Germany: Colloquium on Cologne Jewish Quarter and Synagogue Excavation Results

Cologne, Germany. Detail from early phase of synagogue excavation. Photo: Samuel Gruber (2007).

Cologne, Germany. Medieval mikveh, looking up towards superstructure. Photo: Samuel Gruber (2007).

Germany: Colloquium on Cologne Jewish Quarter and Synagogue Excavation Results
by Samuel D. Gruber

I am very excited to be attending next weeks colloquium in Cologne, Germany, where the results of the recent and extensive excavations of the town hall square will be presented and discussed in detail. I first visited the excavation of the medieval synagogue in 2007 and most recently reported on the remarkable finds from this dig earlier this spring. I am thankful to the City of Cologne for inviting me to attend and participate. Together with the recent excavations in Lorca, Spain, the Cologne excavation is probably the more important work of "Jewish archaeology" of the past decade. Even though the site had been partially excavated in the 1950s, the finds really present an entirely new picture of Jewish history and community in Cologne.

I plan on writing some detailed articles from this meeting after the work is fully presented. In the meantime, here is the working schedule of the event.

Cologne, Germany. Hypothetical reconstruction of facade of ancient synagogue by Sven Schütte, published before recent excavations. Will now surely be modified,

THE EXCAVATIONS ON COLOGNE TOWN HALL SQUARE RESULTS

Colloquium July 6th/7th 2011
Cologne, Historisches Rathaus, Spanischer Bau, Ratssaal

Simultaneous translation in ENGLISH available for the whole congress!

For first Information please visit the English version [press „en“ ]
of our Website:
www.museenkoeln.de/archaeologische-zone

WEDNESDAY 6.7.2011

8.30 am Opening of Congress office - Spanish Building, Court
9.00 am Welcome
Jürgen Roters, Lord Mayor of the City of Cologne
Introduction into the Subject
Prof. Georg Quander, Head of the Department of Culture

SECTION: ANTIQUITY, EARLY MIDDLE AGES AND CONTINUITY

9.30 – 12.00 am
Sven Schütte, The Area in Antiquity
Marko Hocke, An Roman Architectural Model
Christos Vangelzikis, The Roman Thermal and their walls with stamped bricks
Marianne Gechter, the Written Sources from Antiquity to Middle Ages
Sven Schütte/Marianne Gechter, the Question of Continuity
Discussion / Moderation: Ulrich Klein

12.00 – 13.30 Lunch break (Opportunity to visit the Excavations)

SECTION JEWISH HISTORY I

13.30 – 17.30 pm
Marianne Gechter, Written Sources of the Medieval Jewish Community in Cologne
Sven Schütte, The Medieval Area around the Town Hall and it’s Phases
Ulrike Nusch-Schikowski, The different tiled floors of the Synagogue

15.00 pm – 15.30 pm Coffee break
Hubert Berke, Kosher Cuisine and Auerochses – The Archaeozoological research
Sven Schütte, The Infrastructure of the Jewish Quarter
Marianne Gechter, Written Sources for the Topography until 1349
Katja Kliemann, The Ashes of the Pogrom 1349 and their distribution in the Jewish Quarter
(Opportunity to visit the Excavations until 18.30 pm)

19.00 Evening Lecture , Historisches Rathaus, Hansasaal
Ernst Baltrusch, Constantine The Great and the Rescript of 321. Antijewish Predjudice or Religious Tolerance?

THURSDAY 7.7.2011

SECTION JEWISH HISTORY II / THE LATER HISTORY OF THE QUARTER

9.00am – 12.00 noon
Michael Wiehen, Latest Research on the Cologne Mikveh
Katja Kliemann, Ceramics and Stratigraphy – an overview
Elisabeth Hollender, The Epigraphic Finds from the Cologne Synagogue from 1349
Elisabeth Hollender, An Oldjiddish Text from the Cologne Synagogue

Discussion / Moderation: Johannes Heil

10.00am – 10.30 Coffee break

Marianne Gechter, The written Sources 1349 – 1424
Sven Schütte, The medieval Town hall and the Town Councils Chapel
Marianne Gechter, The written sources fort the Cologne Goldsmith’s Quarter
Sven Schütte, Cologne Goldsmith’s Quarter and its buildings
Sven Schütte, An Imperial Earring of the 10th century

Discussion / Moderation: Norbert Nussbaum

12.00 – 13.30 Conclusion /Perspectives
Sven Schütte, Colonia Archaeologica – Archaeological Zone and Jewish Museum – The Concept of the new Museum

Max Polonovski, A Future for the Past? Colognes Jewish Heritage in the 21st century –
Conclusion Discussion / Moderation: Johannes Heil

For Contact please do not hesitate to contact MARTINA HEMMERLING
0049 221 221 33422

Germany: Sensational Finds at Cologne Medieval Synagogue Excavation

Cologne, Germany. Fragment of slate tablet with Hebrew script for German-based text found in synagogue excavation.
Photo: courtesy Sven Scheutte/Archaologische Zone.

Cologne, Germany. Stone fragment of Hebrew inscription found in synagogue excavation.
Photo: courtesy Sven Scheutte/Archaologische Zone.

Germany: Sensational Finds at Cologne Medieval Synagogue Excavation
by Samuel D. Gruber

Cologne city archaeologist Sven Schuette has announced what is surely the most remarkable find of the continually remarkable excavation of the medieval synagogue and Jewish quarter of that ancient city - scores of fragments of inscribed slate tablets, some of which appear to have been used as writing tablets - perhaps by scholars and students - and some of which were possibly visible literary or historic texts important to the community. So far the finds have only been reported in local media.

Archaeologists have recently been recovering these and other extensive remains of the synagogue destroyed in 1349, during what is known as as the "Plague Pogrom" on Saint Bartholomew's Night, when the synagogue was burned and many Jews died within.

We now know that a synagogue had stood on the site since at least the 8th century, and there is strong evidence for an earliest Jewish presence on the site. Jews were present in the Rhineland in the Late Roman Period and I believe they maintained a continuous presence in Cologne, which was the major administrative center of the region until Charlemagne began to move his court to Aachen after his coronation as King of Franks in 768 (Schuette has been attacked for pushing for an early synagogue date, but the circumstantial evidence seems to support him).

At the time of the First Crusade in 1096 the synagogue was destroyed and many Jews murdered, but it was rebuilt. After the destruction of 1349 a small Jewish community was reestablished in 1372, but this community did not last long. In 1424 Jews' right to reside in cologne were revoked and the city was Judenrein for centuries. The synagogue remains today are part of the city's rich archaeological zone and part of the fine Archaeological Museum, which also preserve remains of the Late Roman and Early Medieval Cologne.

When in 1349, the night of 23 to 24 August, the Jewish Quarter was attacked and almost all its inhabitants murdered in what was one of the most brutal and devastating massacres of Jews in the late Middle Ages many people took refuge in the synagogue, which was then burned and subsequently looted. It is not clear whether Jews sacrificed themselves as martyrs or if they were attacked after taking refuge in the stone building.

Afterward, whatever was not of value - either because it was too damaged or of unknown use - was thrown as rubble into large pits or left it in place. In one of the pits - which may have been used as a privy and/or rubbish pit before the destruction - archaeologists are now recovering thousands of fragments of the destroyed synagogue, and earlier refuse from the period of intensive Jewish use. There have no reports of finding human remains.

Cologne, Germany. Fragments of synagogue bimah. Photo: Willy Horsch.

Previously fragments of the stone bimah (platform from which the Torah is read) has been found and published by Scheutte, but now many more have been found and archaeologists are also uncovering fragments of furniture, books, burnt parchment, toys, medicine bottles and even food waste. "It is the largest archaeological collection of finds from a German synagogue," says project manager Schuette.

Perhaps most remarkable find has been a collection of more than seventy fragments of slate on which extensive inscribed writing has been found. More pieces are still coming to light with inscriptions in Hebrew, German and Latin. Sometimes there are just scribbles or drawings, but there are also longer texts. A long poetry text literature from before 1349, is written in German, but in Hebrew script - possibly an important text example of early Yiddish. Only time will will tell what these text contain, already it is clear that we might have a new sort of genizah - though one not deliberately made by Jews to preserve sacred objects and texts to Holy to destroy, but rather an accidental genizah, where fragments of Jewish life and thought have been entombed for centuries by their destroyers. The inscribed tablets are strong evidence for the presence of a yeshiva or Jewish school on the synagogue premises.

It is remarkable that these finds - as well indications of the synagogues earlier history - were overlooked in the excavations by Otto Doppelfeld undertaken in the 1950s, which Scheutte, who began these excavations in 2007, felt required examination and continuation. But Doppelfield was working under intense pressures of time - whereas Scheutte has been given the opportunity, encouragement and budget by the city of Cologne to carry out a careful, continuous and far-reaching project. In the end the story of the Jewish quarter of Cologne, its historic synagogue and the vicissitudes of the Cologne Jewish community through the centuries will be told in a new museum to be erected over and around the synagogue site.

The excavation of the Cologne synagogue tells us much about the medieval Jewish community in Cologne, and also recover important traces of art and architecture. The excavation is also a new chapter in what I call the "archaeology of destruction," following especially the excavation of the demolished synagogues of Regensburg and Vienna, each of which was more systemically dismantled by Christian authorities for material reuse. Some day we may also witness the excavation of the great medieval synagogue of Budapest, which was burned like Cologne, with Jews inside.

Germany: Back to the Drawing Board for Cologne Jewish Museum

Germany: Back to the Drawing Board for Cologne Jewish Museum
by Samuel D. Gruber

Cologne, Germany. Visitors try to view medieval mikvah protected (hidden) beneath a glass pyramid.
Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 1989.

Cologne, Germany. View from mikvah towards Rathaus (City Hall) with synagogue excavation in between. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber 2007.

(ISJM) Last month the plug was pulled on plans to construct an impressive (some would say too impressive) Jewish museum in the historic Jewish center of Cologne, Germany, exactly atop the site of the former synagogue, which archaeologists believe may date to as early as the 4th century C.E. I wrote about this project last summer.

Plans for the museum were announced with great hoopla last year by a private association that received the rights to build and operate the center on one of the most important sites in the city - immediately across from the town hall, and almost adjacent to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum C built after 1996 and designed by noted Cologne architect Oswald Mathias Unger . This entire civic area sits atop the ancient Roman administrative center.

The private Association "Society for the Promotion of a House and Museum of Jewish Culture" that was to finance the Jewish Museum wrote to the Cologne City Council that it did not have the funds for the project nor would it be able to raise them. The Society cited the present poor economic situation as the reason for its inability to fund the project, but this seems an excuse, since it was clear at the time of the acceptance of the project that the Association did not have the funds needed nor did they have a reliable plan for raising the needed money. Skeptics last year claimed the project unfeasible and that in the end the city would be shamed in to taking it over - in order to salvage an important cultural endeavor, but also to escape charges of neglect of Jewish history.

Now the question is - have expectations been raised for this large institution - and will the city council feel obliged to step in and rescue the plan? No decision will be made until after local elections on August 30th. Mayor Fritz Schramma (CDU) has in the past preferred a smaller plan that would incorporate the synagogue remains into the large archaeological park that includes all of the excavated ancient and medieval elements in the area.

Cologne, Germany. Plan of medieval Jewish quarter from C. Cluse, ed., The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries (Proceedings of the International Symposium held at Speyer, 20-25 October 2002), p 374

To me, this is a sensible approach. In the end more people would learn of the long presence of Jews in Cologne, and all would better understand Jewish history in the city as one that was long integrated into the urban, social and economic fabric. There can still a plenty of room for detailed historic and interpretive exhibitions and temporary displays focusing on different aspects of Jewish history and Judaism.

Cologne, Germany. City archaeologist Sven Schuette explains the medieval history and topography of the Jewish quarter, shows a model of the synagogue within the larger archaeological zone, and exhibits a few of the many finds that have been recovered since the 1950s excavation was reopened and expanded in 2007. Photo: Samuel D. Gruber (2007)

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.

Architects chosen to design Cologne Jewish Museum on site of ancient synagogue

Architects chosen to design Cologne Jewish Museum on site of ancient synagogue

by Samuel D. Gruber (ISJM)

(June 20, 2008)

Another Jewish Museum is planned for Europe, this time in the ancient city of Cologne, the site of the oldest physical remains of a Jewish community in Germany. The new museum project, which has been discussed for some time, received an official launch on June 13th when the prominent and critically acclaimed German architectural firm of Wandel Hoefer Lorch + Hirsch was chosen winner of an international competition for the museum design. Among the firm's many projects are the recently completed (2007) Jewish Museum and synagogue in Munich. The decision is not yet final, the town senate will decide in August. There remain many concerns about the financing of the project.

The impetus for the museum comes from new excavations of the Jewish quarter of Cologne, right around and underneath the town hall, as well as a dramatic increase in the city's Jewish population which has tripled in the past 15 years. Inter-city rivalry certainly plays a factor. There are now major Jewish museums in many German cities (Munich, Frankfort, Berlin) and smaller Jewish monuments and galleries in scores of other German localities.

The museum is expected to open in 2010 or soon thereafter. The planning, design and construction will take place contemporaneously with the extensive and important archaeological excavations now in progress on the site of Cologne's ancient and medieval synagogue, and its extensive medieval Jewish quarter. The museum, a private-public partnership, will be erected over the site of the old synagogue, the remains of which will be visible from the museum, but will be administered separately as part of the extensive archeology preserve in the area, already one of the largest accessible underground archaeological museums in Europe. Next door is the medieval mikveh, which has been partially visible to tourists for decades beneath a glass pyramid. Archaeologists and historians are concerned that the construction of the new museum should not disrupt the excavation or destroy the ancient remains.

In recent years city archaeologist Sven Scheutte has been investigating the synagogue and adjacent areas, which were first excavated in the 1950s in the wake of the destruction of the area as the result of World War II allied bombing. Those excavations, by Otto Doppelfield, were hurried due to the demands of reconstruction, but still they revealed four distinct phases of synagogue building, the earliest of which Doppelfield dated to the 11th century. Scheutte has
determined that the synagogue originated in antiquity, and the mikveh dates at least from the early Carolingian period, since its masonry shows distinctive cracks from an earthquake, probably of 789. It is hoped that extensive new excavations begun in the fall of 2007 will determine the early phases of the synagogue, and whether it was continuously used from the 4th century C.E. following, or whether there was a break. In either case, it is clear that the museum
project will link Germany's oldest Jewish building with its newest.

Wandel Hoefer Lorch + Hirsch designed several important Jewish buildings and monuments in Germany in recent years, often as the result of competitions. Among the best known projects are the synagogues in Dresden and Munich, and the Holocaust monument at the Grünwald Train station in Berlin, which commemorates the deportation of thousands of Jews to concentration and death camps; and the monument at the former prison and concentration camp at Hinzert (near Saarbrücken). All of the firms are site specific. Some, like Grünwald, are modest and intimate, others like Munich are monumental. The Cologne project would be one of the most complex – since it must integrate many layers of history, and also serve as an important urban link in the heart of city.