Since the end of the 17th century there has been a Jewish community in Berlin. Art and culture, the sciences and politics, and the entire social life of Berlin have always been shaped by residents of the Jewish faith or with Jewish roots. We cannot tell the history of Berlin without them. Moses Mendelssohn, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Rahel Levin, Ferdinand Lassalle, Giacomo Meyerbeer, James Simon, Carl Fürstenberg, Franz von Mendelssohn, Max Liebermann, Else Lasker-Schüler, Alfred Döblin, Albert Einstein, Hans Rosenthal, Walther Rathenau or the Wertheim family and the publishers Ullstein - to name but a few - all of them have played an important role in Berlin and German history. At the end of the Third Reich, of the 170,000 Berliners with Jewish roots, only 9,000 were still alive in Berlin, 100,000 had emigrated or fled into exile and over 55,000 had been murdered in the concentration camps or on the deportation transports or had been driven to death in desperation. Today Berlin has a Jewish community again, which enables its more than 10000 members to live a traditional life with 9 synagogues and 2 mikvahs, schools, theatres, retirement homes and numerous cultural events. Our tour takes us to the most famous places of Jewish faith and life - today and in the past - but also to the places of the Holocaust and of expulsion and persecution. We will take you to the historical residential addresses and places of work of famous representatives of Jewish Berlin and tell you about their many-sided activities.
