are described, as is the revival of the theme in Europe since the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the Washington conference in 1998.

These articles present the facts of the 15 case stories described in detail in the book. They tell of the often intricate paths from "looting" to "restitution." Involved parties such as heirs, lawyers, museum representatives, and politicians have their say in interviews.

Click here for an account fo the exhibit by AFP.

Click here or a brief description of the exhibition at Artdaily.org

Germany: 5 Millionth Visitor to Berlin Jewish Museum

Germany: 5 Millionth Visitor to Berlin Jewish Museum

by Samuel D. Gruber

Ruth Ellen Gruber writes on her blog that the Jewish Museum in Berlin has received its 5 millionth visitor since the museum opened in September 2001. Ruth writes “even before its formal opening, the empty building was a tourist draw because of its distinctive design by Daniel Libeskind."

"According to the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel, the museum is the fifth most popular museum in Berlin, with 733,000 visitors in 2007 -- including 140,000 under the age of 18. (The Pergamon Museum holds the top spot with 1.3 million visitors). About two-thirds of visitors to the Jewish Museum come from outside of Germany.

The Museum is many things to many people. For some, it remains the most compelling Holocaust monument in Germany, and there remain many (sometimes I can be counted among them) who wish the building had remained empty as a memorial and that the Peter Eisenman-designed monument had not been built. Indeed, a good number of those 5 million visitors came to the building even before the museum was installed. Most of the time I wish, as do many visitors and staff, that the Libeskind design could have been more accommodating to the musuem exhibits. I have not visited the Museum for several years, but my overall impression was of a permanent exhibit that was contorted and disjointed, in large part because of the difficult spaces in which it was forced. But that too was the result of an unclear and uncertain story line. Whose Jews to commemorate. Berlin's or Germany's or Europe's? What history? Big cities or small towns? Rabbis or cafe raconteurs? What was important - history or art? Originals or replicas? I know that the staff has been trying hard for years to work all of this out. I hope on my next visit to Germany to have time to revisit and reconsider. As for the Libeskind space, in the end the staff's best efforts will have be confined to the more traditional exhibition spaces of the old History Museum, rather than the expressive and haunting spaces of the Zigzag.

Libeskind's type of space worked well in Osnabruck, where a small number of works by Felix Nussbaum are given lots of space, and the architecture is part of the narrative. To me, this small space remains Libeskind's most successful work. It is appropriately disconcerting and disorienting, but somehow remains humane. Like Berlin, Libeskind's Imperial War Museum in Manchester, England is difficult to navigate, but the disorientation there is in part due to murky lighting and unnecessary special effects, that for me undermined both architecture and exhibitions. At Manchester, the best experience was actually the liberating one of climbing on the outside of the building. I look forward to a trip to San Francisco, to see what musuem curators have to confront with there.

photos of the Jewish Museum in Berlin by Samuel D. Gruber (2003).