JEWISH LIFE IN CHARLOTTENBURG
From 1895 to 1910 the Jewish population of Charlottenburg increased from 4,600 to 22,500. New institutions were set up (synagogues, schools, mikvah, social services). The Kurfuerstendamm with its famous cafés, theatres and cafés, cinemas and cabarets became the center of the avant-garde (writers, painters, musicians, actors, critics...) and Jews were an integral part of it. In the 19th and 20th centuries, as political emancipation took hold, Jewish Germans soared to extraordinary heights of scientific, academic and professional achievement, artistic merit, political advancement, prosperity,cultural enrichment, leadership and honor.
Berlin was also a center of Zionist activities. It was in Berlin that Chaim Weizmann first became involved with Zionist intellectual circles.
The twenty-century experience of the Jews in Germany has been one ranging from spectacular highs, to tragic lows. The pogrom of November 9th 1938 (“Night of Broken Glass”) was a break in Jewish life in Germany. The Jewish Community Center of Berlin is at the site of the former Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, destroyed on Kristallnacht, at Fasanenstrasse 79-80. A section of the destroyed synagogue's surviving portal was incorporated into the new building,
After Shoah many displaced persons Eastern Europe and started a new life after haveing survived. Jewish life in Germany was intended to be temporary. In 1959 the Jewish community center was inaugurated in West Berlin and thus Charlottenburg became the center of the post war Jewish community in West Berlin. Since the 1990ies Berlin is - because of the Russian Jewish immigration - the fastest growing Jewish community of the world after Israel itself. Today most Jewish institutions are situated in Charlottenburg.
Duration: about 1 ½ hours
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Contact: info@berlin-juedisch.de
