Jewish culture in Germany

The American architect Daniel Liebeskind has a decisive influence on perception Jewish cultural life in the urban space. His Jewish Museum in Berlin continues standards. The museum visitor feels the building physically to the point of pain. Of the walking over thousands of clinking metal plates in the shape of faces let you feeling Shoah, hearing, frightening, becoming devout and pausing.

Architectural quotations from Berlin can also be found in Mainz. The plans for the new Jewish Community Centre were designed by the Cologne architect Manuel Herz. “Kedushah” is the Hebrew word of a blessing for “sanctification”. Its five letters give the new synagogue in Mainz their shape and structure. The Architecture with its own design language and its green Façade covered with ceramic profiles deliberately deviate from the usual designs and materials. Manuel Herz closes the arc from the Middle Ages to the present, however, without direct reference to persecutions, pogroms and the Holocaust. Rather, his architectural work is based on traditional texts of the Torah, depicted as wall ornaments in the synagogue.

Though, the new Jewish Museum Frankfurt/Main with historic Rothschildpalais is dedicated to collecting and conveying Jewish cultural assets with a special reference to the history of Frankfurt. The photographs follow the conceptual ideas of the architects. With their imagery it captures the specificity of the rooms in its formal language and aesthetics.

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